And Vijay Says…

To some degree, we all need some validation to feel good and perform better . As we grow as leaders, it becomes a big part of our lives to balance the need for validation of folks in our team. Too little and they may never realize full potential and too much and you will never have time for anything else. Striking the right balance is key, but real hard !

It’s one of those cases where the leader has to err on the side of more validation, not less. It’s also a multi dimensional problem which needs you to come at it from several angles

1. Is it just a pure lack of confidence ?

There are several people who can do a great job and the only ones ever in doubt of that are – ironically – themselves . If that is the case, it’s usually easy enough to fix. I just reinforce them with some version of “You got this – you no longer need to check with me on every step. You have earned the autonomy you deserve”

2. Is it incompetence ?

Sometimes it’s a job that someone is just not suitable for and no amount of help is going to solve it . Once that is clear – after training , multiple chances etc – it is time for that hard conversation on next steps .

3. Is your open door policy abused ?

I have had an open door policy for a long time and it looks like this after a few evolutions . Anyone in the company can get 15 mins of my time for a first chat. They can ask me anything at all and I will help what I can . But from then on – I need to know why I am the best person to help them if they need my time again . If they don’t convince me (or my EA if they go to her first), they don’t get that meeting .

4. Are there systemic insecurities ?

It’s very often the case that there is some history that causes people to need your validation more than you think is normal . Perhaps the people who held your job were micro managers , or the company had just laid off a bunch of people , or there is news of a market down turn . Leaders need to keep up with the environment closely to know if there is a systemic issue to be tackled heads on.

5. Are you causing the problem ?

When I am new to a role – I often dig very deep into even small issues to learn more . Long after I stop doing that, some people in my team will keep involving me on things where I have no value to add . This is on me and not them . I shouldn’t be sending mixed signals.

6. Are you balancing praise and criticism ?

Whatever the balance – first thing is to make sure is that it’s timely . To start with – If it’s praise – do it in public . If its criticism – do it in private . If all you do is praise – your team at some point will think you are not sincere . If all you do is criticize – no one will enjoy working for you . That’s the hard thing with leadership !

As I look back on my various leadership roles – There are two mistakes I have made multiple times

1. Not validating repeated good performances

There are some people that I routinely would go to for specific tasks because I know they will execute flawlessly . After they do it a few times, I tend to stop validating their good work . Bad idea – consistent performers also need validation that they are still adding value .

2. Ignoring the low maintenance folks

The needy folks always get time from you . And while the low maintenance folks are usually much appreciated by their leaders – they often don’t get the deserved validation for their good work . Also an equally bad idea obviously.

There is a quote I love which is attributed to Mahatma Gandhi that goes “the sign of a good leader is not about how many followers you have, but how many leaders you create” . Validation of their good work is a foundational aspect of creating self confident leaders

The first time I saw bottled water being sold at the TRIVANDRUM Central railway station, I remember it being a big joke in my family . We continued taking water from home when we travelled for a couple more years, constantly making fun of those “Bisleri” vendors, and the idiot travelers who could have just brought water with them like we did . And then, my family too made the switch to bottled water and no one reminded us that the joke was on us now 🙂

A similar story is going on in companies too – there are now official titles of “Chief Story Teller” in many places. The first time I met a story teller in flesh and blood – she knew in a second that I didn’t take her role seriously. She didn’t defend her role or anything – instead she started humming “Do you believe in magic” and we both burst out laughing.

Pretty soon I became a believer – I started seeing the effectiveness of story telling in sales scenarios . When dry PowerPoint presentations were replaced or augmented with good crisp stories – we started winning more business. I became a big fan in quick time – and also realized that the only way to scale this is if all of us became good story tellers – instead of relying on one story teller for the whole team for everything .

Once they see something that helps them sell – the people with sales quotas don’t need any more motivation to take it up. But engineers don’t work that way and I should have known . I started hearing things like “I am a DBA – what fluffy story do you want me to tell?” . For a little while I could get away with “Well, I am an engineer too and if it works for me it works for you too”. Pretty soon – and of course quite expectedly – my defenses were met with “Yeah, but you are not much of a real engineer anymore”.

