Game Career Seminar: Co-Managing: Building an Effective Manager/Direct Relationship

[Music] so this is co-managing building an effective manager and direct relationship so friendly reminder from our staff please silence your phones um we will have a QR code present at some point we will let you know when to pull it up and take photos um and thank you so much for being here so this is me I am Katie golden I'm the executive producer at Wonder Woman I've been a manager for about four years I've been in the industry for about 10 years I'm associated with all these icons that you see here they are part of my lexicon of where I have worked and I will be driving the manager portion of the conversation but I'm going to kick it off with Aaron here to discuss the direct portion awesome thank you Katie and hi everybody my name is ainol Lee I'm currently an associate director of production over at second dinner you know Katie and I have worked collectively for 25 years in games shipping games to communities that we

love we've found solidarity in talking about our successes and our failures and what we've both tried as directs and managers so we're here to share more with you so first note in an analysis released by McKenzie they say your relationship with your manager is actually a top factor in your job satisfaction which means as a result it is the second most important determinate in your overall well-being only mental health is higher the manager direct relationship is not a new challenge but it is vital to our careers so we need to bring attention to it consistently and talk about new approaches and new materials year-over-year because you know building an effective relationship together is more important over that time for today's talk we're going to carry you through some key areas you can focus on in developing your relationship further and we're going to bring you actionable tactics that you can try now for being managed and for managing we're here to talk

through those actions we brought some resources to help like Katie mentioned we have a QR code later on but if you see a doc icon on the slide it actually means we have something in that QR code for you and you might have noticed but we brought some friends along like Dwight and Leslie as you'll see through today's talk so we've learned something and that is trial and error is key and no two relationships look the same so our challenge for you today is to pick one thing from today that you want to try test it out try it again and find what works for you so let's figure out what we want to try today so to all the reports in the room which is probably all of you uh when it comes to being managed a tough lesson that can influence your approach to your career is that managers are human and that while managers should care about your career no one is going to care about your career more than yourself it doesn't excuse Managers from the effort that they should put in but I do believe that acknowledging this can be freeing

it can be this lens that you use in approaching your relationship and when we do use this lens it can push us to better know ourselves our systems and our managers so the actions we're going to discuss today could lead to more contextual in nuanced conversations and it could help you take a more active role in participating in what you can control so the great thing is the first thing that we can do doesn't require a manager at all it is the work to know ourselves better it is that internal fun time to get to know yourself to understand what's important and why and this can be a critical step because if the expectations we put on our managers are that they support your career and your opportunity you need to give them a more complete picture of what's important to you because that will help them better advocate for us even when we're not in the room so the first thing you can do is run through an exercise like your own personal Q&A session do

this on your own or with a trusted friend and this is also an exercise you can repeat over your career I would say do it yearly do it every time you change a role um and we won't go through every single question on this list and you're not required to answer every question on this list but a few example questions could look like identifying what work fulfills you and what actually drains you but also taking a hard look at how you could even stack rank priorities in your career so we're talking about things like the importance of having a a good manager the importance of the team or the project that you're on or even money and title this is a tough question because it forces us to really say would I choose money over title or would I choose a project over having a good manager well we're rarely in a position to have everything at once so what would you actually prioritize and where do you think you'd compromise at this point in your career and an example of how this can manifest if you get to know yourself a little bit better you know on the surface level every probably said

they've wanted a promotion before but it can look different for two people it can look very different for two people and both of those examples on the screen are okay but knowing these nuances can help your conversation they can also lead to better opportunities because now that your manager has a bit more insight into the why about what's important to you they might have some opportunities for you in areas you can grow so some next steps after you do that you want to take these takeaways to your manager un ended um get it into a conversation with your manager make it a one-on-one topic we're going to talk about that later and share as much as you're comfortable with you're not required to tell them every single answer that you answered on that Q&A sheet just tell them your takeaways and what's important to you and while we're talking about sharing with your manager I want to mention one lesson both myself and many other leaders have experienced and discussed and that was we all thought if we worked hard enough and we did a good job that we would get the thing that we want sounds familiar right

you feel like you do a good job you're going to get it well a lot of us that doesn't actually happen um it wasn't true and the reason for this was we didn't ask we didn't say what we wanted we place a lot of weight on our managers for understanding us for knowing what we want and knowing that we're doing a good job and how we're going to get that but in reality they can't know what's in our minds so we have to tell them I get it talking about what you want is hard it makes you vulnerable but I would encourage you to find ways to become comfortable with this talk with your friends trusted friends on ways to do this practice with them you can even tell your manager I'm not comfortable asking for what I want can we exercise this can you help me work on this that is something that they can and should help you with because I can guarantee you you're going to have a higher chance of not getting the thing you want by staying silent so congratulations we all get to know ourselves a little bit better we're now going to turn our attention on ways

