IT Leaders

So quick show of hands. Your last major incident, was that solved by a documented procedure? Okay. How many of it was connecting someone connecting dots that the playbook missed. Yay.

Okay. So that's why we're here today is to talk about our people. Our people manage all of our systems. So sorry. Yeah.

That's why we're here. You're people. They keep our system stable, improve our systems, and are operating all of our systems. And so I wanna talk about human centered leadership, which is HCL. And it's not supposed to be this softy thing, it's smart.

Focus on your people so that you're creating conditions for them to be be problem solvers, not task doers. That's yeah. So we'll kinda go through what HCL actually is for IT, and we'll talk through some of the different perspectives that people have on it, and then go into some strategies that I've been kinda trying to use, and then some actual tactics of what those strategies look like, and then talk a little bit about some of the outcomes for that. So this is me. I'm originally from Fort Wayne.

I went to IE Bloomington before it was a football school and which is a real bummer because they weren't good at basketball basketball either. So I've been at Sarbanes for about six years. I am lead to boss, I guess. So I about three months as an intern, about three years as a systems analyst, and then I write about at three years in my current role. Those are my 15 top five strengths, if you're familiar with that.

But the reason I wanted to hit on so my informatics major is all about connecting people, data, and information to solve problems. It talks about how technology doesn't solve the problems, your people and your information and your data do alongside it. And so it's been something that I've been really passionate about and and trying to learn and grow through all the time. So what is HCL? So it's like I said, it's not about being soft, it's about being smart.

We manage all the systems, but the systems are built, maintained, and improved by our people. ACL, what it really does is it prioritizes growth, autonomy, and trust so your teams can solve the problems and not just close tickets. So your outages, your tricky defects, cross system failures, technologies are fixed by itself. And what I'm really hitting on today is when people feel trusted, informed, empowered, they turn into problem solvers and not task doers. And then it's not a one size fits all approach, and so it adapts to different contexts and people.

So if you've heard anything about situational leadership, that's really interesting. I did touch on it, but we can talk more about that after. So these are kind of the different perspectives that I think think it's important to know, like, you might feel really good at some of them and not as good at the others. And if you're only people first and you're only about it's okay. Like, you're stressed and burned out.

Like, we can reprioritize things and like and that's, like, all you do. There you're not holding people accountable always. And so this is kind of just like a toolbox and to think about maybe, you know, okay. Maybe this I'm sensing My team right now is is really stressed and there's a lot of burnout looming. I can feel it or I can see it or I've heard it from my team.

This might some of the tactics under people first might be some good ones to use. This is when your team really maybe needs safety and support. The next one is purpose driven. So if you feel like your team is not connected to the organization and the organization as a whole in the mission, There's some things you can do to really help connect your individual contributors to the organization and the outcomes. And then empowerment base is really about man, I'm really in the weeds as a manager.

I'm sitting right next to him. I'm doing it, but I've been doing that for three years. So when does it become a time that I can start to delegate? And so this is really about your autonomy and innovation. So it's not just your ideas, but your team's ideas.

And then your adaptive leadership. This is kind of we all have priorities and projects that switch around. So how can you be an adaptive leader that's flexible and also responsive and understanding of what your team's needing at the time. And then inclusive leadership is all about hearing everybody's voice, making sure you're rotating. So if you feel like you've got one person that's really dominating ideas, have you and maybe your team, you've got one person that's really, really excelling, the rest of your team's kinda flat line.

How do you be intentional about bringing more voices and things in? So these are kinda high level, the different perspectives of HCL that I Okay. Kind of thought of. So let's talk not principle, but okay. Now let's talk about what are the strategies that I can think about for how I can be an HCL leader or a human centered leader.

So first, you've gotta build trust, and I know Doug talked about that. And I think trust can look like a lot of different things for a lot of different people. But really, like for me, I think that I I'm really good at building trust by being transparent. But, like, my consistency involved or sometimes probably could break some trust. So those are some things that I really thought about for me.

I'm a high eye. I'm a person. I love telling stories. So the consistency and follow through isn't what comes supernatural to me always. So the next one is lead as a coach.

