Christian Idiodi: evaluation

Transcript context

…And each person will know. Yeah, it just makes sense. Something else you talk about is people getting promoted too early. Leaders getting promoted too early, not doing well, they end up blaming others when really they were not actually ready for this new position. Can you talk about why you think that happens and then just how maybe as that person that might be in that position right now feeling like, oh, shit, maybe it's not my fault. I don't know how to make an appeal to corporations on this one. It's a similar appeal in the light of coaching too as well. Most people are promoted to a point of incompetency or so, but I kind describe the dynamic this way. It's kind of like Lenny is a fantastic engineer. If you think about it, he wins engineer of the year awards. If you go to the office, his picture is on the wall, everybody knows him. He's feeling good. But it's like one year, two years, maybe eight years in Lenny's feeling like, am I really growing in my career? Am I really challenged in my career? He looks at the engineering career ladder. The next role from his senior engineer role is engineering manager. The leadership team, HR, they look at the same thing. That's true. We love Lenny. We don't want to lose Lenny, we need to promote him. And the next step is engineering manager or product manager, manager, however, I want to use the rule here. And so, we do what? We promote Lenny. It feels good at the moment. Yeah! Congratulations on your promotion. He posts a nice post. We are like, "Yeah, we're going to keep Lenny there for long time now because he's promoted." Now, Lenny has never been a manager in his whole life. He's never interviewed people, fired people, didn't even coach people or had done any of those things directly. After a couple of months, Lenny starts to recognize an interesting pattern. Nobody's clapping for him at company meetings anymore. And sure they've taken down his picture from the world because he's no longer an engineer, he's a manager. So somebody else is now the engineer of the year, they are clapping for him in meetings. He's like, he doesn't feel recognized or seen anymore. He's just a guy now behind the scenes and that kind of thing. Then in a couple of weeks go by, then they have a big engineering problem. And you know what Lenny does? He jumps in and he solves the problem. Lenny did not recognize that his job has changed. His job is no longer to solve the problem directly, but to get a team of other people good at solving problems. This is because you're a great engineer but not a good manager. This story or this dynamic I've told is probably the most common origin story of what people see or deem as micromanagement. In many cases here, this individual knows how to do engineering. They don't know how to do engineering management. They don't see the shift in their dynamic being changed. We see back patterns where it's like the second you become a manager or a leader, you cannot say things like, I don't know. I'm not sure, I need help. Who told us those things? But it's like such an expectation that our leaders must have the answers, must know the right things, must do the right things. And so what do we see people do? Rather than Lenny asks for help, he goes to Google and searches how to do an interview, how to write a review. Are you seeing? He reads different articles like this one looks cool and then he does it and nobody dies. y asks for help, he goes to Google and searches how to do an interview, how to write a review. Are you seeing? He reads different articles like this one looks cool and then he does it and nobody dies. Nothing breaks so he thinks there's a good framework and a good pattern. And we have this dysfunctional culture of everybody doing different things, whatever works for anybody and that is the cycle that repeats itself. Now, a person that works for Lenny sees that he used this framework and thinks it must be a good framework, my boss did it, and you see how that cycle repeats itself? Because Lenny didn't actually get coached to be a manager. If you ask anybody that works with me, if come to me and say, "Oh, I need to get promoted to be a director." You know what I say? I say, "Go be a director. You don't need a title. Let me tell you what a director does. And you're going to work with me over the next couple of months to do those things because I am promoting you to do the job, not to learn the job." You see where it falls apart in promotions? We promote people and it's like you're now a VP, do VP things. And you're like, I have never done VP things before, but I cannot tell people I've never done VP things because it makes me look incompetent, but I see the job description. I should do some VP things. What did my last VP do? Those things and those. How you say? But the best place to learn how to be a VP is when you're not a VP because that's where you practice being a VP. That's where you get feedback on because then when you become a VP, you have done those things before. It's like why is the first time you've done an interview when you're now a VP? Come in and do an interview with me, observe me do an interview, ask questions, see what works, get feedback. That's why I love those group product manager roles because those are actually meant to be designed as ways for people to make a decision if they want to be a manager or they want to just stay in the discipline, but people use them as why would you give somebody four direct reports if no evidence, they can manage one? So what I do is I give you one, you might tell me, I hate people. That's okay, we can talk about that. But it's like, let me give you four and you're just going to practice the bad behavior on four. So this is what often happens in company. We promote them into incompetence. It's not their fault because we are not coaching them. What we need to do is create a safe environment for people to practice leadership before they become leaders, before we promote them. We have to have good coaching programs for leaders to say, if there's a succession plan, I want Lenny to be a new manager. I don't wait till it's time to promote him then I teach him management because then apparently he cannot say things like, I don't know. I have to teach him leadership and management before he becomes a leader or a manager.…

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