 Okay. I see we are on the hour now, according to my clock, so I will go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone to the manager session on how to give performance review feedback. So I think everyone should have links to everything. If you don't, please let me know. I think they're all in the invite and I'm seeing you all in the different documents that we have sent out. So I wanted to have this topic because I thought it was quite timely as we're in our performance review current performance review process. I want to just go through what we're going to cover and I started off with an update to the handbook with some tips on what to do and don'ts as a good starting point. Then I've asked for help from Ernst. He and I are going to do a role play together and I think you probably have access to the script. So if you want to take a look at that and you can follow on and add any comments or notes that you have. Then I just want to point out a couple of issues that are open and then obviously we'll open it up to discussion based on what we've talked about and the role plays and everything else. So at any point please jump in with anything that you want to add, anything that I'm talking about that doesn't make sense. I believe that our Barbie is joining this call so I'm really pleased about that and hopefully she can help and jump in and add any insights that she has as well. So on to the next slide I'll go to the handbook. So as I said I've added a few points there just to sort of get us started for our discussion a bit later. The first point I want to highlight is that there shouldn't be any surprises at the performance review meeting people should not be hearing about either positive or negative feedback for the first time at the performance review. I actually have a bit of a horror story myself about that. It's a bit of a situation that happened to me not thankfully not that get lab in my previous roles when I first started out in HR I was given. I had a meeting with my manager and we didn't have one on ones. I had no clue about my performance how I was doing and and we had a performance review meeting where I was absolutely flawed. I had no clue about my performance and it was absolutely terrible and I can't stress enough that horrible feeling when you just have no clue about what's going to happen. But I think we can safely assume that that's not going to be the case at get lab. The other point is obviously to share the performance review ahead of the meeting with the persons they have a chance to read it through and they can prepare for the discussion and take some notes. And also you as the manager should be prepared ahead of the meeting so that you have your own discussion points that you want to go through. And you should be also prepared for you may have some disagreements, which is fine. It's not necessary that you agree on every single point. And that's something again that that's what the meeting is for. So I won't go through all of this you can take a look at it and again, comments, questions, please let us know what they are so we can discuss them together. And I think we can go back to the role play and and if you're on standby. I just want to set the scene a little bit so and is my manager in this scenario and we're going to go through an example of a really not really bad a bad meeting book or a bad meeting and I am in the support team. So apologies Lee and that and I want to be support engineers and we're going to go through this example. So when you're when you're ready. Sure, ready. So here goes. Hi Abby thanks for taking the call. This is for your performance review. I just finished typing it. Let me just send it your way on Slack. Hang on. Here it comes. There. Please open that up take a look. Have you got it. Yeah. So we're going to have a call another time or. Oh no I think we should just talk about it now you know just go ahead read it and then we'll talk about it. Or if you want I can just jump right in. Okay, yeah, let's let's do it. So you know as you as you can read in the doctor's a couple things I wanted to highlight things that I think are going well things I think are not going well. You know, I just want to point out that generally I think you're doing you're doing really well feedback has been wonderful from customers. You you're answering lots of tickets you have a good satisfaction rating from the customers. But last month you really you really kind of screwed up with customer X and you got upset at them. It's not professional the way you followed up with them. Some really really disappointed there. And I want you to work on it. So that's important. But it's also important to note that I then noticed later on that with customer why you did a great job again. Okay. That's I'm really surprised because you I don't think we did. Well, I know we didn't discuss this at my one on one I would have remembered. And I don't think we actually talked about it at all. I mean why why is that. Well, I'm a little surprised you're surprised I thought you knew this, but in any case, you know, we're talking about it now. So, you know, this is the reality we have to deal with. It is the case. And, you know, so it is relevant for to review your performance. Right. So let's let's talk about it though. Let's talk about how we can get you through this and what you can focus on in the coming months to to get better at it and sort of to prevent this from happening again. So specifically, you know, with this snafu with customer X, I want you to to make that right. I want you to reach out to the customer and apologize and make sure you stay on them until the problem is resolved. And I think it's also a good idea if you complete training on GitLab CI. I know you started that not long ago, but I'd like you to to finish that up as quickly as you can. I think you should be able to do it by the end of next week. And yeah, I think that that'll put you on a good track. So what do you think? Do you have any questions? Not right now. I guess I should read this a bit more