Aufbau großartiger Teams mit Matt Doucette

Yeliz Castillo:
Hi, Matt. So nice to have you. Thank you for your time. So I’m really excited. Sorry.

Matt Doucette:
Thanks for having me here.

Yeliz Castillo:
Of course. I’m really excited about this topic because we will be talking about how we can build great teams. And I know you are very passionate about this and also have a lot of experience. So I’m going to dive in straight into that. And my first question is, why do you think it’s important to build great teams?

Matt Doucette:
Yeah, so I’ve got around 15 or so years and some levels of senior leadership and talent in the corporate world. A lot of that’s been in tech, to be fair. Um, and over that time I’ve noticed quite a consistent trend where, you know, a lot of focus on building teams and developing talent and career progression and career growth is very much focused on, you know, what you traditionally think about, levels and expectations, framework, performance management, conversations, you know, and, and it often comes across to individuals quite unclear and opaque. That leads to a lot of confusion when it comes to, you know, an individual on the team wanting to be developed or, you know, figure out what their career path is or figure out what to do next. And so it’s been a consistent theme across a lot of the companies I’ve worked at. And you know, being one of the organizations that houses such an enormous amount of data on the employees in the company, like, I feel HR as a trade has not invested the amount of time they should have in using that data to come up with, know, a clear understanding for employees. To me, you know, why team building is so important.

And so, you know, I, I come from a background of being in the military and, and in leadership roles in the U.S. marines. And you know, it’s interesting coming from an environment like that where, you know, leadership principles, principles of command, like those things are so clear and, and unflappable. And there’s like a common theme that, that happens across military leadership. And it is about very much about like, developing your, your team so that you can operate as a team. Everybody has a specific job. That job has to be done to the highest degree. The person below you needs to know your job as well as they know their job, the principal of them and so forth and so on.

And that esprit de corps and that kind of culture is pervasive, especially in, you know, some of the infantry units that I was part of. And it just, it just ensures that there’s always continuity of leadership and, and continuity and focus around the mission. And like, what do we do to go accomplish the mission and you know, if somebody is, isn’t capable of doing their role for some reason, there’s always somebody that’s able to step into that. And if you, you fast forward to now, my career in the corporate world, it could be more drastically different than that. I oftentimes hear in companies a lot of the same terminology, let’s build our battle plan or our war plan and all these same things. And it’s, you know, there often times I’ve noticed there’s such a lack of understanding around how do we connect everybody around the mission, how do we educate and train people on what they call in the military, they call it, you know, the chain of command is the main thing, but within that something called commander’s intent. And the commander’s intent is we have a mission to accomplish. This is the, the tenants, which would be the tech company world of what we’d say.

This is the tenets of what we intend to do to accomplish that mission. But then so much of that responsibility of leadership gets passed down to line leaders, people that are actually in the field that have to make the hard decisions of whether to go left or right. And then when you look at corporate organizations that generally gets housed at the top so much, and the reason it gets housed at the top so much is because leaders would say, well, I don’t have the bench strength, I don’t have the right level of talent on my team in order to accomplish this. So I’ve always wondered, and I’ve always been curious as to why they don’t have that bench strength and what’s happening. And also coming from a military background, there’s a saying that we like to use, which is there’s no such thing as bad teams. There’s only bad leaders. So having that as my core frame of reference going through my career, it’s, you know, I’ve always kind of looked at myself and how I build teams is like if things are going wrong and people aren’t being developed, I’m not able to rely broadly on my team to delegate wide and deep across my team. Then obviously there’s something I’m doing wrong or there’s something.

There’s an issue in my chain of command that we need to rectify and we need to make sure that we’re training our leaders, leaders to be able to act with this intent as well. And so, you know, I like to think of it as there’s a consciousness scale of capability, right? So you have unconscious incompetence. You don’t know, you don’t know. What you’re doing and you don’t know why, you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re just out there doing stuff. And then that kind of moves to unconscious competence, where you’re doing things really well, you have no clear idea why you’re doing them well. Um, and then that goes to unconscious or unconscious competent or conscious competence, where it’s like, you really know what you’re doing and you know how you’re being successful. And so, like, as you go through your career and you stay in the same role, hopefully you’re going down that thread of the consciousness sale where you get to that ultimate state of conscious competence where it’s like, you’re really good at you do you, and you can articulate to other people why that is, and you’re able to go train and educate other people again.

