Hire and Develop the Best Flashcards
QUESTION: Tell me about a time when one of your team members had difficulty doing a project. What did you do?
Title: Practice makes a world of difference
Situation:
Early 2019, I hired a talented UI/UX Director who had an impressive design portfolio
3 months into the job, I worked with her on a complete redesign of our reporting tool
Really proud of the designs that offered smart workflows, user customization, white-labeling, scheduled reporting and other great enhancements
Next step was to present to an internal audience inclusive of key stakeholders, Sales and Success before engaging externally with customers
Obstacle:
During presentation, she struggled providing coherent narrative or background
She neglected to run through the demo path in advance as the hot spots didn’t navigate to the proper pages creating choppiness in the user journey
Design concept wasn’t conveyed effectively and I was accountable for her under performance
Action:
Following the presentation, I synced with her to provide constructive and honest input
Influenced by Kim Scott’s ‘Radical Candor,’
Act with care to established rapport in order to be receptive to feedback
Directly challenged her lack of preparation
Shared the importance of rehearsing prior and ensuring the demo path is flawless
Conveyed the importance of a first, and lasting impression among peers and customers
I performed dry runs with her ahead of the next presentation in front of customers
Results:
Customer demos were narrated smoothly
Demo path was executed perfectly
She thanked me afterwards and recognized how much better her performance was compared to the first attempt
Confidence increased and the value of the design concept was achieved
For upcoming presentations, she proactively sets time to review the flow in advance
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Hire and develop the best
QUESTION: Tell me how you’ve been successful at empowering either a person or a group to accomplish a task?
Title: How do you eat an elephant (piece by piece)?
Situation:
Galvanize a team by conveying a strong vision and picture of success
Organically drive passion and velocity through effective communication
Positioning individuals and teams for success; delivering for the customer
Tasked with fulfilling a contractual client roadmap containing 36 small to large features and capabilities
Business expectation to complete work within 1 quarter (w/o product input)
Unable to bill customer until list is complete and deemed “product ready”
Customer planning to terminate competitor’s service and transition asap
Obstacle:
Other teams, like customer success, mobilizing around completion date
Team was discouraged by an unrealistic timeline
No change in resourcing or headcount
Business pressure to generate revenue
Action:
Decomposed features and developed a matrix with each functional team
Design, Front-end, API, Engine, Database, QA
Hosted several full day working sessions with QA, Dev and Designers
Each respective workstream provided estimates
Arrived at a 9 month estimate
Achieved buy-in from functional owners tied back to accountability
Communicated revised timeline to respective stakeholders to reset expectations
Results:
Finished one month behind schedule due to customer scope creep
Incrementally introduced features when ready building team confidence
Capabilities enriched the product and benefited the broader customer base
Co-founder acknowledge team’s contribution during all hands
Activated second largest contract in company history
Empowered team through vision, accountability, communication, and execution
What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Hire and develop the best.
Earn Trust. Allowed everyone on the team to contribute to the timeline
Frugality
QUESTION: How do you help your employees grow?
Title: Kylie’s Growth (TODO)
