Melissa Tan: belief

Transcript context

…What's an example of caring deeply about someone and being that kind of leader? People may be listening and are like, "Oh yeah, I care a lot about my reports." But what are some examples of what that means to you that maybe would surprise people? I think an example from someone that they joined my team and I just early on thought that they weren't maybe moving quickly enough and they needed some more direction. And so really early into them joining the company, that was about two or three weeks in, I actually pulled them aside and I said, "Hey, we need to move a lot faster. This is where we need to get to by X. We're a growth team. We need to prove wins out early. This is how I think we should do it. Let's try to create a roadmap, a list of problems to solve, et cetera, hypotheses." And they don't have to be right, but just getting something out there, starting to line the whole team on what those are and then defining how we're going to measure success and know we're in the right path. We just need to get there as quickly as we can. And so I gave them that feedback and afterwards, ever since then they have been just on a tear and they actually have mentioned that in later conversations a year into working together that they were so grateful that I had that conversation with them and that I took the time to tell them those things. I think sometimes as a manager it can maybe, you want to avoid the uncomfortable conversations, but I actually think the more direct you can be but also saying this is my intention. My intention is to set you up for success. That goes really far and I think that's a great example of how do you deeply care about somebody and give them direct feedback and you're giving them direct feedback because you deeply care and you also believe that they can do things differently. I think the only reason you would give that feedback is because they can do things differently and you just want to help support them. In that conversation. What is it that you did that made them feel like you really cared about them? Because when I hear you describe it's like you're just telling them, you're giving them feedback just like, "Hey, you need to do a lot better at this. We need to actually hit our goals." What was it that made them feel like, "Oh, she really wants me to succeed?"…

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