Supporting your people leaders
High growth companies often struggle because their emerging people leaders don’t get the support they need. In reality, startups begin with very few people and a flat organisational hierarchy where everyone wears many hats and no one has time to focus on leadership. As companies scale, leadership levels start to appear. As this happens, companies need to start supporting their people leaders. Support options include reading suggestions, formal training on concrete leadership skills, peer groups, challenging prospective leaders, shadowing other organisational leaders, and leadership coaching.
You should also take into account
- the level of seniority when considering the suitable support;
- allocating appropriate budget for professional development; and
- defining accountability structures.
Part of the responsibility of leading is preparing others to lead. Ensure your people have the sufficient support they need to succeed. Considered support will mean your new leaders will not "sink or swim".
Supporting your new leaders will lead to long-term better outcomes for you, for them, and for your business. To read more about the different support options, visit https://blackmill.co/resources/supporting-your-people-leaders. Also did we mention we can help?
~ Elle
What’s been happening?
Leading engineering teams workshop in March
March is fast approaching and so is our first Leading Engineering Teams workshop for the year. These are always very popular but this one has not sold out yet, so check your training budget and your calendar. To learn more about the workshop and how you can become a more effective leader, visit https://blackmill.co/coaching-training/workshops/leading-engineering-teams
F Factor panel
Elle will be speaking on a panel for F Factor with Vanessa Doake from Art Processors, Michelle Gleeson from Kaleida, and Emma Jones from Project F. Titled Levelling UP — A Careers Special, the focus is on the performance process as a means for levelling up the careers of women. Join at: https://lu.ma/fzjvgwth
Blackmill free office hours are on again!
We’ve made eight complimentary 50-minute sessions available in March.
Past sessions have talked about everything from how to start shipping again to why everything has slowed down now that you’ve hired more people or what your org should really look like. We also love talking about how to maintain a healthy and productive team culture. Or perhaps you’re just wondering what executive coaching even is?
Topics could also include strategic thinking, conflict conversations, resilience, work overwhelm/prioritisation, managing change, first time leaders needing support, long time leaders who need peers… You tell us, really.
Booking are available on a first come, first served basis, book here: https://meet.blackmill.co/blackmill/office-hours
What are we reading?
- Do Users Write More Insecure Code with AI Assistants? – This study from Stanford says they do. And finds that they're also more confident in the security of said code.
- ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups – An old First Round interview with Molly Graham, who is a very respected scaling operator.
- Whose Risks? Whose Benefits? – Mandy Brown with a typically brilliant and thoughtful take on how to reframe risk and benefit to help us all make better decisions.
- Teaming is hard because you’re probably not really on a team – Lachlan doesn't love the judgements inherent in the use of 'real teams' here, but finds the perspectives to be a useful tool for evaluating your working structures.
- In Loving Memory of Square Checkbox – RIP the square checkbox, a historical design journey.
A cuppa with Andrew Cosgriff
1. What do you do? And what do you like about your work?
I’m an Engineering Manager in the Reliability and Security function inside MYOB. As you can imagine for a long-running company like this, there’s a huge mix of old and new technology that our software delivery teams need to work with. Our function’s role is hopefully apparent from our name, and there’s plenty to do.
What I like about it is that I can connect my work to meaning — MYOB’s here to help Australian and New Zealand businesses to start, survive and succeed. With that, the impact that our function can have inside the company by working with delivery teams to improve the reliability and security of their systems is huge, and that impact flows onward to help all of those businesses that rely upon us. I love that idea of connectedness, and I’m always making connections between the things that I learn across our company, looking for opportunities for people to solve problems together rather than alone.
2. What aspect of your work do you find most challenging?
At the moment, prioritisation. It’ll be a familiar story to plenty of you — small teams with big dreams, high hopes placed upon us, and a long road ahead. We can do lots of things, but we can’t do them all at once. As a recovering people-pleaser I hate letting people down, but also need to manage the ever-growing expectations of my teams.
