5 Tough Conversations Managers Need to Have

I'm super excited to talk to you today about having tough conversations. I know this is a little bit of a divergence from a lot of the technical talks you've likely been hearing today. I'm also proud to announce that I do not mention AI in this talk at all. So that should be pretty cool. So a quick intro. I am Kellie. As mentioned, I am a senior engineering manager at Zapier. I've been here for seven months now, so still definitely on the newer side. I've been in engineering leadership for over a decade, and I call myself a recovering entrepreneur as well. If you founded a company, it's a little exhausting. Trying to run two companies at the same time is not my best move ever, and I no longer run either of them. But the more interesting part of this and why I'm talking about this today is I am a trained therapist. I went to school for nothing related to engineering. I have a master's in social work and public health and psychology. I collect degrees for a living. So this definitely comes through with my management style and the kind of conversations I have.

Before we dive in, curious, how many of you are managers today or are interested in becoming a manager at some point? Cool. Yeah. And if you're not, a lot of this is still absolutely going to be relevant to you because you're going to learn how to have these conversations with your manager as well. I know for a fact that managing up is pretty hard for most of us. And so you're going to have a good opportunity to learn how to do that. So why do these conversations matter in the first place? I want you to think for a moment. Have you ever had like lost sleep over a conversation you've been needing to have, but have been putting it off? Maybe it's feedback you need to give somebody. Maybe you need to set a boundary, or maybe you're just trying to address some sort of underperformance. And if you're nodding along, you're really not alone here. As managers, we tend to get extensive on-the-job training for budgets, strategy, project management, technical skills, but rarely do we actually learn how to manage teams, how to have tough conversations with people.

And because of that, one thing that I've learned over time is avoidance is not neutral. So every day when you're not having that conversation, the problem just continues to get bigger. It continues to fester. Resentment starts to grow. And once it gets to a point where you've been holding off for so long, that's when the conversation really doesn't go well. So just remember, while you're losing sleep over having that conversation that you know you need to have, chances are the person on the receiving end knows that that conversation needs to happen as well, and they're also losing sleep over it. So the best thing you can do is just push through it because avoidance hurts everybody. So I want you to kind of take this part away as we're talking through these five types of conversations. In my therapy training, I learned something that changed completely how I manage folks, and that's avoidance is actually a trauma response. How we avoid difficult conversations is usually some form of protection. Something happened, and therefore, we're just trying to protect ourselves. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable. Nobody wants to be in a position where they feel discomfort. And so we usually avoid them, but by avoiding that, we're also depriving our teams from growth opportunities with these conversations that you really need to be having. So as you're thinking through this, the main thing I want you to be thinking about is moving away from a mindset of how do I fix this person to how can I understand what's going on with them, and how can I best support them through this process? And with that, let's dive into the first conversation. So we're gonna talk about underperformance first. Let me paint a picture that feels familiar. And side note, I will have these slides available to you afterwards. So you'll catch on the last the very last slide if you want to copy anything in there as I walk through frameworks. So reading this here. Sarah, a senior developer on your team, has been missing deadlines for the past six weeks. Her code quality has dropped, and other team members are starting to pick up their slack. You've hinted at issues in standup, but nothing has changed. The team is getting frustrated, and you're worried about losing good people.

Does this sound familiar? You ever have somebody on your team who's kind of falling behind for some reason or not doing their best work, and you feel like you need to stand up and say something or do something, and it's really hard conversation to have. As we walk through this, I'm going to be walking through frameworks for each of these five top conversations. The first one I want to talk about is the care framework. It's called care because that's literally what you're doing. You're caring about the situation, you're caring about the individual, and you're showing that you care about their success. You want to clarify it with very specific data, not your performance has been slipping, but more focusing on three of your last four deliverables were two to three days late.

You want to emphasize facts over feelings. Next, you want to ask the support they need. This is the magic question because you don't actually know what's going on. Maybe something's going on in their personal life that you have no idea because they haven't talked to you about it. Maybe they're overwhelmed, maybe they're bored, maybe they just need additional training. You want to co-create this path forward. You want to make sure that they're invested in this situation or this solution as well. And lastly, establish regular check-ins. This is one of these things that a lot of folks forget to do.