to partner with your manager as a further extension of how you advocate for yourself and a major step you can take is learning about the system that you operate in so we're going to talk a little bit more specifically about performance and reward structures and when I say this I'm not telling you to understand the concept of the system I'm telling you to understand how it works at your company your manager should understand this but I would encourage you all to educate yourself on this because it can give you insight to that process and what you can control with them and I would say don't wait till review season to actually learn this go find what resources are available to you now and if they don't exist because some places don't have these types of things you can work with your manager on building some flexible structure for you for example pulling other company JDS to help build rooll guidelines for you as something that you can look uh un build on there are some standard items to investigate here and you can go find uh for your company but I want to make one

call out here and that's requirements for managers for example when a manager submits a promotion for you um some companies require what we call business justification managers have to prove your role needs to be higher for the project and as a result um they need to provide this business sorry they need to provide a business justification and what that ultimately means is you could be competent in your role and you could be doing all the right things but your manager actually has to prove positive impact that that role needs to be higher both for the project and for the company so I'll say it again they need to not only show that you're competent at your role but the business succeeds as a result of it that kind of sucks because we're all doing what we possibly can and that's a bummer but the thing I would say is if you know this and you're working with your manager before review season you can start talking to them about hey if there's a business justification how can

I help write that with you can we try to figure that out so I know when you're going to Advocate that's something that I know what you're going to talk about and how other considerations not outlined in wikis are things like are there Unwritten values your company or team may support that could be reflected in your reviews What specifically do they want to talk about do they want you to talk about a list of accomplishments that you've done do they want you to talk about your impact in certain areas or how you live lift others up or do they want you to talk about all of that you can also partner with your manager to find examples of success and failures of advancement at your company so if you know people who have succeeded in this or failed you might actually get to go learn what's worked and what hasn't and that can allow you to avoid some pitfalls when you work with your manager on trying to build that case for yourself and while performance reviews also happen only twice once or twice a year we want to be sure throughout the year that you're showing up and

partnering partnering with your manager and that can look like documenting your growth documenting your impact and driving your one-on ones and a bonus all the things that we're going to cover in a minute can even help you if you transition managers because you will not start from zero by doing that so if you're focused on growth I recommend that you maintain a document where you can assess where you are compared to your next level this is also known as a gap analysis this is where you can look at competencies filled out for your role and then start to identify where you're strong and where you want to improve this type of exercise actually does require partnering with your manager because you are both going to assess where you're at and then discuss that together align on where you may have disagreed and then create an actual action plan for how you want to move forward your biggest step here today could be just asking your manager to start this process together and a common issue with this is that like I said um once everything is checked off that may not mean that you

are going to get that promotion like I said there are factors that are out of your control but I would say that please don't let that dissuade you please focus on what you can control because you know you could always make a decision to find a company that can and will promote you in the future but do what you can control so additionally with self-reviews we are asked about our achievements what we achieved over the year right but if you start recalling details from a year ago it starts to look blurry you don't recall specific details it's really hard to figure out what your impact was a year ago if you're not really tracking that so a recommendation here is to maintain a document and update it regularly I would recommend weekly because that time sync can look a lot more like 10 to 20 minutes a week and your details are still crisp in your head at this point in time you can list accomplishments the impact you drove you can provide links to resources that you want to recall later um but the benefits of this could be that you are saving time time and energy come review season

it is also a great look back to what you've done and how you've grown for me it makes me feel really great to go back and take a look at these things and it also can lead to a more complete narrative that you can write for yourself come review season the bonus is you could tell your manager you're going to give them access throughout the entire year of this stock and they can look at this week over week and indirectly see what you're accomplishing week over week without having to tell them all the time while we're in progression mindset we are going to talk about a very valuable Channel for growth and that is your one-on ones everyone's manager here has probably told them I'll say mostly everyone's manager has probably told them that this is your time so you are going to drive it because we want you to get the value out of it well we've probably all fall fell into that trap where we use it for status updates who's used it for status updates oh I know there's more than than that but I love it I love it I've done it too I do it still um don't do that find different ways with your manager to

