Author: Alexis

In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I had the pleasure to welcome Lucinda Duncalfe, serial entrepreneur and Founder and CEO of AboveBoard, an inclusive hiring platform focused on executive and board roles.

We explored the overlap between hiring, diversity, and the top of organizations. The conversation is full of practical hiring insights, but also deeper reflections on leadership and team building.

“Being a leader is about setting out a future for people and then bringing them together to reach that future.”
— Lucinda Duncalfe

Why start at board level?

Lucinda explains why she chose to focus on boards and executives. Change can happen bottom-up, but it is often easier to shift systems from the top. Diverse boards tend to drive:

• better business performance
• more holistic decision-making
• stronger alignment with customers

Boards shape what organizations value, who gets promoted, and what becomes possible.

Diversity is not a pipeline problem

Lucinda shares a pattern she has heard many times:
“We’re doing nothing wrong. It’s just the pipeline.”

Then she gives two examples of hiring practices that quietly reduce diversity:

1) Comfort questions
A question like “Would you like to have a beer with this person?” screens for familiarity, not capability. Humans naturally feel more comfortable with people who resemble them.

2) Showmanship in interviews
Live whiteboard coding tests can favor a certain style: instant performance under pressure. That can penalize people who are excellent problem-solvers but work better with reflection and time.

And then comes the biggest barrier: when candidates meet a team that looks identical, they often receive an implicit message:
“This company is not for you.”

Lucinda’s approach was direct: candid conversations, clear commitment, and getting a few people over the hurdle so momentum could build.

The job description trap: too many bullets

Lucinda confirms something many hiring teams observe:

Women and underrepresented candidates often apply only when they match every requirement. Many men will apply when they match a few.

Too many bullet points can create an artificial “pipeline problem” you designed yourself.

Move from CVs to capabilities

AboveBoard aims to shift hiring away from brand-name CVs toward an assessment of competencies:

• What do you need this person to be able to do?
• What have they actually accomplished?
• What capabilities can they demonstrate, with examples?

This changes everything downstream, because interviews can become structured around specific competencies instead of a free-flow conversation that mostly confirms first impressions.

Leadership and building teams like a stew

Lucinda’s definition of leadership is clear:

• leadership is not authority or title
• leadership is about envisioning a future and bringing people together to reach it

When building leadership teams, she starts with hard skills, but then deliberately designs for complementary profiles.

She uses a simple metaphor: a stew needs variety. Adding the same ingredient repeatedly makes it boring.

She even builds a table to track what a team has and what it lacks, across dimensions like:

• pace-setters and risk balancers
• extroverts and thoughtful voices
• celebrators and improvement seekers

Diversity is one of those dimensions. Not a separate “nice to have”, but part of building a better team.

“I don’t want special treatment”

This part matters.

Lucinda highlights a tension: top performers do not want to be hired as a quota. They want a fair shot as the best candidate. The goal is not a handout. The goal is to remove the invisible filters that prevent fair access in the first place.

And she challenges a common objection:
“I don’t want to drop the bar.”

Her response is sharp:

• why assume diversity means lower quality?
• why isn’t diversity part of the bar, like any other dimension that makes a team stronger?

Mentoring is a network

Lucinda reframes mentoring as a set of relationships over time, not one formal mentor. Different people teach different things at different stages.

One advice to grow as a leader: intentionality

If Lucinda had one principle to share, it would be this:

Be intentional.

• set an intention for your week
• reflect after meetings
• act deliberately
• review what worked and what didn’t

She believes the difference between people who progress and people who sleepwalk is intentionality.

A final image: skiing and risk

Lucinda closes with a simple mindset:
“What’s the worst that can happen?”

Fall. Fail. Learn. Try again.

Here is the transcript of the episode

Alexis:

Hey Lucinda. Great to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit more about you and your background?

Lucinda:

Absolutely. It’s great to be talking with you today, Alexis. So I am what is known as a serial entrepreneur in the tech world. So I have founded and/or led a number of venture capital backed technology companies, high growth firms. I started doing that when I was quite young and I’ve been doing it for 25 years now. My most recent company is one that is called AboveBoard, which is an inclusive platform for hiring at the executive and board level.