You have a conversation, you're like, okay, I have the conversation, I can move on now. You want to be establishing this regular check-in schedule to make sure that you're actually following up with them and they're following through and they continue to feel supported. That is not just this one time thing. What does this look like? This potential response to the situation would be, Sarah, I've noticed that three of your last four deliverables have been completed two to three days after the agreed deadline, including yesterday's QA review, which flags several issues that are unusual for your work. Help me understand what's happening from your perspective. What support do you need to get back on track?

And lastly, establish regular check-ins. This is one of these things that a lot of folks forget to do. You have a conversation, you're like, okay, I have the conversation, I can move on now. And then everyone just completely forgets as soon as you, you know, leave the Zoom chat, and then that's it. You never revisit it. So you want to be establishing this regular check-in schedule to make sure that you're actually following up with them and they're following through and they continue to feel supported. That is not just this one time thing. So what does this look like? This potential response to the situation would be, Sarah, I've noticed that three of your last four deliverables have been completed two to three days after the agreed deadline, including yesterday's QA review, which flags several issues that are unusual for your work. Help me understand what's happening from your perspective. What support do you need to get back on track? I'm not making any assumptions. I'm focusing specifically on the facts. I'm not, you're struggling or your performance is down. I'm saying exactly what I've observed. Three of your last four deliverables have been two to three days late. The magic question, help me understand what's going on from your perspective. You know, I'm not assuming what's wrong. I'm gathering information. This is, you're wanting to come in from a place of curiosity. You're not wanting to focus so much on like making assumptions around what is actually going on here. And then I end with an offer of support, not a demand for improvement. Not you have to get better or else you're going to lose your job. There is a time to have those conversations, especially when you're getting really deep into a performance improvement plan of sorts, but this is early on in the conversation. You want to support them to get them back on track. In this script works because it's curious. It's not accusatory. Sarah can respond honestly instead of feeling like she needs to get defensive.

So let me save you from some of the mistakes that I have made over time. These are the types of pitfalls that will absolutely derail these conversations. First off, saying you always or you never. The moment you say this, the conversation's over. There's no coming back from that. Sarah's going to stop listening and going to immediately start defending herself. Second, you don't want to solve these problems for them. Again, you want to co-create a solution together. You want to find an opportunity for you to work with them, to empower them to come up with ideas. What's going to work best for them? Do they need regular check-ins? Do they need to be on a different project? Because this project is not working for them. Do they need some time off? Are they very burned out? You want to work on solving these problems with them, and offer that support instead of making an assumption of what they need. And I mentioned this before, but this bears repeating from the earlier therapy slide. If you ever go into these conversations when you're feeling emotional, that conversation's going to become derailed. So if you're frustrated, you need to hold off on having that conversation until you can go in with a clear mind. Because if you go in on the attack, they're immediately going to get defensive. So the goal here is to have Sarah feeling supported and clear about next steps. She does not want to be criticized or confused. So you want to come in with a very, very clear message.

So you want to come in with a very, very clear message. Moving on to the next conversation, this is around difficult feedback. This is something that I think a lot of folks struggle with. I myself do as well, and I teach this kind of stuff. I teach a course on engineering management and giving feedback, and it's one of these things that I struggle with as well. Here's the situation. Mike, your product manager, has been interrupting team members in meetings and dismissing their ideas before they're fully formed. You've received feedback from three different engineers that they're hesitant to speak up in Mike's presence. He's brilliant and gets results, but his communication style is damaging team dynamics. This is an interesting dynamic because Mike probably doesn't report to you. He might be a peer. If you're a manager, he might be your peer. If you're an individual contributor, you might be working closely with Mike, but you are one of the engineers that feels very uncomfortable bringing this up. How do you handle this situation? I teach this particular framework in a management course that's perfect for this type of situation, which is a STAR framework for feedback. Different from situation, task, action, response, which is a different STAR framework. The bottom, the R relevant used to be backed by examples, but I realized calling it the STAB feedback for STAB framework model might not be the best idea. Here we are with STAR, a second STAR one.

First off, specific. You want to give as clear details as possible. This means no vague language. So not, you are interrupting people, but in yesterday's meeting, you said that's not going to work before Jenny finished explaining the testing approach. You're going to give a very specific situational example. You want it to be timely. And timely means two things. One, it has to be recent. So you don't want to wait four weeks to give this feedback because they probably forgot what happened, and that's an easy way to get defensive. And two, you want to make sure that the time is right to be giving feedback. I like always going in and saying, hey, I would love to give you some feedback on this topic. Is now a good time. And if they're going through something that's really hard right now, you can schedule that out for another time and they can become more prepared. So you want to look for both of those things.