carefully. And oh, yeah, I'm well, I'm just really shocked. But I get it. You know, I need to improve. And I'll come back to you if I need any further help. All right. Well, wonderful. Great call. Thank you. Have a great day. And end of that scenario. Any thoughts questions at this point anybody wants to jump in before we go to the good meeting. I'm not seeing anything yet. So I think we can go back into character and for the for the next one. It's a different character. I have to reset my brain. Hang on. All right. Hopefully this one is a little closer to who I actually am. All right. Abby, time for your performance review. Thanks for joining the call. Did you have time to read the performance review ahead of this call? I did. Yes. Great. So I want to take this time to discuss the feedback with you. I think probably the best way to do it is just to go through the reviews section by section and discuss as we go. Thank you. Yeah, sounds good. All right. So starting at the top first section, let's focus on results at the value of results. And I'm glad to see we're in agreement that your performance meets expectations. And we both agree on that. I think it's worth pointing out that if you'd like to exceed expectations, then that's really going to have to come from following more training and leveling up your skills. Practicing on difficult situations. You know that we've discussed this in one of the ones before we've we specifically touched on get lab CI. And so yeah, so just wanted to bring that up in this context as well. Have you been able to start the training? Is there anything I can do to support that training? Let me know. Yeah. So yeah, we discussed this before and I've already started the training and it's going really well so far. But I know if I need any help, I can reach out. Great. Great. All right, thanks. Then on the next section about collaboration. We should talk about this one because we don't seem to be fully aligned on your performance there. You mark yourself as exceeding expectations. I've marked you as below expectations. So let me explain my reasoning there and I'll ask you for yours. So my reasoning is that you have been collaborating obviously with other members of the support team. I see that. But I haven't seen a lot of cross collaboration, you know, people pinging you or you pinging others in other teams. So I'm getting the sense that you're sort of staying on an island in some sense. And to me, of course, collaboration is across the company, not just within a small section of the company. So that's where my score comes from. But where does yours come from? So what's your perspective? So my perspective on collaboration is that, you know, we have lots of issues and I'm contributing in those issues and I'm pinging people across the company who I think can handle this or they should be handling this. And I think that's collaboration, isn't it? When you know that perhaps someone else needs to do this and you don't, you just get them and you ping them and that's it. That's like collaborating, picking things up as a team. Well, it's part of collaborating, right? To make sure you pull in the people who can help you move things along. But there's more to it than that. So why don't we talk about what we mean with collaboration? And let me just actually see if there's more about this described in the handbook. We go to the handbook. We read the topic about collaboration. Right, so as I'm reading it there, that aligns with my, you know, what I believe collaboration should mean. And amongst other things there, you see the bullet point about, you know, being able to do things yourself if you can and taking ownership in a sense. So, you know, it's fine to ask for assistance here and there as you're doing, but it's not fine if you could have carried it further yourself. And if you could have reached out to other teams, well, you do reach out to other teams, but you're sort of pinging people and bringing them into an issue instead of going to them in a more proactive fashion. So I'd like you, you know, I think we have a slightly different perception there of what it means to collaborate. So I'd like to see you, you know, take more ownership and reach beyond your team more often. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I think I'm glad that we talked about this because another thing that I'm struggling with is time zones. So sometimes if something happens and I need to action it, it's kind of hard knowing that somebody is in another time zone and I have to wait and I just kind of ping and have to kind of sit and wait. And it can be hard to juggle priorities as well. So, yeah, I guess I can see that I'm being a little bit unrealistic and not kind of understanding that's not really how we do it. Well, right, you know, the issue of time zones and picking priorities, that's always going to, that's always one to work through. So we do, we work asynchronously, right? If you're having difficulty at any time, picking priorities come to me, I can help you pick your priorities. But this is more about sort of, you know, don't throw things over the fence, essentially. And, you know, do be helpful to other members of the team when they're asking for your help. And then we'll continue to work in asynchronous fashion across time zones. So if somehow the time zones are messing with our ability to respond quickly, let me know and we'll have to work around that in other ways. Okay. Now, I think this is a good segue into talking about your goals for your career development. We spoke in length before during one-on-ones that, you know, the next step for you would be to get onto a path to becoming a senior, collaborative spirit, displaying collaborative spirit, having collaborative spirit, modeling that behavior is part of being senior. So I think this is an area that if you make progress in this, it helps you make progress in your career growth. So not following the script here exactly, but what do you think there, Abby? Yeah, that sounds good. I think we probably need to have a separate