3. What are you passionate about?
That software is not just for Christmas. I’ve worked with plenty of teams in earlier years where it was assumed that “once it’s in production we can move on to writing the next thing.” Instead, I tried to help teams see that “getting it to production” is just the start of a piece of software’s lifecycle. It ain’t over ’till it’s over — and that’s when the system’s shut down, and its infrastructure is decommissioned. Keeping software running is how we realise the value we were hoping for by building it. DevOps culture wasn’t just about making teams deploy their own code, it also includes taking on that ongoing responsibility.
I'm also passionate about Inclusivity. At another popular Australian company I worked closely with a remote delivery centre and (for a time) helping people work better with their distributed teams. A lot of hallway conversation and context is missed by the folks not in the main office. It takes a lot of intentional actions to avoid that and to keep them included, engaged and informed. I organised plenty of little “side” things — taking stock photos when I visited their office, publishing interviews similar to this — to increase the remote folks’ presence in the eyes of the head office staff. I also made sure they were included in large company events. You’ll notice that I haven’t even covered the cultural aspects, but there are plenty — all the way down to taking the trouble to get people’s names right. While the COVID-19 pandemic gave more people a taste of distributed work, the lessons weren’t always obvious and didn’t always stick.
4. What are recent accomplishments you are happy with?
What I’m most happy about from 2023 is successfully settling into a new company with new challenges and some lovely people to tackle them with. I’d spent a long time at my prior employer — I was incredibly fortunate to grow through many roles and opportunities there — and finally tearing myself away from the “comfortable chair” was a stressful experience. I hadn’t had a “first day at work” in 11 years! A year later, the honeymoon’s over but I’m no less keen — not only for the role itself, but also the chance to use my photography and other skills to engage with the wider company.
5. What is one mistake that you will never make again?
Don’t give your manager agency over your career. Regardless of best intentions, they know less than you think you do about what you want. I spent the first twenty years of my career deep in technical areas where career growth was never ever discussed, so I’ve been a very slow learner in this regard. In the more recent decade I’ve been mostly lucky, but learning to ask for what I personally need remains a challenge. Perhaps it’s that people-pleasing thing…
6. How do you manage stress?
Not as well as I’d like to. Much of my stress comes from feeling stuck somehow, so I’ll often spend time thinking through how I can unblock situations, or better visualise progress so as to stop worrying about it. At the very least, I’ll jot down ideas to try and remove them circling around my brain. I find going a few days without some kind of exercise contributes to feeling low. Long, aimless walks on my own are my favourite circuit-breaker, ideally with a camera in hand.
7. What is the best advice you can give?
Make your work visible (work out loud!) but don’t just talk about the what. Connect it to some kind of value for others — the why.
Alongside that, don’t be shy to share the credit around. We’re in this together.
8. What one thing would you change about our society?
I love the idea of a Universal Basic Income — removing a primary source of stress from people’s lives and allowing them the freedom to pursue more meaningful goals.
9. What are your goals or aspirations for this year?
Personally, more photography — not just taking photos, but printing and using them. I love to find beauty in the everyday, but I’d love a few more overseas opportunities to find beauty in a slightly different everyday to the usual one.
Professionally, as I know many middle managers do, I aspire to find more occasions to rise above the day to day and look further ahead — not alone, but with my peers (as per Patrick Lencioni’s observation about who your “Team #1” should be).
What are we cooking?
Andrew: I recommend people try a dish of Khao Soi next time they visit Thailand.
I’m lucky in that my wife (who is Thai) cooks Khao Soi at home, but she just makes it up on her own. She did mention this recipe online that you could try: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/kao-soi/
And we’re out
Thank you for showing an interest in our newsletter and we hope that you enjoyed the read. Feel free to contact us if you have any feedback, a burning question, or just a recipe that you would like to share.
Until next time, keep learning!
Everyone at Blackmill