Alexis:

Excellent. Thank you, Lucinda. Inclusive platform. That means I will be able to ask you questions about diversity and hiring? Right?

Lucinda:

exactly. That’s the world I live in, is the overlap between three circles in a Venn diagram: hiring, the executive and board level, and diversity. Exactly.

Alexis:

Why do you think it’s important to start at the board level?

Lucinda:

So, I think when I was younger, I probably thought that sort of power to the people and you can change things from the bottom up. And I still do believe that you can do that. I’m a little older and wiser now, and I know it’s actually a lot easier to change things from the top. And so if we start at the board level that then will flow down through the organizations. I have a very deep belief, which is backed by data, that first of all, companies that have more diverse boards of directors have better business performance. And we can talk about why that is. You know, I think you get a diversity of perspectives, you’ll tend to get a better answer. You’ll have a board that tends to look more like your customers, and therefore you’ll align the company better with your customers. So that is really key, is that you’re going to drive performance.

Lucinda:

Also, if you turn and look down the other way, if we think about legacy, I have also a very strong belief that diverse boards of directors make more holistic decisions. And that that ultimately is better for the world. You know, I’m an American. I went to business school, I’m a capitalist. And I think that the reality is the way businesses operate is one of the most powerful drivers of what we do in society. So to the degree we can increase diversity, we’ll have more perspectives that the board will, as I said earlier, have better performance. And then we’ll also have boards that are making better decisions in terms of the world and our society on it.

Alexis:

That reminds me of a conversation I had with the leadership team that was in engineering and software engineering. As you can guess, the great diversity we add in our teams, it was not great at all. We were discussing in the leadership team about diversity and basically one of the member of the team said, “We are doing nothing wrong. That’s just how it is.” And I said, “Okay, so we are all white, all male, and we are doing nothing wrong?” So how do we expect the situation to change?

Lucinda:

Yeah, I mean Alexis, so the last company I ran was a large software company. And when I first joined, I joined a CEO in a more mature company. We had the same exact symptom, the same exact situation. And I’ve heard the same exact thing from the team. It’s a pipeline problem, this isn’t anything we’re doing. Well, when you dig into that, I’ll give you two specific examples of what the team was doing and it was ineffective. One was that a question in the wrap around a candidate, so we’re sitting around and talking about them, was “Would you like to have a beer with this person?” Well, how is that relevant to what they’re doing in their work, right? It was about comfort. And as humans, we tend to be comfortable most with people who are most like us. And so we were screening out great candidates there.

Lucinda:

The second, which is maybe more subtle, but I think actually maybe even more damaging, is part of the interview process was a live code test. So literally here’s a problem. Let’s code it together on the whiteboard. And what was happening there was there a certain cultures where that was just difficult, right? The showmanship required, the instantaneous response versus folks who maybe were even better problem solvers in a more thoughtful, quiet way. So we changed those two things and it did start to change. The biggest challenge once those two were knocked down was that candidates who weren’t straight white males came and saw the team and got the implicit message, “Oh, this company is not for me. Not only is there no one here who looks like me, there’s no one here who is different at all.”

Lucinda:

And so then it got to be hard to hire them, to actually get offers submitted. And the way we handled that was, I just had personally very candid conversations with them. So that if we got a candidate who would add some diversity to the mix, I would literally reach out to them and I would tell them here’s what the deal is, and we’re completely committed to this, and we got a couple of them over the hurdle that way, and then it took off. But it’s very challenging and it starts with the recognition that there’s a problem.

Alexis:

Yeah. I think that’s a really big thing in our world is that we have a problem. It’s not that we are doing intentionally something wrong, but in reality, we are doing something wrong.

Lucinda:

Exactly, exactly. And you know, that’s a typical human thing. And leadership, you have to be careful because people feel badly about being accused as they feel of doing something wrong. So it’s more about diagnosing the process or the culture and depersonalizing it so that people are more open to looking at it in a different way.

