Why set goals

Goals aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I think they are fantastic for lots of reasons. It’s a way of achieving alignment between a person and their manager — what they are going to achieve, by when, and what the criteria for success is. Without this clarity agreed and written down, it can be hard for both parties to understand exactly what is expected. Without a clear goal, it increases the chances of misalignment and disappointment further down the line — something which is best avoided!

Goals are also a good way to guide someone to formulate a plan around something they want to achieve. If someone wants to learn a new skill, or invest in improving a skill, having a mini plan to achieve that thing gives them clarity on what they are going to do by when, and they are more likely to achieve it.

Setting goals also means you can look back at what you’ve achieved and if you’ve met the key results for the goal, it makes you feel good! It’s also a great way to have a bunch of examples and information to hand for a promotion case when the time is right.

The process of setting goals means you’re priming your brain to look out for opportunities to fulfil the goal, something that would be less likely if you didn’t go through the goal setting process. I’ll go into this is more detail in a post about “The wierd thing about goals”.

If you are happy to, sharing your goals with your teammates means they know what you’re investing in improving, and they can help to support you.

Finally, flipping this on it’s head — if you don’t set goals, there is the possibility that with everything else on your plate throughout busy working weeks that you may not be making decisions to invest little by little in a specific direction and so weeks or months down the line you find you’ve been busy, but that you’ve not moved forward as much as you’d hoped.

What do great goals look like?

You’ve probably heard of SMART goals and OKRs, so I won’t go into the specifics of those goal setting models here — instead, I’ll share what I’ve found works well, using either of those models.

Firstly, have a clear, specific headline, which explains WHAT you want to work on and WHY, in the form “I want to do X so that I can Y”. For example:

• I want to learn about deployment pipelines so that I can make a recommendation about which one we should implement at our company
• I want to improve my communication in meetings so I can be a more effective team member
• I want to improve my public speaking so I can share what I know with a wider audience

When I first started setting goals for myself, I treated them as “one-off” goals — learn or do a thing, bank the experience and move on. This is fine, but I’ve evolved the way I look at them now — now I look at them as a way to make small adjustments in my habits so not only do I bank the learnings, but I make small investments continuously to improve.

To illustrate what I’m trying to explain here, imagine you want to do the couch to 5k. You could set that as a goal, and once you’ve achieved it — which is great in itself, or course, I don’t want to detract from the achievement! — wouldn’t it be great to continuously use some of the great habits built up rather than heading back to the couch? So one of the new habits might be to run for 10 mins a day going forward, or to run to work/the bus/tube/train every day.

Following on from the examples above, I tend to ask the folks I manage, “what habit do you want to build up as a result of working towards this goal?”. So for, “I want to learn about deployment pipelines so that I can make a recommendation about which one we should implement at our company”, we may have a key result of “I will set aside 15 minutes at coffee break time to do research on deployment pipelines”, or, “I will use 30 minutes every Wednesday afternoon before I head home to experiment with deployment pipelines”. Doing this encourages a sustainable change in behaviour and helps to build long lasting habits. I’ve found this approach to work well with lots of folks.

Finally, a couple of tips on goals:

1. Far better to set them even if they’re not ‘perfect’. It actually takes a fair bit of practise to get good and therefore happy with goal setting. So don’t worry about whether they’re perfectly crafted, just get stuck in 🙂
2. If you don’t have a career path mapped out in your head, or a clear idea of what you want to achieve before you sit down to set goals, don’t worry. Think about what you’d like to learn, what your team need from you, what would be useful to invest in for your team’s success, and what you need to work on in order to progress, or what feedback from your last review you should be looking at working on.
3. I tend to use 3 months as a default time period when setting goals. There can be so many things to choose from, you can get analysis paralysis — just pick something. It’s better to invest in something and bank the learnings than spin on the spot unsure of what to pick — before you know it 3 months will have passed! Choose something, you will learn from it whatever you choose 👍

In my most recent Engineering Management role, there’s a very strong focus on the individual engineers, rather than working with teams as a whole. Whilst this has its advantages — people feel very supported and invested in — I noticed at times that I didn’t feel as comfortable as I wanted to — I felt like I was disappearing. It’s in my nature to give, with a tendency towards caring for others. As an EM in this role I am there in a supporting function, and happy to provide that support, although I found myself craving more balance. Any successful relationship has healthy boundaries and both people’s needs being met.

