Rosie Sherry (@rosie) and I had a chat with Chris Henderson from Dunelm the other day. He talked about their dedicated learning days, quality engineering leadership team days, quarterly events, plus many supportive things.
Another one stood out. A commitment to letting people work wherever it fits into their workday. He mentioned that some folks work from home full-time and come into the office every so often. Whilst others choose to be full-time in an office. And all sorts of other setups. Great stuff!
How can leaders set up a healthy work environment? What examples do you have at your workplace? What are you doing as a leader to amplify healthy working?
That is a good listā¦and I could do better with 1 and 3. the rest are fairly embedded.
My learning as a leader has really come from all my mistakes as a young leader, trying to find out what kind of leader I wanted to be and grasping at principles to see if theyād fit me and the organisation I was in - fixing mistakes and/or leaving organisations along the way. Iām considering doing my first article on that as there are many pivotal mistakes/learnings I made that lead me to be the leader I am now. Iām a better leader now than Iāve ever been, but I can always get better.
So a few things that we do, by no means exhaustive - the simple principle being we care about each otherās well being and success:
During the pandemic we became remote, so we started the day for all testers to know what weāre all doing with a short update to a team slack channel, whether we needed help, whether we were open to help others etc. Thats carried on today as weāre still remote.
We have a monthly team meeting. It is nothing to do with project work, thats managed by the sprint ceremonies. This meeting is about ensuring everyone has a say, shares what theyāve learned, kicks off open discussions and an āask me anythingā where I will give my honest opinion - on rare occasions I may be cornered to say āRight now I canāt answer thatā but they know at least Iām being honest.
We try and fight silos of knowledge. We have a number of products with testers being the āgo toā tester - so we work hard to break those silos down and share that knowledge. We want people to have the freedom to book holidays without having to check their workload and also to feel supported so the pressure on certain release deliveries is not all on them.
When people are dealing with their health issues, that benefits everyone. So no pressure from me, I give them the time to get back to full fitness. The organisation helps with that obviously, so if we honour our caring culture, it doesnāt stop when people are ill. Thats stressful enough.
Trust and empowerment are also at the heart of our day to day working. My job is to support people, not tell them what to do. I respect them 100% as experts and I just help them consider options. If they need me to get my hands dirty, then they can tell me what to work on. All the time, they take the responsibility and grow with it.
Finally, being remote we have organisation meetups, team meetups and donut sessions. We need to see each other, we need to talk about more than work. People need to feel valued beyond just work, which is down side of being remote. So we make sure we connect and work to put smiles on each others faces.
Probably a lot more subtle things here and there, but being passionate about each others care and health is what its all about.
This is such an important point - the best leaders Iāve worked under have provided a degree of freedom to take things in a certain direction, offering support as/when required.
One that comes to mind for me:
support for irregular working hours - this is a game changer for work/life balance. I am fully remote with two young kids, itās nice to be able to take a couple of hours here and there when I need to and then make the time up later without the fear of it going against you.
Something Iām trying to do more of is to set a good example. Iām very good at telling people not to work too late, or take the day off if theyāre sick, for example, but I wasnāt always good at doing those things myself.
So now I show people that these things are okay by doing them myself, and being open about that fact:
Keeping overtime to a minimum
Taking a full lunch break every day
Taking time off if Iām sick
Using our dedicated time for learning - to learn
Praising others
Admitting mistakes and owning growth areas
ā¦
Itās all well and good to talk about a good culture / work environment, but whatās important is that people actually live it.
the rest are fairly embedded.
on that as there are many pivotal mistakes/learnings I made that lead me to be the leader I am now. Iām a better leader now than Iāve ever been, but I can always get better.