Sustainable Growth 4 Questions for Fast-Growing Companies - Focus

Sustainable Growth 4 Questions for Fast-Growing Companies - Focus When a start-up grows at scale, your leadership strategy will need to grow with it. At MeisterLabs, when we could no longer fit around the same meeting room table, we knew it was time to take stock. Over the past few years, our company has grown from a small start-up to a team of 35. Throughout this process, growing sustainably, rather than rapidly, has been paramount. We’ve needed a leadership strategy that not only hires top talent  but provides our team with the onboarding processes and feedback they need to thrive. To receive a helping hand in this, we rolled up our sleeves and signed up for an external leadership workshop. The training was challenging, but enlightening, and identified a few key areas for improvement, along with strategies on how to get there. These approaches will no doubt apply to other growing tech teams too. In this article, we’ll share the key lessons, in the hope that you’ll be well placed to weather your growth, too: Dealing with Growing Pains As tech companies scale at pace, there’s a risk that teams will begin to lose direction. Without structure, it’s difficult to continue working together in a strategic way, as bigger picture aims get lost among individual tasks. Without clear team leads, questions over who should onboard new staff members and provide regular feedback can also arise. As a result, in fall 2017, we decided to create a formal company structure. Until this point, MeisterLabs had been almost entirely non-hierarchical. This worked great for fast-paced working and collaboration. However, as we hired lots of new team members over a short period, it became problematic. As new hires joined the team, they would often have no clear line manager. This meant no specific person to onboard them, no one to showcase their work to, and no one to provide regular feedback. To address this, we began by developing a clear company structure, providing each employee with a clear understanding of who they can look to for support and feedback. Next, we needed to ensure that our new leadership team had the skills and confidence to manage their teams. To this end, we reached out to 5P Consulting and brought our team leads and founders together for a 3-day leadership workshop in Vienna. Within the training, we established our own strengths and weaknesses as a leadership team. Then, we looked at how we could improve, particularly in the areas of delegation and providing feedback. Here’s what we covered and the questions we asked ourselves, in order to make that progress: 4 Essential Questions For Leaders: 1. What drives you as a leader? To know how to improve as a leader, you first need to establish what you could be doing better. To do this, try asking yourself: How would your team describe you as a leader? How does this vary from how you would like to be described? Which leadership situations do you feel you’re really good at? Where would you still like to improve? It might have been a while since you thought about the broader impression of your leadership style. However, aligning where you’re at currently with where you’d like to be is a great first step in identifying how to improve. An element of this is understanding our personal drivers as leaders. These can often be deduced from how we would like to be seen. However, undertaking a questionnaire on our leadership drivers, we found that many of us have drivers that we’re not yet aware of. For example, a number of our leaders found a conclusive drive to please others. Although this can be essential for a happy team, it’s important to remember that you can’t please everyone, all of the time. As long as decisions are made for the greater sake of the team, in line with company strategy, not pleasing everyone is okay. Another we found was the need to be perfect, which was holding some leaders back from delegating. We’ll come back to this, but in order to move forward, it’s important to first identify these leadership shortcomings. Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask 2. What drives you as a company? Next, focus some thought on drivers within the company as a whole. During our training, we shared on a flipchart what we most appreciate about working at MeisterLabs, as well as where the pain points lie. We asked ourselves: What are the top three things that make us successful right now? What are the top three things that hold us back and if done better, could make us more successful? It became obvious that for many of us, we enjoy elements such as: working with people with a similar mindset an open-door policy for asking for help the active involvement of our knowledgeable founders and the encouragement of team input within our company strategies. All of these factors enable us to trust one another and work well together. However, we established areas for improvement too. As a leadership team, we all agreed that we could be doing a better job of delegating tasks and providing regular, constructive feedback. Both are essential for growing teams, so I’ll share the strategies we’ve put in place to address them. 3. Where could you delegate better? As leaders, many of us have been there: You’re facing a never-ending to-do list, but feel hesitant to ask your team members to take on a task. Even as a company working on our own task management solution  MeisterTask    we’ve faced this problem too. So why is it that we so often face this conundrum? It might be that we feel we could do the task better ourselves. That we think it would require too much time to train a report to do it instead. That it could put too much pressure on a colleague. Or perhaps that we’re simply scared of losing control, in case we become redundant by handing over our work. All of these concerns are valid in their own right. However, companies hire specialist staff for a reason. As long as you  feel confident in your team members, we should never feel afraid to entrust them with important tasks. For some of us, resistance to delegation can link back to our inner drivers. For example, if one of your drivers is to complete tasks quickly, this might make you resistant to training a team member to do it. If your driver is to please others, you might be concerned by the pressure you’d be putting on them by delegating. Reflecting on the drivers established in step one will help you in deconstructing any personal resistance to delegating. Once you’re feeling more comfortable to delegate, the key steps we covered in our guide to effective delegation are as follows: Explain why you’re delegating Provide the right instructions Provide the necessary resources and training Delegate responsibility and authority, too Say thank you! Learning to delegate effectively will develop you as a leader and can help motivate your team too. After all, it’s your responsibility to focus on their professional development and this includes challenging them, providing opportunities to grow. As mentioned, at MeisterLabs, we use our own task management tool, MeisterTask, to help delegate. With transparent project boards, we can create and assign tasks to our team, then track these to completion. If team members have any questions, they can voice them simply via the comment section. However, an in-person conversation between the team member and team lead can never go amiss either! 