Transcript: Building Trust and Authentic Connections in Remote Teams
0:00 Brad Because it's about connection.
0:02 Brad And if we build connection,
0:04 Brad then we'll be able to get to the place of like you really trusting me to help you solve your problems.
0:27 Scott Should we record an episode of How Many CPOs?
0:30 Brad Yeah. Why don't we get started?
0:32 Brad I'm
0:32 Scott Okay,
0:32 Brad Red Haftagab.
0:33 Scott please subscribe,
0:35 Scott rate,
0:35 Scott and review Scott
0:35 Brad My co-host is,
0:37 Brad yeah,
0:38 Scott Porad, and you can sign up for our Patreon feed.
0:42 Brad there's going to be all kinds of great advantages being
0:44 Scott Oh, my God.
0:44 Brad a Patreon.
0:45 Brad If you're a Patreon,
0:46 Brad imagine like the swag you get.
0:49 Scott You are not going to get any swag.
0:53 Scott at all
0:55 Scott we're not doing that out of the case so i actually own i don't have it with me i own swag here we're going to get way off topic in the interview as
1:05 Brad As one does.
1:07 Scott you may know or if you don't you're about to find out i like boats i think boats are just the most fun and uh why first of all i love being on the water
1:18 Scott and boats themselves are really just interesting things like they're beautiful and they're they're you know adventurous and so on and so forth but then as someone with an engineering mindset I mean there's always something there's always a little project in fact I'm going down there hopefully later today to like grease some parts right to make them squeak less there's always there's always something to tinker with it's great fun
1:42 Scott So anyway,
1:43 Scott last summer we got a new boat and it's really my wife's boat.
1:47 Scott My wife really wanted a new boat.
1:48 Scott So I got some swag made.
1:50 Scott I got baseball caps, trucker hats,
1:54 Scott and beer koozies that say Lisa's boat.
1:59 Brad Is that the name of it, by the way?
2:01 Scott uh the name of yeah it's informally the name of it she would absolutely kill me
2:05 Brad if Oh, okay.
2:06 Scott i put lisa's boat on the side of the boat it's not a big enough boat to have a name but uh so i got this the point is is minimum orders are high
2:15 Brad Oh, no.
2:16 Scott So we have a lot of hats and we have a lot.
2:19 Brad Do you hand them out at all your guests that come out and party with you on the lake or whatever?
2:23 Scott We do.
2:24 Scott And my wife was terribly embarrassed about this.
2:26 Scott She was totally she was totally like this is this is the douchiest thing you've ever done in your life. And I loved it. But it turns out, especially my kids friends think it's awesome.
2:38 Scott they're electing we can you get us t-shirts
2:41 Brad All right. So what you're saying is we will not be giving out swag on the Patreon for how many CTOs. But if you're in
2:48 Scott well
2:48 Brad the greater
2:49 Scott maybe
2:49 Brad Seattle area.
2:49 Scott like a hundred maybe once we have like a hundred subscribers that can do it when we can cover them in all
2:54 Brad I thought that's fair.
2:55 Brad I thought what we were going to do maybe is
2:57 Scott First 100 subscribers get swag.
2:59 Brad first
2:59 Scott Ooh,
3:00 Scott limited
3:00 Brad drop
3:00 Scott edition swag.
3:01 Scott It's like supreme.
3:02 Scott We're going to drop swag.
3:04 Brad swag.
3:05 Brad I thought maybe you were going to volunteer to take them out on your boat at
3:08 Scott I will. Yeah,
3:09 Scott I will volunteer to take the first three subscribers and Brad and I will go on the boat.
3:14 Scott We will go get dinner or lunch.
3:17 Scott We'll have a nice cruise on Lake Washington.
3:18 Brad the yacht at the yacht club.
3:20 Brad or
3:21 Scott uh
3:21 Brad just pull
3:21 Scott we don't
3:22 Brad on
3:22 Scott we
3:22 Brad up to some
3:22 Scott don't like yeah
3:23 Brad a dockside cafe or something like that like in a yard i'm maybe or something
3:28 Scott not a like yacht club i'm not a yacht club people um but there's a handful of places on lake washington where we can go get a meal and we'll go we'll cruise up to kirkland go from mercer island to kirkland and then we'll cruise right by bill gates house
3:41 Brad and here's the question we had talked i we sent around some topics for this week
3:48 Scott Yeah.
3:48 Brad And one of the topics was, how do you, when you're air dropped in on a team,
3:53 Brad how do you build trust?
3:55 Brad Is there a segue here that involves taking your team out on your boat?
4:00 Brad Is that what this is? Is it gifts? Is it like what?
4:04 Brad So how does one crack the nut of,
4:09 Brad and how do you frame this?
4:12 Brad As much as I love talking about your boat.
4:14 Scott how do you build trust with a new team that's
4:17 Brad Yeah.