When my own career progression meant moving departments, I transitioned away from one set of engineers I was managing to a new set of engineers within the new department. I took this opportunity to reflect on what had gone well with my approach to management and what I would like to change to feel like my needs in the working relationship were being met. I’m a huge fan of making sure new any new relationship is started in the right way, and to this end I’ve always explained to new folks what my management approach and style is, why I got into Engineering Management in the first place, and that trust is really a core element of our working relationship going well. I also ask what the person needs from me, what they would like from me, and we discuss a little about their working history and where they would like to be. My approach to these conversations has always been quite casual and I’ve found it work well to set a foundation for us.

This time, however, I wanted to keep sense of building a strong foundation based on trust, but give us both an opportunity to express our needs and preferences from the outset. I created a “working agreement” session for each person, and I’m happy to report I still get great feedback on how well my folks feel supported and how I’m helping them to progress and grow, and at the same time I feel much happier that my needs are being met too.

I run this discussion over two 1:1 sessions. We each take 10 mins or so at the start to answer the following questions, usually on post-it notes:

Person I am managing:

• What parts of your job do you really enjoy?
• What parts of your job do you find hard?
• How do you prefer to receive feedback?
• What have your managers done in the past that works well for you, and what hasn’t worked so well
• What expectations do you have of me as your manager?

Me, as the manager:

• What my approach to management is & why I got into Engineering Management
• How I prefer to receive feedback
• What I really enjoy about my job
• What I find hard about my job
• What expectations I have of you as someone I manage

Then we share our answers with the other person, one at a time, taking turns. This bit I think is key, and what helps set the relationship up well in terms of each person getting their chance to feel heard and to feel supported in being honest and sharing.

As I said, I usually cover most of these topics in our initial conversations, asking the new person I’m managing their preferences and understanding their expectations and needs. However, this format allows me an opportunity to share my expectations and needs and is working out really well 🙂 Give it a go, and let me know how you find it!

How ask for feedback

It can be tricky to know what to ask. By asking someone, “Do you have any feedback for me?” — you’re doing the right thing by asking but with the question being so broad the person’s mind may go blank! I find it can be useful to give someone boundaries, or a focus for their feedback, and that way, you are more likely to get specific, actionable feedback.

Here are some ideas for feedback questions 💡

Other folks can often see your strengths more easily than you can. To get a better understanding of how people see your strengths, try asking them:

• What do you think my strength is/strengths are? How have I demonstrated it/them in the last x weeks/months?
• What is something I seem to do with ease?
• Where have I surprised you in a good way?

Knowing where you’ve had the greatest impact recently helps with understanding what you’ve done well — so you can do it again:

• What thing did I do that had the greatest impact on the team in the last x weeks?
• Where did I really help you out recently?
• Where did I really help the team out recently?

It’s very valuable to understand what you should be focussing your efforts on to improve, so you know where to invest your time and energy:

• What one thing can I work on to accelerate my development?
• What support do you need from me that you’re not getting?
• What support would you like from me that you’re not getting?

These last two questions are very similar. Using need in the first implies that there is something missing that the person needs from you. In the second, like implies that this would be a nice thing to have, but isn’t necessarily missing — they might tell you something that will help your working relationship, or identify something that would help you to stand out by exceeding expectations.

Knowing what you should stop doing is useful too, so you can use that energy to focus on building on your strengths and positive impact:

• What should I stop doing?
• Where have I surprised you (in a not-so-great way?)

Finally, just as others can sometimes more easily see your strengths, they can also more easily see what areas there are for improvement:

• What do you think I find challenging, or hard?
• Do you think I’m learning/doing the right things? What support do you think I need?

How often should you seek feedback?

It’s important to reach out to those around you regularly for feedback so you know how you’re doing — but how regularly should you do this?

If you’re facilitating a meeting, or rolling out an initiative, this is a great opportunity to ask for feedback on a specific thing that you’ve done, in a timely fashion, so you know what changes you can make to continuously improve.

