I had a boss years back who was a fantastically natural mentor and coach, and to whom empathy was seemingly innate. Having one-on-ones with her was formative and provided a template that I would follow for years to come.
Unfortunately, I lacked the magic she had.
My kickoff question for the longest time was simply, “So, how’s it going?” I thought this was incredibly natural and casual, but sometimes casual just doesn’t work.
As I developed experience managing people of varying personality types, I started to encounter more and more office introverts. For them, a natural response was simply “fine.”
I was shocked.
For most of my career, I worked in agencies. I’ve also owned my own, led engineering departments at others, and did a tour as an IC.
In agencies, everyone is an extrovert. You kind of have to be to survive.
Shifting to product companies with significant heritage, however, that wasn’t the case. Teams and people are way more varied in the day to day and looking for different things.
My “How’s it going?” just wasn’t working anymore. So I started to prepare more ahead of time.
Read the full article @ Medium
Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash
