I have been a manager on Stingray for the past year. It happened quite organically and never was planned on my part. In fact I did not want at all to become manager. But at some point we had choice between bringing someone from outside of Stingray who didn’t know a thing about our techs… or for me to step up and manage the Tools team. We have chosen the latter. Since that time I try to juggle what I like to do: code and be involved with technology with managing responsibilities.

One-on-one meetings

Recently I had to do one-on-one reviews for my team. A rather awkward experience for all parties involved! I wish I had found this great article by Claire Yew before. She gives 6 tips to improve communication with your team members:

• Make empathy your mission.
• Ask questions to uncover two things: tension and energy.
• Admit what you think you suck at.
• Explain why you need their input.
• Don’t get defensive.
• Talk less.

The whole article is well worth a read. And a reread for me in particular. I will try to improve for next year meetings!

Questions to ask your employees

The ever-prolific Claire Yew has published another great piece about what to ask your employees to learn a lot about what they think about their work (and life and such). These nine questions are sure to stir the pot and create great and informative discussions.

• Are you afraid of anything at work?
• Have you seen something recently and thought to yourself ‘I wish we’d done that’
• Is there something we should measure in the company that we currently don’t?
• Is there any part of the company you wish you were able to interact with more?
• Are there any benefits we don’t offer that you’d like to see us offer?
• Is there an area outside your current role where you feel you could be contributing?
• Is there anyone at the company you wish you could apprentice under for a few weeks?
• Have you seen someone here do great work that’s gone unnoticed?
• Are there things you don’t know about the company that you feel you should know?

All of these questions have been asked to a lot of actual employees and the article goes in great details at explaining what surprises these questions have dug up.