discussion outside of this about, you know, having a plan of how I'm going to get to senior, because I know it means a lot to become a senior, particularly at GitLab. And I know that does involve exemplifying the values as well. And as you've just pointed out, I'm not doing a very good job on collaboration. So I guess that's one thing I definitely need to work on. Sure. All right. So let's make sure we follow up on this one. You know, it's come up before on one-on-ones. We've touched base on it now. Let's continue to work on that. You know, we have your promotion doc as well. And, you know, I admit it can be tricky sometimes to find the balance between iterating and getting results and being efficient versus taking ownership and being collaborative. So we'll continue to work on that one in the coming weeks and months in this coming review period. Okay. There's more sections to the previous review, but that's the end of the script. Okay. So at this point, I'd like to ask everybody what they've learnt, any pitfalls that they've fallen into, not necessarily at GitLab, but in the past when they've done performance reviews, any examples that they'd like to share? So I'll go first, maybe that, I don't know if that breaks the ice since I've already done some talking, but as we were going through this role-playing exercise yesterday, setting it up, you know, it's going through what was written in the handbook, and I decided to add a couple of things that come actually from links in the presentation that Abby put together as well, that I think are relevant and that I try to include in the role-playing. Specifically, I've discovered on a couple of occasions, it's very easy to get hung up on relatively recent events, and you have to sort of make a conscious effort to step back and go all the way back to the beginning of the review period, which is also why the more frequently we do the reviews, the better, and it's very important to keep bringing up anything related to performance in one-on-ones because it's very easy for things to be forgotten or diluted or amplified by whatever happened last week or last month. So that's an important one in my opinion. I try to include that here in the role-playing. Personally, I really dislike the feedback sandwich, right? Say something good, then bad, then good. I really, really strongly dislike it, but I actually still see it pop up sometimes in, you know, sort of blogs about how to do performance reviews, try to couch constructive feedback with positive examples. I'm curious to see if other people have different experiences there or different preferences to use that method or not. And then the final one, it comes from some personal experience, which is that I've received performance reviews in the past that devolved into to-do lists for stuff that needs to be done in the coming months. And it was a very odd juxtaposition of, you know, really long-term thinking and feedback and then short-term follow-up. So I try to avoid that as well. I'm going to mute myself and read the comments. I just wanted to plus one what's termed the shit sandwich. I'm going to say something good. I'm going to put a turd in the middle and then I'm going to follow it up with something good. It's just not something that I've personally found very helpful when I've received feedback. When someone starts by saying, oh, you know, first I want to let you know. I immediately embracing for whatever that bad thing is going to be. So I think it's like, to me, it's really a personal style. I think for some people they can really make that work. Some people are really good at serving that up. I'm not. I'm much more straight into the point and direct. I always try to say something positive if I'm going to give negative feedback, but not necessarily just as a frame. I want it to be genuine. I'm trying to understand because I've always believed in if they're not that you should be as somebody, but that you should give positive feedback if there is positive feedback to be given. First, is it what's what's the big I'm trying to understand what the bad part about that is. I just for me, Jacob is is like, it's kind of like it's a setup, right? It's a known setup of, you know, hey, we're going to do this review and, you know, first off are really like X, Y, Z. And you just know that the next thing is going to be, but this is an issue and this is an issue and then you followed up with something else and I just think that it can come across as very disingenuous and what happens is. I don't know how to describe it, Ernst, maybe you can describe it a little bit better why you dislike it, but a lot of times I'll just go right into the negative and talk about, you know, these are some of the issues and let's get this out of the way and kind of discuss it and get through that and then follow that up with, you know, the other points that I think are really positive. I think that kind of changes the for me it changes the flow of the conversation a bit more. I agree with that. Essentially, the shit sandwich right tends to be a tool that avoids an honest conversation about the performance or the behavior that needs actual tension and it needs an actual honest conversation. By couching it between two things that are positive. I don't know whether it's supposed to, you know, trick the person receiving the review or or assist the person giving the review. Perhaps it does both, but it doesn't actually help right at the end of the day you want the performance to be improved. So you just need to very honestly confront that. I think that it can be more effective when all the feedback is actionable and constructive and I know that the terms positive negative are out there and everyone will always use them. But I asked actually think the redirecting feedback or the feedback for improvement is very positive. I mean this is someone investing their time in you and trying to help you be more effective and better at your role and more successful. And so I think sometimes the words we use positive and negative can shed that