4:18 Brad What's the process?
4:21 Scott a great question i don't know i can tell you how i do it and i have no process for it i just speak i speak from the heart and
4:28 Brad Speaking from the heart.
4:29 Brad Being authentic.
4:30 Scott i'd be yeah just totally authentic and i also exhibit
4:36 Scott extreme trust out of the gate some people will say hey i'm not going to trust anybody till they earn their trust i'm going to i start by trusting everyone and then you know learn who turns out maybe i shouldn't be trusting which is maybe a foolish way to do it maybe i kind of get myself up a creek a little bit
4:52 Brad Do
4:52 Scott sometimes in that department but that's how that's how i go about it
4:55 Brad That sounds like a very,
4:56 Brad that does sound like a process.
4:57 Brad That sounds like a very intentional process.
4:59 Brad Um,
4:59 Brad so I'm going to give you credit for having
5:01 Scott I
5:02 Brad a prompt,
5:02 Scott wasn't but I
5:02 Brad not calling
5:02 Scott would never thought about it as a process, but like that's there's one other part.
5:09 Scott I started with an AMA where I introduced myself and the introduction was also sort of very personal. Like here's who I am, you know, here's the jobs I've had.
5:20 Scott Here's my family.
5:23 Scott here are some of my strongly held beliefs just to tell people who I am so
5:29 Brad Yeah.
5:29 Scott I think yeah come out come out of a place of vulnerability all three of those have vulnerability in them and basically I guess I guess I have a theory that I didn't know I had which was you engender trust by being vulnerable
5:42 Scott And here's
5:43 Brad You
5:43 Scott small
5:43 Brad sound ways like my that therapist.
5:44 Scott can exhibit itself. So I think I mentioned we have a recharge week and it's not entirely closed because people have to be on call and there's operations people and things like that. But somebody wanted to ship something, there's a code freeze during that time and somebody wanted to ship something.
6:06 Scott The code freeze like started yesterday,
6:08 Scott somebody wanted to ship something.
6:10 Scott And they were asking for my approval,
6:13 Scott to which my response was,
6:15 Scott here's my point of view on this.
6:18 Scott The people who make decisions should have to be responsible for their outcomes,
6:21 Scott or get to be responsible for their outcomes.
6:25 Scott So if you think this thing needs to be shipped.
6:28 Scott and you're prepared to take on monitoring it to make sure it doesn't break something and dealing with the fallout if it does break something then you are empowered to decide to ship it was my first point
6:40 Scott My second point was knowing specifically what it is that you want to ship. If it was me in your position,
6:45 Scott I would not ship this.
6:47 Scott The downside,
6:48 Scott I understand that you have a deadline you're trying to meet, but the downside is far bigger than the upside.
6:54 Scott And I would just take the heat for missing my deadline because I would rather have that heat than the heat of having
7:02 Brad Potentially like
7:03 Scott a
7:03 Brad yeah
7:03 Scott system be down while everyone's on vacation.
7:07 Brad And how did that and well,
7:10 Brad first of all, logistically speaking, how did that conversation go?
7:14 Brad But it was their reaction to that.
7:16 Scott uh it was it was twofold actually it was number one it was positive they're like that's great i love that but see over here in this wiki we have this written policy it says in order to ship from a code freeze you have to get approval from someone on the senior leadership team i was like oh okay interesting so um i think
7:37 Scott They decided to postpone it. Anyhow,
7:38 Scott I can't remember why there were some other factors that came up, but I said, okay,
7:43 Scott we'll have to add looking at that policy to our list of things we want to look at our
7:47 Brad backlog of things we need to look at and then how do you feel like um you know if we if we put that through the lens of your like um be authentic uh be um uh genuine and vulnerable and
8:01 Brad and then like you know your radical trust um
8:05 Scott Yeah, so
8:06 Brad what do you think do you think that the person on the other side of that conversation heard it and and sort of took it in that genuine sense or do you think that it's more like um many many small acts build up to this and was this the first small act
8:27 Scott I think
8:27 Brad with
8:27 Scott I
8:27 Brad this
8:27 Scott think
8:27 Brad with this actor
8:29 Scott Well, yeah,
8:30 Scott I think it,
8:31 Scott so I should say, this is interesting. I'll tell you the dynamics.
8:35 Scott A product manager came to me and said, hey, this engineering manager says he needs approval to ship it.
8:41 Scott And I told the product manager, well, this is my philosophy.
8:44 Scott It's under,
8:46 Scott you know.
8:48 Scott is that engineering manager's decision and then it was so i was actually interacting with the product manager
8:52 Brad Yeah, okay.