Third, make sure it's action focused. This is super crucial. So you're not talking about what Mike did. You're not talking about who they are as an individual. You're really aggressive in these meetings. That's not something that if it's a behavior, they're not going to change. And that's when they're going to get really defensive. Focus specifically on the actions that are being performed. And then fourth, not backed, but relevant with examples. Again, you want to use very specific examples and instances that they can remember. If you have notes and timestamps and receipts, these are the kinds of things that make these conversations a lot easier when you can point back to very specific situations. This framework really keeps this feedback factual. It's very actionable and it's not personal and overwhelming. So you can have a much easier conversation with this individual. Here's what it looks like. So Mike, I have some feedback based on yesterday's sprint planning meeting that I think will help you grow is now a good time.

So you can have a much easier conversation with this individual. So here's what it looks like. So Mike, I have some feedback based on yesterday's sprint planning meeting that I think will help you grow is now a good time. Again, you're setting the stage here. During the meeting, when Jenny was explaining the testing challenges, you interrupted her twice and said that's not going to work before she finished her explanation. I noticed she stopped contributing for the rest of the meeting. Can you explain to me your intention here? How can we handle similar situations in a safer manner going forward? This is a good conversation to have face to face, by the way, or like over Zoom. This is not something that you typically want to just deliver via text. If you can try to have this conversation person to person, so it can actually be a dialogue. But you'll notice this opening. I have some feedback based on yesterday's sprint planning session. Again, I'm framing this as a gift and then I'm asking permission to give you feedback is now a good time. It's specific in yesterday's sprint planning meeting. It's recent. It happened yesterday. I'm giving very specific examples of what actions Mike took. You know, he interrupted Jenny. That is an action that is like it's not him as a person. And I'm using these relevant examples as well, so we can point to it. And then we're having a conversation. You know, can you explain to me your intention? Maybe they were just like very firm on this, that Jenny's suggestion was not going to work. And then you can have another conversation about, well, you know, when you're interrupting Jenny like this, this is when things kind of get challenging and here's a better way to frame this conversation. Or like, I would love to work with you to figure out how we can better communicate with the team, just so they know the impact of that. So here's some traps that can kill your feedback conversation immediately. Again, never give feedback when you're emotional about something, when you're irritated, when you're angry. Hold the feedback until you can have a conversation about it. You always interrupt people is very interpretive. Again, you want to give a very specific example about interrupting Jenny. You don't want to forget that intent question. What is the intent behind this? Again, give them the opportunity to kind of give their view of it. And then check in a week later. You want to make sure you're checking in again. So make sure you're saying, hey, I know we had a conversation about Jenny last week. How are you feeling about it? How can I best support you? So you're continuing that conversation, working together. It's not just a one and done situation. You want to see behavior change. You're not just venting your frustration here. You can vent your frustration to somebody else, but not to them. Now let's tackle everyone's favorite word, no. This is a fun conversation to have because it's really hard to say no to certain people, especially when you're managing up. So here's the situation. And this one will probably resonate. Your VP comes to you saying the sales team needs a, quote, quick integration with a new partner system. They're promising it to a major client and need it by end of quarter. Your team's already stretched thin. And you know this integration is going to be anything but quick. How do you handle this conversation? How are you able to approach this in a way that's not like immediately shutting down that we can't do this? I know somebody who was let go from their job because they were always just firm on their no. There was no conversation, no discussion, just like, I'm done. Like, this can't work. So here's how I approach saying no.

It's three steps. First, acknowledge the situation. Understand why it feels important to them. And acknowledge why this integration is really important for closing this client deal. Next, you want to explain, here's what we need to stop doing in order to make this happen. The best thing you can do when you're working with anybody who's like your manager or your boss's boss, even your peers, is discuss trade-offs. What happens if we do this? What's going to fall off if we don't do this? Everything's important. Nothing's important. So decisions have to be made here. And then redirect. What if we approached it in this way instead? And this works because you're not just saying no to them. You're helping them make an informed decision by painting a bigger picture for them that it's not just we need integration. Do integration.