4. Are you providing enough feedback? To help your team members develop further, it’s crucial you provide regular, constructive feedback. This shouldn’t be an annual affair, where all tasks completed over the past year are presented all at once. Instead, you should normalize immediate feedback and create a constant dialogue flow, including praise and points for improvement. The mindset of the leader will play a significant role here. In her book, Radical Candor, leadership expert Kim Scott shared that ideally, every team leader will care personally for their team member. In parallel, they should develop a relationship in which they’re able to challenge each other directly, without resulting in any  upset. Many articles have been written about how to give feedback in the best possible way. Some claim that criticism should always be sandwiched in praise. However, as we’ve shared previously in our best ways to offer effective feedback, this is just undercover bashing and often ineffective. Instead, the most effective way to offer feedback on topics surrounding criticism, recognition and expectations is via the following steps: First, provide a description of the situation Second, provide an objective description of the behavior Next, provide an objective description of the consequences Then, provide a subjective assessment of the situation, outcomes and onward actions Finally, provide a description of future expectations. In order to communicate your feedback in a considered, thoughtful way, it’s important to first structure your thoughts. Below is an example of how you can prepare for feedback sessions with the help of a mind map. In our case, we used  MindMeister. Your browser is not able to display frames. Please visit 5 Steps for Effective Feedback on MindMeister. MeisterTip: To use the template feedback mind map, simply sign into MindMeister (or sign up free) and maximize the map via the map actions icon. Once maximized, click again on the map actions icon and choose to clone the map. From there, edit or embellish the topics to make the map suitable for your personal feedback session. Of course, if your feedback is critical, you might need to escalate this to further levels. The first couple of stages will involve explaining, convincing, requesting changes and then holding follow-ups to monitor those changes. However, persistent issues should be dealt with by alerting the employee to the consequences, before, eventually, putting those consequences into practice. Ultimately, your feedback should be a continuum from friendly chat, to direct conversation, to tangible consequences. Ideally, with a focus on regular feedback,  you can avoid the latter escalations altogether. Once you’ve been through these processes as a leader, the next step is to disseminate this knowledge internally. By demonstrating the value of the new management processes to your team, you can get them on board with the changes. This way, they’ll be ready and eager for the 1:1 feedback sessions and to receive some new, challenging tasks. In our case, our Tech Lead for MindMeister, Laura Bârladeanu, led an internal workshop, leading to positive feedback on the new processes so far. After all, feedback is a two-way street, and we, as leaders, must be open to receiving it too ?? If you like the sound of how we do things at MeisterLabs, there’s still space in our bustling offices in Vienna and Seattle! Head to our  jobs page  to check out the positions we’re hiring for. Plus, if you don’t see an opening that fits, get in touch via  [emailprotected]  to let us know where you see yourself on our team! Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask Sustainable Growth 4 Questions for Fast-Growing Companies - Focus When a start-up grows at scale, your leadership strategy will need to grow with it. At MeisterLabs, when we could no longer fit around the same meeting room table, we knew it was time to take stock. Over the past few years, our company has grown from a small start-up to a team of 35. Throughout this process, growing sustainably, rather than rapidly, has been paramount. We’ve needed a leadership strategy that not only hires top talent  but provides our team with the onboarding processes and feedback they need to thrive. To receive a helping hand in this, we rolled up our sleeves and signed up for an external leadership workshop. The training was challenging, but enlightening, and identified a few key areas for improvement, along with strategies on how to get there. These approaches will no doubt apply to other growing tech teams too. In this article, we’ll share the key lessons, in the hope that you’ll be well placed to weather your growth, too: Dealing with Growing Pains As tech companies scale at pace, there’s a risk that teams will begin to lose direction. Without structure, it’s difficult to continue working together in a strategic way, as bigger picture aims get lost among individual tasks. Without clear team leads, questions over who should onboard new staff members and provide regular feedback can also arise. As a result, in fall 2017, we decided to create a formal company structure. Until this point, MeisterLabs had been almost entirely non-hierarchical. This worked great for fast-paced working and collaboration. However, as we hired lots of new team members over a short period, it became problematic. As new hires joined the team, they would often have no clear line manager. This meant no specific person to onboard them, no one to showcase their work to, and no one to provide regular feedback. To address this, we began by developing a clear company structure, providing each employee with a clear understanding of who they can look to for support and feedback. Next, we needed to ensure that our new leadership team had the skills and confidence to manage their teams. To this end, we reached out to 5P Consulting and brought our team leads and founders together for a 3-day leadership workshop in Vienna. Within the training, we established our own strengths and weaknesses as a leadership team. Then, we looked at how we could improve, particularly in the areas of delegation and providing feedback. Here’s what we covered and the questions we asked ourselves, in order to make that progress: 4 Essential Questions For Leaders: 1. What drives you as a leader? To know how to improve as a leader, you first need to establish what you could be doing better. To do this, try asking yourself: How would your team describe you as a leader? How does this vary from how you would like to be described? Which leadership situations do you feel you’re really good at? Where would you still like to improve? It might have been a while since you thought about the broader impression of your leadership style. However, aligning where you’re at currently with where you’d like to be is a great first step in identifying how to improve. An element of this is understanding our personal drivers as leaders. These can often be deduced from how we would like to be seen. However, undertaking a questionnaire on our leadership drivers, we found that many of us have drivers that we’re not yet aware of. For example, a number of our leaders found a conclusive drive to please others. Although this can be essential for a happy team, it’s important to remember that you can’t please everyone, all of the time. As long as decisions are made for the greater sake of the team, in line with company strategy, not pleasing everyone is okay. Another we found was the need to be perfect, which was holding some leaders back from delegating. We’ll come back to this, but in order to move forward, it’s important to first identify these leadership shortcomings. Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask 2. What drives you as a company? Next, focus some thought on drivers within the company as a whole. During our training, we shared on a flipchart what we most appreciate about working at MeisterLabs, as well as where the pain points lie. We asked ourselves: What are the top three things that make us successful right now? What are the top three things that hold us back and if done better, could make us more successful? It became obvious that for many of us, we enjoy elements such as: working with people with a similar mindset an open-door policy for asking for help the active involvement of our knowledgeable founders and the encouragement of team input within our company strategies. All of these factors enable us to trust one another and work well together. However, we established areas for improvement too. As a leadership team, we all agreed that we could be doing a better job of delegating tasks and providing regular, constructive feedback. Both are essential for growing teams, so I’ll share the strategies we’ve put in place to address them. 3. Where could you delegate better? As leaders, many of us have been there: You’re facing a never-ending to-do list, but feel hesitant to ask your team members to take on a task. Even as a company working on our own task management solution  MeisterTask    we’ve faced this problem too. So why is it that we so often face this conundrum? It might be that we feel we could do the task better ourselves. That we think it would require too much time to train a report to do it instead. That it could put too much pressure on a colleague. Or perhaps that we’re simply scared of losing control, in case we become redundant by handing over our work. All of these concerns are valid in their own right. However, companies hire specialist staff for a reason. As long as you  feel confident in your team members, we should never feel afraid to entrust them with important tasks. For some of us, resistance to delegation can link back to our inner drivers. For example, if one of your drivers is to complete tasks quickly, this might make you resistant to training a team member to do it. If your driver is to please others, you might be concerned by the pressure you’d be putting on them by delegating. Reflecting on the drivers established in step one will help you in deconstructing any personal resistance to delegating. Once you’re feeling more comfortable to delegate, the key steps we covered in our guide to effective delegation are as follows: Explain why you’re delegating Provide the right instructions Provide the necessary resources and training Delegate responsibility and authority, too Say thank you! Learning to delegate effectively will develop you as a leader and can help motivate your team too. After all, it’s your responsibility to focus on their professional development and this includes challenging them, providing opportunities to grow. As mentioned, at MeisterLabs, we use our own task management tool, MeisterTask, to help delegate. With transparent project boards, we can create and assign tasks to our team, then track these to completion. If team members have any questions, they can voice them simply via the comment section. However, an in-person conversation between the team member and team lead can never go amiss either! 4. Are you providing enough feedback? To help your team members develop further, it’s crucial you provide regular, constructive feedback. This shouldn’t be an annual affair, where all tasks completed over the past year are presented all at once. Instead, you should normalize immediate feedback and create a constant dialogue flow, including praise and points for improvement. The mindset of the leader will play a significant role here. In her book, Radical Candor, leadership expert Kim Scott shared that ideally, every team leader will care personally for their team member. In parallel, they should develop a relationship in which they’re able to challenge each other directly, without resulting in any  upset. Many articles have been written about how to give feedback in the best possible way. Some claim that criticism should always be sandwiched in praise. However, as we’ve shared previously in our best ways to offer effective feedback, this is just undercover bashing and often ineffective. Instead, the most effective way to offer feedback on topics surrounding criticism, recognition and expectations is via the following steps: First, provide a description of the situation Second, provide an objective description of the behavior Next, provide an objective description of the consequences Then, provide a subjective assessment of the situation, outcomes and onward actions Finally, provide a description of future expectations. In order to communicate your feedback in a considered, thoughtful way, it’s important to first structure your thoughts. Below is an example of how you can prepare for feedback sessions with the help of a mind map. In our case, we used  MindMeister. Your browser is not able to display frames. Please visit 5 Steps for Effective Feedback on MindMeister. MeisterTip: To use the template feedback mind map, simply sign into MindMeister (or sign up free) and maximize the map via the map actions icon. Once maximized, click again on the map actions icon and choose to clone the map. From there, edit or embellish the topics to make the map suitable for your personal feedback session. Of course, if your feedback is critical, you might need to escalate this to further levels. The first couple of stages will involve explaining, convincing, requesting changes and then holding follow-ups to monitor those changes. However, persistent issues should be dealt with by alerting the employee to the consequences, before, eventually, putting those consequences into practice. Ultimately, your feedback should be a continuum from friendly chat, to direct conversation, to tangible consequences. Ideally, with a focus on regular feedback,  you can avoid the latter escalations altogether. Once you’ve been through these processes as a leader, the next step is to disseminate this knowledge internally. By demonstrating the value of the new management processes to your team, you can get them on board with the changes. This way, they’ll be ready and eager for the 1:1 feedback sessions and to receive some new, challenging tasks. In our case, our Tech Lead for MindMeister, Laura Bârladeanu, led an internal workshop, leading to positive feedback on the new processes so far. After all, feedback is a two-way street, and we, as leaders, must be open to receiving it too ?? If you like the sound of how we do things at MeisterLabs, there’s still space in our bustling offices in Vienna and Seattle! Head to our  jobs page  to check out the positions we’re hiring for. Plus, if you don’t see an opening that fits, get in touch via  [emailprotected]  to let us know where you see yourself on our team! Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask

Sustainable Growth 4 Questions for Fast-Growing Companies - Focus