8:52 Scott which is kind of funny by itself but then i i took that same message into slack and i told all my engineering directors there's six of them i was like hey i just had this exchange with so-and-so and i just want you to see like my point of view on this um and i and and i recognize there's this policy and i want to add that to the list of things to discuss but
9:11 Scott Um,
9:12 Scott I think they,
9:13 Scott they received that positively.
9:15 Scott And I think because I think that's a different tenor from my predecessor who put in a policy that said to ship during a code, you know, who put this policy in place, right?
9:24 Brad Right.
9:25 Scott I don't, you know, I don't think.
9:28 Scott my predecessor he'd left the company voluntarily so i don't think he was either beloved or hated but
9:34 Brad Yeah.
9:34 Scott i just think he was just he was just a boss
9:36 Brad Yeah.
9:36 Scott um but i think it was definitely a signal of like in a positive way like okay well there's a different mindset in town than was here before
9:44 Brad Totally.
9:44 Scott um
9:44 Brad Totally.
9:44 Scott and so in that and probably some other things people are sort of getting that like
9:52 Scott Oh, interesting.
9:53 Scott This is Scott operates differently than the last guy did.
9:58 Scott And there's some frictions there, like we saw, well, hey,
10:00 Scott we have this policy in
10:01 Brad Right,
10:01 Scott the wiki.
10:02 Brad really.
10:02 Scott And I'm having some frictions too,
10:04 Scott because I'm like, oh, interesting,
10:05 Scott okay,
10:05 Scott I probably need to follow.
10:06 Scott So then my question went to the directors was,
10:09 Scott so if we wanted to consider this policy,
10:11 Scott what's the right way to do that?
10:12 Brad Right.
10:12 Scott Like, I can't just come in and be the dictator and say I'm changing the policy today.
10:16 Brad Really.
10:17 Scott Like, that's actually just being a dictator in a different way.
10:20 Brad Right,
10:20 Scott You
10:20 Brad totally.
10:20 Scott kind of got to say like, so how does policy get set around here?
10:24 Brad Yeah.
10:24 Scott All right.
10:25 Scott And how do I play in that game?
10:27 Scott So it takes some patience.
10:30 Scott But to your question,
10:31 Scott I think it's a lot of those little acts add up to changing a culture.
10:36 Scott And the culture I want to build is a culture of empowerment and ownership.
10:41 Scott And I think that's, to me, that's the name of the game is to get.
10:46 Scott engineering teams thrive they have to feel like they own what they're doing and
10:50 Brad Yeah.
10:50 Scott it's interesting I had a totally separate conversation this week with some of our product managers about business metrics
11:00 Scott there was this conversation in slack that said the business metrics that there was this line the business metrics that engineering teams own
11:09 Scott And I wrote back, I was like, I don't understand that statement.
11:12 Brad Right.
11:14 Scott Engineering teams on engineering metrics.
11:17 Scott And we sort of got into this dialogue about how, well, it's very important for the engineers to know what business metrics are trying to move,
11:24 Scott which I agree totally with.
11:27 Scott But if what you're trying to do is increase,
11:30 Scott if your software is trying to increase orders,
11:32 Scott it's other people that made the decisions about what was going to be on the product roadmap.
11:37 Scott And we can't hold engineers accountable to increasing the orders. It's important that they know the outcome we're trying to achieve.
11:42 Scott We can't hold them accountable.
11:43 Scott And that's a fuzzy line.
11:44 Scott That's actually one of the harder lines to draw.
11:46 Brad Do you think, by the way, one of the things that, so let me, I'm going to try to like.
11:52 Brad to corral this conversation towards this question of you're the CTO, you've been dropped in,
11:58 Brad you know, you're dropped into this environment,
12:00 Brad it's got its legacy culture,
12:02 Brad it's got its legacy technology,
12:03 Brad it's got its legacy policies,
12:05 Brad it's got its legacy ways of working,
12:07 Brad it's got its legacy business metrics,
12:09 Brad right?
12:09 Brad And you've got to build trust with both the team that you manage,
12:14 Brad you know, your engineering team,
12:15 Brad and you've got to build trust with your.
12:17 Brad your stakeholders right so your product team you got to start building trust with them you got to build trust with your rest of your executive team right you know one of the things and first of all i love your your your general philosophy of like be genuine be authentic be vulnerable be clear about what your core values are right
12:39 Brad And I think that I
12:40 Scott You know,
12:41 Brad agree.
12:41 Scott there's one other thing I'm going to put in there, and
12:43 Brad Yeah.
12:43 Scott you didn't include be trusting, but there's also another thing I'll put in there,
12:48 Scott which is be positive.
12:50 Brad Yeah.
12:51 Scott I mean, I have this big philosophy,
12:53 Scott Brad,
12:54 Scott which is as engineers, all we do is deal with problems all day.
12:59 Brad Right.
13:00 Scott Once we've solved the problem,
13:02 Scott the system works fine.