In the corporate world, you see a big gap with that quite consistently where, you know, really good individual contributors become managers. And then, you know, for some reason, like, people are like, well, this team’s struggling. Why is that? It’s like, well, there’s. There’s a gap of leadership. And so I’ve kind of taken that as, as something important to me of like, how do we go, you know, without having to use the military way, which is, you know, probably would never work in the corporate world. I don’t think people would, like, latch onto that kind of ideology around training, of course, but, like, how do then we arm people in this world of data and this world of science where, you know, people need to see things to believe it. And we use that to help empower managers, empower leaders, empower individuals to go out there and actually get to that state of conscious competence, become leaders, build conscious competence across their team and create that cycle where you’re starting to build for the future and you’re scaling your talent. And, you know, that’s kind of the thing that’s always been really important to me to look to identify in companies is like, how do we go and build that? And we can provide that back as an enabler, as a leadership enablement tool to help teams become better, to help companies become better and ultimately, hopefully produce more revenue.

Yeliz Castillo:
Okay, and what would you say are the main components for building successful or good functional teams? What has been your experience?

Matt Doucette:
That’s a good question, because I would say, like, my notion has been challenged in the public discourse around this type of topic because, you know, companies like the FAANGs have come in and I’ve worked for a couple of them. Meta and Amazon, where they have such a clear understanding or belief of what good looks like in their minds. Now, if I was to do a compare and contrast between these, I would say Amazon probably is better at that, and I’ll tell you why in a second. You know, and a lot of these big companies, and then, you know, smaller companies have fallen, followed suit, because leaders have left these companies, they’ve gone to startups, they’ve gotten into leadership and executive roles and they brought a lot of the culture inside a lot of these companies. I’ve worked for a few myself that have had that happen. And what’s interesting is like that kind of culture at a fang never works. At a startup, almost usually there’s actually a drastic difference, a B I think it removes some of the unique identifiers of not just individuals but also teams. I think every team has its own culture, whether we like to admit that or not.

I think there’d be a lot of debate around bias, unconscious bias and impact on Adni. But I think a manager and a grouping of individuals out accomplishing a task ends up creating their own subculture on a team. And I think that’s natural and I don’t think that’s necessarily always a bad thing. And so what has happened is that, you know, we have kind of tried to paint this very broad brush brush by doing interview calibration debriefs, you know, bar raiser programs, things like that, where it’s like, you know, people that aren’t part of that team aren’t part of that nature are, you know, removing away from what the original purpose of like a bar raiser is. Which is why Amazon, I believe, is probably a closer fit to like this infrastructure. You know, it’s really important because it’s really focused on, it should be focused on the skill set. Like you’re an engineer. Like, you know, the bar raiser should focus on code or architecture shouldn’t focus on behavior.

Right. Like, because the behavior of a team, you know, not everybody might need to have, you know, ownership might, you know, as an example, I probably wrong example. But like, not everybody needs to have leadership expertise. Not everybody needs to have these different behavioral competencies, right. Like, I, I think as a manager you should be able to look at your team and identify, let’s call them human gaps, not skill gaps, like human gaps in your team to say, like, I need these type of people on my team because I already have these type of people on my team, right? And I think that’s, that’s something that gets missed Quite a bit by us looking at this calibration perspective of saying, you know, let’s kind of, you know, fit all these square pegs into round holes and like, hope that they work out in the end. And then you just have, you know, experience, high turnover and you go like, well, that just a, you know, cost doing business. Rather than going back and say like, actually maybe we should give some of this responsibility back to leaders and say like, I need you to tell me, you know, what do you need on your team to be successful? Like, you just lost a senior engineer, you just lost a senior recruiter, you lost a senior HR business partner. What made them good? You know, what are you going to be missing on your team by them not being here? And I’m not talking about employee relations skills, I’m not talking about sourcing skills.