Okay. So let's see this in action. I understand the revenue impact of landing this client. To deliver this integration properly, we need to push back the Q3 launch by three weeks or pull two engineers off security updates. Which priority takes precedence? Again, you're framing it as you understand the revenue impact of this. You're speaking in their language as well, especially with a VP. Adjust your language to what's going to resonate the most. Usually it's business impact is a really great way to latch onto that. And then with this, we're also just suggesting two... I'm giving you two alternatives. Either we can push back the launch date or we can pull two engineers off another project. Can't do both. Which one would you rather do?

And if they come back and say, well, both of them are high priority, I'm like, choose one. I need you to choose one or I'm going to choose one for you and I'm going to explain what's not going to be done. But we're going to have this conversation documented. Because I understand I've worked with CEOs in the past who are like, well, everything's important. I want you to build all the things. And that's just not realistic. So this makes you look strategic and thoughtful. This is a really great way to approach managing up. So don't fall into these traps. Again, don't say no without showing all alternatives. Anytime you have an opportunity to provide some sort of alternative and even if you don't know at the moment, be like, this isn't going to work. I need more time to understand or to provide another option, but I want to give you a heads up that we need to have a longer conversation about this.

You don't want to make it personal. As in, like, my team can't handle more. Your team is not going to like that. Because your team is going to be like, well, maybe we can't handle more. And if they hear that the VP is asking for something, engineers love to solve problems. And they're going to latch on to that as an opportunity to show the work that they can do and make somebody happy. So you don't want to make it about the team. You don't want to make it personal. And again, speak their language. The more you can adjust to revenue and customer impact and business impact, it's going to resonate a lot more with the VP. And again, document these decisions. You want to make sure this conversation has been documented. Because I've been in this situation before where I forgot to document these conversations. And what happens? They're like, okay, well, why didn't you work on these security updates? Oh, we had a conversation on this day. I'm like, do you have any notes? I don't remember making that decision. I know you made the decision because I remember more than I probably should, including the little mistakes you made in sixth grade. But I know this one for sure. We had this conversation. But if it's not documented, it's not, you know, to them, it never happened. So remember, saying no strategically, it makes your eventually yes a lot more valuable. So use this as an opportunity to practice these conversations.

Number four, the career expectations conversation. So some of these are some of the most emotionally charged conversations you're going to have. These are when I feel like I'm ready for a promotion, but my manager disagrees, for example. So here's the situation. Alex has been a strong IC for 18 months and wants to discuss a promotion to senior. They believe they're ready based on their technical contributions and project ownership. However, you've observed that they're dismissive of feedback and haven't demonstrated the mentoring skills expected at the senior level. They seem frustrated by the timeline and mentioned that friends at other companies got promoted faster. This is a conversation I've had more than once. A lot of people say I'm ready for a promotion. Why am I not getting a promotion? Before we kind of go into this, what I will say is there are two parts to a promotion. One is individual readiness and two is business readiness. There has to be a business case for a promotion. So framing that, now let's talk about Alex. So this is the grow model that I use when I'm talking about these conversations. And this goes for any sort of growth conversation you're having, not even necessarily a promotion. It could be any situation where they want to learn a particular skill. They want to flex into moving from engineering to product. They want to move from product to engineering. Any of these things, this model applies to any of those changes. So first off, start with a goal. Don't assume you know what they want. Ask them what their ideal next role is. Sometimes they're like, well, I've been a senior engineer for a while and now I want to be a staff engineer. Staff engineer is a fundamentally different role from senior. And sometimes they don't recognize that and they think that it's just a higher title with higher pay, even though their job changes substantially. So understand what it is that they really want to be doing and what about their job they're looking. Maybe they are looking for compensation increase. Maybe it is a title thing, but maybe there's a different avenue than just going the promotion route.

So really understand what their intention and their goal is. Next, talk about the reality. Where is that gap right now? You need to assess this gap together. Don't make assumptions or don't go in being like you're short on all these things and here's why you're not getting a promotion. Ask them, where do you think that you have an opportunity to work towards this? The individuals that I work with the most who are high performers always seeking that promotion, they're a lot more in tune with what their gaps are. But they might not recognize all the things that are required for a particular promotion, for example. So you're helping to kind of shape that. Here's what the senior level requires. Where do you see yourself on this?