exact light on that. And so I think if we can, if we can try to steer away from saying I have negative feedback for you, which will instantly put negativity into the receiver's mind. It could be termed differently. I have super helpful feedback for you. And, and, and I think the same way with the quote positive feedback. If it's not constructive and actionable, then it's not that beneficial. If I'm doing something great. Why is it great. What's the impact of that. And why should I continue doing it. It's so great to work with you, but it's, you know, if we keep it all actionable, then it's all valuable, whether or not it's redirecting or for improvement, or whether it's to make sure you keep doing something that's super viable to the company. And so I think it's just, we should just be careful about the word choice we use and how we say things and I might seem too touchy-feely, but it actually does impact people. Words do matter. Yeah, I agree. I think again, my example of my horrendous performance review, again, not at GitLab, but when I first started working. Yeah, it was just so bad. I think I was the, I did cry. It was really terrible. And if anyone has seen me cry, which hasn't been the case here. It's not a pretty sight. And it just destroys the trust and the relationship that you have between your manager and the team members, just awful. So yes, I do think the people element is important to consider as well, because you know your team members better and you may have already picked up what they respond to. And what, you know, they're going to react well from rather than just having a blanket approach to how you do the feedback. This is Kristin. One thing we used to do in my past company, and it wasn't just necessarily targeted towards performance reviews, although because it was within our culture, it was accepted. We called giving feedback, both positive and negative, both gifts and grades. So grades, these are the really great things that you're doing. And we want to continue to build on that and make even better and always wanting to improve. And the gift side of it, just using that word, because I like how Barbie said, choosing your words also is really effective and how they're, you know, consuming what you're telling them is, my gift to you is offering you, here's where I see some areas that we need to improve on. And I'm giving you this gift for you to accept it and to own it, and how can we make it better? What can I do to support you? What are your ideas to get it better, so that you're encouraging but not falsely encouraging them. You're giving them this idea of you're laying it out there, here's where I'm telling you you need to improve. And we usually start with the gifts first, you know, or however you choose, but we started with the gifts first and then we ended it with, you know, some things that are really awesome that you're doing, and we want to continue. So those are just some ideas that we took that were helpful for me in the past. Preston, thanks for that. So I would fully acknowledge that through the choice of words matters. Absolutely. But if I start to notice very strong correlation between somebody giving me a gift and it turning out to be they thought I did something poorly and they have an idea for how I can improve. I'm going to get weary of receiving gifts, you know, just sort of remap the meaning of the word in my brain. So I wouldn't want it to, you know, yes, words need to be chosen carefully, but we shouldn't be afraid to sort of discuss the matter at hand, right? I think for me, well, out of all of this, I understand like what a lot of people are saying. I think the biggest key is to not be as people in general, and whether you give positive feedback or however you want to, whatever you want to call it, that's not the point. That's not the point. The point is to in your heart, in yourself be honest with them and not try and BS them for what, for lack of a better term, because people have good BS detectors, and it doesn't feel genuine when you do that. Like I personally don't feel that when I'm giving feedback, if it's a gift or if it's, you know, whatever it is, as long as it's honest and I'm being real with them, I feel like they can also feel that as well. I think that's the problem with putting, you know, a positive with a negative with a positive and a sandwich is the BS factor of it. I think that's the actual problem with it. And if you were doing it honestly, then I don't think it's, you know, I don't see it as a problem. I think one of the other things that I have seen is that sometimes you hold back. So you go 80% there with your feedback, but you don't go 100% there. And so I think that's another thing we can push ourselves to do is to go the full 100%. That's a good point, Barbie. In the role-playing example, how would we have altered that? Would it, for example, in the better form of the feedback, if I'd included a discussion of the thing that went so horribly wrong with Customer X last month? Would it essentially have been kind of hinting at something didn't go so well with Customer X instead of just putting it out there and talking about it? Is that what you mean? Well, it could be that something went wrong with Customer X, but it also could be that that wasn't the first time. But you just brought up one example, but really it's a sign of a pattern. But you're holding back by not saying, this is a sign of a larger pattern that we need to be thoughtful and considerate of. I don't know because that was a made up situation, but an example would be trying to lighten the feedback so that it doesn't feel as big when it's, maybe it should. Maybe it is big, and yet we don't go all the way there with it. Well, in a way, when you do that, you're kind of, if you don't go all the way, you're kind of lying to them in a way. But being completely honest with them. And so maybe the truth is the best lie that you're going to give. I also think it's useful to set the context around feedback in terms of helping them process it because people will