If a project is concluding, you could reach out to your team mates to ask how your contributions to it went — what went well and what you could have done differently.

As a rule of thumb, aim to ask for feedback around once every couple of weeks. This will mean you have a steady signal on how you are doing.

How should you react to feedback?

The golden rule here is to ask the person to send you feedback in the format you are most comfortable with. Everyone is different, so let the person know how you like to receive feedback. For example, if you prefer to have it in writing then meet with the person you’re asking for feedback, tell them this 🙂

They say “feedback is a gift” because the person giving you the feedback is investing in you by giving you honest, actionable information on how you are doing. Try to keep this in mind if the feedback is unexpected! Always thank the person for taking the time to give you feedback. Take the time you need to reflect on it and decide how you will incorporate it into your goals and development plan.

If you try out these questions, let me know how it went in the comments. I wish you the best of luck with asking for feedback — once you get used to it, you’ll wish you’d done it more regularly before!

I’ve observed that the terms “coaching” and “mentoring” are often bundled in together, although they are really quite different approaches for investing in someone. For example, in job descriptions and progression frameworks, I’ve often seen “coaching & mentoring” listed as an expectation for senior roles where someone is being asked to “coach & mentor junior team members”. I’ve also observed that people tend to think they’re the same thing, but I believe it’s important to clarify what they both mean as each approach has its own merits.

Mentoring is where you are using your skills and experience to teach and guide someone. When you coach someone, you assume they have the answer they need and your role is to ask incisive questions which allow the person to find the right answer for their challenge.

As a manager who supports folks who are keen to progress and invest in others, I’ve spent some time explaining this difference and I’ve written guides on “How to be a great mentor” and “How to be a great mentee” which I’ll post about here very soon.

For now though I’ll focus on coaching, as it’s a skillset I’ve invested in over the last two years. As someone who puts themselves under alot of pressure to have all the answers all the time (maybe that’s a good idea for another post!) it felt very strange to experiment with the coaching stance. Initially I felt, well, not really like I was doing a great job as an Engineering Manager — all I was doing was asking questions! I quite quickly realised though, that by giving a person an answer to their problem, I was potentially doing two things:

1. Taking an opportunity for learning — thinking through the problem and working through solutions — away from them
2. What works for me with the challenge they’re having may very well not work for them, as we are all so different

In coaching conversations I aim to create a space for the person I’m managing to think clearly. It’s very important that you are gently focussed on the person and give them room to think and then speak. The worst thing you can do is be distracted or interrupt their thinking by rushing to give them an answer!

“The quality of our thinking depends on the way we treat each other while we are thinking”

I love Nancy Klein’s “Thinking Environment” for creating the space to allow someone to think clearly by following her Ten Components of a Thinking Environment.

So, what questions do you ask as a coach? A great first book to read when starting to learn some coaching techniques is, “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More and Change the Way You Lead Forever”. Through experimentation, Michael Bungay Stanier has identified and shares in the book the questions that are mostly likely to get you straight to what is on someone’s mind and what their blockers are, so you can support the person to identify what support they need to move forward.

A few tips for your coaching conversations…

I’ve found it very valuable to get some coaching myself from a professional coach to see how they approach our conversations, and my experience here has fed into the approach I take with the folks I manage. I’d encourage you to experiment with doing this — perhaps try a few different coaches to see what different approaches they take. It’s very important not to judge or criticise the person’s thinking as this erodes the safety they feel in the conversations you have with them. Finally, I encourage the folks I manage to commit to doing at least one thing as a result of our conversations — I’ve found that this accountability helps people feel momentum and progress, and increases the value of our conversations for them.

Finally, I want to stress that this is one tool in your box as a manager, and coaching as an approach will not always work for every situation. If someone does not have the answer they need to move forward, coaching will frustrate them and contribute to a sense of feeling stuck. If coaching as an approach isn’t working in our conversation, I will pause and ask the person if they’d like some advice, before offering solutions.

Note — this was first published in May 2020

I wrote the following guide as a way of explaining to the engineers I manage what a great mentoring relationship looks like. As I explained in my “Coaching & mentoring — what’s the difference?” post, mentoring someone is to use your skills, experience and knowledge to teach and guide them. How do you become a great mentor? What should I be doing, as a mentee? I’ll answer these questions, and more, in this post.

