Latest / Sales Pipeline Radio / Building, Managing and Leading High-Performance Teams

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Building, Managing and Leading High-Performance Teams · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  Matt: Welcome everybody to another episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 0:19
  I'm your host, Matt Heinz.
• 0:20
  Very excited to have Gina with us today in the green room.
• 0:23
  Yes, there's a green room.
• 0:24
  We were both actually physically in together before we did this
• 0:27
  several hundred miles apart.
• 0:28
  I was joking because today we're going to talk about building,
• 0:31
  managing high performance teams.
• 0:33
  And sometimes just to kind of freak people out, I'll get on and say, okay, what
• 0:36
  we're talking about today is zucchini.
• 0:38
  It's that time of year when everybody's out of ideas to do with the zucchini.
• 0:42
  And I brought up a new recipe we use and you brought up one of my favorites.
• 0:45
  So I think for those watching today, this is our cold open.
• 0:48
  Before we get into real talk, let's do real, real talk.
• 0:51
  Explain your Genius Zucchini idea here.
• 0:54
  Gina: My Genius Zucchini is the simplest application of zucchini ever.
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  And you actually grate it on the large holes of a box grater.
• 1:02
  And you saute it in a little bit of butter and olive oil.
• 1:06
  You can leave the butter out if you're vegan.
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  Salt and pepper.
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  And if you like a little parm at the end, just hit it with a little
• 1:11
  bit of parm and it is perfect.
• 1:14
  It's like the perfect vegetable side.
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  Everybody loves it.
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  Great texture, great flavor.
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  Matt: It really is amazing.
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  I would say that because it cooks down, like you start with a large amount of
• 1:24
  zucchini, you end up with a little bit.
• 1:25
  Gina: Ya, those really big ones and you can get the farmer's market for
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  like 75 cents because they kind of lose their deliciousness when they're too
• 1:32
  big, throw in the pot, grate it up.
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  So good.
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  Matt: Or the ones in the plant that like the big leave is hiding it.
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  And then you get out there like crap.
• 1:39
  It's like this big zucchini.
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  So, treat it like you're caramelizing onions.
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  So nutritious and dense.
• 1:46
  All right, Gina, welcome to Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 1:50
  I think you, you mentioned jokingly we could talk about zucchini all day.
• 1:53
  I think maybe we should make a CMO Coffee Talk where it's swipe file Friday recipes.
• 1:57
  That might actually be fun.
• 2:01
  But no, today we're going to talk about high performance teams.
• 2:03
  So first of all, if you are joining us on Sales Pipeline Radio live today
• 2:08
  as part of your work day and your work week, thank you for taking time.
• 2:11
  I promise we're going to make this more valuable than just
• 2:13
  amazing zucchini recipes.
• 2:15
  And if you are watching or listening live, you can be part of the show.
• 2:17
  If you put a comment in on LinkedIn we're going to see it
• 2:20
  here in our StreamYard platform.
• 2:22
  We can respond to it.
• 2:23
  We can put it up on screen.
• 2:24
  We can talk about it.
• 2:25
  So questions, answers, rebuttals, rants..
• 2:28
  It's good.
• 2:29
  We welcome all of it.
• 2:30
  If you are listening or watching on demand, thank you so much for
• 2:33
  downloading and subscribing every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 2:36
  Past, present, future, always available at salespipelineradio.com.
• 2:40
  Today, super excited to have a Head of Marketing Community for
• 2:44
  HackerOne, Gina Hortatsos joining us.
• 2:47
  Gina we kind of did the cold open already, but thank you for doing this.
• 2:51
  Gina: Thanks for having me and thank you for pronouncing my last
• 2:53
  name the right way the first time.
• 2:55
  Matt: I will say that it was was a little bit terrifying moment because
• 2:58
  I've known you for a long time and I've seen your last name a million times
• 3:01
  and I've only just called you Gina.
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  So from this point forward, it'll just be Gina.
• 3:06
  There were so many different topics that we could cover as part of this.
• 3:09
  And the thing we both kind of caught down to was just teams.
• 3:12
  I've got a small consulting firm where the team is the product, like the
• 3:15
  team is critical, but it's no less critical even if you're selling a
• 3:19
  widget or a product or anything else.
• 3:21
  Start with, over your career, what are some of the lessons you've learned
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  about some critical elements of building a high performance quality team?
• 3:30
  Gina: Yeah.
• 3:31
  I've been leading teams for about a quarter of a century now.
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  And even now I make mistakes all the time.
