I think of myself as a leader being placed somewhere on a value based spectrum, with efficiency on one end and empathy on the other. As an individual contributor, I started my career all the way on the efficiency end of the spectrum. I believed that talking to people about their feelings was a waste of time. Turns out, that’s not true at all. Leaders who value efficiency over empathy tend to sacrifice investing time in relationships with their team members. The result? Ironically, team efficiency is negatively impacted. Why? Because team members who don’t have close relationships with their …
A simple approach to difficult conversations
About two years into my career as an engineering team leader I had to have a difficult conversation. The conversation was with Connor (not his real name), a junior engineer, who had recently joined our team. Connor was consistently arriving to work late, taking long lunches, and leaving early. As his team lead I knew that I needed to talk to him, so I arranged a meeting: difficult conversations should always take place in person. Not long before this, I had attended a leadership training course lead by Nick Reid, from Training for Change. So, I used the SCORE approach …