Sustainable Growth 4 Questions for Fast-Growing Companies - Focus When a start-up grows at scale, your leadership strategy will need to grow with it. At MeisterLabs, when we could no longer fit around the same meeting room table, we knew it was time to take stock. Over the past few years, our company has grown from a small start-up to a team of 35. Throughout this process, growing sustainably, rather than rapidly, has been paramount. We’ve needed a leadership strategy that not only hires top talent  but provides our team with the onboarding processes and feedback they need to thrive. To receive a helping hand in this, we rolled up our sleeves and signed up for an external leadership workshop. The training was challenging, but enlightening, and identified a few key areas for improvement, along with strategies on how to get there. These approaches will no doubt apply to other growing tech teams too. In this article, we’ll share the key lessons, in the hope that you’ll be well placed to weather your growth, too: Dealing with Growing Pains As tech companies scale at pace, there’s a risk that teams will begin to lose direction. Without structure, it’s difficult to continue working together in a strategic way, as bigger picture aims get lost among individual tasks. Without clear team leads, questions over who should onboard new staff members and provide regular feedback can also arise. As a result, in fall 2017, we decided to create a formal company structure. Until this point, MeisterLabs had been almost entirely non-hierarchical. This worked great for fast-paced working and collaboration. However, as we hired lots of new team members over a short period, it became problematic. As new hires joined the team, they would often have no clear line manager. This meant no specific person to onboard them, no one to showcase their work to, and no one to provide regular feedback. To address this, we began by developing a clear company structure, providing each employee with a clear understanding of who they can look to for support and feedback. Next, we needed to ensure that our new leadership team had the skills and confidence to manage their teams. To this end, we reached out to 5P Consulting and brought our team leads and founders together for a 3-day leadership workshop in Vienna. Within the training, we established our own strengths and weaknesses as a leadership team. Then, we looked at how we could improve, particularly in the areas of delegation and providing feedback. Here’s what we covered and the questions we asked ourselves, in order to make that progress: 4 Essential Questions For Leaders: 1. What drives you as a leader? To know how to improve as a leader, you first need to establish what you could be doing better. To do this, try asking yourself: How would your team describe you as a leader? How does this vary from how you would like to be described? Which leadership situations do you feel you’re really good at? Where would you still like to improve? It might have been a while since you thought about the broader impression of your leadership style. However, aligning where you’re at currently with where you’d like to be is a great first step in identifying how to improve. An element of this is understanding our personal drivers as leaders. These can often be deduced from how we would like to be seen. However, undertaking a questionnaire on our leadership drivers, we found that many of us have drivers that we’re not yet aware of. For example, a number of our leaders found a conclusive drive to please others. Although this can be essential for a happy team, it’s important to remember that you can’t please everyone, all of the time. As long as decisions are made for the greater sake of the team, in line with company strategy, not pleasing everyone is okay. Another we found was the need to be perfect, which was holding some leaders back from delegating. We’ll come back to this, but in order to move forward, it’s important to first identify these leadership shortcomings. Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask 2. What drives you as a company? Next, focus some thought on drivers within the company as a whole. During our training, we shared on a flipchart what we most appreciate about working at MeisterLabs, as well as where the pain points lie. We asked ourselves: What are the top three things that make us successful right now? What are the top three things that hold us back and if done better, could make us more successful? It became obvious that for many of us, we enjoy elements such as: working with people with a similar mindset an open-door policy for asking for help the active involvement of our knowledgeable founders and the encouragement of team input within our company strategies. All of these factors enable us to trust one another and work well together. However, we established areas for improvement too. As a leadership team, we all agreed that we could be doing a better job of delegating tasks and providing regular, constructive feedback. Both are essential for growing teams, so I’ll share the strategies we’ve put in place to address them. 3. Where could you delegate better? As leaders, many of us have been there: You’re facing a never-ending to-do list, but feel hesitant to ask your team members to take on a task. Even as a company working on our own task management solution  MeisterTask    we’ve faced this problem too. So why is it that we so often face this conundrum? It might be that we feel we could do the task better ourselves. That we think it would require too much time to train a report to do it instead. That it could put too much pressure on a colleague. Or perhaps that we’re simply scared of losing control, in case we become redundant by handing over our work. All of these concerns are valid in their own right. However, companies hire specialist staff for a reason. As long as you  feel confident in your team members, we should never feel afraid to entrust them with important tasks. For some of us, resistance to delegation can link back to our inner drivers. For example, if one of your drivers is to complete tasks quickly, this might make you resistant to training a team member to do it. If your driver is to please others, you might be concerned by the pressure you’d be putting on them by delegating. Reflecting on the drivers established in step one will help you in deconstructing any personal resistance to delegating. Once you’re feeling more comfortable to delegate, the key steps we covered in our guide to effective delegation are as follows: Explain why you’re delegating Provide the right instructions Provide the necessary resources and training Delegate responsibility and authority, too Say thank you! Learning to delegate effectively will develop you as a leader and can help motivate your team too. After all, it’s your responsibility to focus on their professional development and this includes challenging them, providing opportunities to grow. As mentioned, at MeisterLabs, we use our own task management tool, MeisterTask, to help delegate. With transparent project boards, we can create and assign tasks to our team, then track these to completion. If team members have any questions, they can voice them simply via the comment section. However, an in-person conversation between the team member and team lead can never go amiss either! 4. Are you providing enough feedback? To help your team members develop further, it’s crucial you provide regular, constructive feedback. This shouldn’t be an annual affair, where all tasks completed over the past year are presented all at once. Instead, you should normalize immediate feedback and create a constant dialogue flow, including praise and points for improvement. The mindset of the leader will play a significant role here. In her book, Radical Candor, leadership expert Kim Scott shared that ideally, every team leader will care personally for their team member. In parallel, they should develop a relationship in which they’re able to challenge each other directly, without resulting in any  upset. Many articles have been written about how to give feedback in the best possible way. Some claim that criticism should always be sandwiched in praise. However, as we’ve shared previously in our best ways to offer effective feedback, this is just undercover bashing and often ineffective. Instead, the most effective way to offer feedback on topics surrounding criticism, recognition and expectations is via the following steps: First, provide a description of the situation Second, provide an objective description of the behavior Next, provide an objective description of the consequences Then, provide a subjective assessment of the situation, outcomes and onward actions Finally, provide a description of future expectations. In order to communicate your feedback in a considered, thoughtful way, it’s