Alexis:

I had a really interesting conversation with one- of the talent acquisition that I was working with. I was hiring for a position and a tendency, usual tendency, laziness. I asked for the previous job description for that position. And I started from that page that was not blank. That was more comfortable. And I discussed with the talent acquisition that was working with me. And I explained what I wanted of inducing more diversity in our teams and so on. And she looked at the description and she told me, “Okay, there’s a few things that you need to fix.” Of course, I was thinking about the gender on things and I said, “There’s nothing on this.” No, there’s a problem. You have eight bullet points in the requirements. That will never work. You will only have one type of people that will look at that list and say, “Oh yeah, I’m covering two of them. I’m good.” But you will miss all the others. So you need to be already careful with that.

Lucinda:

That’s right. We see that over and over again. We actually see it in the statistics on AboveBoard itself, is that women and underrepresented minorities will only apply for a job if they have every single one of those bullets, whereas men will generally look at it and say, “Oh, I have two of those. I can do this.” And so you’re setting up a pipeline problem for yourself that way. That’s exactly right.

Alexis:

Yeah. So I was already impressed of that. So in what you are doing with AboveBoard, are you also advising your customers in changing those kinds of things? In addressing those kinds of things?

Lucinda:

Yes, we are. There’s a few things that we’re doing. One is that we’re pivoting away from a typical CV and towards an assessment of capabilities. So if you think about it, you’re looking for people and in our world, for example, they’ve been at Google and Facebook and you think, “Oh, perfect. This people are awesome.” But the reality is you don’t know how good they were at Google or Facebook. What did they actually accomplish? And so if you instead frame the need in terms of competencies, what do I need this person to be able to do? Not what places have they worked, or what roles have they held? But rather what have they done at those? What competencies have they grown and shown? Then you can change the conversation downstream so that people start to interview or use other assessments against that specific set of competencies. And that’s our long-term goal is to be able to map competencies against roles, assess competencies for individuals, and then be able to match the two.

Alexis:

So it means in the interview process, the customer will have to work on himself to say, or herself, to make sure that they are assessing for one competency and they are looking for examples, illustration, of how those candidates demonstrate those competency.

Lucinda:

That’s exactly right. And so you’re asking all those same, giving you an example, when questions. You’re asking those questions against a very specific list of competencies that you’re looking for.

Alexis:

Yeah. I really try to do that now, but I have to admit that for a long time, that was just a free flow conversation. And I enjoyed the conversation with some people that was leading to more interesting questions. And at the end I had a good time and I was really happy with that candidate. And for other candidates, the first 15 seconds, I knew that I did not want to work with those people and I was done.

Lucinda:

That’s right. You know, that’s just, really, honestly, that’s a more sophisticated version of the would you like to have a beer with them approach.

Alexis:

Exactly. Yeah. That’s exactly that. That’s how to fight your first impression that could be really good or really bad, but you don’t know nothing about the person if you stay on that first impression.

Lucinda:

Exactly.

Alexis:

It’s interesting. So you work with a lot of leaders. You’ve worked with a lot of leaders in the past, and you are working currently with a lot of leaders. What does being a leader mean to you?

Lucinda:

Oh, this is such a big question, and books and books and books written about this question. So I think to start with what being a leader does not mean to me, it’s not about authority. It’s not about a title or a position in an organization. Being a leader is about setting out a future for people and then bringing them together to reach that future. So it’s about how do we motivate and organize? How do we create the structure within which people can be successful? It’s about being a pace setter.

Lucinda:

I sometimes use the analogy, you know, in the world I live where speed is of the essence, I talk about driving, and I will admit I maybe drive more quickly than I should, but I always feel like I’m in more control when I’m going a little bit faster than everyone else. And it’s because I’m able to lead. I’m able to set a path through the traffic versus sitting and following somebody else. That’s great too, and required, but I don’t think that’s leadership. So I think that’s what it is. Now, there’s a whole array of things that come underneath that. I think there’s always an interesting conversation about what’s leadership and what’s management. I think they’re quite different. I think someone can be a great manager and a poor leader and vice versa. I would say that I was a better manager when I was earlier in my career, and I’m a better leader now that I’m later in my career. So that’s what I think it is. It’s about how do you bring people together to drive towards a future that you’ve envisioned.

Alexis:

Excellent. And when you build a company, I think you have to assemble different leaders that will form that company, that will drive that company. How do you form those teams? How do you assemble those characters together?

