Summary: Seth Bartholomew, the Global Head of Employee Experience at Chronosphere, shares insights on building elite teams with spiky individuals. He emphasizes the importance of clear vision, building on strengths, and maintaining flexibility in roles. Seth discusses the role of a manager in observing and assessing strengths, as well as providing support for improvement. He highlights the significance of establishing communication norms, setting clear expectations, and fostering a solution-oriented mindset. Seth also emphasizes the value of regular feedback conversations and quarterly performance assessments.

Key Takeaways:

Building a team starts with a clear vision and understanding of the functions and strengths required.

Focus on building people's strengths and maintaining flexibility in roles to align with their strengths and career goals.

Assess strengths by observing where individuals light up and naturally gravitate towards during interviews and onboarding.

Establish communication norms and preferences as a team to maximize efficiency and collaboration.

Open up lines of communication to empower team members and avoid becoming a bottleneck.

Encourage a solution-oriented mindset and provide opportunities for autonomy and decision-making.

Conduct regular feedback conversations and quarterly performance assessments to understand strengths, areas for improvement, and career aspirations.

Chapters:

00:01:00 Employee experience encompasses the entire employee lifecycle

00:03:00 Building teams based on strengths and traits

00:05:00 Flexibility in roles and reassigning functions

00:08:00 30-60-90 day onboarding process

00:00:11 Remote work challenges

00:13:17 Providing clear expectations of performance

00:16:33 Development and career paths for team members

00:18:45 Regular feedback conversations

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Thanks for joining us, Seth.

Seth Bartholomew: Yeah, thanks CT. Thanks for having me.

CheeTung Leong: So Seth, tell me a little bit more about your role and particularly what employee experience means at Chronosphere.

So for me, it's really looking at experience from the day that they're on boarded. Even beyond that from the day that they're a candidate all the way when they're off boarded, ensuring that they have a positive experience throughout that life cycle, that they are engaged, there's job satisfaction. That's what employee experience encompasses for me.

CheeTung Leong: It seems like there's some parts of it that deal with kind of workplace, some parts of it that deal with organizational development. For Chronosphere, does this sit under the PeopleOps function or is this kind of a separate thing?

Seth Bartholomew: It is, no, it's under the PeopleOps function. So we, we are part of the people team and we've got hRBP function, we've got learning and development, total rewards, compensation and then employee experience. And it's, pretty collaborative across all the functions, but yeah, we do sit under the people function.

Seth Bartholomew: The first, part of it for any leader when you're, developing a team is really be clear about your vision.

What is your team responsible for? Think about all the facets, all the functions that, that go into that. And then build out your your vision for your department, your vision for your org based on that. When I look to build a team. There's a couple things.

One is I do want to ensure that they have the requisite experience and the know how and the skill set to perform the function. But really, what I'm looking for are strengths and traits, right? So like, how will they fit into that larger vision of a team? And then, you want to think as much as possible about not only can this person perform the functions of job, will they be successful in that job, but how will they work with other people, the team how will they work in terms of your vision for scaling and growth?

of what their strengths are, what they're capable of. And as you work with that person, as you develop a relationship with that person, you're going to start to get a better sense of what their strengths are. So sometimes it makes sense to pivot a little bit in terms of what they're responsible for or assigning projects that align with their strengths and their overall career goals.

CheeTung Leong: This is something that I'm super interested about because imagine you're going to the market to hire some talent and you put together you have this vision for what the team does and you've got a job description. The way to think about it maybe is to hire for extreme strength, right?

Do you have to get someone else on the team to pick up that slack or do you just change that job description?

Seth Bartholomew: I think there's a few things. One is in an ideal scenario, you can build people's strengths, right? You can restructure roles. You can move people around as you need to, but we don't always work in an ideal world. Part of it is management. If somebody's just. Terrible with something you want to give them the opportunity to improve. You want to work with them as a leader to ensure that they have the support they need to improve at a certain point.

Sometimes, unfortunately it's just not a good fit. And I think it's, that's a tough decision for every manager to, to make when they get to that point, decide what's best for the team. And sometimes individuals just aren't a great fit and you have to make a shift.

CheeTung Leong: I'm glad you talked about fit as well, because from Strengths don't always exist in isolation.

So strengths typically are relevant to the particular team in particular context of the job. So how do you go about assessing strength? Is it purely performance driven? Or is there some kind of latent performance potential that you recognize is maybe not unlocked yet because of the context and because of the situation.