And I've been having this struggle for three years. I've still like, I have a lot to learn. And I just kept thinking like, man, like, how do I I feel like I'm really trying to give really clear guidelines. I know that, like, I need you to take initiative and this is what initiative looks like to me and, you know, so on and so forth. Like really just trying all the different ways to like explain like really what I'm looking for and it really was problem solvers and not task doers, but it's hard to just tell them that.

But someone said to me, hey, have you just said, what does ownership mean to you? Instead of trying to tell them, like, what does ownership mean to you in your one on one with your teammate or with your employee? And that was like a light bulb to me. It's like, oh, they can tell me what ownership means and then we can have a discussion about it. So that's kind of that lead as a coach type of thing.

So you feel like you're just telling and you're spending a lot of time on that. Ask them what initiative means to them and what problem solving means to them and things like that. Maybe they need the next meeting to come back, but that's showing initiative by coming back with a good answer and a thoughtful answer to what those things mean to them. So the next is empowering with context. Share the why.

Obviously, you can't always share everything, but be intentional about what you're sharing. It's not just about, you know, oh, transparency. I'm gonna tell them everything and then everybody's stressed about everything. So be intentional about your whys, share context. It empowers them to, like define the outcomes and your guardrails and then share the context and see what kind of solutions people come up with.

The next for HCL leadership is you've got to have psychological safety. So normalize, let's test that out. Normalize learning and failure, share stories of failure failure and maybe how you've grown from that. And then the last and really, really important that I know we or I know I can fly through because we're all very busy and this one doesn't come as easily to me, is recognizing your like not just recognizing outcomes, but recognizing problem solving behaviors. So recognize when someone took initiative or had a really creative idea.

Maybe it wasn't even the right idea, but just recognize those types of things. So I think that these strategies can scale good judgment and across messy and dynamic environments. Alright. So this is the specific tactics in the eye kinda came up, and then I had AI build me, like, a little visual, then I couldn't figure out how to get the yeah. It was a whole thing.

But so this is my company's AI video of my tactics. So under each of the strategies that have kind of, like, what those actual tactics look like. There's way more. You can look these types of things up. So when you're building trust, it's things like here's what we know, here's what we don't know, let's figure it out together, share the rationale, and then be consistent about publishing, like, the commitments that you have said you're gonna make, and then where you're at with things.

And those there are are does anybody have any other big trust builder tactics that they think are really great?

I think for me, one of the big ones that's so easy and a lot of leaders miss it, and it kinda goes with publishing commitments, but keeping your commitments. Commitments. If you schedule one on ones with your team, you keep those one on ones with your team and be very, very careful about rescheduling or canceling. Or if you spend time with your team, make sure you honor those commitments on a regular basis, and that goes a long way towards building trust because you can destroy that so quickly by constantly canceling one on ones. And they get to the point where they're like, that doesn't mean anything.

I don't have to show up to that one on one anymore because my boss is always canceling.

Yeah. Or I'm gonna come prepared because my boss isn't prepared. They don't Yeah. All those things. Lead as a coach again, I think I went I talked about this a little bit.

Ask ask for their options. Well, what do you think? Hold intentional one like, your one on ones are for coach like, you can have development coaching or you can have development one on ones. You can have quick twenty minute so that they know that we're coming in and we're gonna we're gonna focus on coaching and you need to come out with some insights. And then hold that consistency that you're always asking, hey.

What'd you take from this? So that they know that, you know, they they don't feel attacked if you're, you know, always ask about that or not always asking and then you randomly do. With Empower, I think I kinda talked about these things. This is like the goal is x by Friday, but how you get there is up to you. That's that autonomy that you're you're telling them what the goal is, but how you get there is up to you.

I'm here to support you. Here's why this matters to the business or here's why this matters to the customer. You have the context. You make the call. I'm here if you hit a roadblock, those types of things.

And then psychological safety, that's you know, we've all been in problem management meetings where it feels like no one really wants to say, I pushed the wrong button and whatever, everything exploded and everybody's really mad at me. But have those blameless post forums that talk about, you know, what led to it, what did we learn, let's test it and see, improve our systems, not blame people mentality. And I think, like, it's more like, I know that that seems, like, kind of obvious, but it also goes about how you communicate about problems that happen that maybe, like, your team wasn't involved in. But, like, if you're communicating constantly, like, if you're blaming, you know, other departments or other departments are really slow or waiting because we're all cross functional. Right?