establish work updates because your one-on-one time is valuable for getting what you need from your manager not to show your value to them so there's a number of topics you can tackle we have some here for example setting your goals in a gap analysis this requires pre-planning you can create and maintain a shared dock with your manager you can track one-on-one topics you like to cover and you can likely tackle one or two in a one-on-one but bonus you can keep a list of parking lots you uh topics you haven't gotten to as well so we're driving impactful conversations with our manager now we know ourselves a little bit better that feels pretty good right well let's shift our Focus to our managers we're going to find ways to learn about them and build trust with them in a way that you can that can set you up both for Success so when you meet your manager you may have had good and bad experiences in the past with other managers and I could probably make the assumption that they're going to make the same mistake right if you've had bad

experiences it's hard not to want to protect ourselves and assume they're going to also make the same mistakes so how can you protect yourself and give them a chance to earn your trust so relationships require trust but you're not going to have that on day one so I would say can you credit them trust kind of like a bank you know can you credit that to them while they are working to earn it from you find ways to be more open early in your relationship or comfortable enough just to talk to them about concerns you have I know this can be really hard because it leaves you vulnerable with your manager and I'm not suggesting that you let them walk all over you and be okay with it but to start how can you try to not predetermine that your manager is going to fail you on day one this one likely requires more work inside for yourself to figure out how you want to have that conversation or how you want to be open but I think it's worth a shot also gaining insight to our manager and learning about their work you can ask them about their priorities and goals as well because this can give you

more insight to what the company's doing at the top line or even where your work May align but also by doing this you can identify work they have and create opportunity for yourself they may have work that you want to grow in and honestly asking how can I help you has been one of the best tools that you can have with peers colleagues your manager and other leaders because it can enable you to take on more challenges and new challenges that you'd like to tack and lastly learning how they work can be important too this is about getting the most from them in your interactions this can be about do they like knowing every time you're going to

engage with them you know we all have to learn how to work with one another on our team on our day-to-day jobs let's try to figure out what works for them as well you know I know what I said at the beginning that no one actually cares about your career more than you and you know the first time I heard that that kind of felt like a slap in the face because you want everyone to care as much as you do about your job and that's hard to hear because I empathize with how hard it is to be a direct report that power Dynamic is real it's so hard to navigate there's invisible Gates vulnerability is hard like with friends not even your job right it's it's really difficult and not to mention this industry right now is exceptionally tough and it is hard not to feel like we just have to accept what's provided to us that is an exceptionally hard time to feel like you shouldn't just be thankful for what you have in your hands but I do believe that through learning more about yourself your system and your manager that you can take more power and take Tak a more active approach and how you want your career

progression to happen and I'm so excited for what you all are going to be doing so we all know ourselves everybody I'm so excited for you I believe in you and I'm going to hand it over to Katie to talk to the current and aspiring managers in the room thanks everybody thank you okay current aspiring managers can I see some hands we have managers in the room oh my go oh okay a lot of you fantastic I love this so we're doing a mind switch right now we are shifting into I'm not a director Port I am thinking about a manager and how I am supporting my direct reports so I love this quote from the Harvard Business Review is that one quality that truly sets apart Great Managers from the rest is that they discover what is unique about each of their directs and then they capitalize on it so average managers play checkers while great managers play Chess By the way we're moving away from the office memes at this point Michael Scott is not who we're going to be talking about for a

great manager really there aren't any a lot on TV but we have Leslie no so we'll start by creating an environment that Fosters relationship building um according to Gallup employees who whose manag to hold regular meetings with them are almost three times more likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings with them and those are those one-on ones that we talked about previously the manager is responsible and accountable for creating the space in time with their direct so some tactical suggestions about how to do this how do we actually get our checker pieces over into chest pieces how do we start to understand what they are agree to a one-on-one Cadence with your directs and so some examples of some structures that I've seen previously are maybe this is one hour monthly maybe this is 30 minutes weekly maybe you're doing 30 minutes weekly to discuss career you're doing 30 minutes weekly to discuss work 30 minutes weekly roughly boils out to about 6 hours a quarter that you're spending discussing growth with your direct which if you think about it 6

hours not that much 30 minutes a week does sound a lot so finding a good balance between your direct what's going to work for you what going to capture your goals is going to be key here now ensure that this time is sacred do not reschedule your one-on ones if you can help it so sometimes a a trap that our colleagues will fall into is they'll look at your calendar I just need a meeting it's really important they'll see hey I oneon-one with the direct report they can move that no big deal and they'll stomp it do not let this happen and set an example with the other leads and colleagues around you that you don't move your one-on-ones for your directs and this sends a message that your directs time are is valuable because you keep it sacred and also you are present so you are demonstrating their time as valuable by giving them your time which they already believe is valuable by listening to what it is they're talking about so be mindful of alternative one-on-one use already spoke to this of there's times where maybe we want to