Third, you're going to talk about options. So there are multiple paths you can take to the senior level. Which one resonates most with them? What timeline makes the most sense? Maybe Alex wants to focus on mentoring or maybe they want to lead a cross team multi quarter project. There are multiple ways you can approach this. And then will is really, really important. What are they actually committed to doing here? You can't force somebody to change their behavior to grow. If they're like, I want to become a senior and then they're not willing to put in any of the work, that's a conversation you're going to have with them saying like, I haven't seen any of these that indicate that you're ready for this next promotion. I need to see these particular things. I'm providing the opportunities to you. I need you to take advantage of them.

So let's see this in action. Alex, I'm excited to talk about your career growth. Tell me about your ideal next role and what success looks like to you. Again, you want to spend time listening to them. You're not going to interject. Let them and give them that awkward pause to let them actually think about finishing that thought too. And then I go in, here's what the senior level requires in our organization. We have this career ladder. You need technical excellence, mentoring, junior developers, collaborative code reviews. Where do you see yourself against these criteria? Again, give them a chance to kind of talk through what those gaps look like right now. And then what would success look like for you in the next six months? Maybe a promotion to senior is not relevant or not realistic in the next six months. Maybe it's one year. But what can we focus on over the next six months to start working our way towards that?

So here's what you want to avoid for the career conversations. Don't just focus on deficits. If you're just like, you need to improve your code reviews, or you want to say like developing collaborative code review skills will help you influence technical decisions across teams. So you want to focus it more on how can we reframe this? That is an opportunity for growth, not just you're bad at this thing. You want to be specific about the timeline as much as you can. Again, there are certain companies typically work in a particular cycle of promotions. They might not be ready for the next six month one. Be more realistic about maybe we can go for this one year.

Make sure you're not promising that you're going to get them a promotion. Because again, the business readiness factor has to be there too. There has to be the opportunity to actually get that promotion as well. Third, document everything. I know I keep on saying this. This is one of the most important things that we forget to do. If you're having this in a one on one, this is a perfect thing to have in your one on one notes. And you want to avoid making comparisons. If Alex is talking about, well, Sarah at this company got promoted in two years and I've been here for 18 months. I feel like I'm ready in six months. Why am I not there yet? Sarah is at a different company. They work on a different schedule. Sarah is a different person. Let's avoid talking about Sarah altogether.

Last conversation is around boundary setting. This is a very, very social work therapy type topic. But let's introduce the different types of boundaries you can be setting. First is time. Don't check email after 7 p.m. This is protecting your time. Availability. General availability. I'm not available for meetings on Friday afternoons. If you put a meeting on my calendar for 5 p.m. on a Friday, I'm going to decline that meeting. I'm just not going to do it. Scope. Marketing requests go through the proper channels. You want to make sure that you're honing in on scope, especially if your team is often running into scope creep. This is an example of discussing those tradeoffs. And then communication. There are proper channels to talk to me. If you need me for something, if it's absolutely urgent, you can text me. Otherwise, please email or please use Slack. Don't just text me random questions.

Marketing requests go through the proper channels. You want to make sure that you're honing in on scope, especially if your team is often running into scope creep. This is an example of discussing those tradeoffs.

And then communication. There are proper channels to talk to me. If you need me for something, if it's absolutely urgent, you can text me. Otherwise, please email or please use Slack. Don't just text me random questions.

So here's an example. Your team has gotten into the habit of messaging you on Slack until 9 p.m. and expects immediate responses. You've been answering to be responsive, but that's affecting your family time and your effectiveness the next day. You need to set clear communication boundaries without seeming unavailable or uncaring. And feel selfish, in a way, that you're like, well, I just want my time for myself in the evening. But there's nothing selfish about that. Boundaries aren't selfish. They're generous. And especially as a leader, if you can demonstrate what good boundary setting looks like, your team will adopt that same behavior.

So here's the framework for boundary conversations. State the boundary clearly. I need to let you know that this. Don't hint or apologize. I can't respond after 7 p.m. I'm sorry. You're not sorry. You don't have to say you're sorry. You're not apologizing for anything. You want to explain the business reason. I need work-life balance, but I'm going to be more focused and effective during working hours if I have my non-working hours to myself. Always offer alternatives. If you're not available after 8, what should they do with urgent issues? Maybe that's when they can text you and reach out to you. You have an on-call system, they can use that. And, fourth, you want to stay firm but acknowledge their feelings. I understand this might be frustrating. You're used to being able to reach out to me whenever, but I'm committed to this approach. I'm sticking to these boundaries. Boundaries only work if you're actually sticking to them.

