Handling Negative Feedback, Growth Mindset and Netflix Culture
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How to handle negative feedback at work or at life, what is Growth Mindset and why and how we should work to have such mindset. The latest book by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer Author and Professor, Only top talent in team, unlimited vacation, no decision making approvals needed, be frank and honest in communication, Lead team with context not with control, so many culture related topics what worked for Netflix and what others should learn or revisit their culture. This week newsletter is all about these topics. So let’s dive in.
Handling Negative Feedback
At workplace, your immediate manager or boss has huge impact on your day to day or weekly work. So they can directly impact your work life, your interest to come to work daily and deliver results. Not just current work but also impacts your future at the company and your growth. If we look at any companies Glass door reviews, among the lowest reviews Bad Manager or Bad Boss comes up strongly. So we should know how to handle negative feedback from such people as we cannot show our emotions or retaliate at workplace.
It is very common that when someone shows negative energy towards us, it impacts us, as we cannot feel good about ourselves. Ideally it is other person reflecting negative energy, so it is his/her pain, we should not get upset with ourselves. In such case, we should step away. I mean not physically from the conversation instead emotionally and look at the situation as their talking and hear it out as it is not about us. That is let go their anger and anxiety etc. so you can hear them. Once you hear them out you will be in better position to handle negative energy. Here is a template for such conversation at workplace, when getting negative feedback.
Do Take Notes. Hear them out and take notes about what being said. This will allow you to refer them out at later phase and for other person you are listening to them (Not walking away physically, Stay with them by walking away your emotions)
Nod your approval. Doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with the feedback or their energy. You don’t have to respond right away, by nodding your approval will let them calm down or they will be done with sharing their feedback quick as you are not retaliating.
More than nodding your approval, briefly describe back your notes, so you are assuring them about their feedback
Remember you both are in same team and till you are in same project, you have to work with each other. Go through the notes taken very clearly, step by step. For each point, calmly look back about your own work deliverable and see if you are agreeing with them or not. This will allow you as a Judge, so be transparent in the review process of the feedback. With the process, you should able to say for each point, what’s your room for improvement. Once you know that, you have your agenda for next meeting.
Work on that improvement and share your work deliverable since last time you both have met and ask them to be Judge. As you are giving them importance and valuing their feedback.
There will be a case, where other person is just bashing out their negative energy and it’s their attitude as they are more of controlling or commanding nature (Negative person traits). You are good with your work. Even in such case, do meet and simply share your work deliverable’s since last time you both have met and ask their feedback if they are seeing progress since last you met. You will be amazed to see change in their behavior as you are allowing them to be commanding position and agreeing with them ( personally even when you are not really), they will come back positive or will end up saying keep working on it.
This creates an ongoing conversation between you two, as you both are in same team it shows that you are making an effort in this work relationship.
At the 5th Point, do handle with care when you are meeting with them even personally you are disagreeing. I have personally been once with such negative manager and this calmness and stepping back approach has worked little bit I guess or at least things were little cool keeping our boundaries. It definitely does not remove hurdles for future of that person promoting you, but will settle things at current position. It is their negative energy as I said, we should not get upset about it as it’s their pain, time will show them their negativity at some stage sure so they can reflect upon themselves.
Growth Mindset
In one of my recent podcast listening, Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft mentioned about growth mindset which was studied by Harvard University. He recommends instead of Know it all culture, he asked to embrace Learn it all culture in his organization. Once you learn it all, actually then you will know it all. Learning should never stops in life as each event, duration in life teaches us back or needs us to learn, so learning should continue. This is named as Growth Mindset. Growth mindset is based on the belief that your skills, qualities are things which you earn them by your efforts. In order to get into growth mindset, I do not think that we can pick a book and start learning about each skill or quality. Yes, we can learn but important thing is change our way and adapt towards those learnt things. So as a person we need to look everything from new perspective if we are not in the right state of mind.
Example, say if I overthink every situation then there is a need to change my mindset to not wander off with information, rather analyzing the information and able to articulate and be a decision maker. So in such cases we need to have a mindset that kicks out our distraction and see any matter with clarity. To be in Growth Mindset, need to have below few changes
1. Be Disciplined
2. Live Intentionally and consciously (My learning from recent read of Seneca’s essay, well defined in the book “On the Shortness of Life”)
3. Show Compassion
4. Able to take Self-Care and Care for others
5. To shine in Diversity, Be a Collaborative team member in work or at home
6. Able to make decision with clarity
7. Able to answer your own Honor ability and stand to it always
8. Be determined
9. Be Patient, Do not show emotions, step back always logically to think before you respond
10. Do not allow Negative energy of others, Impact real you. Stick to your values
11. Self-Motivated in all aspects of life
12. Might be at work or at home, be genuine, Do not sell your ethics for a business deal or for your wants or needs
Let me know what else you think we need to adapt to be in such mindset always.
No Rules Rules, NETFLIX and the culture of reinvention Book by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer (American author and professor)
The book trending over LinkedIn and also over Amazon ranking in over top 20 charts among Non-fiction book. So thought of sharing few notes from the book and few short interviews of Netflix CEO talking about culture I have seen this week.
Netflix right now holds 182.8 million subscribers and they are growing big day by day. Specially looking at their interface, their algorithms running to scan top trending shows, curating content specific to user watch, for sure that much amount of streaming with high definition calls for huge data centers, Network, Response rates, Optimization, Huge big data systems. Yes as I’m an IT Professional more than shows these are the things which interests me. To know what skills does their team has, what is their team culture, how they succeed into moving to production for giving such wider audience an interface which is just growing up since last decade.
