Superpowers, Psychological Safety & Empowering Your Team with Tia Caldwell #36

Tia Caldwell, former Director of Engineering @ Slack, shares different frameworks she’s used to motivate teams and unlock their superpowers! We cover methods to identify, maximize, & balance strengths on your team, how to shift your team’s mindset from drama to EMPOWERED so they can better confront adversity & challenges, and more.

Knowing your superpowers maximizes strengths & protects against your weaknesses

Harmonizers will try to make sense of everyone on the team to find a way for them to play to each other’s strengths

• If this is your superpower, you can usually get a professional performance out of an amateur team
• Don’t forget to consider growth opportunities to make sure that the team is optimized

Why relationships & removing the “manager gameface” are your most effective tools

Take the time to make the investments in the people & show that you care by followup & follow through in action.

• People will be more open & honest with you & this will help retention & happiness.

How to prompt self-reflection and identify how your team wants recognition & feedback

Share these questions with them in advance

• One-on-one to discuss
• Provide a safe space to say, “Here’s how we did things at an old company. Here’s how I’m seeing things done at this new company.”
• Show that you care

How superpower awareness & common language changes how you operate, make decisions & structure teams

When you became aware of Harmonizing being your superpower, how did that change or inform some of the decisions that you were making with your team?

• An example of where you were able to with awareness, be like, “okay, my strength is Harmonizing. Here’s how I’m going to apply this to this situation with my team.”
• It allows you to understand the positive aspects and how to bring that out in a team and also like what you bring to that team in, in reverse.
• You look at the players of who’s working in a certain situation and pair people who are even opposites to help find the right balance.

“The Drama Triangle”

In addition to helping your team identify their own superpowers, what else are you looking out for as a leader?

• You need to figure out how to operate above the line when dealing with drama and not let it interfere with your work.
• Hero or the Rescuer: Takes responsibility for other people’s problems and makes it their own
• Villain or the Persecutor: Feels hopeless and powerless

Tia Caldwell

Former Director of Engineering @ Slack, Co-Founder @ Color Code

• Lead the Monetization Team at Slack
• Led engineering teams at Netflix and Microsoft
• Serves as a facilitator in /dev/color and is the co-founder of Color Code

Notes

How do you motivate your team? Find their superpower! (3:05)

• Tia’s Superpowers
• Knowing your superpowers maximizes strengths & protects against your weaknesses. (8:02) How superpower awareness & common language changes how you operate, make decisions, & structure teams. (12:31) Why you should balance your team’s superpowers to increase collaboration and be more effective. (17:06) “The Drama Triangle”
• The Empowerment Triangle
• Personal operating manuals & having explicit conversations to get the best from your team
• Prompt self-reflection and identify how your team wants recognition & feedback. (46:03) Why relationships & removing the “manager game face” are your most effective tool. (49:20) Takeaways

Tia’s Superpowers

As a manager, your job is to figure out how to utilize this in the right stages to help prioritize what is important

• How do you help get everyone aligned and moving on the right track to let them know why this project is really important?
• Set out some initial goals
• “Here’s what you want to do. Here’s how we’re going to define our mini milestones in between. And let me tell you why it’s important just to get everyone on the same playing field.”

Shift your team’s mindset with “The Empowerment Triangle”

Hero: intervenes on behalf of the Victim, tries to save everyone

• Victim: people who resonate with being powerless because of a certain circumstance
• Creator: takes them from being a Victim to a Creator
• Villain: controls others through blame and criticism
• Challenger: spark learning by challenging assumptions and the status quo

How to shift someone from “Victim” to “Creator”

First, make sure they feel comfortable

• Then, show them the Drama Triangle
• Let them know that what they’re saying adds value if you reframe it
• Once they realize you’re coming from a good place, they reverse their actions
• Change your questions to go from Hero to Coach
• Over time, help them to shift from Victim to Creator mode

How to recognize what role you’re playing in “The Drama Triangle”

Active listening

• When someone comes to you with a problem, let them first say what they want to talk about.
• Ask explicitly “Do you want my opinion on X?”
• You have to figure out how to shift your mindset from being the Hero to a Coach
• Shifting your mindset to be more outcome-oriented
• Remove the personal piece of the problem to remove the guilt trip

Why you should balance your team’s superpowers to increase collaboration and be more effective

This framework reminds me of when I first learned design patterns. It created a meta- language, so the bandwidth of communication suddenly increased a lot.

• It is also useful for when you’re doing hiring. Look at team composition besides looking at their skill sets, but also their innate traits.

Personal operating manuals & having explicit conversations to get the best from your team

Tia Caldwell shares a personal operating manual with new hires

• Explicit conversations on how to work with them
• Everyone in the team has a superpower listed along with a link to their good and evil side so that people understand a little bit more
• Discipline and psychological safety is key
• Build awareness, increase communication, make more effective collaboration, and make the team better

“What’s your grumpiness level?” & other ways to create psychological safety in your 1:1’s

To have authentic and real conversations, use a framework called Lara Hogan’s power for one-on-one framework to reduce some of the anxiety

• First thing is to use the framework created by Lara Hogan: “Project Oxygen”
• Second thing is feedback and recognition
• Third thing is autonomy
• Fourth thing is being able to follow up and close the loop

How do you motivate your team?

Authenticity in leadership as the result of a powerful blend of vulnerability and psychological safety

• Championing and motivating your teams
• Using a framework called the super power framework
• SY Partners is a management consultant agency that analyzes leadership strengths between different characteristics of powerful leaders
• They created a deck of cards and an app to help you and your team learn about your team superpowers
• You read a scenario card and choose which one mostly resonates with you and flip it over to reveal your leadership trait

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