Like, that’s a given, right? We already know that. That’s a skill set. What I’m talking about is like, what did that human bring to your team? That’s going to be a gap that’s not going to be filled by anybody that you just bring off of the street.

Yeliz Castillo:
Totally. And on that note, do you think it’s also possible to, you know, let’s say you join a company, there is already a team, so you’re not building a team from scratch or, you know, you’re not hiring, but you have to work with the team that’s already there. What would you say are then the key points to, to make sure that you develop a team to be successful? Because I think that’s also what happens quite a lot, right, that you join a company and there is a team and then it’s a mess or there are a lot of issues and you as a leader have to really, you know, turn it all around. And I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that. Is there anything that you could share?

Matt Doucette:
Well, I think, especially in, like my industry in recruiting, in the talent world, everything gets so focused just on delivery, right, that we always promote, like, not promote as in, like you’re getting promoted, but I think, like, mentally we promote like the people that perform the best. And I think that’s very natural to do. And I think a lot of different, you know, trades do that. Like, you know, you produce the most code, it’s good quality code. And like, we can’t lose this person. But like, what if they’re just rude, right? What if they’re just toxic with other employees? Like, does that matter? No, it doesn’t. Right. And so I think there, I Think there’s a few elements to this, right? Because I think there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s the natural belief of just if you’re a leader, you’re the CEO and you want to make this decision, right? I think you have a lot more leverage to go out and say like, this is the behaviors I want my company to produce, quote, unquote values, right? But when it comes to, you know, recruiter or an engineer or you know, a finance partner, like, I think it’s different because every year the business is going to have a different strategy, right? And so within that strategy, there’s different behaviors that need to be drilled, you know, instituted.

Are you building? Are you buying? Are you selling? As an, as a drastic example, right? Is your company going in a direction where you’re acquiring companies? Is it going in a direction where you’re scaling because you’re getting investment, or is it going in a direction where you know you’re not and you’re staying flat? I think because of that, it ends up driving different behaviors on your team as well. So I think leaders need to be very cognizant of those behavior changes that need to happen in their team. Like, you know, if you’re in a flat headcount growth and you get a team of hunters, it’s not going to work, right? They’re going to get bored, they’re going to get frustrated, they’re going to leave, it’s going to cause noise, they’re going to sit there twiddling their thumbs and get in an issue. So I think as leaders, every year, as you’re looking at the strategy for your organization, it’s really important to then think about how are you going to adjust your goals, your KPIs, your performance management, the behaviors that you promote across your team. Like how are you adapting those based upon what that company strategy in that year is on top of that. And I think most importantly, leaders need to have that vision of three to four years from now. Where are you taking your team? I don’t see that enough. Across companies where it’s like, and it doesn’t have to be this thing where it’s like you’re reaching this inanimate object that’s impossible to catch.

It’s just an idea. It’s a vision of. For me, my vision for my teams is super strategic business partners. We’re not just filling roles, we’re not just hiring people to a company. Our job is to be leadership enablers to build the of that organization. And that means we have to be super data heavy. We have to be influencers to the business. We have to understand their problems so we can help provide solutions for those.

That takes a true business partner skill set. And so I always want to evolve my teams down that path. And so that’s always been my vision at every company I’ve ever gone to is like I, I want those people to be strategic, but that requires me to build really strong leaders underneath me. They’re going to be able to develop their teams in that direction, develop the managers that develop the ICs like that want to go in that direction. And you know, of course recruiters are all say, yeah, that’s great, we want to do it because we want to be strategic. But then it’s like the how. And so you then have to build the strategy and then you have to build the how, which is, which is, you know, a long process. And then you have to manage that and balance that with the leadership behaviors that you need to pull in from where the company’s going.

And so you have to really create this intentional mindset across your team of like, this is where we’re going, these are our non negotiables. And then from that you can start saying these are things that we have to do because this is what the business wants us to do.

Yeliz Castillo:
And do you also think that, and I’m asking this for a friend, AKA myself because I’m also in my path right now of, you know, leading and, and having a bigger team. So would you say that you would rather have like a general approach to develop those and, and setting those KPIs or you know, building all your teams like up to the same kind of level? Or would you say it’s a individual approach for each person that you have in your team?