“A mentor is a person who provides you with the tools, guidance, support, and feedback you need to thrive in your career”

Good mentoring relationships have the following health indicators:

• High levels of trust. You trust each other, so giving honest, respectful feedback each way is safe to do
• High levels of psychological safety — you feel accepted & respected by your mentor/mentee
• There is a sense of momentum from both sides; that you’re moving forward together and both of you are growing — it’s a win-win relationship!

What makes a good mentor?

Here are some of the behaviours and approaches of good mentors, they:

• Listen well, using active listening
• Don’t talk over your mentee — it could be that you get really involved in what they’re talking about but do avoid talking over them — wait for them to finish what they’re saying
• Understand where their mentee is and what they need to learn to move forward and grow
• Are happy to share what they know for the benefit of others
• Genuinely care about the success of their mentee
• Feels good themselves about where they’re at — so the mentee picks up on this positivity and gets inspired!
• Help people get unstuck
• Provide their mentee with insights, context and experiences that either they may not necessarily have at all or have limited visibility into
• Is a role model — someone who has a growth mindset and is continuously learning. You will have a healthy approach to feedback and this will encourage your mentee to follow your lead
• Help the mentee recognise their strengths and areas for improvement through positive reinforcement and respectful, clear and actionable constructive feedback
• Ideally as a mentor, you will have a mentor of your own! This way you can learn from your mentor(s) and pass on what you’ve learnt that way too
• Challenge your mentee to set goals, and encourage them to achieve them, holding them accountable
• Your mentee has placed their trust in you by asking you to be their mentor — don’t forget to thank them 🙏

What’s in it for me as a mentor?

Lots!! 🙂 You get the chance to support someone to navigate similar challenges you’ve been through yourself — you can be the person you wish you’d had support from on your journey.

• You can develop your active listening skills, and practise asking Incisive Questions
• It’s a great way to start building up great people management skills You can develop your communication skills
• You can flex your creative muscles — play with the formats of your meetings! You can role-play challenging situations your mentor is facing, for example

What makes a good mentee?

As a mentee, here are some of the behaviours you should aim to do to make the most of your time with your mentor:

• Arrive early for your meeting with your mentor
• Come prepared — thinking about what you want to get out of the sessions up front will make most efficient use of the time you have together
• Be present — checking your phone during the session will give your mentor the impression you’ve checked out of the meeting; if you’re expecting a call, let your mentor know up front
• Take notes. They’re there for you to reflect on in between meetings
• Try to be concise and stay on-topic — it could be that you’ve talked about alot of things that are on your mind, and suddenly it’s the end of the meeting! Doing some prep beforehand will help here
• Your mentor has taken their time to invest in you — don’t forget to thank them 🙏

Some tips for a great working relationship

Here are some things to look out for so that your working relationship runs smoothly. As a mentor, it can be really easy to jump to solutions that work for you, that may not necessarily work for your mentee — for example, if you’re goal focussed and your mentee isn’t, using goals to support them to meet their aspirations may not work for them. Ask them what works for them, and follow their lead. If they don’t know, then explore what might work for them, together. As an enthusiastic mentor, it can be tempting to offer advice before the mentee has had a chance to explain fully what they mean, so give them space to finish their explanation before moving to solutions.

Here are some of the resources I used as input to this guide — let me know in the comments how mentoring is going for you!

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/qualities-of-a-good-mentor-1986663 https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-to-find-qualities-good-mentor

Along with mastering time management, my goals for 2019 included:

• A daily gratitude practise
• Practising meditating for 10 mins daily
• Yoga/HIIT/running for 20 mins daily
• Increasing the quality of my sleep
• Improving my diet

I wanted a way to easily track my progress with these things, for lots of reasons:

• It would help me see if I was building up consistency with doing the new habit
• I could track qualitative data — for example, was I choosing healthier food? Was my sleep quality increasing?
• I wanted to check that how I felt about my habits matched with the action I was taking. As someone who’s quite hard on themselves I wanted to see if I was making progress, even when I felt like I wasn’t

I got myself a notebook and a pen, and started drawing a bunch of small boxes on the page — one box for each day. I created a key for my habits so I could easily track my habits without writing a load of text for each day:

An example would be:

After a couple of weeks I could easily see by glancing at the page what the trends were. For example, was I grumpy in the morning if I didn’t exercise for the last couple of days? Yes. Could I fix my initial grumpy mood in the morning with meditation? Yes! Was my sleep quality improving once I got into the rhythm of going to bed at the same time? Yes.