Lucinda:

So the first thing, which is not particularly interesting, but it is the first thing, is hard skills, right? So you’re putting someone in a role. Do they know how to do that? Do they have experience? And back to the point I made earlier, the competencies, have they proven competencies in terms of how you manage a function or manage whatever it is that they’re going to be given? Because in corporate life, you don’t get to just lead. You have to manage as well. So that’s table stakes. I then think about it always as a stew. So to make a stew, we’re going to need a variety of ingredients, right? You keep adding the same thing. It’s going to be pretty boring. So I think of it in terms of, because it starts with me typically, right, as an entrepreneur, what am I missing?

Lucinda:

So I’ll give you a really concrete example. You know, Alexis, the way you and I first met was because I was looking for a chief of staff. And the reason I was looking for a chief of staff is that I am very, very good at big picture, at visioning and strategy. I’m good at selling. Really not so great at making the machine work. I’m really just not good at it. I can sort of do it in a pinch, but it’s not my thing. And so I needed someone who was balanced to me, who could do those pieces. So could understand and work with me and challenge me and be a sounding board in terms of those bigger picture issues and selling, and who would be crackerjack at making the machine actually run. And that continues. So as you add more people, I think you can make the list more comprehensive and you start to look for adding different personality types.

Lucinda:

Adding some people who are more run and guns, some who are much more thoughtful. You want some people who are sort of extroverted and are going to celebrate, and other people who are the ones who are going to be constantly looking for what’s wrong and how to improve it. And what you’re doing there is really thinking about diversity in all of its guises. So it is completely true that someone who is a different gender or ethnic background, they are de facto going to have had different life experiences and bring something to that stew. That’s one of the many dimensions that you’re looking for, how the pieces fit together.

Lucinda:

The challenge with that is to balance it with a foundation that is commonly held. And the way I think about that is value set. So, in the case of AboveBoard, you want really clear mission alignment. You have to care about what we do, it has to be important to you. And then values like integrity, like quality. You have to have a set of people who have these core things in common so that you can all work together, and above that bring very different things, soft, hard, personality skills, all these things, so that you can get the maximum possible packed into a leadership team.

Alexis:

Excellent. This is really an interesting job to do, to balance those different aspects. That you are balacing those different aspects, right?

Lucinda:

It’s so much fun. This is really my favorite thing. And there’s more art to it than science, but I do think there’s science to it. So I will literally, as I’m building a team, make a table that has the people or the open functions across one axis, and the other axis is the things that I think are most important to this business in terms of the softer side. So I won’t hire anyone who I don’t think is at the very top of the game in their function. Then once you have that, what are the other things I’m looking for? And try to spread the check marks in the boxes in that table, across the team, right? So you want someone who’s more of a rah rah person and someone who’s more risk averse. And so you’re looking across each one of those and making sure that somebody is filling that box in.

Alexis:

Yeah. So that means that you are really looking into it consciously, and looking at the gaps that you want to fill, not only on skills, but also on personality types, or kind of things. Yeah. That’s really interesting.

Lucinda:

Yeah. And I think actually that dovetails in to a discussion about diversity. Because I spend most of my days talking to people about this and how to actually action adding diversity at the most senior levels. One of the things that I think is very difficult for the folks who are the driving, you know, the straight white middle-aged males who hold most of these positions today, they will often say to me, “Well, I don’t want to drop the bar.” Which, first of all, candidly is a little insulting. So for those people who are listening, right, this presumption that in order to add someone who’s not that is going to drop the bar. Why would you make that assumption?

Lucinda:

The second thing that I really try to get people to think through, at least as a challenge, is why is bringing some piece of diversity not part of the bar? Why is that a separate thing? Why isn’t it that if you were making a stew, for example, is why I use that analogy, and you already had meat, would you go get more meat? Or would you add some vegetables or herbs? You’d want some vegetables or herbs to make a stew better, right? So the requirement when you go to the grocery store, isn’t the best possible grocery. It’s the best possible carrot or the best possible thyme.

