 Yeah, the session I want to present to you is called Value-Based Team Management, so as it was just announced and before we start I wanted to ask you if I start talking very fast or not understandable don't hesitate to raise your hand and make me repeat it or make me explain it more clear because I'm a little bit nervous right now which means I'm freaking out totally therefore I might speak very very fast and not understandable so don't hesitate to interrupt me and ask me to repeat or like whatever to make it more clear to you so and before I'm gonna switch to the content part I want to introduce myself a little to you for you to have an understanding so why am I right person to talk about this topic and actually what the background what experience I've got to choose this kind of theme for the speech so my name is Marina and I come from Russia I work at ADCI Solutions Company and I'm in charge of organizational development because I'm really really passionate about building processes actually from I'm passionate about building something structured out of chaos that's why building some business processes or whatever like this is something which drives me in life a lot and so as I've already told you I come from Russia it's a small city called Omsk which is located 5,600 miles away from here that's my first time in the US first Drupalcon and thanks so I'm speaking also for the first time and this that makes me even more excited about everything what's going on around so I'm really really thankful for you for coming to hear my speech today and during my previous experience I I've been through a lot of team management and team membership experiences and I'm somehow reinvented myself through all of them in order to have some clear view to the team management process at the whole as a team member and as a team leader so in my local city I've been managing my own project team and management and communication department and then I moved to Moscow to work for one year and then I was responsible for managing the distributed team of 26 people so can you imagine distributed team for the whole Russia it was kind of disaster like seven hours damn difference so and all of those experiences may provided me some a picture of how it is better to manage people in order to have them satisfactory from the experience they got and for the team leader to be able to provide such kind of experience but actually it wasn't always like this and I wanted to start with the story of my failure that was the second or third year of university and was my very very first leadership experience ever I didn't know anything about values I didn't know and almost anything about team management itself I was just taught some very very basics and I was said you're okay to lead the team and I guess I'm okay but I wasn't completely and my team didn't perform any results I was organizing personal meetings and team meetings motivational meetings even but nothing worked my people was just nodding like yeah we agree with you but still didn't do anything and I was like I felt really useless in that kind of moment I didn't know what can I do more to engage them as those people to make them feel connected to the project but even it was a very like tough experience to me that was a bright thing in it that that was my first touch point of thinking how the team management can be approached how can the team management can be done in a better way so I started digging deeper from that point in my life and therefore I chose this topic not randomly it is something that really drives me a lot and what I'm gonna present to you today is not something you can just read in some book or whatever it is just a compilation of some approaches some techniques based on my own personal experience in team management and it is all very very connected to the personal values of people in your team so how can you find out what are the personal values of your team members and how you can align those personal values the values of your project in order to create a stronger commitment of each and every of your team members so we will start with a basic flow of team development to have an idea actually what's going on in the team within a different stages and then we will move on and actually talk about values so how you can intersect the personal values of team members with the project values and the values of the world and then we will build up a little bit more on the topic of the values and talk about how to become an influential leader yourself because being a manager and being a leader is the two completely different things and finally I will present to you a little a simple coaching model of structure in your coaching conversation which will help you at the first stages to talk to your team members in order to understand their deeper goals their deeper personal values okay so the first part of our session is the stages of team management so it was developed it was created by Bruce Tuckman in 1960s quite far far away far ago but I do believe that is still relevant by now and when I will explain some stages and the leadership role on each of the stages maybe you will even find some similarities with your previous experience or with experience you are living right now so doesn't even know this kind of model this kind of approach uh-huh two hands a great so you see on the slide this stages it's very easy to remember it's forming stormy Norman and performing all sounds come almost the same and you see some of the fluctuation like everything in life team cycle is always it's not the stable thing of course because it's connected to people and after a couple of years the fifth stage adjoining was added because like it it felt that like leaders involvement on the last very last stage is also needed so to how somehow make a right conclusion to the experience so you cannot even read the slide just trying to imagine you are a leader of a brand new team so maybe people even don't know each other yet so you imagine your first team meeting people don't know each other they don't really understand what they are going to accomplish they keep very positive and polite to each other because it's something new they don't feel really confident in themselves in this situation but they still excited because something in a new chapter of their life is going to happen right now so what's the role of the leader at the stage at first you should set the very clear rules of how they work is going to be accomplished because if