Matt Doucette:
I think there’s a general view of where you want a team to go, but development for humans is the most preciously individual thing that could ever exist, right? No human, two human beings are alike. No two human beings are in the exact same career trajectory, career path states. You know, somebody might be really great at business partnering, somebody might be really great at sourcing, right? Somebody might be really good at recruitment delivery, somebody might be really good, good at selling. Right? And so I think it’s like we don’t want to have everybody look and feel the same. We want to promote the traits that people do really well and use that to help enable, train and educate others and mentor others to be really good at that. But then also we want to figure out the gaps that Somebody has. And so that takes a deep process of working through a talent review process, whether you use a 9 box, whether you use the JDI’s judgment driver influence, whether you use tools and technology for that, right? Where you’re using personality assessments, like, whatever. The approach is for you to, like, do that gap analysis across your teams and then sit your leaders down in a room and talk about it and say, like, here’s the gaps that, you know, this person has.

What are we going to do to help develop this person? Like, what kind of work are we going to give them to help develop that skillset? By the way, there’s no other way to develop a skill set other than giving people the work that they have gaps on, right? Like, I think everybody’s like, well, let’s do a training program. Who in the corporate world likes to sit in a classroom and hear somebody dribble on about something? Like, people watching these podcasts gonna listen to me trouble and be like, who, who is this guy? Right? You know, but at the end of the day, it’s like, if you give them the work and you give them the, the tools, you give them the understanding of the direction of things and you let them go do it, and then you watch them try and oftentimes fail, then you can bring them in, give them some feedback, put them in the right direction and push them forward. And weirdly, that’s such a military leadership training ideology is like, really how we do it? Because inevitably, like, you can only classroom so much stuff. You can only sit people in a school circle so often and say, like, this is how we do things. And it’s really about the trial and error piece of, of of them going and failing and doing better. But that takes a lot of confidence in as leaders to be like, I’m willing to accept the failures of my team in order for them to grow. And I think that’s the biggest fear that leaders get is like, I don’t want to accept the failures of my teams. And because I’m going to get in trouble, I’m going to hear, it’s like, you’re not going to get in trouble. Somebody’s going to go like, you missed your goal. Okay, well, this is why we missed it. And this is how it’s going to be fixed in the end. And so just have that transparency and honesty.

Yeliz Castillo:
Totally. But I do think that this starts actually at the top, top leadership level. Right? Because if they don’t allow for failure and if they don’t allow for mistakes, then I think it kind of sick us through to the leaders below and then they sickle that through to the team. So I think it really has to start at the top to really allow those people to grow in a safe environment almost. Right. And learn by doing, because that’s the only way. And I see that in my team members as well. When, you know, I just throw them into a situation and I’m like, okay, let’s do it the way you think.

How would you do it? And I give you feedback after because it’s funny, when you said that, I was actually reflecting. You know, I think we as like humans, we have this tendency to kind of like sugarcoat everything and be like, yeah, okay. No, it’s like, you know, don’t do it. You know, like how we do almost with kids as well sometimes where you don’t want them to fall down and you don’t want them to make a mistake, but really they have to fall down in order to learn and to not hurt themselves again or not to make that mistake again. So I think it’s, it really goes back to like the mindset within yourself, but then also like kind of living that or having that space or the, the, the approval from the almost.

Matt Doucette:
Kind of, I would argue, kind of. I think, I think there’s a couple sides to the coin of what you’re saying, right? I, I think, you know, everybody wants the executives of their company, the officers of their company to be able to set that perfect standard. The challenges that the executive office are going to have is that they’re dictated by the board. The board’s dictated by investors. Investors are dictated by the big firms, you know, the big VCs that are funding you. Right. And you have EST goals, you have all this stuff that happens at the board level, right. That is going to make sure that that never happens at any single company ever.

And that’s, that’s the scary reality of today’s corporate world, right? Is like we are such a money driven culture. And you know, so it’s, it’s about producing more revenue. It’s about producing, you know, more money for the shareholders, more funding for the stakeholders, making other people richer. Right? So providing shareholder values. The big joke. D would say, right. And so because of that, people shirk the responsibility and they say, okay, well I’m a director. My VP said, you know, no, that’s not going to happen.