important to first structure your thoughts. Below is an example of how you can prepare for feedback sessions with the help of a mind map. In our case, we used  MindMeister. Your browser is not able to display frames. Please visit 5 Steps for Effective Feedback on MindMeister. MeisterTip: To use the template feedback mind map, simply sign into MindMeister (or sign up free) and maximize the map via the map actions icon. Once maximized, click again on the map actions icon and choose to clone the map. From there, edit or embellish the topics to make the map suitable for your personal feedback session. Of course, if your feedback is critical, you might need to escalate this to further levels. The first couple of stages will involve explaining, convincing, requesting changes and then holding follow-ups to monitor those changes. However, persistent issues should be dealt with by alerting the employee to the consequences, before, eventually, putting those consequences into practice. Ultimately, your feedback should be a continuum from friendly chat, to direct conversation, to tangible consequences. Ideally, with a focus on regular feedback,  you can avoid the latter escalations altogether. Once you’ve been through these processes as a leader, the next step is to disseminate this knowledge internally. By demonstrating the value of the new management processes to your team, you can get them on board with the changes. This way, they’ll be ready and eager for the 1:1 feedback sessions and to receive some new, challenging tasks. In our case, our Tech Lead for MindMeister, Laura Bârladeanu, led an internal workshop, leading to positive feedback on the new processes so far. After all, feedback is a two-way street, and we, as leaders, must be open to receiving it too ?? If you like the sound of how we do things at MeisterLabs, there’s still space in our bustling offices in Vienna and Seattle! Head to our  jobs page  to check out the positions we’re hiring for. Plus, if you don’t see an opening that fits, get in touch via  [emailprotected]  to let us know where you see yourself on our team! Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask Sustainable Growth 4 Questions for Fast-Growing Companies - Focus When a start-up grows at scale, your leadership strategy will need to grow with it. At MeisterLabs, when we could no longer fit around the same meeting room table, we knew it was time to take stock. Over the past few years, our company has grown from a small start-up to a team of 35. Throughout this process, growing sustainably, rather than rapidly, has been paramount. We’ve needed a leadership strategy that not only hires top talent  but provides our team with the onboarding processes and feedback they need to thrive. To receive a helping hand in this, we rolled up our sleeves and signed up for an external leadership workshop. The training was challenging, but enlightening, and identified a few key areas for improvement, along with strategies on how to get there. These approaches will no doubt apply to other growing tech teams too. In this article, we’ll share the key lessons, in the hope that you’ll be well placed to weather your growth, too: Dealing with Growing Pains As tech companies scale at pace, there’s a risk that teams will begin to lose direction. Without structure, it’s difficult to continue working together in a strategic way, as bigger picture aims get lost among individual tasks. Without clear team leads, questions over who should onboard new staff members and provide regular feedback can also arise. As a result, in fall 2017, we decided to create a formal company structure. Until this point, MeisterLabs had been almost entirely non-hierarchical. This worked great for fast-paced working and collaboration. However, as we hired lots of new team members over a short period, it became problematic. As new hires joined the team, they would often have no clear line manager. This meant no specific person to onboard them, no one to showcase their work to, and no one to provide regular feedback. To address this, we began by developing a clear company structure, providing each employee with a clear understanding of who they can look to for support and feedback. Next, we needed to ensure that our new leadership team had the skills and confidence to manage their teams. To this end, we reached out to 5P Consulting and brought our team leads and founders together for a 3-day leadership workshop in Vienna. Within the training, we established our own strengths and weaknesses as a leadership team. Then, we looked at how we could improve, particularly in the areas of delegation and providing feedback. Here’s what we covered and the questions we asked ourselves, in order to make that progress: 4 Essential Questions For Leaders: 1. What drives you as a leader? To know how to improve as a leader, you first need to establish what you could be doing better. To do this, try asking yourself: How would your team describe you as a leader? How does this vary from how you would like to be described? Which leadership situations do you feel you’re really good at? Where would you still like to improve? It might have been a while since you thought about the broader impression of your leadership style. However, aligning where you’re at currently with where you’d like to be is a great first step in identifying how to improve. An element of this is understanding our personal drivers as leaders. These can often be deduced from how we would like to be seen. However, undertaking a questionnaire on our leadership drivers, we found that many of us have drivers that we’re not yet aware of. For example, a number of our leaders found a conclusive drive to please others. Although this can be essential for a happy team, it’s important to remember that you can’t please everyone, all of the time. As long as decisions are made for the greater sake of the team, in line with company strategy, not pleasing everyone is okay. Another we found was the need to be perfect, which was holding some leaders back from delegating. We’ll come back to this, but in order to move forward, it’s important to first identify these leadership shortcomings. Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask 2. What drives you as a company? Next, focus some thought on drivers within the company as a whole. During our training, we shared on a flipchart what we most appreciate about working at MeisterLabs, as well as where the pain points lie. We asked ourselves: What are the top three things that make us successful right now? What are the top three things that hold us back and if done better, could make us more successful? It became obvious that for many of us, we enjoy elements such as: working with people with a similar mindset an open-door policy for asking for help the active involvement of our knowledgeable founders and the encouragement of team input within our company strategies. All of these factors enable us to trust one another and work well together. However, we established areas for improvement too. As a leadership team, we all agreed that we could be doing a better job of delegating tasks and providing regular, constructive feedback. Both are essential for growing teams, so I’ll share the strategies we’ve put in place to address them. 3. Where could you delegate better? As leaders, many of us have been there: You’re facing a never-ending to-do list, but feel hesitant to ask your team members to take on a task. Even as a company working on our own task management solution  MeisterTask    we’ve faced this problem too. So why is it that we so often face this conundrum? It might be that we feel we could do the task better ourselves. That we think it would require too much time to train a report to do it instead. That