I think that that kinda creates a culture of, well, if they're if my boss talks about other leaders and other people and how they created a problem for them, is that am I safe to say that I made a mistake? So just kind of that psychological safety. It's not just, like, when you're with your teams, it's also how you hold yourself and talk about the rest of the of the organization. And then recognize problem solving. So I'm the spotlight and see that's have a five minute where you have a spotlight and it can be literally about anything.

Try to focus on problem solving behaviors and not always just so and so did this really, really fast or whatever. But those things are still really good, but just try to sprinkle some of that stuff in. If someone does a really good job with a creative solution and they wrote up a really nice solution doc, like promote that, show it, talk about it, and then also reward initiative and ownership. So these are my so I talked about kinda like these are really good things. And then here's some things that I found that I've hit and still watch out for that can undermine, and I did Buddy with Obstetrician because I'm living, breathing that right now.

And but I still think some of it because I had other ones, and I'm like, you know what? This is more kinda what I'm going through right now. So your friendship over feedback, avoiding this just completely breaks trust eventually. I think it's a slow burn, and that's what and it was a slow burn for me. So you avoid hard talks.

You're maybe a little bit more vague about what they could have done better. Like, you're not intentionally trying, but you're maybe when you do this, you're creating actually unclear expectations, and then your trust that you have for that person actually erodes, and then their trust for you erodes because they don't feel like they're getting feedback. So not only are they not doing things and then you're like, I don't even wanna delegate to you anymore, but so just always give the feedback and be intentional about your feedback. You're heroics. Your leader jumps in and fixes the issue every single time.

Or I understand sometimes, like, it's there's a line. I understand that. But if your leader is always jumping in and the fixer, that is killing your team's confidence and you miss really good coaching moments. So sometimes when you're in fixing, you can miss really good coaching moments. And then assumed understanding.

I knew this when I was in that position. They should know this. Maybe you skip context a little bit because you assume maybe you know what they're exactly what they're doing, but this really breaks the power with context. You gotta just because you've done it before does not mean you and you assume that they would know because you maybe knew when they were in that role, when you were in that role. You're gonna have blind spots and misalignment on how the bar is cheating.

This is my big one. I don't wanna be a micromanager. Well, that if you go completely hands off, you're going off the rails. So too much autonomy without guardrails leaves people pretty much lost and they don't wanna take risks because they don't even know where to go. So by kind of really doing all of these things yeah.

Don't do these things because it goes bad. And then also, again, the human centered leadership isn't about, like, being the boss that has all the answers. Know, this is about, like, empowering your team to be really good problem solvers so that you don't have to be involved in every single meeting and conversation, and you've gotta have all the analytical information behind it to make a decision. You can let your team make decisions. Alright.

So how do we make these strategies produce problem solvers? Again, coaching in context, this is what is gonna create your ownership and initiative. People know the goal and they feel capable. Your safety and trust. They your teams are gonna try.

They're gonna learn faster. It's okay to make miss it's okay to make a mistake in the right environment. And I know that if it's even in the wrong environment, I'm not necessarily gonna get my hand cut off, but I'm gonna be held accountable over and over from it as a team. And then your recognition. So when I do the right things, I'm celebrated and it becomes the norm.

And that is what creates those repeatable behaviors. So this is what I think if you can get really good at humans in a relationship, like what outcomes you're gonna have. So higher ownership and initiative, your engineers and your developers and your service desk, all of them are creating our you know, they're driving solutions. They're thinking outside the box. They're not just taking the ticket task and closing out.

And I know, like, at Star Bank, our IT team is not huge. We've got a lot of people that have their hands and a few different I don't know. A lot of people wear a lot of different hats in the organization, and I don't think that that's completely abnormal. So having people that take ownership, solve problems, not just, well, what's in my queue today? Alright.

That's what's gonna create a good culture and problem solvers. Of and faster problem solvers. You've got problem solving. You got fewer escalations, quicker resolution, less outages, bugs, deployments. I know that you guys are on IT and wanna see data, but I don't have that.

But I think that because I'm still working. So I think less outages, less bugs, and all that. Innovation and continuous improvement, your safety fuels your experiments and your team's experiments. So you're gonna have more automation, cleaner code, smarter workflows, people thinking about how to improve processes and not just solve, like, put fires out. And then you're you'll have resilient teams.