And so we go, okay, well my VP said, no, I don’t agree with that. Right. You know, in the Marines, there’s general orders that we have and they’re you know, very set in stone when you’re standing post and you’re standing guard and there’s 11th one, which is kind of funny, and I, there is a swear in it. So apologies to everybody, but it’s, I’ll walk my post from flank to flank and I won’t take from any rank. And so therefore what that means, and if you distill that down to this conversation, is you can hold the line as a vp, as a director, you know, you obviously have to fit into company strategy and you have to be able to fit into what the business is trying to do. But that doesn’t mean that you let your team down. That doesn’t mean that you let the wolves pass the gate to come at your team at things. That means that you need to stand the line.

You need to hold the line. But be clear, be transparent, be written, be intentional about why you’re doing what you’re doing, providing the ROI of what’s going to happen if what you’re suggesting works. And if it doesn’t, you have to be quick to be able to adapt that. Right? And so, yes, it’s, it’s very easy to fall in line and just say, yes, sir, yes ma’, am, and just go out and do what you told. But I think the harder and the more important path to take is the one that’s, the one that’s capable to stand there and say, actually, no, but here’s why. And that’s where the true value of ownership comes in and where actually you’ll, you’ll, you’ll be able to build the teams you want and people will buy into you more as a leader.

Yeliz Castillo:
But don’t you think that there is like a cultural aspect to that as well? Like for someone who maybe, you know, there are different types of leaders. Right. There is not just one type. And I don’t think that there is one right type either. There are different kind of individuals. They bring all different strength and weaknesses, of course, like everyone. But don’t you think that that kind of behavior is also sometimes culturally dependent? Because if I think of a place like Japan, for example. Yes.

You know, those kind of cultures have a complete different way of leading or, you know, living a culture or, you know, do you know what I mean? So, yes. What would you say with the different cultures as well, or people having maybe difficulties speaking against hierarchy? If I can say that.

Matt Doucette:
Yeah, for sure. India is a great example as well. You know, I’ve worked with teams in India for quite a bit of my career. And they’re very similar, right. Where, you know, it’s, I’ve often and identified that it’s very difficult for them to push back on senior Western leadership. And you know, as you said, not everybody’s going to be the same. Not every leader is going to be cut from the same cloth, which is good. That’s not a bad thing. But as the leader of those organizations, you need to be finding ways to help them become empowered.

And obviously it has to fit into where their culture nuances like they’re, they’re. They’re going to have a little bit more of a hierarchical view of things than we might, you know, in the Western world, you know, because it is baked a little bit more into their culture. And it’s actually unfortunately was baked because of us where the way we created the cultures of an India Development Center 20 years ago when they first started kicking off wasn’t great. And so we need to be the ones that are brave to not allow that and to create that empowerment and to give them more breadth of impact and also show them. I think there’s a part of leadership where it’s like, you don’t just delegate to delegate. You don’t just say, you know, I’m going to go give you this, this thing because I want to, I want to develop you, right? I need to show you how to do it. I need to show you how to do it successfully. And then I need to give you the tools for you to go create your own brand of how you do that.

And so, you know, if they just do it my way, it’s not going to be authentic. Probably won’t work. You know, let’s be honest. I’m me for my reason, right? And people underneath, you know, my teams, they’re them for their reason, they’re successful, their reason. So understanding their strength and then figuring out how to empower them through those strengths, but then showing them, showing them how it can be done successfully is going to help them understand how they could go out and attempt to do it. But I think it’s about giving them their voice and like hearing their feedback and their fears about why they don’t want to do it and then providing that safety zone to be like, you know, look like this is something I’m supporting you doing. And then you communicate to the leaders that they work with also the levels of accountability and ownership you’re giving. But it takes a lot, and it takes a lot of intentionality and it takes a lot of guts sometimes to be the leader is going to Go out there and say, like, I actually am not going to accept that. Like, this is something that I need my team to do and if it’s not going to work, then this isn’t going to work. Right. Our partnership’s not going to work.

Yeliz Castillo:
Totally, is there any example that you could share for, you know, that where you had like, a challenge to. To do exactly that. Just maybe that empowers others to. To follow the path in one way or another?