react differently to feedback. So if I tell Abby, wow, you really should have done this differently. Abby may take that away as, oh my God, I'm going to get fired, or she may take it away going, yeah, it would have been nice. It doesn't really matter. So it might be that I actually have to help her understand how important that is. This isn't life or death for you. This is just, I think you could be more effective if you did this, but it was still good. You don't need to worry. Let's just work on it versus, yeah, this is a big deal. And this could impact your career if it doesn't change. And sometimes we don't help people actually understand at what level they should take the feedback and what they should be doing with it. I think some, well, for me in particular, if I find myself not going the whole hundred percent, it's because I struggle with the choice of words and tended, you know, water it down a little bit. So back to some of the earlier points about carefully selecting, you know, how you actually convey the message, how you articulate it, can really make or break how much you actually get across. Is it the whole hundred percent or is it a watered down version? And Hayden, one of the solutions for that that I've done in the past is just in a similar fashion to going in and doing our corporate presentation to somebody, you'll practice it a few times out loud beforehand. And so if you do the same thing in a conversation that you're going to have, it helps you select those words that you want to use in that conversation. Yeah, I actually write a script before I do stuff because I find that I can write quite like I can write down my words very clearly and thinking off the top of my head. I like to choose my words very wisely. And when I write them down, I can choose them very wisely. And it's not that I have to follow an exact script, but that at least I had the chance to think about it. And that's what I was going to say before is that writing a script is I mean, that's what I do. It helps me a lot. And then I go through like what they they might like the thing what I would how I would react and then have answers to those questions so that I don't get caught off guard. I have an idea, Jacob, having a few scenarios and impossible reactions to what you're saying. Because in the heat of the moment, you know, you can get get caught off guard and go somewhere you probably shouldn't. Yeah, some people are really good at that. Like going off the cuff, but I find that work best with the script so maybe it's not the best for everybody but it works well for me. What's next here, Abby. I couldn't find the unmute button. Sorry. And so I just want to highlight a couple of issues. So we are going to be reviewing the current performance review process and there is an issue there that I've put in the slide and I know Barbie this is something that will be working on. Because we, you know, we need to make some changes there. I just want to remind everybody that there is an issue for these sessions as well, which has all the topics listed. And if anyone wants to add anything to them or make any changes or tell me to do something. I'm very happy to do that. And if people want to collaborate with me on certain subjects that would be greatly appreciated. And I'm very proud of just asking people coming up with a topic and asking people, which I'm very, very, very happy to do. And I think Barbie and I will be working on this as well and to see how we can make it better because I think there are some improvements that we can make and some changes. And yeah, that was what I wanted to mention as well. And then there's the, those articles are really good, I thought. And I think Ernst, you agree there was some really good points in there as well. And so yeah, go check those out. And that was that is all that I wanted to cover. If anybody else wants to talk about anything else. Maybe I'll go ahead, Jacob. Is there an issue anywhere where we can add our comments about performance reviews and just to voice how we think it went down or anything like that. When you say, we're going to improve them in the future so that we can have at least feel like we put forth our opinion about them so that you take that into consideration. Yeah, is there an issue anywhere or anything? In the, I think that issue I've linked their feedback on current performance review process. Yeah, look at that. I had a question on straightforward logistics. The performance reviews have not been released from lattice yet. But we can already download them for individuals where they've completed their self review and we've completed the manager review. Yes, so Brittany I believe is imminently going to press the button to close the review cycle. We were waiting for a couple but you can go ahead and share the reviews if you've completed them and your team members have completed them you can share the PDF packet. Now, but I will find out from Brittany where she's at with that. I'm closing the cycle on that front to just want to chime in. The PDF packet the way that it structured it oftentimes doesn't work as well if you just share your screen as the manager, because you on the manager view it groups it by response so you see what you rated them what they rated them. Both of your answers next to each other when I was doing the PDF packet it was it was all over the place I think that they grouped it by manager and then person contributor so you may find that just sharing your screen on that page is super helpful to make that easier. And if we have a thread open with lattice we may want to tell them that the PDF export would be much more useful with those blocks next to each other. So, and I don't know if that's configurable but that's what I noticed so keep that in mind. Okay, thanks Lee. That's a good point. Okay, well it does nothing else and give you back 10 minutes of your days which I'm sure you'll be greatly appreciative of so thank you very much for joining and and I will reach out again when we plan the next session. Thanks everyone. Thank you.