13:05 Brad right
13:05 Scott right we encapsulate into a library or we set a system up and it runs normally etc fundamentally what we do as engineers is deal with problems problems are my business isn't performing the way i want it to or my software isn't running the way i want it to or whatever and always live we live in a context of things that are broken right and things where nothing is good enough right
13:25 Brad right well you kind of said this in the last we talked about that in the last episode this notion of this like
13:29 Brad like a disease of everybody wanting to get an a everybody wanting to always get better always get the highest possible score
13:37 Scott right Yeah,
13:37 Brad right
13:37 Scott where straight A's is not good enough.
13:39 Brad straight is not good enough we're like set ourselves like we're failing even when we're succeeding right
13:44 Scott Because we just live in a context and an environment where everything is broken,
13:48 Scott right?
13:49 Scott So I think you have to come at it with positivity also.
13:53 Scott In fact,
13:54 Scott there was a Slack message I sent this week, which is we had a really unpleasant meeting. We were having the classic,
14:00 Scott you know, having to choose between many bad choices,
14:03 Scott the least bad choice kind of meeting of some things, something.
14:07 Scott And I said, I said to the team and then I actually reiterated in Slack,
14:09 Scott I was like, hey, I just want to remind you, like thousands of orders got filled in the last hour, last hour.
14:16 Scott our mission is to do such and such and it is happening right now even though we're like having to deal with this very sticky situation like the mission is happening like it's going it's ongoing every
14:26 Brad minute Don't
14:26 Scott of every day
14:26 Brad lose sight of it. Don't lose sight of the abundance.
14:29 Scott yeah we just don't get it at all right we just especially in a remote environment
14:34 Brad Yeah,
14:34 Scott Okay,
14:34 Brad well,
14:35 Scott so you said you said like the philosophy I added the positivity in there. You were going somewhere with that question though.
14:40 Brad so so yeah,
14:42 Brad so I like that framing. I also love adding positivity to it. That's great.
14:45 Brad Let me sort of like set the stage right for what I think we often always run into.
14:50 Brad Right. We get dropped in and the very first moment like the very first moment.
14:55 Brad The team that reports to us.
14:58 Brad I don't think I've ever been dropped into an org where they weren't skeptical of the new guy, of the new person. And maybe they were skeptical because the last person in the role was problematic,
15:17 Brad right?
15:18 Brad And so you're not only like working against like,
15:22 Brad you know.
15:23 Brad I'm new, I'm other,
15:25 Brad I'm unknown,
15:26 Brad here I am my authentic self,
15:29 Brad but I also think you're working against whatever the history was, right?
15:34 Scott Yeah.
15:35 Brad Because definitionally, you were brought in by whatever context had the last person in charge,
15:44 Brad right?
15:46 Brad And so I think that...
15:49 Brad So there's a like I love your higher your overarching theme and I guess I'm kind of curious do you feel like especially like in a large organization like yours or a large-ish organization right where we're 100 people or more like
16:04 Brad I love the idea of the all hands AMA, right?
16:08 Scott Mm-hmm.
16:09 Brad Do you do other things? I feel that one of the things you got to do is you got to go ask a lot of questions.
16:15 Brad You got to like find out and try to get and and in my experience,
16:20 Brad I think that there are two types of people you run into when you first start asking questions.
16:27 Brad The first type of person is like.
16:30 Brad They've been pent up waiting for someone to listen to them, and
16:34 Scott Mm-hmm.
16:34 Brad they tend to be more willing to be open right away.
16:39 Brad And then you have another group of people which are maybe more conservative with a small C,
16:46 Brad careful,
16:48 Brad like they don't guarded,
16:49 Scott Started, yeah.
16:50 Brad guarded.
16:50 Brad I like that.
16:51 Brad Yeah.
16:51 Brad And so it takes them like you can ask them directly like,
16:56 Brad hey, I really want to know that I really want to know what's going on. I'm open to anything. There's no wrong answers here.
17:03 Brad And it takes multiple times of you saying that and multiple.
17:06 Brad multiple times of you demonstrating your own authenticity before then they go yeah I've been meaning to wanted you know to talk about this yeah
17:16 Scott So, okay,
17:17 Scott you have now,
17:18 Scott I want to flip the table here. Let me ask you a question.
17:21 Brad totally
17:22 Scott It's a two-parter.
17:23 Scott So the overall question is, what are the questions you would ask?
17:28 Scott And part A is what are the questions you would ask in a group setting and what are the questions you would ask in a one-on-one setting?
17:35 Brad Mm-hmm.
17:36 Scott And I actually think I can come up with my own questions in the one-on-one setting.
17:39 Scott But it's actually in the group settings that I think it's interesting,
17:44 Scott especially remotely when like it's just crickets on Zoom,
17:47 Scott right?
17:48 Scott You got 96 faces looking at you and literally nobody's saying a single thing.
