How teaching children science taught me to be a more ‘humane’ manager at a high growth startup
Managers are the execution muscle for any organisation, but managing people is hard work. And harder still in a high growth startup. Add the effects of the pandemic to the mix, and you get the managers’ perfect storm! While the move from an individual contributor to a team manager is one of the most important transitions in one’s professional career, no one formally trains you for this role. Like most things in life, you have to just figure it out.
Research from Gallup shows that only 34% of the global workforce is engaged at work. Further, now with the pandemic adding to employee burnout and with options for remote working, over 40% of people in teams are demotivated and thinking of quitting their jobs. With the changing nature of work, worker and workplace, there really couldn’t have been a harder time to be a manager. Luckily for me, my learning to better manage a 25 member team at a high growth startup has come from an unusual corner: the experience of teaching children science for 5 years.
My success as a science teacher was wrapped around the philosophy of making every class a unique experience as opposed to just another event. Teaching methods were designed in a way that children left the classroom 10x more engaged, excited and motivated to come back the next time. Class would start with a big hairy question on science in order to pique the curiosity of the group, establishing the why behind every class.
Once attention was captured, space was created for every child to first build a unique working project and eventually come together as a group to try and answer the big question. This created individual accountability along with a shared pursuit, enabling children to meaningfully help each other along the way.
A culture of psychological safety and trust was created where every child knew every other child. Since children don’t work, they connected through hobbies, interests and food. Because of the level of trust, no topic under the sun was off limits for a discussion. An atmosphere of experimenting, tinkering, play and learning by doing was deliberately created to emphasise that relishing the journey of getting to the answer was more important than just getting the answer. It was perfectly ok to make mistakes and a mindset of learning from mistakes was actively encouraged.
Children followed the motto of ‘when in doubt, ask’, seeing me more as a mentor and a coach than a sage on stage. Class would end on a high with a ‘question-storming’ activity with children stretching their imaginations by asking questions on how their answer to the big question could improve the world. They left feeling proud of the projects they built, anxiously waiting to come back a week later to solve the next big hairy question.
In a similar manner at work, I have tried to evolve my management style from being just an event to being a worthwhile experience, and it all starts with creating a culture of psychological safety.
As a ritual, our daily team standup meeting begins as a melting pot of moments with people expressing their personal sense of selves before jumping into work updates. From playing a music track of a loved artist to sharing what’s cooking for lunch to speaking about the dreams everyone wakes up confused about! This safe space helps the team get to know each other at a very personal level, and goes a long way in enabling communication, collaboration and the resolution of conflict during the normal course of work.
Success is not measured by just the number of tasks delegated and completed. Instead, as a team we break down our work into problems and projects, and success is measured in the joy we feel while overcoming them - using a joy tracker on a scale of 1 to 10. Every problem that the team works on starts with the ‘why’. This is a way for the team to ‘feel’ and really understand the problem by asking a set of big hairy questions to get curious about what is being solved. A higher curiosity can lead to a stretch goal in the form of a shared pursuit, and a much greater sense of ownership among team members.
With a stretch goal, it’s perfectly ok for the team to occasionally feel anxious and unsure while working on a project, and sometimes even fail. It’s a sign that people are moving out of their comfort zone and trying to be fearless. Learning by constant experimenting is encouraged as a way to live the growth mindset in order to achieve more and feel more fulfilled. Practicing a habit of lifelong learning about my industry enables me to share best practices, and move into the role of a coach with my team.
Finally, every project has an accountability forum in the form of regular weekly check-ins where the smallest wins are highlighted. Be it diagnosing the root cause of a bug or an interesting customer insight, nothing is small enough to not be celebrated. This is the space for the team to express the pride they feel about the progress they make and the work they do. This is the fuel that keeps the flame of motivation burning, getting everyone to come back to work everyday.
In an age of distributed and decentralised work, the biggest insight in trying to be a better manager has come from an understanding that people working in teams are not objects completing assignments but humans on a journey to fulfil a purpose. As a manager, my job is to strive everyday to make that journey as enjoyable and meaningful as possible so as to help my team thrive.