Matt Doucette:
I think the biggest, like, I won’t give, like, specifics because I don’t want to go into, like, company stuff on a podcast, like, individual company stuff. But I, you know, I think our role, what we do for a job is incredibly difficult. Like, we’re. We’re the worst enemy of every company, and then sometimes we’re the best friend of every company. Right? So, like, it’s a very topical times and we’re not trusted as much as, you know, other. Like, let’s just take hr. Business partners versus recruiters. Like, we’re, we’re definitely not trusted to the same degree.

And so we have to be perfect at times with everything we do. And the biggest gap that, that I would say we make as an organization back is our level of transparency and the level that we oftentimes like to push back, you know, and just say, like, no, because we’re the experts as opposed to being scientific and clinical about how we respond. And, and so, you know, I like to try to err on the side as much as I can of being, like, clinically, this is what’s happening, whether it’s right or wrong. Maybe that feedback’s negative towards my team, maybe that feedback’s negative towards the business. But, like, clinically, this is what’s happening. These are the challenges, these are the roadblocks. These are the things that are keeping us from being successful. And then try to create that open dialogue.

And oftentimes you get shot down. And so it’s really important to not take that shot down as something that you use to then become combative and then just fight about consistently. It’s actually more important to then go, great, I hear your feedback. Go back and rebuild something else. Go back and rebuild something else. And like, you know, there’s a poem by Tennyson that has a line that says, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. And I think it’s really important to go out there and continue to look for something, because with the data that we house as an industry, you’re always going to find that root cause of roi. It’s going to be productivity impact, it’s going to be roadmap impact, it’s going to be sales impact, revenue impact.

And like, these kind of data points are so impactful to be able to do that and like, to go back to, like, how do we manage the cultural nuances? You know, if, if, if our local recruiters in India, let’s say, are not able to push back on the leader around, I don’t know, you know, hiring from this, you know, the, the company mix that we’re recruiting, Is it the right one for the right talent? Then what’s the data point that’s supporting that argument and arming them with that information so that they can strategic conference, which I hate the word strategic, but this strategic conversation. And so, but I think the main point there is like, it’s always going to be combative in our trade, always. We’re always going to be looked down upon slightly. But we do have the best data in the world. We are the best data scientists. Recruiters are the most accurate data people I’ve ever worked with in my life. Even probably better than they. Well, not better than data scientists, but like, but like, you know, generally I, I always go like, I want 80% accuracy and data on my teams.

I’ve probably had 90 to 95% data accuracy on my teams, right, because it’s like they understand the value of it and they see how me and my leadership team uses that. And so we always have a data point of impact that we can give back to the business. And so we just keep pushing that message until we find the right one that brings them across the line. And oftentimes it is partnerships, and oftentimes it is relationships. And oftentimes it is the capabilities for, you know, people in region, in country to become strategic, to have the right strategic conversations. And so, you know, being able to show what that impact is and finding pilot areas to go try that in, to then bring that back and say, like, here’s an area that worked really well. Let’s try a little bit broader. To me, that’s a way for us to like, you know, start broadening the impact of individuals, but also show that it’s like we actually aren’t saying no because we’re just saying no. We’re saying no because this is going to be a massive impact to you at some point down the road.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, totally. And what would you say would be your top tip for a leader building their team or what they can do right now, and then also for an individual who wants to become that?

Matt Doucette:
Yes. I think for leaders, if you don’t really, if you don’t have a clear understanding of why the talent on your team is good, like if you don’t know who your high performers are and why your high performers are high performers, you need to figure that out. You can work with your HR business partners on that, you can work with your talent management teams on that. You know, you could implement a nine box, you could implement judgment drive and influence. You know, you could do, you know, all the different methods that companies use for talent management, but you need to be able to have a benchmark understanding of why good is good on your team. That’s going to be a combination of behavioral competencies, skill competencies, cultural competencies, and these different things. And it’s like you got to be able to create some level of measurement and benchmarking for why that is. And then you need to compare your teams against that.