17:53 Scott thing right and there's no body language you can read really like you can read in a room what are the questions you would ask of groups in that
18:02 Brad Well,
18:03 Scott environment
18:03 Brad that's a, that's, I love that. And first of all, 100% agree with you that.
18:08 Brad Very rarely do groups produce good questions because to your point, it's like it's crickets. And so I feel like you got to do a lot of you got to put stuff out there in a vulnerable way and then.
18:23 Brad When they see that you're genuine and vulnerable and authentic,
18:27 Brad then that will allow them to then come to you one-on-one or come to you in a smaller setting and say,
18:36 Brad you know, the person who stands up in the large meeting and asks the hard question is rare.
18:45 Scott Mm-hmm.
18:46 Brad And even rarer that they are coming to it with a positive mindset.
18:53 Brad Typically, I've found that the person that sort of stands up in the group meeting and asks the hard question,
18:59 Brad I want to encourage that and say, yes, please bring that.
19:04 Brad But they tend to have an agenda which tends to not be as constructive as possible, but at least you're getting signal.
19:12 Brad You know, so I
19:13 Scott It's
19:13 Brad don't ever try never to shut that down,
19:15 Brad but it's rarely,
19:17 Brad it's rarely, it seems to me the better, the better feedback loop comes from creating the sense of trust,
19:25 Brad creating the sense of authenticity in the group setting. And I have some specific logistical things I've done in the past, which I feel have worked really well.
19:33 Brad And then through one-on-one, through skip levels,
19:37 Brad through team AMAs, you know, smaller settings,
19:40 Brad cultivating that space where people feel comfortable bringing their issues to you.
19:46 Scott So, okay,
19:48 Scott so what are the, you said you had some specific tactics to build trust.
19:53 Scott What are those?
19:54 Brad So a couple tactics that I feel like worked really well for me is.
19:59 Brad And I definitely set up one-on-ones with everybody in my span of management,
20:05 Brad for sure.
20:06 Brad And that is recurring and
20:07 Scott regular. Yeah,
20:08 Brad And I have a specific script that I use for that to kick that off.
20:13 Brad I absolutely believe
20:14 Scott you mean of the first one-on-one, like that first one-on-one you have a script that you follow.
20:18 Brad Yeah, pretty much. But also it's a standing agenda that is true for all of those one-on-ones,
20:25 Brad right?
20:25 Brad And that agenda is basically,
20:27 Brad well,
20:28 Brad the introductory script is like,
20:33 Brad I am here to make you and everybody on the team as effective as possible.
20:39 Brad That is what I consider my mission to be.
20:42 Brad And I am willing to...
20:45 Brad I'm willing to do no job is too small.
20:47 Brad Let I treat me as your agent.
20:52 Scott Mm
20:52 Brad Now,
20:53 Scott -hmm.
20:53 Brad there are some things that you might ask me for that I won't be able to do.
20:56 Brad And I'll be super clear and direct with you to the best of my ability whenever that happens. But otherwise,
21:00 Brad I want you to bring me things that I can do to help you.
21:04 Brad That's the main thing here.
21:08 Brad And then I say things like, you know, another example is logistically speaking,
21:13 Brad like we have a running document that's either,
21:16 Brad you know, there's tools for it, but right now I just use like a Google document that's got the agenda in it. And I say, go put whatever you want in there and I will make a point before you're one-on-one, I will show up and I will have read whatever you asked that you wanted to talk about and
21:31 Scott Mm-hmm.
21:31 Brad I will be prepared to talk about that. If there's things on my mind.
21:34 Brad I'll put them in there, but every one of my one-on-ones always starts with the question,
21:39 Brad how's it going for you and what can I do to help you?
21:42 Brad Like that's the first question in every one-on-one.
21:45 Brad What can I do to help you?
21:49 Scott Okay.
21:50 Brad And I do that with direct one-on-ones. I do that with skip levels.
21:54 Brad I also do random one-on-ones. So that's like the one-on-one playbook that I have.
21:59 Brad The other thing I do is I've done open office hours,
22:04 Brad like
22:05 Scott Mm-hmm.
22:05 Brad I just set aside an hour and a half,
22:08 Brad anyone can come.
22:11 Brad And then I make a point of like when I kind of market my open office hours,
22:16 Brad I promote it with here are things on my mind.
22:20 Brad And I always include in that.
22:24 Brad stuff that's specific to the team to the business to whatever and i also include just personal stuff you know like
22:30 Scott Mm-hmm.
22:31 Brad oh i've been doing this research on um you know whatever you know um something that's not related to the business or oh i'm really excited about this mountaineering trip that i'm going to take next weekend you know and i use that as like these conversation starters that are
22:50 Brad Like you literally could come here and talk about anything you want because it's about connection.