It’s really helped me get a good sense of the impact of the habit changes I’ve been making, and has helped with reinforcing the message that good change is happening by creating healthier habits, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it!

One of my favourite resources I found when I was researching time management & habit formation techniques is by Time Dorks — renamed to be the much-more-sensible Make Time. I was sure this is where I read about micro habit tracking but I can’t find the original post now! If you do give micro habit tracking a try, let me know how you found it in the comments 🙂

Note — I first published this in May 2020.

Being a part of a panel at meetups has worked really well for me as a way to start sharing my knowledge with the community, especially as someone who has spent the first part of my career (the first decade or two?!?!) terrified of public speaking. It’s helped build my confidence with being in front of an audience and I’m now far more at ease presenting in front of a crowd. I’d recommend it as a way for you to get into public speaking if it’s something you want to do, but find the thought of presenting alone to a crowd very intimidating. I’ve also paired with someone on a couple of occasions when presenting at a meetup and that’s been a really useful step on my journey too.

There have been plenty of online meetups during the coronavirus pandemic and I’ve had the privilege of being a part of two recently:

• Adapting to Remote Management, organised by Wave Talent
• How to Build a High Performing Engineering Team, organised by Indorse

I always find it fascinating to hear about others’ thoughts, ideas and experiences — to learn from them and to compare and contrast with my own approaches and experience. I gained a great deal from both of these sessions 🙂

Adapting to Remote Management

You can watch the panel discussion on how we are all managing our folks well, now everyone is working as part of a distributed team here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgi2lxJMzJA&feature=youtu.be. There were lots of great tips, but my main take aways were — having a clear boundary between work and home (especially as we’re all working from home at the moment), documenting decisions to ensure alignment is clear and being creative with online versions of casual office interactions 🙌

How to Build a High Performing Engineering Team

I found this discussion fascinating because “high performing team” is one of those buzz-phrases you hear quite a bit, and in the past when I’ve asked people what a “high performing” team is, I haven’t always got a clear answer. I was curious to see how folks defined it in this discussion, and I was not disappointed! You can read the write-up of the session here: https://blog.indorse.io/how-to-build-a-high-performing-engineering-team-ccc69a2b6232.

For me, a high performing team has team members who work as a team rather a group of individuals, supporting and investing in each other & anticipating each other’s needs; they have high levels of trust. They communicate with each other clearly, giving everyone in the team a chance to speak and have strong alignment on moving towards their goals as a team. They surface work with clarity and deliver simple, elegant solutions with an emphasis on short feedback loops and delivering value for the business at a sustainable rate.

Note: I first published this in May 2020, now moved it here!

Over the last couple of years I’ve gone from someone who was late for work rather too many times — arriving at my desk having rushed since waking up, to being one of the those people who wake very early and have a positive morning routine. How on earth did that happen??

Why did I make the change?

For years I was doing well at work but always felt rushed during the day, because my mornings before I arrived at work were rushed. Even if I managed to squeeze in some morning exercise that day, I tended to feel on the back foot during the day after quickly going through my routine every morning before work started. I knew I didn’t like the way I felt and wanted to make a change but I had a good think about my whys before taking steps to effect change. They included:

• I wanted to be more in sync with my husband who leaves the house by 6am every day for work. I was finding that rising so long after he had left meant our schedules were out by around 2 hours. This caused problems for mealtimes, for example — he would arrive home way before me, ravenous, and have to wait around 2 hours before we could eat together
• I reflected that I was de-prioritising self improvement and investment in myself by postponing it until the end of the day when I was invariably too tired from a long day at work to think about learning. I really wanted to spend some time in the morning on learning and research, so I initially gave myself an hour every morning
• I wanted to feel more positive about life, and energised. I’ve been meditating for years, although not as consistently as I wanted to, so this was an opportunity to build a meditation habit
• I also wanted to exercise more consistently, so I decided to make this a part of my morning routine too
• I wanted to improve the quality of my sleep. I was going to bed between 10 and 12, and waking up between 7.30am and 8.30am; I wanted to be more consistent with my sleep patterns
• Finally, as explained above, I wanted to take some time in the morning so I would stop feeling like I was on the back foot or rushing as I started my workday

What changes did I make & how?