And if you don’t have that and you’re not very clear in your brain, I’ve always had that for my teams and I’ve always known even individuals I maybe talk to once a quarter personally, I know what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. So if a project comes up, I’m like, ah, this person’s a great person for it. And if you don’t have that capability, then there’s no way for you to be able to help your leadership team create value of the development of your employees and also go put the right people in the right places to have the right level of impact. So I think that’s probably tip number one is like, if you don’t have that, go build that today. I think the second side of this coin is if like you don’t have a clear mission, you don’t have clear tenets of how your team operates. I think if you haven’t established the cadence of operation of your teams, cadence of communication structures of like, what information you need to know. There’s this concept in the military called disconnected but informed, which I like. And how would I like to implement as a leader, which is like, I don’t need to, I don’t need to micromanage, I don’t need to know everything that’s going on, but I need to know what I need to know, which is obviously connected to what the company and the leadership cares about at this time.

So that if I’m asked on the spot, I know the answer, right? And I also can reference back like, I got this information and I know this Thing successful. I know this thing isn’t successful. This is what we’re doing to fix it. So I’m not having to go back and ask everybody and bug them and create this ridiculous long presentation and all this stuff. I can, I can spit it out on the spot. So I think creating that cadence communication is what needs to be communicated. What level of disconnected, informed. You want the tenants, you know, how your team should operate, you know, the commander’s intent.

Like, you know, does everybody know everybody’s job above them? So that if there’s issues or challenges that happen throughout the year, people have covered. Right. We have that strategy because still moving forward, I think that’s strong tip number two. And I think the last one is we have to humanize things more. We have to move away from this opaque view of levels and expectations framework, some performance management scale, anecdotal evidence or anecdotal reviews of what makes people successful. And we have to move more towards a science point of view, like might as well in the days of AI, you know, create something more, you know, structured that allows us to humanize things and get away from talking about skills. You know, if somebody’s a good recruiter, they’ve been a recruiter 15 years. I don’t really care about talking to them about like how they go hire or source people or whatever.

Like they’re gonna. They don’t know that. Right. I want to know what makes them tick as a human. I want to know what makes them successful. I want to know why they want to do what they want to do. And so like humanize this process a lot more. And let’s move away from like, you know, the competencies based upon skills and the level and expectations framework and the like, you know, the values of a company, like, which are great and companies need values. But I hate to be this type of person, but companies are in animate objects. They’re not. They’re not human. And so therefore values at a company is going to be relative to the humans of that company.

Yeliz Castillo:
Totally. And I think this is something that, that, that has. That is get. Doesn’t get looked at that way. You always think it’s a company. No, but it’s the people who make that those values and they have to live those values and kind of project them. And I think that’s something that we really need to understand. Thank you so much, Matt. This was really.

Matt Doucette:
I thought so. I thought you. I think you said something about individuals too. Might as well say something quick in there for them.

Yeliz Castillo:
Oh yeah, of Course, no worries.

Matt Doucette:
So I. I didn’t do this for a long time, but when I got my first leadership role, there was this guy, Shameless Plug for him, Paul Forte, he was the. He was very senior at sales at IBM. He ended up joining Monster as the head of global sales. And he had this thing called impact sales. So it was basically his conscious competence around what made him a great leader and, like, how he helped develop other leaders. And so I kind of stole that and I made something impact recruiting. Very Shameless steal that I did a long time ago, which was very similar.

Right. Thinking about, like, what makes me a good leader, what makes me good at executing leadership and recruitment. And I’ve always thought about that for, like, individuals as well. Like, you know, I think it’s really important for people to go out there and spend the time, you know, a couple hours a month to really think about, like, what makes them good at what they do, what is it that makes them really successful, and write that down. And once you figure that out, go start telling other people about that, you know, and give them that opportunity as well.

Yeliz Castillo:
Yeah, totally. I think opportunity is a big one. Right? Like that you. But. But do you think, sorry, I’m continuing here now. But do you think go for it, Giving the opportunity, but then also for people to be ready when the opportunity comes, so they are at all times preparing themselves, doing whatever they need to do to get there. And. And really, you know, like my husband always says is actually like, you know, he studies a lot and does a lot, even though he doesn’t have anything coming up, like, no, not an interview or whatever it is, but he always says, like, I need to be ready when the opportunity comes to go there, not just be too late. So do you think there is, like a coin to both sides that you have to get the opportunity, but also be ready for the opportunity when it’s there?