you don't do this now most probably on some further stages like storming people will not follow any rules and that may cause some problems to you and in the future here you also should clarify each and everyone's responsibilities each and everyone's area of their duties because again if you don't do this now further on if some unpleasant tasks will appear no one will will want to take it and it's pretty understandable and right away from the very beginning you start talking about personal values how exactly we're gonna do this I will we will talk a little bit later but just notice that talk about values should start right now because if you know the personal values of your team members if you know what drives your team members it will be much easier to you to distribute tasks and to allocate people to different parts of your work making more efficient way so forming is quite a short stage usually and then we move to storming and here is a name says to itself it's everything is just unstable everything is like a storm in the sea so people are overwhelmed with their new responsibilities they maybe even don't know what to do with all of this and but they feel more confident because they just they've already tried to do something they feel like they know what they're doing so that make them push against the boundaries and even challenge your authority as a leader because they're great you're not anymore because yeah that can can happen and if the working approaches of people your team are different it may cause conflicts on this because of this yeah what's another can happen at this stage so if you didn't clarify the goal of the project and the forming stage they may question the team's goal and resist taking on tasks because of it so you see there are a lot of obstacles can can happen on the storming stage and what you're gonna do with this at first when you just have noticed that something big game not stable as it was in the forming stage you should remind the teams your the rules you've said before you just say them you know we're all adults and we all promise to respect those rules so why why don't you do this and it's kind of not honest because we all agreed on this before and that is very important for you as a leader to lead by example because if you don't follow the rules yourself your team will watch you and they won't do this anyway so for leader it is very important to follow the rules you all have said it's quite obvious but sometimes the leader thinks that yeah I'm a leader I'm okay doing whatever I want but my team should follow the rules and you also should stay committed to the goal because if your team sees that you don't really believe in the goal you're all achieved you're all achieving together they will also lose this kind of focus and they will question it a lot yeah so you should also manage conflicts if you see you with any possible means like with personal meetings or like meeting the team all together just reduce tension in any possible way but I believe that your grades in management storming stage so will you move to norming quite fast here the tough times are almost over and your team members resolve the differences and try to start respecting each other they are able to provide constructive feedback not just critics right away in your face they start in socializing together which is great but you should always keep an eye on it because I had in my experience and people were too friendly to each other and then one of them didn't perform and others tend to cover him so here is a leader don't have a clear picture of what's going on in your project anymore because like all the team members cover one or two that don't perform or whatever so it's great if your team got bonded but don't make it too wanted let's say like this yeah and what's role of the leader on the storming stage this all this unstable situation can happen because the team is dealing with something new with something unknown before they are all well overwhelmed and they don't know how to act properly they don't see results in the same way and then on norming that you can you have your first results and that is a huge for motivating people and you should should totally show your team the first results you have and say to them that all we've been through on this heavy storming stage is is not for nothing we have results and we are on the right track and be sure the first result is something that just boosts the performance of your team in very in a great way and but here is again a tricky moment because sometimes it's life and it can happen so that some new difficult task can appear or you should change the direction of your actions or whatever so it will be again a big difficult task and you should anyway feel make your team comfortable not to go back to storming stage from this point so you should still say to them that you know we have results yeah we need to change it or we need to accomplish something more but you are doing great and just keep making this well performing that is my favorite station you will love it as well that is a stage where the unicorns live where the rain was everywhere everything is just amazing your team works really hard they're all already started achieving the team's goal and as you may easily conclude that the role of the leader is to extend this stage as as long as it's possible because it is the highest efficiency you can get through the all the work working on the project and what about the role of the leader here you can finally delegate much of your work because no what no one question your role as a leader anymore and you can concentrate on development of your team members it doesn't mean that you didn't do didn't need to do this at previous stages you did need it to do this and forming and perform storming stages and Norman of course but here you can concentrate on any leadership skills you'd like to develop yourself either it coaching or like better delegating stuff or whatever so it's just it's just great you see your team is working even without you directly involved in each process but all good things eventually come to an end and we have adjoining stage and especially if your team got really bonded because of your all of your efforts they may experience some difficulties in in the end because the future looks really uncertain they don't know which step to take on next and here is a leader should should manage this should facilitate the process of keeping them in touch because I've been in many