it could put too much pressure on a colleague. Or perhaps that we’re simply scared of losing control, in case we become redundant by handing over our work. All of these concerns are valid in their own right. However, companies hire specialist staff for a reason. As long as you  feel confident in your team members, we should never feel afraid to entrust them with important tasks. For some of us, resistance to delegation can link back to our inner drivers. For example, if one of your drivers is to complete tasks quickly, this might make you resistant to training a team member to do it. If your driver is to please others, you might be concerned by the pressure you’d be putting on them by delegating. Reflecting on the drivers established in step one will help you in deconstructing any personal resistance to delegating. Once you’re feeling more comfortable to delegate, the key steps we covered in our guide to effective delegation are as follows: Explain why you’re delegating Provide the right instructions Provide the necessary resources and training Delegate responsibility and authority, too Say thank you! Learning to delegate effectively will develop you as a leader and can help motivate your team too. After all, it’s your responsibility to focus on their professional development and this includes challenging them, providing opportunities to grow. As mentioned, at MeisterLabs, we use our own task management tool, MeisterTask, to help delegate. With transparent project boards, we can create and assign tasks to our team, then track these to completion. If team members have any questions, they can voice them simply via the comment section. However, an in-person conversation between the team member and team lead can never go amiss either! 4. Are you providing enough feedback? To help your team members develop further, it’s crucial you provide regular, constructive feedback. This shouldn’t be an annual affair, where all tasks completed over the past year are presented all at once. Instead, you should normalize immediate feedback and create a constant dialogue flow, including praise and points for improvement. The mindset of the leader will play a significant role here. In her book, Radical Candor, leadership expert Kim Scott shared that ideally, every team leader will care personally for their team member. In parallel, they should develop a relationship in which they’re able to challenge each other directly, without resulting in any  upset. Many articles have been written about how to give feedback in the best possible way. Some claim that criticism should always be sandwiched in praise. However, as we’ve shared previously in our best ways to offer effective feedback, this is just undercover bashing and often ineffective. Instead, the most effective way to offer feedback on topics surrounding criticism, recognition and expectations is via the following steps: First, provide a description of the situation Second, provide an objective description of the behavior Next, provide an objective description of the consequences Then, provide a subjective assessment of the situation, outcomes and onward actions Finally, provide a description of future expectations. In order to communicate your feedback in a considered, thoughtful way, it’s important to first structure your thoughts. Below is an example of how you can prepare for feedback sessions with the help of a mind map. In our case, we used  MindMeister. Your browser is not able to display frames. Please visit 5 Steps for Effective Feedback on MindMeister. MeisterTip: To use the template feedback mind map, simply sign into MindMeister (or sign up free) and maximize the map via the map actions icon. Once maximized, click again on the map actions icon and choose to clone the map. From there, edit or embellish the topics to make the map suitable for your personal feedback session. Of course, if your feedback is critical, you might need to escalate this to further levels. The first couple of stages will involve explaining, convincing, requesting changes and then holding follow-ups to monitor those changes. However, persistent issues should be dealt with by alerting the employee to the consequences, before, eventually, putting those consequences into practice. Ultimately, your feedback should be a continuum from friendly chat, to direct conversation, to tangible consequences. Ideally, with a focus on regular feedback,  you can avoid the latter escalations altogether. Once you’ve been through these processes as a leader, the next step is to disseminate this knowledge internally. By demonstrating the value of the new management processes to your team, you can get them on board with the changes. This way, they’ll be ready and eager for the 1:1 feedback sessions and to receive some new, challenging tasks. In our case, our Tech Lead for MindMeister, Laura Bârladeanu, led an internal workshop, leading to positive feedback on the new processes so far. After all, feedback is a two-way street, and we, as leaders, must be open to receiving it too ?? If you like the sound of how we do things at MeisterLabs, there’s still space in our bustling offices in Vienna and Seattle! Head to our  jobs page  to check out the positions we’re hiring for. Plus, if you don’t see an opening that fits, get in touch via  [emailprotected]  to let us know where you see yourself on our team! Productive Team ManagementMade Simple With MeisterTask Its free! With MeisterTask

List of the Roman Ludi Scaenici

Amelia Mary Earhart The Most Influential Persons

Amelia Mary Earhart Amelia Mary Earhart is among the most influential persons in history. Her achievements surpass the expectations of many. She had a sparkling career, as a female pilot, a writer, and an activist. Throughout her career, she had several accomplishments which set her on a path of fame. Right from being among the first female pilots, to being an advocate of women’s rights and providing various literary works, Amelia’s career was exceptional. Her life’s experiences set her to various paths before finally ending up in aviation, where she built a career which had a lasting impact in the aviation industry. Amelia was born in July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Since her family moved around, she ended up attending several schools including Hyde Park High School. Her admiration for aviation began when she had volunteered as a nurse’s aid for the Red Cross, who were attending to wounded soldiers returning from World War 1. She was able to speak to the wounded pilots and watch the Royal Flying Corps who practiced at a nearby airfield. Her life got filled with so many ups and downs, leading to her failure to finish her studies at Columbia University. Amelia has been exhibited as a woman not afraid of breaking barriers in her life. Despite the financial constraints within her family, Amelia could explore various careers, including photography and truck-driving, through which she could raise enough money to take flying lessons. Afterwards, she was able to buy a smallShow MoreRelatedLangston Hughes Research Paper25309 Words   |  102 Pageswere scarce. Sometimes she took young Langston with her, but most of the time he stayed with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. Grandmother Mary Langston, an American citizen of French, Cherokee, and African descent, was nineteen in 1855 when men tried to kidnap her and sell her as a slave. Her first husband, Lewis Leary, was killed in 1859 at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, during John Browns raid on the federal arsenal. Throughout Mary Langstons life, she treasured Lewiss bullet-riddled shawl

Slaves Narratives Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano Essay

Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano all have extremely interesting slave narratives. During their lives, they faced plenty of racist discrimination and troubling moments. They were all forced into slavery at an awfully young age and they all had to fight for their freedom. In 1797, Truth was born into slavery in New York with the name of Isabella Van Wagener. She was a slave for most of her life and eventually got emancipated. Truth was an immense women’s suffrage activist. She went on to preach about her religious life, become apart of the abolitionist movement, and give public speeches. Truth wrote a well-known personal experience called An Account of an Experience with Discrimination, and she gave a few famous†¦show more content†¦Sojourner Truth, the writer of An Account of an Experience with Discrimination and speaker of Ain’t I a Women and Speech at New York City Convention, faced many difficulties and oppressive times in her life. Sh e went through several different owners and homes. When Truth got older, she had at least five kids, most of which were sold into slavery, with a slave named Thomas. Truth was granted freedom after the 1828 mandatory emancipation of slaves in New York and finally was emancipated. She began preaching on the streets about her religious life. Truth changed her name from Isabella Van Wagener to Sojourner Truth because she wanted to â€Å"sojourn† the land and tell God’s â€Å"truth.† She moved to Northampton, Massachusetts to become apart of the abolitionist movement. During this time, the Civil War was occurring. The North was opposed to slavery and the South was for slavery. Truth addressed women’s rights repeatedly. She pointed out that the meetings about women’s suffrage were racially segregated. Truth gave many public speeches throughout Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas. Truth used an approach when giving speeches called rhetorical strategy. Sh e was extremely opinionated and pointed out a good argument about slaves creating the country and receiving no credit for it. She also made a good point when talking about women’s rights: â€Å"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the worldShow MoreRelatedFrederick Douglass Vs. Olaudah Equiano Slave Narratives Essay2001 Words   |  9 PagesFrederick Douglass vs. Olaudah Equiano Slave Narratives   Ã‚  Ã‚   According to Abraham Lincoln, â€Å"Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature; opposition to it on his love of justice†. Frederick Douglass published a book on his life that he wrote in 1845, titled â€Å"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass†. It has been said that he followed in the footsteps of Olaudah Equiano who also written an autobiography known as â€Å"Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1789. In the book the â€Å"NarrativeRead MoreThe Classic Slave Narratives: Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano1985 Words   |  8 PagesThe book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturi ng, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligenceRead MoreAdvocates for the Abolition of Slavery: Olaudah Equiano vs. Fredirck Douglass902 Words   |  4 Pagestodays world. However, slaves all around the world were subjected to harsh treatment and grueling tasks like these throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. As a way of spreading accounts of these miserable lifestyles, slaves Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano documented their horrifying experiences and published accounts of them. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano highlight the cruelty towards slaves during the era of realismRead MoreThe Life Of Frederick Douglass And Olaudah Equiano1398 Words   |  6 PagesThe cruel and harsh treatment of slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is something that in today’s millennium a person could not even dream of. S laves were known to be illiterate; however there are few that had the opportunity to be educated and from them society has a small glimpse into the past. There are two slaves in particular that give people a way to see life through their eyes. Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano were two slaves during those times that were forced into theRead MoreThe Great Challenge For Marginalized Writers Essay1681 Words   |  7 Pagesdiscuss  the narrative strategies these writers use to challenge the status quo.   For example, how do they address their audience and get readers from dominant culture on their side? What stories do they tell about themselves or the experiences of those in their marginalized group, and how and why are these stories effective in challenging dominant culture?    The greatest challenge for marginalized writers is to evoke sympathy and support from white readers in their narratives. Writers hadRead More Interpretations of Slavery Essay3734 Words   |  15 Pagesare present in all forms of slavery. Slaves were property and objects, not subjects of the law. Slaves had few rights, always fewer than their owners. Slave were also limited to few social activities and were not allowed to participate in political decisions. Finally, any earnings aquired by slaves by law belonged to their master. Also, slaves were prevented from making their own choices regarding physical reproduction. Western slavery took each of these slave characteristics to a new level and asRead MoreOlaudah Equiano, A British Slave, And Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs, American Slaves Essay1737 Words   |  7 PagesThe autobiographies of Olaudah Equiano, a British slave, and Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, American slaves, highlight the transition from the instituti on of British slavery pre-American Revolution to the 18th and 19th century American plantation slavery. The explicit differences between the two systems suggest unique factors that either promoted or hindered each institution. In Britain, slavery was generally driven by economic factors that relied on trained labor. Growth and expansion ofRead MoreThe Rich Cultural Practices Of Africa966 Words   |  4 Pagesfavoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken† (Equiano, 30-31). In this quotation, Equiano is discussing the rich cultural practices in Africa, when it came to naming. Equiano’s narrative offers some great insight to Africa before his village was invaded, the journey through the middle passage, and the harsh realities of enslavement. Yet, Equiano still chooses to be referred as Gustavas Vassa. In his narrative Equiano refers to how he received the name Gustavas Vassa by his captive againstRead MoreOlaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs Essay1622 Words   |  7 PagesWhen the first nineteen slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, an institution that would last more than two hundred years was created. These first slaves were treated more like how the indentured servants that came to the New World from England were. However, as time passed and the colonies grew larger, so did the institution of slavery. Even after the importing slaves internationally was banned in 1807 by Congress, the internal slave trade expanded exponentially. The growth and durability of slaveryRead MoreEnslavement Disrupted the African’s Authentic Culture Essay1593 Words   |  7 Pagestransplant them in America as slaves. As a result, their authentic cultures were drastically changed from the way of life in their native A frica to life in the plantation society of the Americas. In this essay, I will attempt to show how the conditions of enslavement disrupted all dimensions of the African’s authentic culture. To aid in my analysis, I will be using the â€Å"Reid Culture Conflict Model† as a guide and also drawing upon the works of Olaudah Equiano, Venture Smith, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Jacobs

