Some thoughts on leadership. Early in my career I worked with some great guys like @PahDoh @killchain. We used to joke about the ‘employee recognition program’ - normally when you passed the senior leader in the hallway he would barely look at you.
2/ At some point he would look at you and grunt as you passed. The grunt meant you were now recognized. Thus, the employee recognition program was born!
3/ Experiences like that taught me a lot about leadership (eg what NOT to do). Here are some practices I use to stay engaged with the team and reinforce a culture of servant leadership.
4/ Spend time in the trenches - understand exactly how work gets done and the challenges the team faces. Don’t solely rely on filtered inputs from your management team. My main focus is to remove road blocks and allow the team to move ahead.
5/ Commit to Transparency - I invite early career and more junior members of the organization into senior leadership meetings. Not just to observe but to ask questions, engage and challenge like anyone else there.
6/ Side benefit of this practice is that they share their insights with everyone else and its more believable by the rest of the organization. My message is carried by other messengers.
7/ Thank you notes - I send hand written thank you notes to people in the organization when I notice something great they did. I find this means more than most anything else. I also notice people keep these and hang them up in their office area.
8/ Open Conversation - I have a persistent chat open with the entire organization. They can ask me questions anytime and I will respond for the benefit of the rest of the organization. I also hold an open call every few weeks to do the same. These are called ‘Rap with Rohan’
9/ Town Halls - Quarterly town halls to update on our OKRs and to recognize individuals in the organization. These are high energy events where we focus on a particular theme of interest to the employees.
10/ Recently we did an entire event focused on talent and demystifying HR processes. I was blown away by the overwhelming positive response from the organization.
11/ Most of all team first and humility above all else. Recognition that I don’t have this all right and there are constantly ways to improve and make this better. Interested in any ideas people want to share! #leadership