teams in my life with only in two of them we have we still have this chat in social media which are still we're still communicating a lot even though we live in different continents right now and doing completely different things we are still communicating congratulating each other with birthdays and career promotions and it's really good feeling because we all been through tough experience and now we are really good friends afterwards and here you you're always the leader is also help your team to analyze what they've been through to reinvent themselves somehow because you are the only one who who've been through this particular experience so there are no more people in the world with whom you can discuss it and know exactly what what was going on there so please organize the reflection on what the experience you've got how your team changed through this experience and maybe they started to look at things differently but in our first change in world we don't really have time to do this in our daily life but it's really important and we're slightly moving to the talk about values finally yeah I wanted to present to you like a small really simple model that you can see on the slide three circles of three different different types of values it's personal values companies here can be also project or organizational values depending on what leader you are and the market values so I personally believe that only having all those three circles intersected you can have really efficient amazing project that will satisfy all the stakeholders involved in our organization so either it's your team members or yourself or your company or the world around so let's briefly define each of those circles personal values it is a set of fundamental beliefs that drive the drive behavior and that is very important that values is something that drive behavior of people that means knowing personal values of your team members it will be much easier for you to understand the particular choices this person made and also to anticipate the further behavior so because that is something that will be much more clear to you since you know the personal values and again it will be easier to just distribute tasks because you will know what the person is keen on or or not then the company's values so why the company needs values I believe that company needs values to keep its integrity throughout the years and to fulfill its mission in the end because if you not don't know what you are valuing as a company you don't know the direction of your of your business and market values is a certain demand that exists on the market it's a particular need of the world in the moment yeah so having all those three circles intersected will help you to have the big picture of the impact that your project will create in the world and that will impact that your project will make on the team members in your team so how to apply this model at first you start with your project's values or company's values depending on what what the role you have at the moment because if you're a CEO of the company or the project manager or director of some department or whatever you are the only person who knows everything about this project you are the person who knows what benefits what values this project generates for your team members for the company for the world so it will be very easier for you as a leader to come up with a list of values that your project or your product generates when you're done with this you will move on to market values and here you may probably need to conduct some kind of research to understand whether your product is needed on the market because if you are doing something that nobody else needs so there is a question why are you doing this thing actually because no one else is no one else need this so and when you're done with those two stages you go out to your team and present the results you just get to show them to present to them how the role of your project in the world and in your company and then you need to guide them through the process of their personal values understanding and by that I mean that you can just go to the person ask hey what's your personal values and the person will like have a direct answer it may be like this but it's very rare when the people really think about their personal values and they can answer this right away so you should facilitate the process for them to go through self-understanding and but when you will have all those connected it will be a great experience for all involved parties because yeah your team members will have a clear understanding what the project can provide to them and they will have the clear understanding how their today's action will influence your company and the world tomorrow and that will create a stronger responsibility for their tasks because they will see that if they will call someone today so in two weeks it will appear for some contract or whatever and it will influence your company in that way and then for example you will donate for charity from this money this this amount of money and they will see this kind of circumstances of their today's actions you know before before coming joining ADCI solutions I've been working for four years in non-profit organizations so it is a kind of a big organization and when I was thinking about it on part of my responsibilities was to motivate people to work 24 hours a day seven days a week for free and then I was thinking it's gonna be I think it's it's hard it's hard job you know to motivate people to work for free but when I then I joined the commercial company and I thought it will be much easier because people get paid for the job it's gonna be easier to motivate them to work you know but it appeared in completely opposite way because sometimes people tend to suppress their personal values for the sake of making money and it's fine there are different different life situation but I still recommend you to go deeper in that to ask the person why he or she needs money and to understand real reason of it because connecting a person to the project based on values as money and based on values as for example in you know family or harmony or whatever else it's completely different approach of connecting the person to your project because if you surround yourself with people who values money it is not stable situation in the long-term perspective because if those people are offered more money in another company they will switch like this and it's fine because they