Chris Evans

I'm fortunate enough to have attended the LeadDev conference a number of times through my work, and I always come away with new insights and motivation to improve the way I lead my team. 2021 is no different, with an insightful set of talks on various topics.

These are some key things I took away from the first day of the conference.

The Leader as Coach

• Google's Project Oxygen showed that great managers are also great coaches. As a result they organised coaching training for all of their managers. This has encouraged me to lean on coaching as a tool more frequently.
• "Be curious" - about the people in your team. Find out their motivations, their interests, and build rapport. This will help you to find the best ways to help them progress (for example by matching them up with work that aligns with their motivations), help you to find the best approach for difficult conversations, and much more.

Their Career, Sponsored by You

• If you have a talented team member, find ways to champion their work and give them opportunities to progress and succeed. I'm slightly hesitant about taking this too far as it could promote a "like me" bias and favour certain people unequally, but at a high level the message is a positive one.

Building Healthy Feedback Environments

• Professional feedback needs to happen more than once or twice a year (e.g. at performance review).
• Healthy feedback environments have the following qualities:
  • Credibility of source - the person giving feedback understands the work, the context and the standard expected
  • Quality of feedback - the feedback is accurate and specific, focusing on what the person does rather than who they are
  • Delivery - feedback is delivered with empathy and understanding, but with clarity
  • Frequency of favourable and unfavourable feedback - receiving both kinds of feedback builds trust. Be accurate and thoughtful with unfavourable feedback
  • Source availability - make time for feedback, and be willing to offer it
  • A culture of feedback-seeking - build a culture where people feel safe and feel able to seek feedback, even if it may be unfavourable