So here's the example here. I need to let you know that I'll be checking Slack twice in the evening, once at 6 p.m. and once at 8 p.m., and I won't be responding to messages after that. This helps me be more focused and effective during work hours because I'm well-rested and present. When you have urgent issues that truly can't wait until morning, text me directly. I understand this might be an adjustment from our current pattern, but I'm committed to this approach.

This is something that I implemented with my former manager because he was on the west coast, and I'm on the east coast. We had less overlap, but there are certain times when he needed to reach out to me, so I did give him a couple of options. You can say I will not be checking Slack in the evening. That is also a perfectly fine thing to say, like, I'm not, this is my firm boundary. But what we're doing here is we're being very clear about your, like, why we're doing this, what the benefit is for the company, and how you can alternatively reach out to me if you absolutely need something.

Again, final warning about boundary setting here. Do not apologize for having boundaries. This is not something you should be apologizing for because you're setting the boundary for a reason, and you want to make sure you're actually enforcing these boundaries. Boundaries are negotiable if you're not enforcing them. You have to stick to them. As soon as you start making exceptions, it's no longer a boundary. You don't want to be rigid. Emergencies do happen. Sometimes you have to get involved in a particular situation that's going to have you online at 9 PM.

Sometimes you have to get involved in a particular situation that's going to have you online at 9 PM. It happens. Sometimes I'm traveling in Europe for work, and I have to hop on a call at 11 PM. I don't love it, but sometimes you have to make those exceptions. It's not breaking your boundary if you're saying there's a very particular reason why we're not doing this. I know always wanting to explain the business benefit.

Again, avoid making it about yourself. Focus more on how this is benefiting the business by enforcing these boundaries. And remember, boundaries are not walls. They're guidelines that help everyone work more efficiently together, and your team will respect you a whole lot more for having them, not less. And that's the five conversations.

So if you found this interesting, I do have a course called Engineering Leadership in the AI Era. I'm going to be running this. The next cohort of this course is live via Zoom, taking place January 20th through 30th. There's actually a promotion that Maven is running right now where it's 25% off automatically. You don't actually have to enter a code, FAST25. And then lastly, if you want slides, socials, etc., everything is on my website. You can scan this QR code, or you can visit kvlly.com forward slash react summit. Thank you so much.

So the first question is from Bell. Do you have any advice on creating and fostering a culture of feedback on one's team as a whole? For example, feedback that's just not between manager and direct reports, but between the peers? Yeah. The more that you can foster an opportunity to provide feedback in a blameless way and teach them how to give good feedback, the easier that feedback is going to be a give. And one of the best things you can do with this is provide an opportunity to give them feedback for something good that they did. Don't make feedback only something about some mistake they made, because then they're going to be hesitant to give that feedback. If you're talking about, hey, we value feedback here on this team, here's a good example of you to give feedback to this individual that you're really happy with the work that they did. I just had two engineers start recently on my team at Zapier, and they both absolutely knocked it out of the park with their first project. Really quickly got this done within a week. I had a one-on-one with one of my engineers, and they were talking about, well, this is it. I'm really happy seeing the quality of work that they're doing. And I said, then give them feedback. Tell them that either in a private one-on-one with them or in a public channel, just depending on how they prefer to get feedback. But the more you can encourage your team to be giving feedback to peers, to managers, to direct reports, the more comfortable they are going to be to both give positive feedback and constructive feedback. And you can always give feedback on somebody's feedback as well. Very meta. Very meta.

Any change you want to see, amazing. All right, from Martin, you mentioned documenting conversations several times. Can you explain exactly what the documentation would entail? Yes. So when I'm documenting a one-on-one, for example, there are two parts that are really important for notes for a one-on-one. One is public documentation, the shared documentation. You have a shared note section of this is what we talked about. This is what we agreed upon. They can see the same thing you're sharing, like, say a Notion doc or a Google doc, or you're using something like, what do we use, small improvements at Zapier. Something that's shared. But the second part of this is private. Something that only you are going to see. This is a good opportunity to say this individual is a churn risk. This individual comments on somebody else that I need to have a follow-up conversation. It's not something that you want to make public to them, but you want to have that opportunity to have it shared safely in there. If you can use any kind of AI note-taking tools, I love Granola personally. We use Granola a lot. You can easily share your one-on-one notes with Granola directly with that individual as well. Just you want to make sure you're giving the notes to them in whatever form is going to make the most sense for them. Sounds good.