So I think it builds a good culture and makes people wanna stay at your company and work together when you empower them. So and we all know how it is the most fun thing ever. So how can we keep our people our our people with us and doing your best. And so now I've got and then I'm gonna I don't know how I'm doing on time.

You're good.

Okay. So now I've got all these problem support problem solvers. Your support for them looks a little bit, again, different. You're asking more like, I know because when you're in that directive type leading versus your coaching because when you've got brand new people to brand new things, you can't always be in a coaching scenario. You've gotta kinda tell them this is how you do it.

So that's kind of that situational leadership where if you understand where the person's at, are they new to this task or are they new to the company, I need to tell them probably maybe how to do it a couple times. I'm a lot more directed. But if you stay in that forever, then that's where you get away from that HCL. So then your next level is kind of coaching. So asking questions.

What options do you These are your people that maybe have a little bit less competency, but they're really eager and they have been with company for a little bit longer. And I'm kinda getting off the rails here. Your next is that supporting level of leadership, and that's when you've got your problem solvers. So and not just task takers and order takers. These are some of the what was I gonna say?

This is kind of what support looks like. All right. So to kind of wrap it up, provide clarity and not control. Define your outcomes and guardrails and next steps. Ask before you advise.

So ask, don't tell. What's your next step? What do you think about ownership? What does initiative mean to you? What options do you see?

Create a space for thinking. Don't grab the keyboard in a crisis. Sit like don't sit back, but actively listen in and be intentional about finding moments for coaching and how you can maybe walk someone through. Back to that problem solving, what options do you see? Talk through maybe what you're like, the reasoning if if they're totally off the rails, we gotta bring it back.

We're in a crisis. Right? So maybe talk through reasoning of maybe what you see and why you see that. And then offer resources, not answers always. Has anyone ever here heard of, like, the dummy curve?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So this one was it's it's this idea that you when you first start in your career, you're, like, actually the biggest dummy. You have no idea. You're brand new. You're asking all these questions.

And then you get really good at your job and you stop kind of asking the questions because you already know everything. Then the next part about it is you actually come back up to the curve as you're the expert expert because now you're asking really intentional and good questions. You know what questions to ask that may and so that's kind of the idea of the dummy curve. It's offer resources, ask questions, and don't just give the answers. Normalize learning loops, blame list reviews, recognize good behaviors.

And then I have one takeaway this week. Just ask one coaching question every meeting. Try to think, have I asked a coaching question in my meeting yet today? And then that will become a norm, and you'll hopefully start to shift from answers. Yeah.

Hopefully, start to shift from task seekers to problem solvers. So that's all I have. And I thought I had a question slide, but I didn't. So

I've I've got a couple of questions for you, Jen.

Yeah.

I'm gonna come up here so that the mic can catch me. How did you get exposed to human centered leadership?

Honestly, just, like, on LinkedIn. Okay. Like and then which is I I just heard about it and have just been reading have read articles about it since I don't know. I've been on LinkedIn before I was even really a manager. Yep.

And then honestly, when I became a manager, I'm pretty sure it went all out the window because I just went total stress ball mode. And so over the last couple years, I'd say about a year and a half as I felt like I'm trying to get my feet under me a bit, I've been like, wait a second. All these things that I'm so in tune to and, like, have read about, like yeah. I I can use these practically. And then yeah.

So it's kind of

That's good. Yeah. I'm glad you addressed that from Bud and Boss thing because I think it's a real challenge when you've gone from a fellow coworker to a leader. Do you think there is resistance at all from either the business or from other IT folks that you were in the younger group versus maybe in the middle of your career or at the end of your career? Did you feel any resistance like that?

For my team specifically, no. Okay. But I do think though that I because I I had a lot of trust and respect from them as as a peer. Yeah. And I do think that I broke terribly.

We're good. And I've done things to, you know, really be intentional. But I do think that, like, if I wasn't intentional, like, now I would have I would be in a spot that there is. Like, what the heck? I don't know.

Yeah. So, no, at first, I I mean, I'm sure there was. But to my face and did I feel it? I felt it was, like, really trusted by the organization and very nervous.

Yeah. Yeah. That's okay. Well, thanks for sharing.