What brings out the best in me
- Directness: I do well when you speak plainly and directly. Don’t shut down when I disagree with you. It’s an invitation for you to tell me more of your point of view. Please feel free to push back and tell me what I might be missing. I might come off as intense or sharp, know that I always want to hear you and I’m open to changing my mind.
- Ownership: I need to be able to trust that, if you take something on, you will take care of it. Without being asked, take responsibility to get your work done and make sure it is achieving the desired result. Make it your business to investigate and resolve the problem in its entirety, and not just your small piece. Whenever you bring a problem, present your preferred solution.
- Delivering Quality Results: Review your own work to catch obvious errors and potential improvements before others have to do so for you. Specify a deadline for your work and deliver within the deadline that you set, or if a change comes up, immediately communicate and adjust the timeline.
- Visibility: I need you to show me the evidence of your work progress, otherwise I may get nervous about whether and how the work is getting done.
- Feedback: If something is bothering you, I want to have a conversation about it. If something is going well, I’d also love to know your feedback. Share your insights with specific examples.
- Openness: Be open and vulnerable. I receive it well when you’re coming from the heart. I want to hear about your mistakes and challenges and what you’re learning from them.
What brings out the worst in me
- Avoidance: Withholding or distancing yourself from hard conversations and problems will make me anxious.
- Ego: If you get rigid about your own opinions on how things should be without considering alternatives, I can get frustrated.****
- Not Seeing Progress: I get impatient if we cannot move fast and iterate. Better to do an incomplete version 1, than delaying a release. Missed deadlines, obvious errors, and incomplete work disturb my confidence.
- Low Quality Work: If you deliver work that has obvious errors, that I or someone else has to review to catch your errors, I feel you are disrespecting the team’s time.
- Gaslighting: I feel betrayed when I sense that you might be bending the truth to make a bad situation look better. I would rather hear the harsh truth as it is, even if it sounds bad.
How to rebound if I lose trust
- Be Vulnerable: When a mistake happens tell me right away. Owning it makes me respect you more, and gain back the trust to move forward. Include your reflection on what caused it, what you learned from it, and what you will change going forward.
- Specify: Communicate facts, impacts, pros and cons, and solutions. Be specific rather than general.
- Take Action: Present a plan to get back on track and show me how you will follow through, then commit with passion and deliver it without hesitation. Let me see your ownership.