22:57 Brad And if we build connection,
22:58 Brad then we'll be able to get to the place of like you really trusting me to help you solve your problems.
23:06 Scott I loved grinding the office hours.
23:11 Scott Because I've done office hours in the past and haven't always worked well because people sometimes it's just the same people that come and other times people don't really have anything to talk about.
23:21 Scott Right.
23:22 Scott But saying here's what I'm thinking about right now.
23:26 Scott If you are interested,
23:27 Scott you can come talk about whatever you want,
23:29 Scott but if you're interested in talking about this,
23:31 Scott that's kind of what's been on my mind. I really like that.
23:33 Brad Yeah.
23:33 Brad And that approach has I've gotten very specific direct feedback from people saying, I have never come to your office hours, but I read your office hours, you know, here's what I'm thinking about.
23:47 Brad And even if I don't come,
23:49 Brad it helps me feel like you're there to be authentic.
23:53 Brad and you're willing to talk about anything and so that's that's been something that's really worked for me yeah
24:00 Scott Yeah, that's a good one.
24:01 Scott That's a really good one.
24:02 Scott That's brilliant,
24:03 Scott actually.
24:04 Scott So if it's actually,
24:06 Scott I want to mention something going back to the philosophy thing.
24:11 Scott And you talked about skepticism.
24:13 Scott I intentionally I've had I've only had one all hands which was that asked me anything at the beginning I've intentionally not gotten up and tried to be the face of the organization and and tried to just you know be small because as a reaction to the skepticism which is like okay well
24:36 Scott we've all been a part of that we're like well here's the new guy just talking a bunch of nonsense like whatever we don't need to hear this guy we're just going back to our desk I've tried to not be that guy right but
24:46 Brad Yeah.
24:46 Scott I have received the feedback like hey you're not very visible and that's hard in a remote environment without sort of calling all hands right when you're in a in office environment you can just walk around the office and chit chat with people and take people to lunch or whatever
25:02 Scott But in a remote environment, it's harder.
25:04 Scott So I really like that office hours as a technique to sort of split the difference a little bit
25:08 Brad Yeah, here's another one that I started using recently,
25:11 Brad and I've really had some great feedback on this one.
25:15 Brad So in an organization, so my last stint, organizations got like 100 engineers in it. I've got like five directors that are, you know, managing, you know, somewhere between.
25:27 Brad in a third and a fifth of the of the team and i would do regular staff meetings with them right so once once a week hour we get together and we're talking through whatever the the topics of the week are you know um and what we started doing and got huge response from is we would record you
25:52 Brad The last five minutes of that meeting and do essentially a we would in the in the last 10 minutes of the meeting,
26:01 Brad we would quickly figure out, OK,
26:03 Brad what is the summary of what we talked about?
26:06 Brad that
26:06 Scott Mm
26:07 Brad we feel
26:07 Scott -hmm.
26:07 Brad we can share with everybody almost always it was like we could share all the topics we talked about and we would then you know create a quick little mini agenda for our five minute summary and then we would popcorn around the room with each director and myself giving a summary of the topic right and then we would produce that literally just like boom we just did a five minute video
26:30 Brad And then we would just upload it to Slack and say,
26:32 Brad hey,
26:32 Brad here's the summary of my staff meeting that we just had.
26:36 Brad Let me know if you have any questions.
26:38 Scott Builds a lot of trust.
26:39 Brad Right.
26:40 Brad It's all about like, here we are, we're being transparent.
26:43 Brad This is how we interact with each other.
26:45 Brad And so it's like a little bit of they get to see my authentic self,
26:49 Brad right?
26:49 Brad Because, you know, that that mix of like, yeah, I'm a professional, but I'm also kind of a fun, silly guy. And they get to see the interaction and the positive interaction between myself and the staff.
27:02 Brad their
27:02 Scott Mm
27:02 Brad boss
27:02 Scott -hmm.
27:02 Brad their boss's boss and they get to get a greater sense of like my leadership style their you know their chain of commands leadership style the interaction between all of us
27:19 Brad And we get to hit topics.
27:21 Brad Oh,
27:22 Brad we've got, you know, animal performance reviews coming up. So we talked about that,
27:26 Brad you know, HR is going to be sending out the 360 forms next week, you know, great.
27:31 Brad Okay, now,
27:32 Brad Anne,
27:33 Brad you wanted to talk about our latest offshore testing initiative.
27:36 Brad Yeah, we've got this new compliance requirement.
27:39 Brad We've contracted,
27:41 Brad legal's working with this offshore agency that we're going to be doing this new.
27:44 Brad new compliance testing with.
27:46 Brad We don't expect to interrupt our schedules,
27:48 Brad but that's what I've been working on, you know, okay, great, Donnie, what,
27:52 Brad you know, whatever.
27:53 Scott So it's a summary, not a reenactment.