talk about other stuff and you might notice that your director Port is sabotaging themselves by using the dedicated career growth conversation time to talk about current work maybe they're seeking Clarity or alignment or even Direction so some possible reasons why this might happen they don't have enough time with you they don't have enough autonomy they've been taking direction from you for a long time and they still think they need to maybe they're out of their comfort zone and they do need to still be taking direction from you or maybe you have too many directs and your calendar is full and they're calendar jockeying trying to find time with you and they go I'll just I'll see them at a regularly scheduled time so friends managers this is on you to course correct this is a problem and now you know what it looks like rarely will you have a direct that'll say these things to you but this is what the indicators look like so maintaining the health of one-on ones create a shared one-on-one document I like to put this in a high traffic area for me I pin it at the top of slack

I also put it in meeting invites so making sure this is not something that gets lost or you have to find it at a later time and then update the doc not the direct and so as you're going through the week as you're going through the month and you're collecting ideas and things you want to talk about with your direct report add those to the document do this instead of reaching out to them and shooting them a message because it may just be top of mind you don't want to forget it but it might be fairly unimportant but given power Dynamic Dynamics this can feel like it's urgent to them and it can come across as a message of uh oh I have to do this right away so this sounds familiar you may have heard Aaron talk about this previously they are they are the exact same Concepts however as a direct this is an ownership tactic to drive their career as a manager this is a responsibility to be documenting and understanding what the direct needs to do so if this is happening surprise you may be experiencing a phenomenon that called managing up now this is not bad this is actually very good but let's

take that sweet sweet bandwidth that you just earned and focus on your Direct's career growth that's actually what they're wanting you to do so maintaining our commitments dedicate time to work supporting your directs this is the time outside um consider 10% of your time for each of your direct and that's about four hours a week and a 40-hour work week so what am I doing with all this time actually follow up on the action items that you've written down in your Dock at the very least t on topics and so what you don't want is a situation where your direct report is pondering and wondering man I I brought up that thing last week are they going to know look at your dock Circle back to it and at least indicat that you're thinking about it and reminding them that their concerns are important to you this demonstrates consistency and reliability and reliability starts to translate into trust and I will talk about that with the trust equation I love this thing I reference it all the time it is fantastic for even in just relationships where you think maybe you might not have strong enough trust with

your own manager or your career or your peers um I'll talk it through so we have credibility reliability and intimacy this can also be authenticity because intimacy can freak people out in the corporate environment all over self-orientation equals trust so and you're going to need this trust because we're going to talk about feedback giving feedback effectively anybody get the Willies giving feedback yes completely and totally normal totally normal it's your responsibility though sorry there's that word again responsibility some of you were like I came here to make my job easier not make it harder that's fine um but it's the manager's job to course correct and help define success for their direct this can be scary 8 seconds the discomfort window for discomfort is 8 seconds according to ber Brown in her book darare to lead and then after about 8 seconds that wash of dopamine starts to flood over you because you're actually doing the thing that you wanted to do and we can make this easier for ourselves by creating a culture of

feedback make feedback fluid make feedback safe with repeated exposure over and over again and it becomes easier and so a way to do this is to ask for it yourself and demonstrate how to react to it and you're creating environment of when you receive feedback how you respond to it how you take it and so the the direct report can mirror you so more directly some feedback questions I love feedback questions I definitely recommend them coming up with your feedback question um it creates an environment and so when the feedback question is evoked direct report say okay now is the time that I can tell them that thing that I've been wanting to tell them and it creates a shared language and so when you when you say your your feedback question to one another you understand exactly what's going on so some examples I'm going to give my feedback question this is honest to God my actual question is there something I can be doing to make your life easy easier so when my direct reports hear me

say those words they know I mean what am I doing that's frustrating you um I had a direct report this was uh this was their question I love it he said am I doing anything that looks like a common Pitfall this gave me so much license and agency to talk about their skill set and their career and not about their behavior set highly recommended letting our reports make their own mistakes yikes yes absolutely sometimes you just want to tell your direct no because you just you know you just in your gut you know what they're going to do isn't going to work out for them so the problem is with that is they don't learn to trust their own gut because they don't get to have those experiences themselves so let's help them train their own instincts help directs make or learn from your mistakes so first of all really really really listen you have to be very tuned in at this moment so describe what you think is going to happen so direct has given you the