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  So let's just first say we're all human.
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  We're doing the best we can.
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  And If any good can come out of my mistakes, it's providing them to
• 3:48
  this audience so that, perhaps you will avoid some of the mistakes
• 3:52
  that I've made in the past.
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  So framing it that way, I think the thing that keeps coming up that I still
• 4:01
  have to work on is never make important decisions about org structure, hiring, or
• 4:08
  shuffling work around teams if you're in a state of fear, overwhelm, or exhaustion.
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  Most of my worst mistakes that I've made when it comes to building
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  leading high performing teams have been decisions I felt like I had
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  to make under duress of some kind.
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  Most of the time they were wrong and caused a lot of pain and a lot of stress
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  that would probably would have been unnecessary if I just had the managerial
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  courage to admit that I was not in a headspace to be able to do these things.
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  I've made some bad hiring mistakes because I was just desperate to get someone in
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  the door and in seat because I needed a human to do stuff because I couldn't
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  take it anymore doing it all by myself.
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  So just as in every other situation in life, I was talking to a friend of mine
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  that had to renovate an old house and she said, the worst decisions I made were the
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  ones that I made toward the end when I was so worn down and it just appeals here.
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  Huge lesson learned.
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  Sometimes when the decision is in front of you and you feel like you
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  have to make it and you're just not in the right headspace, if you can
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  possibly sleep on it, ask someone for help or otherwise get the support you
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  need so you don't have to either make the decision alone or don't have to
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  make it when you're in that headspace.
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  I think that's the number one piece of advice that I wish someone had told me.
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  You know, oftentimes you have windows for hiring.
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  You don't want to lose the budget.
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  Oftentimes there is some emergency thing that happens that shifts your
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  market or your business and you've got to figure out how to get the work done.
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  Putting yourself in a calmer state and actually like trying to solve
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  for the issue in front of you and the place that you need to be
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  in your mind is the best thing.
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  I think another lesson that's kind of related to that is the Importance of
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  just being super honest and transparent.
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  And I know we all say that, right?
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  But one of the things that I learned as an emerging leader many years ago
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  is completely counter to what we tell people to do today, which is when I was
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  in the leadership training courses and some of the companies I worked at, back
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  then the very prescriptive advice we received was don't show vulnerability,
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  especially if you're a woman.
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  Don't show weakness.
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  Don't show emotion.
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  Do not ask people about their personal lives or if they're okay.
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  And under no circumstance, do you tell anyone, do you offer
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  details about your personal life?
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  If you've got to go to a kid's doctor's appointment, just don't say anything.
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  That was actually how we were trained.
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  And so one of the areas of development that I continue to work on is still
• 6:55
  unlearning that training and I have to say that with, with modern workplaces
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  and the modern ethos around bringing your authentic self to work, it has
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  been so freeing for someone who was, when my kids were little, I would have
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  loved to be able to share a little bit about the stresses I was feeling and the
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  pressure and the guilt and everything.
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  I couldn't say anything back.
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  And now just being able to work with team members and foster an environment
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  where they can feel like if they got to go to a school play or if they have to
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  take care of an aging parent, that they can either tell me or not tell me why.
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  But having a high trust culture and allowing them to feel like that
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  psychological safety of, I won't be judged if I do say anything.
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  And if I don't, you know, this person trusts me to get
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  my work done and I'm good.
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  That is worth its weight in gold.
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  It'll drive loyalty.
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  It'll drive a high trust culture that means that we we kind of tease out
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  problems before they become huge issues.
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  And it's something that quite frankly, if I had that when I was in my younger
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  years, more junior in my leadership career, I think I think I could have
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  could have done a lot with that concept.
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  Matt: That's such great advice.
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  I really hope that people are listening and taking notes.
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  And some of this is easier said than done, but when you've been through the ringer on
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  these, you realize how important that is.
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  And, you know, if you want to build a high performance team, you
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  need to have a high trust team.
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  You need to have a team that trusts you as their manager and trust each
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  other that you've got your backs that knowing that not every day is sunny.
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  Not every day is perfect.
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  That is hard to do a lot of what we're doing.
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  If you're doing go to market, B2B marketing right, you're embracing the
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  suck sometimes of how complex it is.
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  You have a team that trusts each other.
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  The trust is foundational and it leads to the performance that you're
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  looking for, not the other way around.
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  Gina: Exactly.
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  I agree.
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  I worked with a colleague a couple years ago who, I'm going to steal
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  this phrase from him, and he said, "As leaders, our job Is to give people the
• 9:04
  chance to do the best work of their lives at the best place to do it."
