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Resilient Management with Lara Hogan
Show Notes
- Lara Hogan : @lara_hogan
- Website: WhereWithAll.com
- Lara Hogan's Book - Resilient Management
- Black owned DEI Consultants taking on more work;
- Manager Voltron Bingo(PDF)
- LeadDev Together 2020 (Training for Engineering Managers)
- Project Include
- BICEPS Model
Rough Transcript (via otter.ai )
George Stocker 0:00
Welcome to the build better software podcast, the podcast for software leaders who want to enable their teams to build better software. I'm your host, George Stocker. And today I am joined by guest, Laura Hogan, to talk about resilient management. Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I'm really excited. Now, for folks that who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Lara Hogan 0:24
Yeah, these days, I coach managers and leaders, fortunately, all over the world. Before I was doing this, I worked as the VP of Engineering at Kickstarter. And before that, I was an engineering director at sea and before that many other small startups in the tech space. I started out as a self taught front end developer and then figured out that management was definitely the place for me.
George Stocker 0:48
Yeah, so you've worked at large companies, you've worked at startups, and they're, those are typically differently paced. So I want to go into that deeper. But after you after you did that, you've now started your own company.
Lara Hogan 1:07
Yeah, it's called WhereWithAll . So I realized I had read this study eons ago now about firefighters and how they develop expertise. It turns out, you know, it was it was still basic expertise, but in this study, it was trying to figure out, okay, comparing firefighters in urban areas to firefighters in rural areas, which are the deeper experts just kind of controlling for number of fires and years experience. And the study showed that firefighters in this case in urban areas were deeper experts because of the diversity of fires. So different buildings, sizes, different materials, different you know, just like different kinds of population densities, it was diversity of experience kind of led to expertise building and I realized, I really wanted to get some more expertise in lots of different kinds of companies. And so now that I run my own business against a pretty managers and leaders of all kinds, different levels, also different kinds of organizations, ancient Organizations organizations with lots of hierarchy organizations with no hierarchy, distributed organizations co located you know, it's just the the diversity of organizations that get to support right now is is pretty cool. I'm definitely learning a lot very rapidly and it's been lovely.
George Stocker 2:14
Okay, and what sort of offerings Do you have to help out leaders?
Lara Hogan 2:18
So I kind of split my time between one on one coaching and group coaching and training. So I either go into companies and provide workshops or I offer like ticketed workshops which you have actually attended one of my in person workshops at the time now it's of course all remote. But it's it's been amazing to be able to go in and support all of these different heads leaders, both hands on application, skill based training for mentors because I don't know about you, but I didn't get any training when I became a manager.
George Stocker 2:44
No, the only reason I ever had any managerial training was through the army which is a bit unlike everything else. Yeah. But there are 200 year organization and they do they have a an entire they've books upon books and manuals. about leadership and about running teams, and there's a lot that we could learn from it, but it is a completely different space.
Lara Hogan 3:07
So many fields have actually developed management training curriculum, tech, I mean, classic engineers, like we get to, we're like, oh, we're gonna figure this out for ourselves, like, we know, we can reinvent. Yeah, precisely. It's been fascinating to try to support tech leaders, specifically, because I'm sure you've experienced this, like people are just so hungry to do right by their teams. And so it's been lovely to bring in not just management experience, but also, you know, I've done a lot of studying on how to be a good trainer, a good a good educator, a good facilitator. And that's also a whole new discipline. And so it's been really, it's been really nice to try to bring in these skills to tech organizations to try to help people out.
George Stocker 3:45
You you run a at least the workshop I went to it was a one day workshop, I think might have been to at the lead dev conference. Now, if people who don't know the lead dev conferences, it's a conference for as it says on the tin lead developers, so it talks about so groups that are useful to tech leads, software managers and the like. And I, I loved it, I can't recommend it enough.
Lara Hogan 4:07
And they're doing online right now. So they've got a whole bunch of amazing, they've got like a seven part series starting in this fall. It's all like three hour online events. It's gonna be just there. They're doing such great work
George Stocker 4:20
and supporting so many people. I'm going to drop that in the show notes, because I think everybody can still hear about that.
Lara Hogan 4:27
And I'm actually co hosting the first ones. The first one if folks are interested in this is all about how do we support our teammates as they grow? What are the skills that we need to use as lead devs to help our other teammates grow and develop?
George Stocker 4:39
So I don't want to spoil the subject, but what are skills that we need to help our our teammates grow?
Lara Hogan 4:45
So the thing that I've learned in doing this job for a while is that as knowledge workers, we're taught that the best way we can help our teammates is by teaching them pair programming or sharing with someone how we would do a thing They're working on mentoring them providing our perspective and our advice. And a bunch of research shows that those skill sets like the teaching, the mentoring skill sets, the advising skills, skill sets are really only helpful and getting someone unblocked or helping someone on board. That's it. If we actually want to help people grow, we need to use this whole other set of skills, which most of us are not equipped to use. And we've never been taught that they're important. Like, again, we've been taught that the best thing we can do is give our knowledge to other people, but actually not help people grow. So the three skills I really like to focus on, I'm missing like a broken record to you here is coaching. So helping people connect their own dots, introspect, reflect. This is when someone's like, Huh, like, what's important to you about this? What's hard about this? If you could change one thing right now what would you change those kinds of open questions really prompt like lightbulb moments in someone you know, it's it's so powerful to like, connect your own dots and be like, Oh, I know what I'm going to do next. ...