They enjoyed that project. So I think you as a manager need to look for those signals, right? Where does the person really light up? What do they naturally gravitate to? What do they enjoy? And that helps you build out a path, right? Because you can see, all right I know this person really enjoys this.

They will probably do well at this and then from there it's performance management and it's having one on one conversations in terms of figuring out, does this project fulfill you? Are you really excited by this? Did you do well at this? Did you do very poorly?

Maybe this isn't the best fit for you, that kind of thing. So I think it's initially having identifying or observing human behavior and watching where they they naturally gravitate towards where they light up when they're talking about certain things. And then from there as a manager, it's just it's that performance management aspect, right?

How are they performing? How do they do on this deliverable? What do they naturally get excited about when they propose ideas when they propose projects? What are the types of projects that they're proposing? So I think it's both sides of that.

You have maybe 30, 60, 90 days, however many days it is. And you're watching them in the wild interacting with the rest of the team. And watching the team interact with them as well. Because that dynamic also plays a part in whether or not these strengths can blossom. So as a manager, it's obviously a very complex job.

How do you, personally deal with that onboarding process and making sure that those new strengths that you're hiring for on paper while they compliment the rest of the team. How do you make sure that they actually manifest in a way that's helpful to the team?

The 60 days, the next phase is really about starting to form that plan, starting to socialize the ideas. You've now ascertained this is working really well, we don't necessarily need to lean in here, but this is. An area where I think we can do better. And so when I'm onboarding an employee at that 60 day point, that's when I'm starting to look for, what are those suggestions? What do what did you initially glean from that 30 days?

And then in the 90 days, that's when we want to start implementing. So you've you've looked at what I've given you in terms of a structure, what I've wanted you to focus on. The stakeholders I wanted you to meet with at that 90 day point, that's when I'm looking for an employee to come back to me with, Hey, these are the recommendations.

That's how I look at that first 90 day period for onboarding is it's really a I guess the best way to put it is a learning get to know you period for both parties, but it's it does give you that sense. You can clean in that first 90 days. Where does a person naturally gravitate towards?

Where do they feel really comfortable? And where are their strengths? It's not perfect. And you've obviously 90 days is you're going to get more information, 6 months, a year, 2 years working with some people. But I do think there's a lot you can glean in that first 90 days.

Seth Bartholomew: So it's interesting. We are remote first. We have hub offices and we have some people that work in offices. We offer coworking options so people can utilize coworking space when they need to. But yeah the most of us are remote and this is actually the second on my previous job. I had started remotely as well when I was at Hulu.

I actually find. it's easier to assess in a remote and virtual setting. You've got to maximize your team time as a leader, right?

So you get, you can't just walk up to somebody's desk anymore. You can slack and you can ask people if they've got time, but that those like really easy, quick moments of just, Hey, I just wanted to run this by you walk up somebody's desk, talking to them that's not there anymore. So I think it forces you to maximize your time in one on one.

There's a lot of things that aren't necessarily core to work or their development of their growth. And so for me, I think it's a little bit easier in a virtual setting because you're really focused on maximizing the time you have with people, ensuring that you're going into that meeting with a very clear agenda, very clear objectives, this is what we want to accomplish. So the rules for a manager those, traits and those rules don't change versus if you're in an in person setting or a virtual setting I think it takes more effort and more focus to lead a team in a virtual setting. But I I do think there are parts of it that are easier because you're so focused when you in on maximizing the time you have with people when you're on camera.

Seth Bartholomew: Absolutely. Especially if you've ever worked in an open office setting. I remember trying to get a conference room and there's no conference room booked and oh, hey, let's just go grab this phone booth here. And then you're in an awkward situation where you're two feet away from each other. So I feel like at least for me, it's easier for me to focus on what's important and to maximize those meetings .

CheeTung Leong: That's super interesting, stripping away all the distractions. I'm going to segue a little bit into the the process for once you've built that team of spiky individuals how do you go about managing them?

Seth Bartholomew: The first step is as much as possible as a team, you want to establish your operating and your communication norms, right?

So you want figure out what your team's different communication preferences, styles are and find a compromise there, right? And establish that as a team. So everybody's got buy in. So it's not me just saying this is how we're going to work. It's us together deciding how we're going to work. So it's a little bit democratic in that sense.

And then I think my role as a leader is I've got to provide the vision. I've got to provide clear expectations. What do I consider a high performer? What do I consider a low performer? What do I think people need to work on? What is the career path for them to take? What is the next step in development? So all of those things it's my job to supply that vision.