I was clear about what I wanted to do with my mornings:

• Cultivate a meditation practise
• Exercise in the morning
• Do some research and learning
• Have a healthy breakfast
• Go to bed at the same time, and wake up at the same time

This is quite a list and I knew if I tried to do it all at once and suddenly change to start waking up at 6am when I’d been waking up around 7.45am (sometimes as late as 9am) for years that it probably wouldn’t work and I wouldn’t stick to it. Therefore, I incrementally made changes. this took around a year to get right and be a habit so it’s no longer an effort — I naturally wake up at this time if not earlier. I started setting my alarm for 7.30am and doing 10 minutes of meditation first thing. Then I started setting my alarm for 7am and using the 30 minutes to do some exercise, or some reading.

I now set my alarm to wake me up between 6am and 6.30am — I use the Sleep Cycle app; it wakes me between those times when I’m closest to wakefulness so I am more likely to wake up feeling refreshed. I spend the first 10–15 minutes on waking on meditation, affirmations or visualisation. I then get my exercise gear on and head out for a run, or do a workout or yoga at home. I have a healthy breakfast and spend around 30 minutes reading a book or a blog, or following a course on PluralSight.

After this I shower and head off to work — I use this as my divider between my morning at home and my morning at work. I usually read a Blinkist book on the way into work too.

What are the outcomes of having this new routine?

The routine I’ve moved towards over the last couple of years has actually changed my life in so many ways for the better. I feel so much more positive and energised in general. I now have a meditation habit, so I don’t think about doing it, I just get on and do it. By tracking my sleep patterns and making the adjustments to have a regular going to sleep time and waking time, I’ve improved the quality of my sleep.

I’ve adjusted my working hours slightly so I am more in sync with my husband’s workday, meaning we have more quality time together during the week. I have learnt lots of the things I wanted to outside of work that contribute to work too, on psychology, software development practises, brushing up on my old coding skills and learning new languages too. Sometimes I practise the drums in the morning too 🤘

I highly recommend making some changes to cultivate a positive morning routine if you’re thinking about it. Start small, investing in new habits and make incremental changes. It really helps you feel good!! 😀

It’s been a while since I went through the redundancy process at Monzo between June and July 2020. I was placed at risk of redundancy along with the majority of the engineers I was managing. I volunteered for redundancy and left the company in July 2020.

I’ve finally got the chance to sit down and write this post; I’ve been thinking about writing it for some time. It’s not the most pleasant of subjects to write about, and I’ve not really been in the headspace to write this post until now. I do hope what I share here is useful should you ever find yourself in a position where you’re managing folks through a redundancy process, whilst being at risk of redundancy yourself.

2020 was a year with a huge amount of uncertainty with many companies assessing their business plans more frequently and urgently than usual and a lot of places made layoffs as a result. After furlough in June, Monzo initiated a round of redundancies in engineering, product & design. Managing people who are at risk of redundancy at the same time as being placed at risk yourself is one of the toughest challenges you will face in your career. In this post, I’ll share my experiences of the redundancy process both at Monzo and at other places I’ve worked, along with some tips on how to manage yourself and others well through these difficult times, so, here we go…

The announcement

Even if you thought redundancies might happen, the official announcement can still come as a shock. The decision to make redundancies is made within a very small group, so as a manager you may well be finding out about proposed redundancies when they are announced, at the same time as your peers and the folks you manage.

If the announcement is made verbally, take notes as it will help with taking the information in. It’s likely any verbal announcement will be followed up with written communication that people can refer to as it’s hard to absorb facts when you’re hearing news like this for the first time.

Everyone will react to the news in their own way, and some folks may wish to speak to you directly after the announcement. My advice here would be to make yourself available, but do take 5 mins if you need to for yourself to breathe so you can be present for the person that’s asked to speak with you. Proactively post in your #managed-by Slack channel (or whichever mode of communication you use to speak to the folks you manage together), offering support to your managees.

