How pausing to understand each other helped Mavenlink’s Insights team grow as communicators
As early as grade school, we learn that team projects don’t always go smoothly. Different ideas, priorities, and personalities often fail to magically cohere. Eventually, we learn that communication is key to finding team harmony. But then sometimes, amid “getting things done”, we forget.
Mavenlink’s Insights team develops our Business Intelligence platform. The team recently came together to work through a period of communication challenges. By investing in understanding each other, they turned a rough patch into a growth phase, bringing their team to a better place and enhancing their individual communication skills.
Below, Insights engineers Phil Erickson, Chris Bacon and Andrew Rose tell the story. They’re joined by Director of Engineering Paulette Luftig, who provided helpful guidance along the way.
JB: Thanks everyone for joining today. Phil, and Chris, and Andrew — tell us about your team. What do you do?
Phil: We’re responsible for the data pipelines and Business Intelligence integrations that power data access & analysis for Mavenlink customers. Our customers use our product to find insights into how their businesses are performing. We help them answer questions such as “what was our profit margin last quarter?”, and we provide support for decisions like “should we hire 50 more people in the next 6 months?”
JB: What are some interesting challenges your team faces in providing those customer insights?
Phil: Scale, for one thing. Mavenlink is growing and changing in scale. As our customers use the platform more, we’ve made the data pipeline more robust to service higher throughput and lower latency with continued reliability.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s exciting to go back and see … The growth definitely looks exponential over the last couple years. And it’s a challenge dealing with all that, because our customers depend so heavily on our system — we can’t afford to miss a single data load, even for an hour.
JB: A nice problem to have!
Shifting gears, obviously we develop software in team environments. A big part of enjoying the teams that we’re working on is ensuring that we’re communicating with each other about issues and working through things when they come up.
Your team recently went through a period that required some conversations about how you could best work together. What were some signs that you needed to pause and have some conversations?
Chris: For me, the thing that made it clear that we needed to talk was that it felt like we’d keep having the same conversations. There were times when I would speak, and I felt like my point wasn’t heard. And there were times when others spoke to me, when I felt like after the conversation had ended, I hadn’t fully understood what their intention was.
It just felt like it was hard for us to communicate. Somewhere along the way, the wires were getting crossed.
Phil: Yeah, echoing that, for me a lot times it was that I thought we were all on the same page, and then only later down the road did we realize, “Oh, we apparently meant very different things.”
Andrew: For me, I was fairly new to the team, and so I didn’t have all of the context that I wanted to have to communicate with people. It took effort and repetition for me to learn exactly how to talk to people about what I was concerned about.
I had some experience with systems, and saw some of our opportunities for scaling. I felt responsible for bringing up points that I thought were relevant, and I was having difficulty doing so in a way that was compelling for other people.
So that was really the problem for me. It was like I felt a responsibility, and I was having trouble executing that responsibility. So, that was a concern.
The openness was immediately both liberating and relieving. The longer impact has been that we’re a lot quicker to have these conversations now.
JB: Right, so I guess one underlying theme was, as a group of people who were forming into a team, learning how to talk with each other and hear each other was part of the process. And it’s nice that you guys were able to have those conversations and work through things.
As you were working things out, what did you notice about the team’s feelings, and what about your own experience? How were you feeling as you were learning how to communicate a little better?
Andrew: So, I noticed a whole slew of different things. When I brought up my concerns, I was really impressed at how interested people were in resolving them. People quickly stepped up and said, “Let’s work this out. Let’s talk about this. Let’s find out what’s going on.” We improved.
And yet, there were still some moments of frustration, and I think that the team felt that in general. But again, the intent was to work through it, and to get it resolved. And so, that was really encouraging to see.
Phil: Yeah, given some of the initial frustrations, early conversations were a little uncomfortable and awkward. But as soon as we had the conversations, and got it out in the open, everybody was so willing to work together on communication that it felt super liberating. And the awkwardness pretty much immediately disappeared.
I’m not even sure that there really was awkwardness for everyone, maybe that’s just my perception. We moved on from it so quickly as soon as we actually had some open communication about, “Hey, I see an issue,” and let’s figure out what the issue is, rather than try to continue dancing around it.
Chris: For me, the hardest part of the process was definitely figuring out how to open communication, how to approach it in a respectful manner.
Open communication is something I feel like I sometimes struggle with. I feel like I have trouble both understanding people sometimes, and getting my point across, which added to the frustration.
We had a difficult line to straddle. We were balancing speed of delivery with preparing for future scale, and we were coming from different places.
Phil: The communication was a little bit hard, I think, because like Andrew had mentioned, he was new to the team, but also brand new to Mavenlink. I’d been in Mavenlink for a while, but I was brand new to the team. Chris has been Mavenlink for a while, and on the team for a while, and other people on the team fell into one of those three camps as well.
It was more than just, “What are the technical problems we’re facing?” At the time, it was like, we’re coming from very different backgrounds, from completely different directions, and colliding over these technical challenges.
My strategy is also to help them reflect on what another person has said, and the different intentions or meaning that could possibly be there.
JB: The storming and norming phases, as they sometimes call it, yeah?
Andrew: Yeah.
JB: Cool. So, interested to hear … did you approach some of these conversations in your own ways? How did you straddle the line between working out for yourself how to approach some things, versus getting help and support from other people?
Andrew: This is one of the things that I appreciate so much about Mavenlink is that we have the coaching system. And we also have the technical leads, and the teams. I found that to be very useful, particularly in this case.
I noticed that I was struggling to communicate, both content and also timing. As Chris pointed out, there’s always a balance between speed of delivery and robustness of design… And so, how do you make that balance?
I think that the team does really well on that. I found it difficult as a new person on the team to know when to make suggestions, and when to raise issues, even if they were forward looking. I wanted to raise them early so that people had time to consider.