they were that is something that they were looking for but if you connect people by their life values to your project or to your company they will stay with you even during the hard times and it will be much more stable a long-lasting company and you it yes it takes time to find those people it takes time to get them connected to your company but you will certainly see how it will benefit you in the long-term perspective on the picture you see my previous team we are all wearing the same hoodies we look like baseball team especially we're if we're flying somewhere all together 15 of us you can see me next to the tallest guy I used to have red hair that time yeah that was not profit organization and we needed to we had just one year to change all processes in the organization that that have that have been built for 25 years before and we wanted to change all of this and we did understand that we need a clear vision that will unite all those 15 people throughout the whole year to complete this goal and we allocated two days in a row to come up with just one statement that will motivate each and every of us and after those two days we had a statement which sounded like belief in a better Russia stand to be the change since we wanted to change everything for the better Russia yeah and that was just one phrase that motivated all of us to wake up every day into work hard every day to achieve this vision and moreover that should that was going that was supposed to motivate not only us 15 but the whole national plenary of our organization the whole 25 cities and people in all of this and we did and we did this we achieved our vision by the end of the year it was just amazing and I can imagine if we if we didn't do this what would happen so don't use your time to to do this and you I'm sure that you will see the results of it it is just because people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it and that is a quote of Simon Sinek our next hero of our presentation and he came up with a model called Golden Circle has anyone heard about it maybe yeah good and before moving on with this I wanted to ask you first so in terms of doing something how do you think what's more important why are you doing this how are you going to achieve it or what actually are you doing so please raise your hands those who think that why are you doing think is the most important yeah who thinks that how are you going to do this is most important no one and what are you doing is the most important yeah that's great but I'm I don't want to disappoint you on this but you all are wrong I'm sorry but Simon says that you actually need to balance all those three answers so he says that you should apply two principles to this model as the first one is this balance because if you know why are doing things but you don't do anything you can't you don't have physical manifestation of your why of your reason in the real world and people don't know what are what are you as a person and again if you're doing something without knowing why are you doing this it's again some random things and which don't reflect it doesn't reflect yourself and the second principle is that you should always start from why in in that terms you were partially right because that is the first question you should address to yourself why are you doing this so you should first have a clarity of why where a why is a set of fundamental beliefs the values the core values of yourself then you should have the discipline of how where how is a set of actions that you're going to achieve to realize your why and you should always have the consistency of what where what is actually the tangible results the manifestations of your why in the real world and Simon says that if you have all those questions answered and all those questions in balance you will become that influential leader because anything you do will reflect yourself so every action that you will take up further on will reflect your personal values and therefore people will look at you will look at what you do and they will understand whether they want to join you by their values or no and that will help you to surround yourself with like-minded people and when I used this model I looked back and my failure as example I told you in the very beginning and understood that I was when I was organized this motivational meeting I never told my people why is this project important to me and I never asked them why this project is important to them I was just telling them about what what we are going to achieve what benefit they will get what the numbers are behind the goal and so on is that that is nothing to do with motivation you know because it's real really motivate you from the inside is your personal values is something that you're stand for so yeah maybe if I was had this talk with my team that time it it would be different that time so again question to you please raise your hands those who knows your why right now yeah I'm happy to see your hands because sometimes when I ask this question like a one-third of the audience raises hands and it's like I don't know because I personally believe that before leading someone somewhere you need to know where you go in yourself and it will be very honest to people because if you're leading a team to achieving some goal the team vision or whatever but you actually don't know why is it is that needed for you it's like it's just weird to me and actually at first when I started to ask myself this question it was very difficult to answer I did spend time on it but when you do this repeatedly all the time it will become your new habit and you won't be able to live without it anymore because it will be something natural for you so when you will make some new choices it will just come to your mind automatically it's just amazing so conscious decisions are the best you know yeah well so I talked a lot today about why is it important to connect your team members to your project by values but I didn't tell you actually how to understand the person's values and now it's the time to talk about this so I wanted to present to you the grow model it is a simple and elegant model of structuring your coaching conversation created by Sir John Whitmer in 1980s so yeah a lot of old models today but they do work I promise and the first letter G stays for the goal and when you start your coaching conversation with your coach you ask him or her the question what do you want easy and when the person asked this answer this