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By George StockerShow Notes
- Lara Hogan : @lara_hogan
- Website: WhereWithAll.com
- Lara Hogan's Book - Resilient Management
- Black owned DEI Consultants taking on more work;
- Manager Voltron Bingo(PDF)
- LeadDev Together 2020 (Training for Engineering Managers)
- Project Include
- BICEPS Model
Rough Transcript (via otter.ai )
George Stocker 0:00
Welcome to the build better software podcast, the podcast for software leaders who want to enable their teams to build better software. I'm your host, George Stocker. And today I am joined by guest, Laura Hogan, to talk about resilient management. Laura, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I'm really excited. Now, for folks that who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Lara Hogan 0:24
Yeah, these days, I coach managers and leaders, fortunately, all over the world. Before I was doing this, I worked as the VP of Engineering at Kickstarter. And before that, I was an engineering director at sea and before that many other small startups in the tech space. I started out as a self taught front end developer and then figured out that management was definitely the place for me.
George Stocker 0:48
Yeah, so you've worked at large companies, you've worked at startups, and they're, those are typically differently paced. So I want to go into that deeper. But after you after you did that, you've now started your own company.
Lara Hogan 1:07
Yeah, it's called WhereWithAll . So I realized I had read this study eons ago now about firefighters and how they develop expertise. It turns out, you know, it was it was still basic expertise, but in this study, it was trying to figure out, okay, comparing firefighters in urban areas to firefighters in rural areas, which are the deeper experts just kind of controlling for number of fires and years experience. And the study showed that firefighters in this case in urban areas were deeper experts because of the diversity of fires. So different buildings, sizes, different materials, different you know, just like different kinds of population densities, it was diversity of experience kind of led to expertise building and I realized, I really wanted to get some more expertise in lots of different kinds of companies. And so now that I run my own business against a pretty managers and leaders of all kinds, different levels, also different kinds of organizations, ancient Organizations organizations with lots of hierarchy organizations with no hierarchy, distributed organizations co located you know, it's just the the diversity of organizations that get to support right now is is pretty cool. I'm definitely learning a lot very rapidly and it's been lovely.
George Stocker 2:14
Okay, and what sort of offerings Do you have to help out leaders?
Lara Hogan 2:18
So I kind of split my time between one on one coaching and group coaching and training. So I either go into companies and provide workshops or I offer like ticketed workshops which you have actually attended one of my in person workshops at the time now it's of course all remote. But it's it's been amazing to be able to go in and support all of these different heads leaders, both hands on application, skill based training for mentors because I don't know about you, but I didn't get any training when I became a manager.
George Stocker 2:44
No, the only reason I ever had any managerial training was through the army which is a bit unlike everything else. Yeah. But there are 200 year organization and they do they have a an entire they've books upon books and manuals. about leadership and about running teams, and there's a lot that we could learn from it, but it is a completely different space.
Lara Hogan 3:07
So many fields have actually developed management training curriculum, tech, I mean, classic engineers, like we get to, we're like, oh, we're gonna figure this out for ourselves, like, we know, we can reinvent. Yeah, precisely. It's been fascinating to try to support tech leaders, specifically, because I'm sure you've experienced this, like people are just so hungry to do right by their teams. And so it's been lovely to bring in not just management experience, but also, you know, I've done a lot of studying on how to be a good trainer, a good a good educator, a good facilitator. And that's also a whole new discipline. And so it's been really, it's been really nice to try to bring in these skills to tech organizations to try to help people out.
George Stocker 3:45
You you run a at least the workshop I went to it was a one day workshop, I think might have been to at the lead dev conference. Now, if people who don't know the lead dev conferences, it's a conference for as it says on the tin lead developers, so it talks about so groups that are useful to tech leads, software managers and the like. And I, I loved it, I can't recommend it enough.
Lara Hogan 4:07
And they're doing online right now. So they've got a whole bunch of amazing, they've got like a seven part series starting in this fall. It's all like three hour online events. It's gonna be just there. They're doing such great work
George Stocker 4:20
and supporting so many people. I'm going to drop that in the show notes, because I think everybody can still hear about that.
Lara Hogan 4:27
And I'm actually co hosting the first ones. The first one if folks are interested in this is all about how do we support our teammates as they grow? What are the skills that we need to use as lead devs to help our other teammates grow and develop?
George Stocker 4:39
So I don't want to spoil the subject, but what are skills that we need to help our our teammates grow?
Lara Hogan 4:45
So the thing that I've learned in doing this job for a while is that as knowledge workers, we're taught that the best way we can help our teammates is by teaching them pair programming or sharing with someone how we would do a thing They're working on mentoring them providing our perspective and our advice. And a bunch of research shows that those skill sets like the teaching, the mentoring skill sets, the advising skills, skill sets are really only helpful and getting someone unblocked or helping someone on board. That's it. If we actually want to help people grow, we need to use this whole other set of skills, which most of us are not equipped to use. And we've never been taught that they're important. Like, again, we've been taught that the best thing we can do is give our knowledge to other people, but actually not help people grow. So the three skills I really like to focus on, I'm missing like a broken record to you here is coaching. So helping people connect their own dots, introspect, reflect. This is when someone's like, Huh, like, what's important to you about this? What's hard about this? If you could change one thing right now what would you change those kinds of open questions really prompt like lightbulb moments in someone you know, it's it's so powerful to like, connect your own dots and be like, Oh, I know what I'm going to do next. ...