I talked with Paulette. Phil and Chris were great resources, and we did a lot together, and we worked through a lot together. But I still had some concerns about where we were going, and how I could contribute.
So I talked with Paulette, who’s my coach. She’s really helpful coordinating conversations, and providing feedback on how I could approach things differently, and with a different perspective. That was really useful. The goal was to get the communication working, and to get everyone contributing.
I think the separation of the coach from the team lead is something that’s unique in Mavenlink, to my experience. And I think that was really effective in this case.
Phil: Yeah, I just want to echo that. Huge shout out to Paulette. It was really awesome working with her through some of this, and the coaching system in general.
I was just immediately and continuously talking through this stuff with Paulette. And she was really great at helping me approach it in my own way, but in perhaps a more refined version of my own way.
JB: Chris, how about you? How were you thinking about balancing your own instincts, and looking to others for some guidance?
Chris: At first I was definitely just trying to handle things in my own way, but after noticing that there was still some friction, it became apparent that I needed to reach out to someone else..
I’m always super anxious about approaching anything that seems like it could feel confrontational, so I reached out to my coach, and I talked to Phil, and I talked to Paulette about it because that’s a skill I’m trying to actively work on. And they all gave me strategies on how to deal with it.
Paulette pointed out that it’s possible that one of the underlying issues was just a difference in communication styles. For example, Andrew’s a bit more direct whereas I’m a bit more indirect. And so, we have what feels like friction when in reality it’s just us trying to communicate on two different planes.
One of the things I learned is how to approach conversations with an intentional strategy.
JB: Paulette, your name keeps coming up here. How did you approach encouraging the team to sort things out amongst themselves? How did you balance your own views and input with guiding the team members to find their own path?
Paulette: Well, it started with a belief that they really could find their own path, and that my role was to remind them that we’re all growing. We’re all coming at this from different experience levels, including me. So right, I think my role was to help people reflect on the choices that they’re making, to decide, “Okay, what do we want to do from this moment forward? What’s the ultimate goal they’re aiming for? And what are they choosing? And will that actually get them closer to that goal?”
My strategy is also to help them reflect on what another person has said, and the different intentions or meaning that could possibly be there. And to maybe poke holes in some of the original stories, so that they could consider other options, or ways of believing, or maybe provide a more generous … A story that has more generosity to it.
You guys have mentioned me a few times, but if you could see through my eyes, you’d see just how much work you put into the discussion, and how you ended up solving this challenge and making the team a ton stronger. Hopefully you can reflect on that over time, then lend a hand to another group of people working through difficult conversations.
JB: So it felt challenging for a bit, but ultimately you were able to work things out. How did things feel after you got to that place, and what benefits did you see for the team going forward?
Phil: The openness was immediately both liberating and relieving. The longer impact has been that we’re a lot quicker to have these conversations now. I think Andrew and I pretty regularly have conversations where it’s like, “Hey, I have clearly misunderstood something, let’s just talk about it now.” So, that’s been super helpful, it’s been a real important takeaway for me.
There was never any reason to hesitate to have these conversations except for the initial awkwardness. Once you get through that, it’s like, “Oh, that wasn’t bad at all.” Now, we can just avoid most of these things with a quick Slack message, “Let’s hop on a Zoom call, and take five minutes, and avoid a miscommunication altogether.”
Andrew: For me, it was really exciting, and I double down on what Phil said. It’s not awkward at all, and honestly often when there are very different viewpoints, it’s an exciting opportunity. It’s a chance for both people to learn. And then, also maybe there’s something there that I didn’t see, that I get the chance to pick up on.
And also, just learning about Mavenlink, and learning about how things are done in Mavenlink, and the fact that you can make a difference, and you can change both yourself and also the team is something that’s, again, fairly unique to Mavenlink. It provides people who are on a team a great opportunity to talk to people on the team, talk to their coaches, talk to their leads, and improve things, and improve the process, and improve the conversation.
Chris: For me, it was just a really nice period of growth — learning strategies to deal with tough conversations. It was just a huge learning opportunity, and I grew to respect Andrew, and Phil, and Paulette a lot more at the end.
Phil: Yeah, I want to echo the exciting thing. Well, first, getting to know everybody that Chris just said. I echo that, but also the exciting nature of the collaboration that Andrew mentioned.
It’s cool to look back on what we built, and identify key ideas from everybody that when taken together are better than the individual ideas. I’m really pleased that we can have that synthesis of ideas with a lot less friction.
Paulette: I’m curious to know how you guys now think about the process of growth, and how it was a bit painful, right? To go through the journey. And in the end to reach the other side. Does it make it more exciting? Do you in some ways look forward to other opportunities to be developing in this way despite the obvious discomfort we had to go through?
Andrew: I think one of the things that really impressed me about the process was to sit with Chris and Phil, and talk with them. And sometimes they didn’t know that something was going to be effective, they didn’t know that a particular conversation would be effective, but they were willing to try. They were willing to be there, and be in that conversation. And that willingness I think is great to see, and it was encouraging for me. It’s really encouraged me to look for value in our conversations too. And so, that was great.
Phil: Something that you just said reminded me … there were a lot of conversations that we approached experimentally, like “I don’t know how effective this is going to be.” There were a few that just weren’t effective. You can’t win them all, but I think with the attitude of being willing to try it out, to be vulnerable that really ended up being helpful.
One of the things I learned is how to approach conversations with an intentional strategy. Paulette really helped with developing a plan of how these conversations can be useful. What discussions might need to happen? That’s more thought than I’d ever given to any of this kind of stuff, so that was a big learning experience for me.
JB: Thanks everyone. Really appreciate you sharing the story.