Lucinda:

And I think that if you start to think about team construction in the way I described, diversity is one of the axes that you need to think through because different people bring a different perspective, and that’s additive to the entirety of the team. It makes the whole team better because you’re going to have more valuable perspectives in the room. And you’re therefore going to make better decisions as a team. Whereas adding one more person who doesn’t have that, they’re going to be helpful in terms of hard skills and whatever else, but they’re not going to add something that’s going to lift the rest of the team up as well.

Alexis:

Exactly. This is very, very, very important. And about dropping the bar, that comment, I did not realize, for example, one time that when we were looking at female engineering leader in the organization. We were lacking females at all levels, but especially after a few years, we were seeing really a gap in leadership, so that there was something missing. It seems that we were losing the female software engineer before they were going into a leadership position either as manager or as individual contributor. That was really concerning. And we were trying to understand why, what was happening, and so on. And I told one of them that was in a leadership position that we should encourage and help them and so on. And she looked at me and said, “I don’t want a special treatment.”

Lucinda:

Yeah, that’s right.

Alexis:

And I was really struggling with that thing. I think it’s not a special treatment, but if I’m not giving you a special treatment, what I’m doing? And she looked at me and said, “I just want all people to be treated fairly.” And if you look at it, why people are leaving, they are leaving because they feel they are not treated fairly. The others have promotions before them. And they think it’s unfair. So they are okay to wait for one more year, and after some point they leave because they think their future is somewhere else.

Lucinda:

That’s right. Yeah. Alexis, this is one of the most critical things for people to understand is the very best performers, the last thing they want is a handout. They don’t want to have a job because they were the best Black candidate. They want a fair shot at the job as the best candidate. And I think what you’re seeing today, at least in the US, is there is such a focus on this topic after the murder of George Floyd in particular. The best performers are allergic to being hired in because of a program or that sort of thing. It’s the downside of quotas. Now, I think there’s a place for quotas.

Lucinda:

If you look at what’s happening in some European countries and California within the US, on boards, as there are requirements to have a certain number of women, that breaks it open. And I think in a case where the numbers are so terrible that’s probably the only way you can start, but I sure hope we can drop them soon, and realize that you just want the best directors, and “Oh, women actually brings something special to the table.” And so it’s completely fair and right to consider the special thing that they bring to the table. What we don’t want is to be brought on only because of that. If that makes sense. It’s a little bit of a duality. You have to keep both of those things in your mind at the same time.

Alexis:

Exactly. But I think that’s really an important point. I spoke about leadership and I’m curious, what do you look up to as a leader or learn from, are inspired from? And why, of course?

Lucinda:

Yeah. Yeah. So this is, I think, such a hard question to answer because it’s so many people in so many ways. So the first thing I would say, and I think this is really valuable, maybe for other people as a way to think about this, is I don’t look at a single person and say, “Wow, that’s the leader I want to be.” Instead, I look at people and I’ll talk about them and think about something specific that they do that I want to emulate or learn from. And I think that’s really important because you can only be an authentic leader if you’re yourself. And every one of us is completely different. So we can’t copy who somebody else is as a leader and be successful. Rather, I think we need to look at them and say, “Oh, that is a fabulous way to do that, or approach, or attribute. I want to do that.”

Lucinda:

And so in answer to this question, it’s not really that I look to any one person. It’s rather what I’ve learned from so many through the years. I think one that comes to mind is a man named Carl Moreno, who was early in my career, I was probably in my late twenties. And he was a leader within the company I was working for. I was working in a financial services company and he was at the time general counsel and then moved over into other roles. And what I learned from him was about clarity and trust. So he was great at being really clear with what we were trying to get done. And I don’t mean that in a very tactical way. I don’t mean in terms of goals. More on a strategic level, here’s what we’re trying to do, here’s how it fits in, and then supporting while letting me and others run free.

Lucinda:

So we ended up getting this alignment, getting the very best from people, because we were so excited about where we were going and we felt both trusted and supported, right? I think sometimes people tend to either throw somebody in the deep end or micromanage. The trick is how do you give people the free reign to be their very best, while at the same time knowing that you always have them as a backstop. So no one would know who Carl is. He’s just been a CEO of a few companies now, but he was probably the earliest leader who I had personal contact with, who I have tried to emulate in that and many other ways.

