Session 1: Onboarding and retention
https://leaddev.com/module/tog2102-session-1
You’ve got an awesome team filled with talented engineers, but how are you going to ensure that they’re happy and want to stick around? Retention starts from day one; with a sound onboarding process that sets your engineers up for success, and develops into you providing them with an environment that facilitates learning and self-growth. So how do you make sure you are providing a safe, engaging, environment for your engineers?
In this session, you’ll hear talks on:
- Onboarding: setting the foundation for growth
- Utilizing the tools in your toolbox for onboarding and retention
- Onboarding & Retention: People
Welcome To LeadDev Together
w/ Anjuan Simmons, Neha Batra
Onboarding: Setting The Foundation For Growth
w/ Cate Huston, Engineering Director, Native Apps, DuckDuckGo
PERSONAL REFLECTION
What does your team keep consistent for new joiners:
- 30-60-90 day onboarding plan
- Guidance to being a good buddy
- Typical first 1:1
- Documenting team culture
- Sharing wins and milestones with the team
- Sharing and responding to feedback
Keep at least 1 of these handy as you'll be referring to these in your breakout discussion:
- What's one area that's outdated?
- Given that onboarding tends to cover a lot of fundamental management pieces, what could be reused for the rest of the team that isn't onboarding?
Utilizing The Tools In Your Toolbox For Onboarding And Retention
w/ Rebecca Miller-Webster, Senior Staff Engineering Manager, Venmo
Be careful with stories:
- Humans are wired for story, which means stories are hard to change
- Allow people time to adjust and be careful about the story you tell about your team to others
- "Bad employee" stories are really hard to shake and usually unfair
PERSONAL REFLECTION
Successful onboarding and retention is a team effort
w/ Abel Martin, Senior Software Engineering Manager, Rhino
PERSONAL REFLECTION & COMFORT BREAK
Onboarding and retention in your organization
w/ Neha Batra, Billy Griffin, Lynn Wallenstein, Pamela Corbin-Audoux, Denise Yu
GROUP DISCUSSION
Worksheet: Utilizing the tools in your toolbox for onboarding and retention
We’ve pulled out some questions from Rebecca Miller-Webster’s talk for you to use during your reflection time.
What is your onboarding Story?
- What intro did I get to the company, team role?
- What’s the best onboarding experience I’ve had? Why?
- What tripped me up (here or elsewhere)?
- What’s the most difficult onboarding experience I’ve had? Why?
What is your teammate’s story? Think about a member of the team
- What does this person need in a manager, teammate, and organization?
- What do they want for themselves?
- Where do they see their career going?
- What do they like about their job?
- What frustrates them?
- What matters to them/what do they value?
What are your strengths and gaps?
- What do you get praised for and think is no big deal?
- What do you want to do / like that others do but you can’t seem to do consistently?
- What do you value?
- What do you not value?
- When have you had conflicts at work?
- Did you and the other person care about different things?
How do you make your & your team’s work visible to people above you?
- What does the org, your boss, or your grand-boss care about?
- How do you get people what they care about? hint: ask the bosses.
- map what they care about to your team’s work.
- What is the intersection?
Group Exercise
Group Vote: Have each person cast 2 votes for what they'd like to focus on for this discussion. The 2 topics with the most votes will be the 2 topics of discussion. Some examples are:
- 30-60-90 day onboarding plan
- Guidance to being a good buddy
- Typical first 1:1
- Documenting team culture
- Sharing wins and milestones with the team
- Sharing and responding to feedback
Feel free to also use your ideas!
Individual Thinking: Find some examples that you can show your group to ground the conversation. Spend 5 mins looking through your team's docs and folders to find examples of what your team typically does for the 2 topics your group has selected
Group Discussion: For each topic, ask for a volunteer to share what their team does for the topic to start the conversation. In case you need some starters, here are some discussion questions:
- What's common amongst how teams approach the topic and how are the approaches different?
- What is your personal touch that you add to these types of things when you do them?
- How does that play to your strengths?
- Who do you involve to make this successful?
- How do you make this a regular part of the team's culture?
After 15 minutes, switch to the next topic
CLOSE
Session 2 : Building team culture
Culture determines how we treat people, respond to problems, and approach our work. And culture isn’t static, but something that changes with every new person that joins a team and every new policy created.
In this session, you’ll hear talks on:
- Creating a culture of trust
- Hiring for culture add, not culture fit
- Culture change in a hostile environment
11:00 AM Welcome to LeadDev Together w/ Anjuan Simmons, Jason Wong
11:10 AM TALK Creating a culture of trust w/ Dana Lawson, SVP of Engineering, Netlify
11:25 AM PERSONAL REFLECTION
11:30 AM Hiring for culture add, not culture fit w/ Emily Nakashima, VP of Engineering, Honeycomb.io
11:45 AM PERSONAL REFLECTION
Hiring is an activity that's always evolving - what aspects of your process are you most likely to update next time you make changes?
11:55 AM Culture change in a hostile environment w/ Jason Wong, Leadership Coach & Fractional VP of Engineering, JWong Works
12:10 PM PERSONAL REFLECTION & COMFORT BREAK
12:20 PM GROUP DISCUSSION
Individual Thinking
Take 5 minutes to note down one value that is super important to you and one negative culture trait that you’d most like to avoid.
- +ve: Kindness
- -ve: Culture Fit
Round Robin
In 5 minutes share your most important value and one sentence explaining what it means to you. After everyone has shared, quickly choose one value that you all agree upon to focus on. Remember to write all of these values down, as we will use them later in the session! The team typically does this for the 2 topics your group has selected.
Group Discussion
Once you’ve chosen a value, spend 15 minutes discussing how to take that concept and think about its tangible effects within your organization. Think about:
- How does this value show up in the day-to-day of your team?
- How does it affect how you evaluate your team?
- How does it affect who (and how) you reward?
- How does it affect who you hire and who you fire?
- How can you lead by example with this value?
Round Robin
After that 15 minutes is up, repeat the round-robin and spend 5-minutes thinking about the negative aspects of culture that you need to avoid.
Group Discussion
Spend 15 minutes thinking about:
- How would this negative culture aspect show up in the day-to-day of your team?
- How would you recognize the signs that it’s emerging?
- How do you rectify it on an individual level?
- How do you acknowledge and communicate about it with your team?
1:15 PM ACTION EXERCISE
Exercise 1
For the first 7 minutes, think about the best way for your group to share the value you discussed today with your teams. Think about the tools at your disposal;
- Are you going to write a document?
- Are you going to put together a presentation?
- Are you going to hold a meeting?
Also, think about the methods of delivery. People listen in different ways - how will you make sure everyone has received your message?
Exercise 2
For the 3 remaining minutes, set your group up to re-run this exercise
- Take the list of values from your round-robin and pick two more values you’d like to focus on.
- These will be your discussion topics the next time you’ll meet.
- And then immediately after this session ends, designate someone to find an hour when you’re all free to re-run this exercise.