Tell Me About Your Life

Quite a while ago I came across Adrienne Lowe's Talk about Career Conversations. I have this tendency to wonder what other people are struggling with, even though we very seldom show it at work. So, once I watched the talk I was intrigued and so I proposed it with my team to get their thoughts and opinions.

Are You Keen?

When proposing it to my team, I done it in our 1:1 weekly conversation. I wasn't sure how people would feel about it. Even though I had been their manager for quite some time and built-up trust with them over that time, I didn't know how comfortable people would be to do something like this. If someone were to ask me, I know I would be a hesitant as there are some things that very few work colleagues know about my life. To help alleviate this, I decided to do two things:

1. I would go first. I have always believed that leaders should go first but, in this instance, I also wanted to be vulnerable and for them to know a bit more about me.
2. Even if they initially said they were okay to do it, I gave them multiple times to opt out.

One thing I would mention is that I wouldn't run this with a brand-new team. It may seem a bit to strange without having built up some foundation with them yet.

Let's Do This!

Below is the format that I ran this with each team on an individual basis. I extended one of our 1:1 meeting to one hour and I went first, telling them about my life and answering the questions below. If they were still happy in doing their story, I then extended the next 1:1 to one hour as well. With that aside, let's look at the actual format:

Starting with Kindergarten, tell me about your life?

This question provides insight into the decisions they've made and the motivations behind them and takes up the bulk of the conversation. Beforehand I jotted down a few major points in my life I wanted to talk about. I allowed them to ask questions as they popped into their head and encourage them to dig in a bit deeper into anything I said. It was very free flowing discussion.

When it was their turn, I took down notes that would help me paint a better picture of who they really are (as you will see later). In the interests of transparency, I let them know and offered them the option of writing notes about me, if they wanted to.

What do you love about your work?

Following the life story, the focus shifted to uncovering the things they love about their current job. I depicted the following scenario to dive deeper into this aspect. For transparency, I also responded to these questions when I went first and was telling my life story. The scenario is as follows:

Picture this: you're about to land your dream job. It's got everything you've been searching for – the latest tech, awesome team members, a product that you would love working with and the flexibility to work remotely or in-office. In short, your dream job.

As the offer is about to be made, the manager asks a question: "What's one thing that you love at your current job would like to continue in this new role?"

What do you dislike about your work?

As with the above, this scenario now aims to uncover what they dislike about the current job that they are doing. It went along the following lines:

Imagine you are at a coffee shop. You can smell the aroma of coffee in the air, and you can hear the murmur of people in the background. Some of them are laughing and having a good day. The sun is shining and warming up the coffee shop through its long windows.

You are meeting your friend from work and as you are chatting, they ask you "What is really frustrating you at work right now?"

Drafting It Up

Once you have done the above, you can start to draft up a picture of each team member. You then send this rough draft to them before the next 1:1 so that they can read it through and see what you got right and wrong about them. I tried to group the draft around the following headings:

1. I get excited by…
2. I struggle when…
3. I am…
4. I prefer…
5. Ask me for help with…
6. General observations

In the 1:1 you can then get their input in what needs to change or is missing until they are happy.

The last step is that I created a summary of myself, using the same headings, (Assuming someone done so in our conversation already) and sent it to the rest of the team. If other people felt comfortable, they could send theirs around as well. It is completely up to them.

Unexpected Results

I didn't really expect any other outcomes than what I had already described above. However, but after running it with our team, the following really stuck out:

• Everyone has struggled, we just never hear about it. It's a shame, as we only see tend to see the highlights of people's lives and never see the challenging times. When I talked about my life, I talked quite a bit about some of my biggest struggles and my suspicion is that since I was so vulnerable, they let their guard down as well.
• Like I mentioned above, there are things about my life that many people at work don't know. It's not that they secretive by any means, but more that I have just separated my personal life from my work life. This broke down those barriers. There were things about their life I would have never guessed (and I assume the same would have gone for them) , but it helped me understand how it may have shaped them into the person they are today. It was a newfound understanding.
• These discussions rapidly increased trust, more so than I ever thought. Both of us were being vulnerable and often talked about our weaknesses and fears.
• It also made it easier to talk to team members about personal issues that I was going through and vice versa. Often them just knowing what each of us had been through, made it easy to chat about in our 1:1's

Would I do this again with my team next time? 100% yes. In some ways I would say that those unexpected results far outweighed the initial outcomes I was expecting. It's hard to put a value on having a psychologically safe team, and anything that increases that is a win in my book.

Until next time...keep learning!