situation and you're into situational coaching at this point I like to say okay option A here's what I think the outcome's going to be option b here's the outcome option C here's what I think the outcome is going to be and then ask the direct what outcome they want to happen and once you understand where they want to go with this then start to describe similar situations where you think you have been a similar environment maybe it's not identical but the same feelings the same outcomes that sort of thing and then let them choose a path let them decide so this is super beneficial because I'm bringing back up our trust equation here we've already talked about reliability so we're talking about authenticity now you're sharing a story in which you may have made a right or a wrong decision and you're relating to your direct report and also you're demonstrating credibility because they're going to come back to you and they're going to say hey I chose option b but you are totally right about option A and C and isn't that just so much better now than just telling them what to do it's like you predicted the future shielding let's talk about shielding a

bit shielding is when we intentionally do not share information with our direct reports now this can feel really counterintuitive to everything we just talked about credibility transparency vulnerability all that but too much information can be harmful so it's more beneficial to maintain attention on what the direct can control there was a burnout talk that was yesterday highly recommended it's going to be in the vault and part of the information that came out of that is that lack of control can contribute to stress and burnout so something that may bothering you that's just a headache can be a heartache for your direct report because they cannot control this at all so how to do this be upfront remember we are co-managing here um tell your directs hey I'm not going to tell you everything that I know I don't want to spin you out I don't want to burn you out and I don't want to pull you into contribut into conversations that you actually can't contribute to anyway but do consider exploring their Curiosities give them information that is contextual to them and this is another one of those great ways to identify what chess pieces

your direct reports are by the types of conversations they're going to be asking you I like to say hey your instincts are correct here are the conversations that are happening here are the players that are involved here are the key decision makers and here are the number of outcomes that I think we could have so it's giving them enough information uh to satiate and validate their instincts but it's not giving them enough to for to spend them out and then ask them about the perceived impact why does this relevant to them why are they concerned about it some gets fairly low to the ground that you can just address okay my last point is educating yourself and the direct on your system that you're in do not wait till promotion season that is way too late you are reacting you are not building a plan you are uh as I said reacting so we're going to empower our reports to advocate for themselves know the job ladders yourself know what they mean for the direct and understand the career growth system and then we're going to leverage that to

create our mutual nor star so you know the ladders you know the system set a bar for what is next for your direct reports using these ladders um are these peer reviews are they annual are they biannual what time of year are they any roadblockers that exist like hey there's not actually going to be reviews this year or head count has capped all these sorts of things make sure they understand what sort of barriers that could be that could exist above them that are not within their control and so once we understand our North star of according to the job ladders here is what the next step looks like for you we're going to create a growth plan by working backwards using their own career goals and I'll talk through what that looks like so have your direct pitch a promotion plan and I'll give you a hypothetical example that I like I want to be promoted at the end of Q3 in year 2000 blank this promotion cycle okay cool let's call that 18 months for the sake of the conversation negotiate speak openly about the skills

that your direct currently has and the skills that they will need in order to hit that 18-month Target that we just talk about and at what point they need to be hitting them in order to demonstrate strong progression for example if you want to be a manager that's not something you do in like six months that's something you need to show a long taale for so once we've outlined the skills and we're able to speak to the goals you can also think about how long it's going to take to get there and the types of Special Projects they might need to take on in order to move forward and this will help you write the story so managers you've been in the room uh you're talking to your colleagues and you're saying hey I really want to put forward my direct for promotion but you say in 18 months and the next time you Circle back with them maybe it's six months from now you say hey I think my direct is going to be ready about 12 months here's what I'm seeing here's the progress it's looking pretty good next time you see him we'll say it's six months hey everybody and call him my shot six months from now here's what I'm seeing I think my Direct's going to be ready so by the time you get in that room you've built a longtail conversation that is believable and consistent and

supportive so to recap we are creating our environment to develop a relationship we're giving feedback effectively to help build trust and we're educating oursel in our system to develop our growth road map and that is it we are done congratulations you are no longer part of the 85% of managers that have never received training because you just got 13 minutes of it thank you so much we do not have time for questions unfortunately but we will be around the corner this is our QR code that we promised and if you like this talk and you'd like to see us come back um then please take the survey again we are Katie and Aaron uh if you did not like to talk then we are Leslie and Dwight [Music]