And then the other part of it, because you mentioned communication, is I want to as much as possible open up the lines of communication for the team. I don't want people to use me as a funnel to get to each other, right? Like I want the team to work together. So are there opportunities for cross collaborative projects where I can get them working together, talking together, and then coming back to me with an idea for recommendation?

And that even goes beyond my team. I I don't want my team to feel like they have to go through me to communicate with you see this a lot where direct reports feel like they have to go to their manager in order to communicate with one of their manager's peers. And as much as possible, I just want to open those lines of communication.

I want people to feel empowered to be autonomous and that autonomy comes with. They know what the prioritization is. They know so they know how to prioritize projects when they're juggling multiple things. They know what the vision is. They know what our strategic objectives are as a team, which is all my job as a manager.

Seth Bartholomew: It's different in a remote environment, right? So I think with one on ones, I'm big on agendas, right?

Because I want to know going into that meeting what people are thinking about where they're having challenges where they're stuck. So by looking at their agenda ahead of time, I can come in with some thoughts. And we can have them we can maximize that conversation and I'm big on weekly one on ones.

You need to be touching base of your team, especially in a remote setting on a pretty regular basis. But I don't want one on ones to be, I don't want them to be just purely updates. I want to have conversations. I want to focus on areas they're stuck in. I want to focus on their development. Where can I help?

We don't have to necessarily have a meeting for everything, but I do like at least once a week, we have a one to one check in 30 minutes to an hour. Let's talk about the big picture things. Because I think that you want that connection to be there.

Team meetings. I'm a big fan. In a virtual setting of doing them bi weekly on a bi weekly cadence. Sometimes you need to do it more than that. But the reason I like bi weekly is again, we you're touching base with your team on a weekly basis. And look, sometimes a team meeting is not enough. We have to schedule extra time and work on a project initiative and it just helps to get everybody on a call, that kind of thing.

CheeTung Leong: Async communications you're, referring to things like chat video recordings, like screen grabs.

Seth Bartholomew: Exactly. Working on a shared doc, commenting, editing, things like that, to where we don't necessarily have to talk in real time. Because the other thing is we're, for our company, we're pretty distributed. We're distributed across the US. We've got EU teams. We've got some employees in Australia.

CheeTung Leong: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've got a bunch of notes here from our conversation. Basically, if you're looking to build an elite team of spiky individuals, I've got seven key steps here and then I'd love if you could validate that and add anything, right?

So the first one sounds like establishing team communication norms, clear expectations of high and low performance. The second is having that weekly one on ones with agendas. So with your team to be able to keep them on the same page and help unblock any problems that you have with them. The third one is leaning into asynchronous communications.

And fourth bi weekly team meetings. So all these form that structure for team management that you have and you can help debug any concerns that arise.

Six is around opening up lines of communication. Don't be that bottleneck and that, that funnel and everything has to go through you. And then the last one, which I really like is having a, solution orientation in the mindset for your team. So that you're always looking to find ways to do things better.

Always find, trying to find ways to solve problems. Is there anything else beyond this that you, want to condense and add?

Seth Bartholomew: The one thing I would add to is a regular cadence of feedback conversations, right? So like informal feedback. So it's every one on one there should be some sort of feedback component to them.

But what I'm talking about is some companies do an annual feedback. Process. Some people do biannual, we actually do quarterly. So every three months we're looking at each quarter's performance. Because I think it's one, it's helpful as a manager. And I think the biggest thing for me is with a feedback conversation is I wanna know how they feel about their performance.

That's a big part of it is like, where did you feel really proud this quarter? What was the work that you want to highlight? Because that'll help you figure out what they're passionate about, what they really enjoy doing and what they're proud of.

CheeTung Leong: That's super cool. Thanks so much for sharing your insights, Seth. I feel like we could go on for quite a bit more longer, but if people want to find you to ask a little bit more about what you've shared today, what's the best way for them to do.

Seth Bartholomew: I'm on LinkedIn. So feel free to reach out to me. I love talking to people.

CheeTung Leong: Thanks so much, Seth, and thanks for hanging with us today. For those of you who are listening, I hope you enjoyed the show and all the insights that Seth has shared with us today. Make sure you drop us a review. Tell us if we're doing great. If we're not doing great, tell us as well. I'd love to hear how we can improve.

And tune in next time to the HR Impact Show. I've been CT. Thanks so much for listening