In my 10 years at Atlassian leading and managing people, I built and ran everything from small teams working on a new product, to large teams spread across four continents.
But when I first started managing people, I was lost. I tried to manage a team the way I designed products and it didn’t work.
Fortunately I had transformative guidance from leaders around me and I came to realise: Managing people is its own craft, with its own skills and learning curve.
Using this skill-based craft perspective I went from no people management experience to 3 promotions in 3 years.
I learned from first hand experience how to operate at scale, deliver strategic impact and cultivate a healthy culture.
But beyond the practical skills I also discovered that:
- Looking after yourself is a priority
- Both leadership and management can be learned
- Scaling requires new skills, but struggle and suffering are optional
- Growing your impact can be done without burnout
- It’s better to seek guidance than stumble on alone, drowning in meetings and missed dinners
If you lead or manage people, I can help you use this same craft mindset to build skills that scale your impact in a way that also supports you to thrive as a person.
What I offer:
1-1 coaching in leading and managing people
Specialist coaching for product design leaders where we deep dive into strategies for boosting design team impact
I work with people across many experience levels, from those stepping into people leadership for the first time, to those managing distributed teams of teams. One of the great things about 1-1 coaching is that it’s tailored to your specific needs (both in terms of content and also session frequency).
Book a free intro call - asking me questions directly is the best way to find out if coaching is for you.
Values
Values express our intentions and orient the energy we put out into the world. They connect our contribution with meaning and narrative. When I started Guide + Mentor I wrote down the following company values as a map for this business to cultivate the kind of environment that anchors on joy.
Start with stillness
It can be tempting to see lots of action as the way forward, to the next goal, metric or moment of rest. Yet in endless striving we can quickly find that very little of our work meaningfully contributes to the outcomes we seek. When we pause to consider what’s truly important in a given situation, rather than jumping straight into the doing, so many tasks can reveal themselves to be distraction.
We start with stillness and then act with impact.
Honour your worth
As a human we are each worthy of being here, of being seen and heard and acknowledged - not because of what we do, but because we exist. We need everyone to show up, valuing themselves and valuing each other. Great work in the world is accomplished by teams of people who live authentically. And there’s room for all of us.
We are worthy of our being and of our contribution.
Cultivate trust
We are relational beings. Established trust opens more opportunity than any amount of ‘correctness’ or tabular data. Genuinely engaging with someone to understand what they care about paves the way for collaboration and reciprocity. The wellbeing and performance benefits found in a culture of psychological safety arise because trust is given room to expand. I know you are listening to me because I am listening to you.
We build influence through bridges of understanding, collaboration and care.
Intentionally learn
We are our own curator. If we don’t exercise that power we can find ourselves absorbing very little of our own choosing. Intentionally deciding to learn - to acknowledge that there are things we don’t yet understand or know how to do, and that we can improve with focused practice - is a principle differentiator in the impact we make. It activates humility, ability and agency. And these are powerful indeed.
We deliberately learn from experience and consciously invest in our growth.
Keep things as simple as possible
In both business and life it can be seductive to just add more - more information, more meetings, more processes, more tools. Lasting improvement, however, is found in the work of making things simpler, of taking away the noise until only the essential remains.
We find the essential and make space for it to remain in focus.