All right. We got next question. When approaching a conversation about promotions, what do you do when the fault is in business readiness as opposed to individual readiness? Yeah. And this happens all the time. I just gave a talk at Lead Dev last month on this particular topic. How do you reward your performers if you can't give them a promotion because the finances aren't there, the role's not there. Be honest with them. The best thing you can do is just say this opportunity is not available to you right now because we don't have this role available here at the company. Find what motivates them otherwise. Is it recognition? Is it challenging projects? Have this conversation with them so you can still say I want to work towards this promotion with you as soon as the opportunity comes available. So what can we do right now to keep you motivated? You just want to find that motivational factor with them. Is that something usually HR is okay with you saying like, oh, our company doesn't, cannot. Oh, we don't have this available? Yeah. Yeah. I hope there is a culture of transparency within that.

If the role's not there, what can you do? If it's out of your control, then it's out of your control. You're not badmouthing the company by saying this opportunity is not here right now. It's just like that is a fact. If you leave the emotion out of it, it becomes an easier conversation to say like, I know it's not what you want to hear, but it's not available right now. Yeah. I love that. You're still finding ways to motivate them given the resources you have.

On the STAR Framework, how do you handle the comeback of, oh, but why did people come to you and not to me when we say I have received feedback on a certain topic? I'm going to read that one more time. How do you handle the comeback of, oh, but why did people come to you and not to me? Ah, yes. That's a good question. And that's when you have a good conversation with whoever gave that feedback initially saying there is a reason why they don't feel comfortable giving that feedback. I actually dealt with this literally last week where there was a staff engineer who had questions and concerns around the way that one of my team members was approaching a solution and they didn't come to me. They went to our VP of engineering who went to my manager who went to me. And I'm like, even my manager was very much like, look, we're not talking about rumors here. If you want to talk through what's going on here, we have to have an actual conversation about it. And then we made that public. We posted it in the staff engineering channel to say, hey, if there are concerns, I want to hear them. I consider myself to be a pretty approachable, nice person. I know I'm new to the company and they don't really know me yet, but let's have a conversation about it. And so when that happens, when they're saying like, come back, you can't control what other people do. When this happens in the moment, I redirect the conversation to, let's focus on the now, let's focus on here. And also what's important with this as well. If you could avoid, like I received feedback from this person or like, you know, some people keeping it vague because that's rumors. Then you're talking about exactly the same thing that I'm going with. Like here's some feedback about let's, let's go into this with like a, from a position of curiosity of like, let's talk about this particular issue. How are you feeling about it? Do you think this is an issue? Here's my take on it. And then move forward. But you can leave like the, I received feedback from so-and-so out of the conversation altogether. Yeah. I like that. You're like, I'm understanding like the underlying themes and like what it is and then, or just more in public that way. Exactly. Nice.

Any advice for matching up with micromanagers? And I think my takeaway for this question is, we know we have just learned all the concepts from you, but what if we're not in the management position and how do you manage up? Yeah. What I like to do is again, working with the managers, like what, what motivates them? Why are they feeling the need to micromanage? Sometimes it's just a personality thing and you can't really change people, but you can change how you respond to them and what they want to know. There are times when you work with somebody who's very micromanaging and you're like, look, this is the situation I'm in. It sucks, but I'm going to figure out how I can best reframe the way I'm working with them, that it bothers me less. And that's a very much a therapy thing. But with that, like learn what it is. What is the reason behind their micromanaging? Did they have something in the past where this product did not go well and that really needs to go well? Or maybe they're trying to prove that they're good at their job. Maybe they're new. Maybe they're new in this role. I see it a lot with new managers. They go way too deep into the micromanaging side of things. But you can also give them feedback. Don't say you're a micromanager. Again, you're making that about the individual and not the action. Point to specific actions being like, hey, I feel like you're following up a fair bit on this conversation.

Again, you're making that about the individual and not the action. Point to specific actions being like, hey, I feel like you're following up a fair bit on this conversation. Am I not giving you the signal you need? How can I best give you updates that are going to make you feel more confident about the work that I'm doing? There's a lot of reframing. I love it. I feel like I'm in a therapy session. You can't change people. You can change how you respond to them. Straight up. My poor engineers deal with me as a therapist all the time.

Yeah. So we are out of time. But my last question is, do you want to be my manager? And can you be? We're hiring. Well, everyone, give it up for Kelly. Thank you so much. Thank you.