Matt Doucette:
Yes, to both. However, I think what it’s about is, okay, so you get in, your performance review is done. Now you’re getting your development conversation with your manager, which happens, I don’t know, April or May or whatever happens at your company, right? Like, everybody gets the same thing. And you generally sit in this meeting and your manager comes back at you based upon the feedback of your performance review and spits a bunch of stuff at you, and you go like, oh, cool, thank you. And that’s it. That’s a conversation. And it’s like, oh, okay. So, like, what do they actually think they did really well in the year.

And what do they think that they want to work on and be and develop within themselves. And that’s like, some companies do it to a degree, some teams do it to do agree, but it’s not like a consistent theme. It’s generally a manager going like, oh, well, here’s your peer feedback. And like, this is the things that I think would help steer you in the right direction. It becomes focused on that rather than being like, okay, what did you do really well this year and what do you want to continue doing more of? What do you want to, you know, this whole stop, start. Continue, you know, what do you want to continue doing? What do you want to start doing? What do you want to stop doing? And like thinking about that. And the answer isn’t going to be always yes to everything. Right? But at least now as a leader, I know, okay, this person wants to be involved in this.

It kind of appears like they have, to your point, the readiness for it. So therefore that opportunity is there. Right. And so I think, you know, the reason why people should go and try to build this conscious competence within themselves is so that they can own these development conversations as opposed to letting their manager, who probably is somewhat okay at their job, manage these conversations. Because then you’re able to say like, this is actually what I want to work on. This is what I think I do really well that I could do with my eyes closed. You know, it used to be 50% of my job, now it’s 25% because I do it so quick. Right. And it’s like, now I have this bandwidth to take on this that I really want to get into. And that’s a great enabler for teams.

Yeliz Castillo:
Totally. And I think it’s also motivational issue. Not issue, sorry, motivational point. Right. Because if you like doing something and you want to do more of it, or you, you want to get better at it, then this is also something that keeps you motivated, you know, to work on yourself or do that for the company or within the project or whatever it is that you’re working on. So I think it kind of, kind of touched on that point as well to, to really make them move.

Matt Doucette:
And the last piece of this is, forget about the generational gaps. Got to remove the stigmas. Like I said, you know, I, I am now experiencing my fourth generation in the workplace, right. And every time it’s been the same conversation. There’s always a stigma to the new generation. And it’s always the word entitled always comes into play with that. And I think everybody needs to remove that stigma and they need to, again, humanize things and go, like, what does this person need from me as a leader and what am I not giving them? Right? And then, yes, sometimes it is unreasonable, don’t get me wrong. And I think you need to set the proper boundaries.

But I think it’s really important to understand, like, we are in, like, a weird world where we have so many different generations working at the same time on the same teams at times as well, which is crazy. And the drasticness of, like, their beliefs, their ethos, their culture is, like, couldn’t be any more different. And so, like, as a leader, it’s like, you need to be able to bring the bridges to those things and those conversations. But then as a development opportunity, they’re all going to need to be developed differently because of the way that their culture was and their generation has been raised. And so you have to understand those kind of nuances as you come into this world. Otherwise, you know, it’s just going to be. It’s going to be a bit of an annoyance. I remember, like, when I was at Monster.

Ah, the millennials are coming. And they’re so entitled and they weren’t. They’re fine. They’re all managers now, by the way, you know, and, like, the same things happen to Gen Z, same thing’s gonna happen to Gen A, it’s never gonna stop. So it’s like, you know, we need to kind of think past those stigmas and think about, okay, we do need to manage them different, we do need to develop them differently. How do we do that? Well, we have to ask them. We can’t just assume. We have to go, like, what do you need for me to, to for you to feel empowered to go do your job well, and, you know, it always starts with asking questions, not with making statements.

Yeliz Castillo:
Totally. My recruitment rule number one is don’t assume, ask. So I wanna close the conversation on this. Thank you so much, Matt. I think such a great, fresh perspective. So thank you for your time.

Matt Doucette:
Thank you.