27:56 Brad It's a summary.
27:57 Brad It's a quick punch list summary of what we did.
27:59 Brad That's huge.
28:01 Brad That's I found that to be so, so powerful in an organization where, you know, especially if it was like building trust, rebuilding trust because of like, I don't know whether it be like business hardships of layoffs or something like that, you know, then you've got this opportunity to basically like.
28:18 Brad let people be a fly on the wall to see the trust that you and your team have with each other.
28:25 Scott okay so there's one thing we i wanted to bring up like half an hour ago that we didn't talk about and so maybe we can get to the end of this no no you didn't cut me off at all i just was thinking about it as we've been talking about all this stuff which is all of these tactics and strategies we've talked about but the the trust building
28:44 Scott in a remote environment is so different and is there it's it's so different over the screen you
28:51 Brad Mm-hmm.
28:51 Scott know the human interaction is just so different and um you know i think about a simple here's something so simple there's a we our company had an on-site about uh
29:04 Scott four or five weeks ago in san francisco and i met one of the engineering managers there a woman named hannah i mean literally hallway passing she said hi my name's hannah i want to introduce myself that was like we talked about nothing of meaning um other than that which was meaningful i guess but i mean nothing of substance but now i'm having to engage with her on something else and just having that i mean
29:29 Scott 15 seconds right made there's something human we exchange smells I don't know how to describe it right is so powerful right
29:38 Brad I
29:39 Scott it's
29:39 Brad have to
29:39 Scott the question
29:40 Brad agree.
29:40 Scott of like trust building and remote seems so much harder to me and I it's something I personally struggle with especially when I'm spending eight hours a day on the screen anyhow and it's like oh my god more meetings right so it's like trust building is so hard remotely
29:53 Brad Okay, here's unpopular opinion.
29:56 Brad My unpopular opinion is no, it's not.
29:59 Brad It's not any harder than in person.
30:02 Brad The difference is that in person, in the old world,
30:07 Brad in person, a whole lot of people thought they were building trust when they weren't really.
30:14 Scott Hmm.
30:14 Brad The walk around management by walking around.
30:19 Brad was this is a common theory that lots of people, you know, subscribe to that that didn't really build trust,
30:29 Brad but they they fooled themselves into thinking they were building trust and that instead the way to build trust is to be vulnerable and authentic in every interaction you have. Here's a simple example.
30:42 Brad My screen is not blurred.
30:45 Scott Mm-hmm.
30:45 Brad And I make a point of always having my camera on and
30:49 Scott Mm-hmm.
30:49 Brad letting it be my,
30:53 Brad this is me.
30:54 Brad I like
30:54 Scott Yeah.
30:55 Brad guitars.
30:55 Brad I like tiki mugs.
30:57 Brad You know, I don't have any mountains in that wall,
31:00 Brad but I have mountains on this wall.
31:01 Brad Right.
31:02 Brad That's a small gesture of authenticity.
31:07 Brad And and saying like, yeah,
31:10 Brad man,
31:10 Brad I had a hard weekend.
31:11 Brad I didn't sleep well, you know, like being authentic in every possible interaction is what builds trust.
31:18 Brad Now, in that hallway interaction,
31:21 Brad like.
31:22 Brad You kind of have you definitely have some extra tools at your disposal to be authentic and vulnerable.
31:27 Brad Right.
31:28 Brad But you can totally manage by walking around in person in the office and not be authentic and not and just build this false sense of trust.
31:39 Brad And it
31:39 Scott can Well, I agree.
31:39 Brad be that the leader thinks they're building trust.
31:42 Brad And in fact, they could be they could be not building trust and they could, in fact, be undermining trust by basically just not being authentic and not being vulnerable.
31:54 Scott Well,
31:54 Scott I agree with everything you say.
31:56 Scott And I mean, figuratively speaking,
31:59 Scott there's no going back to the office,
32:00 Scott right?
32:01 Scott But there is maybe it isn't trust as much as
32:06 Scott Micro interactions do build relationships.
32:11 Scott you know I had a practice when I was at Rover my pattern was I dropped my kids off for school at about eight I got the office about 8 15 8 30 so I was the one who took the kids to school and I would typically not schedule a meeting before nine o'clock I mean sometimes they happen earlier because we have company we had offices in Europe but sitting that aside my typical pattern was arrive in the office between 8 15 8 30
32:34 Scott Take my laptop,
32:35 Scott go to the break room,
32:36 Scott get myself a cup of coffee,
32:38 Scott start to catch up on Slack and email stuff like that until my first meeting, which was typically at nine, but often wouldn't be delayed.
32:46 Scott and if I loved it because you know people come in to get their own cups of coffee and it would be an opportunity to say well hey Brad how you doing what's
32:54 Brad Yeah,
32:54 Scott up oh I heard you got a new dog or you know what are you working on or just whatever it was just an opportunity for casual extremely
33:00 Brad I love it.