The redundancy process

During my 20+ year career I’ve been through rounds of redundancies prior to Monzo and before Monzo I’ve been made redundant twice. When the dot com bubble burst in 2000 I volunteered for redundancy having secured myself a new role, and during the recession following the financial crash in 2008 I was made redundant from Barclays Capital. With Barclays, it was the fourth or fifth time they’d done a round of redundancies during my 2.5 year tenure at the company, and ironically, I had just started to get used to the process being so frequent, so it came as a shock when they made the whole team redundant.

It’s always very stressful to face an uncertain future, but going through this process before has given me very useful experience for this time around. In both of the times I’ve just mentioned, I secured a great new job to move on to, so I know as awful as going through the process is, it can actually be a good opportunity to move on to something new.

The redundancies at Monzo are the first time I’ve been a manager at risk of redundancy whilst managing people who are also at risk of redundancy. Absorbing the information given to me so I could understand the situation and make my decision whilst giving support and information to the folks I manage was very hard. It can be helpful to take the following steps to get through the situation.

Remembering self care

When we’re stressed we don’t always remember how to look after ourselves. This is critically important not only for our own wellbeing, but so we are able to offer support to others as a manager.

• I made sure I had time to switch off and not worry, reassuring myself it was ok to take some time to not think about the redundancy process and what might happen.
• I reminded myself that I’ve been through redundancies and challenges before and I always learnt from the situation and always moved into a new role.
• I made the effort to eat well and get quality rest — although this didn’t always work I kept making this effort and it really helped.
• I journalled my thoughts and fears which helped me work through them.
• I did a daily “brain dump” — noting down everything on my mind early in the morning for 10 minutes so my brain didn’t have to work to remember everything all day.
• I put some time aside to invest in updating my CV & LinkedIn profile.

Managing my workload

It’s hard to concentrate when going through the redundancy process. After taking the time for self care above, I used the following questions & approaches to make sure I was managing my workload well.

• Checking in on my people — do they feel supported? What support do they need?
• Projects — what needs doing right now and what can be postponed?
• Consider the level of detail needed for the work you are doing. For example, do you need to write reviews for your people? Focus on the main points you want to get across and it’s ok to be more succinct than usual.
• Be aware & mindful of people taking leave, make sure you include them and that they have the correct messaging and access to information.

Conclusion

Going through the redundancy process is horrible, and being a manager at risk of redundancy who is managing people also at risk of redundancy is really tough. However, the tips and approaches I’ve detailed here really helped me manage the process and support my people well. As someone who has been made redundant three times now (the magic number?!?!) I can say with some confidence that as scary as the experience is, you do come out the other side with new knowledge & skills and usually, a new exciting opportunity to pursue — and you will be ok 🙂

Looking for a new role can be overwhelming, and a real rollercoaster of emotions. This is felt especially keenly if you’re under pressure to secure something because you’re currently between jobs and bills need paying. I’ve written this post with the intention of sharing things that have helped me to bring structure and clarity to the interview process and therefore reduce the feelings of overwhelm and stress as it helps with cutting through the noise.

Step 1 — What do you want?

Ah, this is a massive question. When asked this very reasonable question, it can be easy for your mind to go blank. These prompting questions will help you identify the shape and type of role you’re after.

Thinking about the environment you do your best work in…

• What kind of culture do you thrive in?
• What values are important to you?
• What type of teams have you done your best work in and why?
• What ways of working did those teams have?

Thinking more in depth about ways of working…

• Do you do well when given lots of autonomy and freedom to plan and execute on your work?
• Are you able to motivate yourself without external pressure?
• Or do you do better when there’s pressure with tight deadlines?
• Do you prefer structure and process or are you happy with ambiguity where you may have to move things forward without structure or process in place?
• Logistics — do you want to work fully remote, hybrid, or full time in the office?

Thinking about how you’d like to grow in your next role…

• What do you want to learn in your next role?
• Is there a specific tech, way of working or skill you want to learn?
• Are there opportunities for progression down the line that are inline with your longer term career plan?