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  And so yes, of course, there are a lot of leadership implications, but also
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  the workplace in which you choose to go work has to also foster that culture.
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  We, as leaders, they don't work for us.
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  We work for them.
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  Your success, their success.
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  Matt: Talking today on Sales Pipeline Radio with Gina Hortatsos.
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  Hey, I've said your name again, last name again.
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  She's the Head of Marketing Community at HackerOne There's a bunch of follow
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  up questions I have, and you mentioned earlier, trying to create that calmer
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  state and put yourself in a calmer state to make the right people decisions.
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  And that's not only when you hire someone, but also as you're managing
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  those people, you know, one on one performance reviews, professional
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  development on an ongoing basis, like bringing your full self and not bringing
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  the emotions that can cloud some of that.
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  It's one thing for you and I to agree on this and for us to
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  work hard to be good at that.
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  How do you train and teach and empower your people to do that as well?
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  Right?
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  So it's not just you hiring someone.
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  You may have a direct report that is desperate to fill a seat and
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  just needs that one body as well.
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  And how do you help enable people to have that same mentality?
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  Gina: Yeah.
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  I think there are two things that come to mind right away.
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  One is the framework of jobs to be done.
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  First of all, list out the stuff on a whiteboard, on a Miro board
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  of the work that has to be done, and then find the categorization.
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  If it's a backfill, that's one thing, but I actually use hiring
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  opportunities as a way of potentially rethinking how we get work done.
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  By focusing on the jobs to be done, it allows you to stick a pin in the
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  emotional people part of it so that you can have a very clear head on the
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  attributes of the person you need to do that body of work before you then
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  start slotting people in to that spot.
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  So using that jobs to be done framework and making sure that hiring manager
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  has gone through that exercise.
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  So they're crystal, crystal clear, not only about the work to be done,
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  but what the interlocks are and the critical dependencies of that body of
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  work with other teams and other people.
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  The second thing I would say is utilize a goal setting methodology.
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  At HackerOne, we use the OKR methodology.
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  I know a lot of companies use V2MOM.
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  There are other goal setting methodologies.
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  I don't have a lot of prescription on what that is.
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  But whatever that goal setting methodology is, make sure you allow
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  alignment across teams and up and down.
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  So we have corporate level objectives and key results, departmental level
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  ones, and then we can use those to help individuals or individual teams set goals
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  so that you can see clear alignment.
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  Both up and down and across.
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  So for focus, prioritization, performance management, I know technically in OKR
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  land, you're supposed to decouple OKRs from performance management, but it's
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  kind of hard to, because if you're talking about work that has to be done
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  and measuring the progress of that work having an OKR method, some kind of
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  goal setting methodology is, again very effective in empowering managers to have
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  those conversations with a clear head and also with compassion to listen to whatever
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  might be happening on the other end.
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  Matt: Yeah.
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  I love that.
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  We use a methodology called EOS to run our business, has a similar,
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  what they call rocks for the quarter.
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  One of the things I love about it is it encourages individual accountability.
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  So each rock, with each thing you're gonna get done, there
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  is one person that owns that.
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  So individual accountability, but collective problem solving.
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  So if your rock is off track for the quarter, you will bring that
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  to the group not so that they say, boy, you suck, but you bring it
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  to say, I need help with this.
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  So other people in the room who don't have accountability for that can provide
• 13:01
  ideas and guidance and help you brainstorm in a way that doesn't make you feel bad.
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  It doesn't say like you don't have your shit together, but it allows
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  for the clear accountability.
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  I own this, but I know that the team has my back if I need help.
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  Gina: Yes.
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  And the nature of our work is such that no work stream can really be fully exectued
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  without some interlock with other teams.
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  One thing I talk to my leaders about a lot is solve for the problem, not the person.
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  Because oftentimes if something gets escalated, it might be brought to you
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  with the phrasing around, like, so and so said this in a meeting or so and so
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  I have a critical dependency with such and such team and they haven't delivered.
• 13:45
  By doing a little bit of five why root cause analysis, you don't
• 13:49
  even have to ask the full five.
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  Sometimes you can get it in two or three.
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  You can actually tease out the root cause of the problem, which might
• 13:56
  have very little to do with a person's individual performance, drive or ability.
• 14:02
  Matt: Right, and it allows the team to coalesce a little bit, right?
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  A high trust team wants to succeed and wants their peers to succeed as well.