So is there any good reason for techies to gain some experience in story telling ?

To answer that, we don’t really need to dig very deep. The biggest frustrations of technologists is usually that people who need to make important decisions that affect us – like approving budgets, resource allocations, Infrastructure purchases , hiring … those folks are usually not techies and never seem to understand the gravity of what we tell them . It’s almost as if we don’t even speak the same language 🙂

The frustration is quite real. The very first time I had any alcohol was when my boss came to my apartment with two bottles of wine to get over our grief about the client PM not agreeing to upgrade the test server we were working on, despite we taking turns to walk him through twenty pages of performance statistics . I also got introduced to some of the most colorful German phrases that evening 🙂

Good stories are well engineered and have great structure and flow. All the more reason that engineers should find it easy to tell great stories.

All stories have a simple design pattern –

1. There is an intro, to set the context

Engineers are finding it hard to get approvals for essential stuff like more cloud capacity, better brands of beer in the fridge etc .

2. There is a conflict, since there are choices to make

An alarming number of engineers are ordering cheap wine online and getting it delivered to office, and coming up with rude names for the project managers and the CFO. Monthly outages have been replaced by weekly outages even though everyone is working weekends. Customers are saying things are not working as advertised . And yet everything magically looks fine on the CFO spreadsheets and the board deck !

3. There is a resolution or revelation

Engineering VP shares his cheap wine with John in marketing who tells him they have surplus CMO budget for the quarter. They convince the CFO to use it for buying more cloud capacity . CFO buys expensive wine to celebrate problem resolution . They live happily ever after !

That’s pretty much it ! Give it a try – After all, we are people who made the switch from waterfall to agile and lived to tell the tale . Story telling should be an absolute piece of cake for us.

One of the most embarrassing professional development moments for me was a class on communication that I took as a trainee in TCS in 1999. The instructor video taped me – and went through the replay, pointing out everything that went wrong with my short presentation, in excruciating detail. He concluded with “If you don’t change all these, You will never make your point effectively, Vijay !”. For the next 5 years or so – every single one of performance appraisals had a line “Should work on improving communication skills” 🙂 .

While I don’t claim to be a master communicator by any stretch of imagination, I have largely succeeded in making my point most of the time. It took me a few years to get there, and hopefully I can save you some time by sharing what I learned. “How do I improve my communication skills?” is also one of the questions I get asked a lot – especially by people who grew up in India like I did, and then chose to live and work abroad.

Here is my simple 3 step approach to making my point.

1. What-Why-How : I try to organize my talk track by defining the problem, explaining why this is the right problem to be solved , and my thoughts on next steps.
2. Reinforce : Each step above needs some validation for your audience to buy in. This could come in many different forms – modulation of your voice, dramatic silent pauses, rhetoric, data, stories, pictures etc. This is the part where practice and experience makes you better.
3. Repeat : We over-estimate how fast people understand what we are saying. It is more efficient to just repeat your key points. This is especially important when the talk is interactive – its very easy to misunderstand, or just lose track when there are objections, or a lengthy debate on some part of what you said, or just a mean remark. In such cases – paraphrasing is usually one of your best friends. It helps clarify the intent so that you can respond effectively, and has the side benefit that people generally like their own words repeated to them 🙂

Once you do this a few times, it will become second nature and you won’t need to explicitly think of the three steps. And – it works just as well outside your work too.

Couple of things to keep in mind

1. Less is more – You don’t need to say a lot to make your points. Dr King’s highly impactful “I have a dream” speech only lasted 17 minutes. President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address only had 272 words. Bohemian Rhapsody only has 361 words in its lyrics.
2. Simple words are all you need – Your primary intention is to be well understood. Even when addressing people who know all the fancy words, your ability to explain in simple language will usually help increase their confidence in you.
3. Don’t worry about your accent – This took me a while to appreciate. As a non-native speaker of English, I constantly worry about my thick Indian accent standing the way of people understanding me. In my case, it was mostly the speed that was the actual problem – and I learned to slow down, and people understood me better. When people hear a foreign accent – they tend to listen with more attention, at least to begin with. They also forgive some mistakes in grammar.

Happy new year !