question you should ask one more question which is what else do you want and that will be the source of insights for you about the actual goal of this person because what's your goal is like yeah I want to team event management skills I want the programming skills yeah it's all bullshit please tell me why do you need this actually why do you need project management skills and that will be completely different answer and when you and you very clear on the goal you're going to achieve you move to reality so you have your goal and you have you're now here so you should have a very detailed description of the current situation what skills this person have has to achieve the goal what skills this person still lacks what circumstances will push you to your goal and what what of them will hold you back so very very clear understanding of the current situation and when you're done with this you move to options and here is the time for brainstorming so here you should just describe all possible strategies that you can have to achieve the goal anything possible and impossible so here don't limit yourself in any kind of way and after you you think that you you're done with this you have all possible strategies you move to wheel and you choose what will be the most appropriate one out of those you just created and what's also good about this model is that you can always go back if you feel that you you lost some ideas from the previous stages you freely go to the first or second and just discuss it again for example if your coachy comes up with the strategies and you feel like this person is some lost the direction go back to the goal discuss it again maybe you just didn't do this until the end and then move back to options and further on yeah and it's very important to not to forget the difference between teaching and coaching because in teaching you are the teacher you have your student and you are the only source of information and you are the one who provides the right choices the right options to the person and in coaching you are the one not who provides right answers but you're the one who asks right questions and that is actually much more difficult than just providing right this right answers because you know right answers it's obvious you're the leader of the project you know it but allowing your team members to come up with their own strategy will create a real commitment of this person to achieve the strategy because it is something that he or she created him or herself not just given from somewhere so yeah so that is a very very simple model you can start applying even today because yeah just structure your talk to your people in that way and it will it will be rewarded one day actually when I started to use it at first it was very difficult not to say the right answer yeah but anyway now it's working so what we've been through today is all already moving to the conclusion so we've got the idea of team development stages that you need to shorten the forming and storming stages as tiny as you can and enlarge the performance stage because that is a peak of the efficiency that you can get out of the steam and start talking about values right in the first stage because otherwise you will lose this moment then we understood that you need to align personal organizational and market values in order to create a stronger commitment and to create a long lasting company surrounded with people who believe what you believe and then we understood that first you should actually know your own values before leading people somewhere and to become a real influential leader and to reflect yourself to all the activities you are gonna accomplish and we just go through the grow model and understood how to assess the real personal goals real personal values of your team members well so being leader is hard it is hard and you know it's hard because if you're a leader you cannot stop being a leader I'm sorry we're all our people and sometimes we want to relax don't do things that accurately as we used to because yeah we're tired but you cannot do this anymore I'm sorry because your team is gonna watch you all the time and they will copy your behavior because you are the role model for your team members but even though it's hard it is rewarding because in the end of the project when you will see how much your team members grew from the experience you have provided to them how they changed to the opportunities you created for them it is I don't know I can't describe this feeling even in my own language you know because it is something that I cannot compare to anything it's just reward you I'm sure you will want to get in the end of the project because if you if your team members became better than you in some parts of the processes you were a great leader you did really great job don't be afraid that people started to be better than you it's it's not nothing to compare because you became better as a leader and they became better as professionals so you work together to achieve the great things so I wish you to start being a leader today and to see how it will influence your company in future yeah so that is the end of my speech and I'm ready to answer your questions thank you I understand the question has everyone heard that the question was if one person has a really negative attitude no matter what even though this person has a great skill set so what to do in this kind of situation I had such experiences and I'm first I would recommend actually to talk with this person face-to-face and first very like in polite way and this person doesn't understand in a harsh way because sometimes it can help so just tell us directly so what are you going to achieve by this kind of behavior and if if during the conversation you will understand that this person is pursuing the other goals completely opposite the that your team is going to achieve that maybe it is better to continue without this person because the negative attitude will influence the mood of the team and the team will will not perform as the top even because the attitude I believe that the attitude is is more important than the skill set because you can educate people and but you cannot change their attitude and other team they maybe the better fit for me it's very hard to like fire people or whatever but sometimes it's needed for the sake of the team any other questions yeah yeah thanks the question was that if the person is not motivated but you cannot fire him or remove them right they get your