• 14:12
  And even if I don't have expertise or accountability in something,
• 14:16
  because of that, I might have some right angle thinking or idea that
• 14:21
  could unlock helping with that and I think to create that culture...
• 14:26
  you used words vulnerability, empathy, grace, to have that team sport
• 14:31
  mentality to doing this, to say each of us individually has things we
• 14:35
  need to achieve and be accountable for, but we will not be successful
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  unless we all are in this together.
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  You have to really reinforce that environment and show that you're going
• 14:45
  to do it when on good days and bad.
• 14:48
  Gina: Agreed.
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  I also think that particularly if you work in a small business or
• 14:53
  startup life, there is a gravitational pull because we're very fast paced.
• 15:00
  There's a lot of scope creep because our business pivots all the time
• 15:04
  and we have to be able to respond.
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  It's very tempting to really want to just circle the wagons.
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  And that's when silos happen because people just draw a box around their job.
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  They're like, I've got so much to do.
• 15:15
  I can only think about this right now.
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  I do think it's a leader's responsibility.
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  In fact, a lot of the responsibility, like time and space to think about
• 15:25
  and help teams create space for having those conversations so that
• 15:30
  when a problem is brought to the group, there is not a reaction of
• 15:34
  like, well, that's your problem.
• 15:35
  You have to go fix it because I don't have time to deal with that right now.
• 15:39
  That is a very common problem in startup life.
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  I do think that the combination of having goals and a high trust culture,
• 15:47
  the goals will help to guide focus and prioritization and the high trust culture
• 15:53
  will allow for people to feel safe in bringing up stuff without worrying
• 15:57
  about being judged or being viewed as incompetent, all those ingredients have
• 16:01
  to exist or the whole thing doesn't work.
• 16:04
  Matt: Absolutely right.
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  But every day a well meaning person becomes a manager of
• 16:08
  people for the first time.
• 16:10
  What are some recommendations you have for them in terms of either lessons or
• 16:15
  where to go learn or who to learn from?
• 16:18
  We all make mistakes as leaders all the time, but if someone wants to
• 16:22
  really invest in themselves as a leader of people, what do you recommend?
• 16:26
  Gina: I recommend leaning on your peer group first.
• 16:29
  And showing that vulnerability yourself with your team.
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  Leading by example and by modeling is very important.
• 16:38
  Asking for help when you need it.
• 16:40
  Find a peer group.
• 16:41
  We have the CMO Coffee Talk community.
• 16:43
  There are a few other communities out there for our group, but no
• 16:45
  matter what job you're in, there are some amazing communities out there.
• 16:49
  Maria Ross is an author.
• 16:50
  She just released her second book but her first book is called The Empathy Edge.
• 16:54
  I think that's a great read.
• 16:55
  Leaders need to operate with compassion first because it is
• 16:59
  the key route to building and sustaining a high trust culture
• 17:03
  which creates a high performing team.
• 17:05
  So get your read on and never stop learning and never stop being curious.
• 17:10
  Matt: Yeah, I think that last point is so important.
• 17:12
  Be a regular student and know that what you have learned to do will evolve.
• 17:18
  The workplaces will evolve.
• 17:20
  What's expected will evolve.
• 17:22
  And to your point, what we learned about effective management and
• 17:25
  leadership, 20, 25 years ago...
• 17:28
  I remember working at a PR firm and we had Microsoft was one of our biggest
• 17:31
  clients and going at meetings at Microsoft were terrible because there
• 17:34
  was always yelling, they yelled at us.
• 17:36
  They yelled at each other.
• 17:37
  And you get like, Is this what work is like?
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  And so you get a sense of maybe this is what it's like.
• 17:42
  It's mean and so like, it's not like work is going to be fun, but like, there's
• 17:46
  a better environment you can create.
• 17:48
  And you manage one person or 20 or 2000, you have an opportunity to influence
• 17:54
  that wherever you're working today.
• 17:55
  Gina: It's such a gift.
• 17:57
  Matt: Gina, thank you so much for doing this.
• 17:58
  If people want to learn more about you, can keep in touch with you, get additional
• 18:04
  zucchini advice, like where can they go?
• 18:06
  They can go to my LinkedIn profile, Gina Hortatsos, just search for me.
• 18:11
  I'm pretty sure I'm the only one on there.
• 18:13
  Well, thank you again for doing this.
• 18:14
  Thank you to all of you who have been watching live and on demand.
• 18:17
  We'll see you next week on Sales Pipeline Radio.
• 18:19
  Gina: Take care.
• 18:20
  Bye.