33:00 Scott casual interactions right
33:01 Brad Love it.
33:02 Scott and I loved it too it was a it was a it was a way I enjoyed starting the day and I would frequently I mean sometimes I'd get through a bunch of slack because no one came in and sometimes I would
33:13 Scott That would just be chatting the whole time, right?
33:15 Scott And there's just something about that that built relationships, I guess, different than trust, but built relationships in a way that's harder.
33:24 Scott And there's another piece to it, too,
33:25 Scott which is I had this friend who is a salesperson who has this saying,
33:30 Scott which is more hellos equals more money.
33:35 Scott And and so, you know, I would I'd be very intentional as a senior leader at the company.
33:40 Scott But anytime somebody walked in that break room that I didn't know who they were,
33:44 Scott introducing
33:44 Brad You go say hi to him.
33:45 Scott myself.
33:46 Brad Introduce
33:46 Scott Say,
33:47 Brad yourself.
33:47 Scott oh.
33:48 Scott Hi, we haven't met before.
33:49 Scott My name is Scott,
33:49 Scott right?
33:50 Brad Yeah.
33:50 Scott I'd be very intentional about that.
33:52 Brad Yeah.
33:53 Scott And you just don't get that quite as much in this remote thing.
33:56 Scott So it's just it's a tool that's out of your toolkit,
33:58 Brad I
33:58 Scott I guess.
33:58 Brad totally agree with you. And I'm not in any way trying. That is a great example of a positive use of the in-person. And I'm just saying that you are a.
34:09 Brad I think you're a very strong leader who knows how to build trust through authenticity and personal interactions.
34:17 Brad And I'm just saying that a lot of the people claiming that we need to all go back to the office aren't using that tool that you just described,
34:25 Brad which is one of the cheapest and easiest tools to use.
34:28 Brad Right.
34:28 Scott Yeah.
34:28 Scott It caused me a free cup of mediocre coffee every morning.
34:31 Brad Yeah,
34:31 Brad exactly.
34:32 Brad And, you know, and putting yourself out there.
34:35 Brad And I think that.
34:36 Brad And so that's my point is that for people like yourself and myself that already have like a very clear agenda of like,
34:45 Brad I want to build this authentic level of trust. Sure, we used the in-person stuff strategically.
34:55 Scott Yeah.
34:55 Brad And, and there's plenty of people that didn't use in-person strategically and don't understand.
35:02 Brad They got this false sense that the in-person was building this trust when in fact it was not.
35:08 Brad You know, you're not, you clearly did have a strategic use of in-person.
35:13 Brad And I'm just saying that the hard part about that.
35:17 Brad is what we talked about which is being authentic and being vulnerable and you can do that you can do that on slack you can do that in zoom you can do that in meet you can do that with these small things small things like being your you know having your you know camera not blurred having your laundry in the background and
35:38 Scott I
35:38 Brad having
35:38 Scott know that's embarrassing.
35:39 Scott I'm embarrassed that I've got that back there.
35:41 Brad it's not i think that that's i think that
35:43 Brad You know, I don't I think that's in fact
35:45 Scott It's
35:46 Brad a very.
35:46 Scott it's the clean laundry just FYI. That's the clean laundry
35:50 Brad But that's, to me, that's about being vulnerable,
35:53 Brad right?
35:54 Brad Letting the dog run in the background,
35:56 Brad right?
35:56 Scott Yeah.
35:56 Brad Like that's about being vulnerable.
35:58 Brad Say admitting like,
35:59 Brad man,
36:00 Brad I didn't sleep well last night.
36:02 Brad I might be a little cranky because of it.
36:04 Brad Don't take it personally.
36:06 Brad I'm doing my best, but I didn't get good sleep last night.
36:08 Brad Like that,
36:09 Brad those tiny little things, I think make a huge difference over the long run.
36:16 Brad And that's, there you go.
36:16 Brad That's
36:17 Scott You're
36:17 Brad the right. way to sum up how do you build trust in a new organization?
36:21 Brad How do you maintain trust?
36:23 Brad I think it's about being authentic and being vulnerable.
36:26 Scott Yeah.
36:26 Scott And every action, every interaction either builds it or destroys it.
36:30 Scott And we've got to be thoughtful.
36:35 Brad Well,
36:36 Brad there you go.
36:37 Brad How many CTOs does it take to
36:39 Scott At least two.
36:40 Brad least two?
36:44 Scott This episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast was edited by Saffron Heptigal. Our theme song was AI generated by Brad.
36:52 Scott Please follow us on all the social media platforms at at how many CTOs pod you can find us on YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook threads X tick tock and patreon or at our website at how many CTOs pod calm and remember to rate review and subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice thanks for listening