okay yeah that can happen and that is very difficult situation but I believe that again a very honest talk can help because you will just say the person to the person I will be completely honest to you that is the project that is the situation we all are facing so let's not I don't spread the negative attitude to anyone and try let's try to benefit both of us out of this project because anyway we're all are people and it can happen like this so if you cannot if you cannot stop feeling this negative just please don't show it to the rest of the team because it is not not fair for them because they are really motivated they want to achieve it and you just distracting them from achieving their personal goals so if you don't like the project don't punish people around you for this actually we have in our current team one person who doesn't like anything so any activity I suggest he just doesn't like and he writes in the common chat like yeah I don't like this activity yeah it sucks whatever and just I just wrote to him okay if you have that negative it right to me not to everyone I'm okay to listen to your like negative emotions but please don't ruin the positive one for all the team okay so if there are no other questions so I will be here around so you can approach me I can talk are you have question yeah yeah yeah if I get you right so if the team tends to avoid one one of the person one person of the team right try to not like him right so I I had a similar experience in the previous team so there was one one girl in the team and others couldn't find approach to work with her and they tried to not to work with her at all so they yeah so I just put them together and one table and I had a very strict talk to them because actually I just told them that we are here to achieve something great together that you're behaving like a children in the kindergarten you know because actually finding approach to other people is a part of the team experience and if you're avoiding this experience you are you won't get it anywhere else so for example the role of this girl was to organize all the logistics for the event and I said to her that if you are the person who needs to set relationships with other stakeholders to achieve your projects goal but you cannot set right relations with your team members and the team members also cannot said that because if you how to explain this yeah the main idea that the finding the right approach to people is a part of team experience and if you're isolated from this you are like you're just missing something out of this experience actually was I was when I was applying to become the vice president for communications in my city back then everyone told me you're going to work with this president she's not good don't apply you won't like it and I was like what are you talking about I mean this is a part of the experience if enough even if I don't like it I don't want to miss this opportunity just because of that yeah and it's actually we are best friends now I think yes because when you get new people you again start from forming there I think you should start the cycle for this person from the very beginning you should you should assess the personal values of this new team new team member and to understand how the this team new team member will fit to the current team because yeah for this person it will be all very very fast going but it may also cause some conflicts and it may push your team to the storming stage and it's I think it's partially starts from the beginning I guess because just one person can make a difference you know okay we still have some time yeah how to get feedback to me as a leader from the team if they are shy to tell it right away we did the Google forms anonymous Google forms so we feel that actually I tried to create this kind of atmosphere in the team but it's it's good to provide feedback because you know there is a several types of providing feedback and I use the one which call which is called plus Delta you say we first say positive thing I like you're doing this but I think you need to improve this in the future so that's feedback doesn't offend anyone and people are tend to really change according to such a feedback of course if you say you're you suck in this that's kind of feedback is going to be perceived like a critics and the people of the person won't change out of such a feedback so yeah and my team now my team members can come to me and said Marina what should I do it and it's completely fine because we have such a close relationships and it's I think it's better for the team yeah but actually there is one when you when you're on storming stage and you see that there is a lot of conflicts in between all the team members and you cannot do anything and they conflict with you with each other and everything goes just a complete disaster there is a one exercise which called hot chair and for this exercise you need to have an external moderator because and you are the one you will participate as a part of the team so you have a chair and one person of the team or you sit on this chair and all the rest provide critics because when you are contacting you are not able to provide this positive kind of feedback anymore so and the moderator should be very good one to have this to achieve the real good outcome out of this exercise so every person of the team sits on the chair and receives the opinion about him or herself and usually it helps to reduce tension because people just put all the negativity away and usually afterwards everyone cries and everyone thinks like yeah everyone team we all have our like weak sides but we are together let's do this and so on but it will depend on the moderator of course because if the moderator is not that well you can just finish up without a team yeah and that is a good point because as I said that a journey stage is a final one you should have this reflection on the experience you've just got because it's very important to understand what what actually you've just been through yeah okay anyone else okay if no yeah actually I didn't have such experience but I guess it's better to organize this kind of understanding the values in the very first stage and then just have the rules about what the next leader that next leaders behavior is going to be be like what's the role and I know I guess it's all about this very this particular team and the setting rules on the kind of initial stage of how it might be someone else can share about this yeah