Child Labor in Africa

Question: What are the major cause of child labour in Africa. select 3 source that will be most useful to you in making this argument. also write a concise summary of each source followed by a short explanation of how this source will contribute on you argument. Answer: Bass, L. E. (2004). Child labor in sub-Saharan Africa. Lynne Rienner Publishers. In this article Bass (2014) addresses his concerns regarding child labor that is prevalent in the sub-Saharan Africa. The article details about the need to study the concept. A detailed report on how the cultural background and the history of the place effects the conception of child labor is given. The report talks about how the triple heritage of Africa has influenced the existence of child labor. The effects of economy on child labor is also discussed with examples of large debt payoffs, AIDS pandemic and so on. A comparison of the rural and urban child labor is made in tabular and map formats to understand the child labor market. A clear discussion on how education and work are the push and pull factors for children in Africa is done by analyzing the literacy rates of children and children workforce percentage. The report also encompasses the analysis of various reports from International Labor Organization and United Nations Higher Commissioner of refugees to examine cases of or phans who take up child labor to fulfill daily needs. Bs, M., Hatly, A. (2008). Child labour in West Africa: Different workdifferent vulnerabilities. International Migration, 46(3), 3-25. The article is a detailed analysis of several surveys conducted in several regions of West Africa to understand the child labor situation. The article has its data based on the war effected children of Voinjama district, children from the alluvial diamond production site, street children from Accra and Bamako. The article compares the child labor situation in each of the above mentioned geographies to understand the economic reasons that lead to child labor. The article states steep school fees and adverse poverty as the main reasons for child labor and provides a detailed understanding on how the war-affected areas have better school attendance compared to areas with high population of street children. Canagarajah, S., Nielsen, H. S. (2001). Child labor in Africa: A comparative study. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 575(1), 71-91. This article by Canagarajah (2001) has analysis the key factors that cause the increase of child labor in Africa. A research undertaken on five African countries is the base for the entire discussion. An understanding as how the most common factor for child labor tends to be poverty is detailed. An understanding on how the economically backward areas have a much higher rate of child labor is provided in the report. However, the author analysis several other factors that are generally overseen, that are indeed great contributors for child labor. The author argues how apart from poverty the cost of education and the related prices effect child labor. The author details the influence of the school fees of primary education, transportation cost, books cost etc. on child labor making these factors a major reason for not sending children to school. The report also highlights minor how capital markets and household composition support child labor.

Bessie Smith Essays - Music, Entertainment, Blues, Bisexual Women

Bessie Smith Essays - Music, Entertainment, Blues, Bisexual Women Bessie Smith Known as the Empress Of Blues, Bessie Smith was said to have revolutionized the vocal end of Blues Music. She showed a lot of pride as an independent African-American woman. Her style in performance and lyrics often reflected her lifestyle. Bessie Smith was one of the first female jazz artists, and she paved the way for many musicians who followed. Bessie was born April 15, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee to a part time Baptist preacher, William Smith, and his wife Laura. The family was large and poor. Soon after she was born her father died. Laura lived until Bessie was only nine years old. The remaining children had to learn to take care of themselves. Her sister Viola then raised her. But it was her oldest brother, Clarence, who had the most impact on her. Clarence always encouraged Bessie to learn to sing and dance. After Clarence had joined the Moses Stokes Minstrel Show, Bessie got auditions. Bessie's career began when she was discovered' by none other than Ma Rainey when Ma's revue, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, was passing through Chattanooga around 1912 and she had the occasion to hear young Bessie sing. Ma took Bessie on the road with the show and communicated, consciously or not, the subtleties and intricacies of an ancient and still emerging art form. (Snow). Bessie started by working small-time traveling tent shows. With the help of Clarence she began her professional career in 1912, and soon became a featured singer. Smith was an established star with the black audiences throughout the south by the time she moved to Philadelphia in 1921. However, two more years would pass before she would begin her recording career. Soon after moving to Philadelphia, Smith supposedly auditioned for Okeh and other recording companies. However, each time the talent scouts would say that her voice was too rough to record. Finally, Columbia Records? Frank Walter signed Smith to a recording contract and set her up in a studio on February 15, 1923. Although there is nothing that survives from her very first recording date, the following date she recorded Gulf Coast Blues and Down Hearted Blues. The record sold more than 750,000 copies that year, making her a blues star. She then married Jack McGee in June 1923. In the mid-twenties she toured the entire south and most of the major northern cities, always as the star attraction on the bill. Smith recorded with a number of noted musicians. These included pianists Fletcher Henderson and James P. Johnson, cornetist Louie Armstrong, saxophonists Coleman Hawkins and Don Redman, and clarinetist Buster Bailey. Many of her earlier songs featured only a piano accompaniment, which allowed sole focus on Smiths vocals. Yet the songs cut with Armstrong featured the two most prominent black recording artists of the 1920s. They worked off each others talents and sang too the blues backdrops while keeping the southern roots. In 1929 Smith recorded the haunting Nobody Knows You When Youre Down and Out, a tune blues historian William Barlow called Smiths personal epitaph and a depression era classic.? She was the highest paid black entertainer and completely booked at $1500 a week. Her more than 150 recordings that followed, some of which sold 100,000 copies i n a week, propelled her to fame and immortality (Sanders). Alberta Hunter stated, Bessie Smith was the greatest of them all. There never was one like her and there'll never be one like here again. Even though she was raucous and loud, she had sort of a tear - no, not a tear, but there was a misery in what she did. It was as though there was something she had to get out, something she just had to bring fore. By 1930 her career began to fade due to the publics changing musical tastes, mismanagement of her affairs, and her heavy drinking. She had started drinking as a teen and drank more heavily as time passed. Columbia dropped her from its roster in 1931. Her last recorded song, Gimme a Pigfoot, was under the direction of talent scout John Hammond in 1933. Smith continued to perform, mostly in the South, although it seemed the classical blues era was over. She was even in a movie