Thinking about the type of company…

• What type of company would you love to work in? Do you love seed stage startups, or bigger companies?
• What sector are you passionate about? Being able to articulate why you would love to work at a company within a sector you have a genuine interest in will differentiate you from other candidates.

Thinking about what is most important to you…

• What are your must haves?
• What would you be willing to compromise on?

Having a sense of this will help when making a decision which roles to prioritise and focus on, and with making a decision when you get an offer.

Dream big.

This isn’t always easy!!! When you’ve become used to a certain type of role in a certain type of company it can be hard to envisage something different. Say yes to conversations you wouldn’t usually say yes to. Be curious. Find opportunities in the day to journal and quiet your mind on walks in the park. I’ve found that this helps with surfacing the answer to some of the questions above.

Step 2 — Bringing structure to the search

This bit helps with managing the overwhelm. I find that my brain feels a bit what Mr Messy’s body looks like when I don’t take a methodical and structured approach to things.

Ordering the data and process absolutely reduces overwhelm and helps with increasing feelings of calm. So, let’s take a look at the data points we need to track when assessing and keeping on top of job opportunities:

• Name of company
• Name of recruiter
• Job title
• Current status — which stage of the application/interview process am I in
• Notes on the company, role and interview stages so far
• How I currently feel about the opportunity

I use a spreadsheet to track the above, and then link out to a GDoc for more detailed notes I take throughout each interview for each opportunity. Trello could be useful here as it would be easier to see the statuses of each opportunity at a glance, but personally I prefer my spreadsheet with a status field for each row.

Step 3 — Being prepared for each interview stage

These steps may sound simple, but when you’re feeling overwhelmed and a bit emotionally drained from the search and interviewing, they help to anchor you and set you up for success.

1 — Do at least MVP on the company. When were they founded? What’s their business model — how do they make money? What are the features of the product? How big is the company and what stage of maturity are they?

2 — Confirm who will be interviewing you and stalk (in the nicest way) your interviewers on LinkedIn. Know their background, career to date so far and how long they’ve been at the company.

3 — Ask the agent or talent person what prep you should do ahead of the interview and what will be covered.

4 — Have a set of questions ready that will help you understand what’s important for you to know about this role, the team, the company. Some standard ones I have in a template for each role are:

• What challenges will the person in this role be facing in the first 6 months?
• What are the top 3 skills that are important for the person in this role to have?
• What does success look like for the person in this role?
• What is on the product and tech roadmap for the next 6/12/18 months?
• What is the mission for this team/area?

Step 4 — Take time to feel good

Interviewing is intense; it’s mentally and emotionally draining. Rejection is really tough. It’s very hard to have a positive mindset when you’ve just been rejected for a role you felt you were a great fit for! But as they say, everything happens for a reason and a better fit is out there for you. Take a little time to feel sad about the disappointment and hurt of being rejected — but try not to dwell there too long. The right role will come along — I remind myself of this every day and it helps anchor me to positivity.

I realised with a little therapy (I love therapy, I think everyone would benefit from it — maybe a post for another time!) that I’ve previously been putting too much emphasis on being successful with all processes and getting lots of offers. However, that means I wasn’t always focussing on whether the role and company were a good fit for me — rather, I was putting myself under pressure to be the perfect candidate for each so as to succeed by that metric. It can feel very scary to be your authentic, vulnerable self in interviews but this means you’re more likely to find the best fit for both sides.

I’ve found it helpful to keep a journal of achievements as it’s so easy to lose sight that you’re working very hard on the search. To the point where it feels like sometimes you’re not doing much!!! But actually, even a couple of calls a day is a huge achievement. If you’ve made an intro for someone, or gone to a meetup, or networked over coffee, or applied for a role — note that down. If you’ve finally got round to writing that post (hello! ✅) — note that down. This really helps when you look back at how much you’ve achieved and helps you feel good.

Finally, be kind to yourself. It’s so easy to get frustrated and try and rush things forward — trust that you will be ok. Try and get out for a walk in nature once a day — it really helps.

Wishing you the best of luck

It’s hard right now. But — I’ve found people to be willing to be very supportive — to offer kind advice or just listen. People want to help — it can be hard to, but just ask — you will get energy from the response.