Talent Density - A great workplace is stunning colleagues. Author mentions that having a team of 10 performing people is way better than 20 average performing people is their fundamental rule. They learned this when they had to retain top 80 performers and fire 40 non-performers even the borderline resources, shown them that talented people enrich among other talented people.
On Moving people, Hiring and Firing.
The Keepers test. They ask managers, would they rehire a person, or would they keep them if they are going to another company, this tells them whether employee is keeper or not. If not, then they fire with generous pay of 4 to 6 months of salary i.e. for entry level employee
Every company says we are a family and historically many companies were treated as family. Netflix says we are a TEAM, like professional football team and they want top performers in the team to win the championship. To win championship, they need to have top performers in every team. It requires to pay higher compensation to maintain such teams. In case of family culture in Organization even non performers will be given chance again and again, but that’s not their culture vision. I guess to have only top performers in team, they have to move people out sooner than other organization and it comes with cost. That is higher compensation to get the talent on team or give the extended pay for next few months when firing.
So Top performing team and having a common goal is key.
Analogy of getting such performing team is been compared with professional athlete. Player knows if they get inured, they may lose their career as well, but they won’t stay in that fear, continue to perform better to be their best. Such work culture requires to have employees to perform best everyday instead of pressurized of being fired.
I guess, High performing team members for sure will end up having conflicts, but having a common goal like a football team to win the championship not just require technical skills, also require people skills, personal skills like grit, determination, self-motivation you name it, all have to be at best.
Also when I recruit for my own team or for my division, it’s never possible to get all top performers due to budget constraints. This part in book resonated with me a lot, as I was always been so rigid in getting right resource as it is for long run of company rather than filling immediate position. I guess as now they are so big, they are able to shell out higher compensation to get top talent. Author also mentioned it, that once they went public that is when they were able to enable this culture more, earlier have to do best with what they have got.
Increase Candor (the quality of being open and honest in expression; frankness )
At workplace be diplomatic is been shared a lot, their culture has challenged Psychology in many aspects. It is true that one have to be open and honest in their expressions, be frank. Yes, one cannot be so frank that can end up hurting others feelings. There is an art to be learned here, to convey feedback with positive intent and be honest in opinion.
This is a cyclic feedback they encourage at every level of organization. Rather complaining to manager about the colleague, they ask the person if they have shared the feedback directly with their colleague. Reed compared this lesson from his marriage counselling days when they went during initial years and being honest in conversations and being frank have helped them to be a couple for more than 2 decades.
Removing Controls at work. Funnel shaped approach is shared for all the 3 sections i.e. Talent Density, Candor, Removing Controls. Not to do all of them at force, rather each start small and fine tune again, as in case of removing controls have to start small and then do big changes.
They have removed Vacation policy, yes one can take unlimited vacation. Americans for sure when they have dedicated vacation time in a year, hardly 60% is max they end up using them or some force to take or some stay in fear of getting away from work may lose their position at work. Taking break from work and coming back clearly shows the person will come with clear vision, rather than grinding same thought process all year. This is one more element of Psychology they are bending, as Once they have Talent density , Top performers, Everyone excels at their work, there is no fear of losing their job so allows them to take break and come back when needed.
No Travel and Expense Approvals are needed. One can book any type of hotel or any type of flight ticket
No decision making approvals are needed. If you have read their earlier articles, they mention about person judgement a lot. so they allow people to use their best judgement and no one in team should be surprised as they all are intellectuals and should see what is best for company.
A culture that valued people over process, emphasized innovation over efficiency and had fewer controls
Author mentions about building the culture and re-looking at it again and again, when business are specially moving global. As will get more diverse people, need to understand and respect other countries work culture, their diversity. So figure out what are the values of an organization and redefine the culture which resonates with diverse teams.
Diversity is something which is talked about a lot these days and why we have pressing needs right now to address it, not just country like USA which is country of immigrants but also like India where single country has so much of diversity in Languages and culture. Forming a winning diverse team requires lot of changes and companies should come forward and bring such cultural change within organization, so every employee is in line with organization values and culture.
For someone starting out, Reed mentions his own failures with smile. Like saying he started 10 companies but only 2 worked. He compared with skydiving saying, you have to jump out of the plane, knowing there is no parachute, expecting there will be a bird which you gonna catch on the way for safe landing. So be that irrational if starting out.
Factory model, top down management, Worker follows the rules has influenced us since many decades. Culture change requires lot more freedom, tolerate some small mistakes, do not seek efficiency, and seek flexibility, managing under edge of chaos, Organize around innovation. Inspire people instead of supervise people. Set the context instead of control.
Lead employees with Context, Not with Control
Above were my quick notes from book and also from latest interviews of author and few were my responses.
Another thing which I liked specially from the book is narration of same chapter from Reed first and then from Erin Meyer. I have not talked about Erin narration, you have to read the book, as her part of narration touches culture, Psychology etc. pretty great.
Reed mentioned in his interview, that Book can be read by someone starting out to see how to form culture right or existing companies can agree or can at least revisit their culture. Amuse it in either way. I agree to it
I am going to spend some time to read their culture posted on company website , sharing the link for you
Planning next to read Erin Meyer’s earlier book, kept a hold from my library. Will share my notes once I get it.
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IHGVQ9I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_x_RqRzFbFGT092H
That is all for this week. See you again.
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