Lucinda:

And then I pull other pieces out. So one of them that I’ve been really thinking about recently is Martin Luther King, specifically for his prowess in public speaking, right? I’m talking about issues now that he talked about, and there’s a style and a drive coming out of the Black church in America that I look at and think, how do I inspire people to be willing to think about this differently than they have before? How do I support the people who are our members and simultaneously change the minds of people who I think should be hiring these people? So those are two examples and I could go on and on.

Lucinda:

Oh, there’s one other story I wanted to tell. I’m a member of a group called the Conscious Capitalism Group, which is about why it’s good from a pure shareholder perspective and how to think across more than just the shareholder perspective. It’s mostly big companies, CEOs, and I was originally invited as a program like let a few venture backed kids come. And so it literally felt like that. There were four of us and we show up and it’s the CEOs of fortune 100 companies. And these four of us running $5 million, little companies. And we’re sitting at a table and felt like were the kids’ table.

Lucinda:

And there was a guy who had come in as CEO of Home Depot, who talked and he gave the story about how he came in. The organization at the time when he came in was really in trouble, super dysfunctional. And he started off making all these changes. So he’d spend his day having meetings with sets of people and making decisions and moving to the next thing. And he was very open about the whole thing. And he said, he was feeling like he was doing this great job because he’s making all this change and driving through. And you had a director working with him on these things, young and post-MBA kid. They had one of these meetings, they’re maybe six weeks into this or something, and the meeting ends and the kid sticks his head back in and says, “Can I talk to you for a second?”

Lucinda:

And he said, “Sure.” And he’s sitting at his big desk in his big office. And the kid looks at him and said, “You are really screwing this up.” Taken aback he said, “What do you mean I’m screwing this up? I think I’m doing great.” He said, “You know, you’re managing 250,000 people. You make these changes at your level. You’re making six of them a week. They drive all the way through to the floor level in the stores. And the poor guy who’s stocking shelves, it’s like, one day it’s this, then it’s this, then it’s this, it’s too much. You can’t manage a company like this.”

Lucinda:

And it so impacted me for the following reasons. First of all, here’s the 60 plus year old white guy, you know? And I was, I don’t know, however old I was, in my forties at the time. It was the first time I ever had interacted with a CEO who I did look up to and think, “Oh, I want to be like him.” And he’s not demographically like me, but he had the same value set, right? Authenticity, his openness, his drive. I just thought I could be that. And I had really thought before then that I didn’t want to ever run a big company because you couldn’t be those things. So that was really meaningful and opened me up to his message.

Lucinda:

The second thing was his authenticity. So here he is in front of a pretty big deal audience of his peers, telling a story about this kid being the one who gives him the feedback. And having established a culture where the kid felt free to do that and how important it is to have that openness to the people who are working for you. As a CEO, you tend to get in this bubble, and as much as you want feedback, people don’t give it to you. So thinking about how he did that and how you manage people and interact with people in a way that they’ll give you the real feedback. And then very tangibly, it was a big lesson for me in terms of the difference in pace in an organization.

Lucinda:

I later had a conversation about it with the president of Comcast, Comcast NBCUniversal, really big company. And he told me that, yes, he really can’t make more than a decision a quarter. And really it’s better if it’s once every six or 12 months. Because the reality is the size of those decisions are so huge. And the ripple effects through the organization are so meaningful that you have to be very careful picking. Contrast that to a company like AboveBoard. I’m making decisions multiple times a day that change direction because I’m running a little PT boat versus a big, giant cruise liner. He’s the other one who I would call out as very specifically having been very meaningful to me in those ways.

Alexis:

Really, really great example. And I’m making the connection with what you said at the beginning with the competencies, because what you are looking at, it’s really how those people behave, and what kind of specific things they have that you want to emulate and would want to learn. That makes me think about mentoring and hearing regularly that people should have a mentor, or should mentor others? And I’m thinking that it’s more network of mentor that people should have. What are your thoughts about mentoring?

Lucinda:

Yeah. I think what you just said, Alexis is exactly right. Is that you need people who will help teach you different things at different stages, have different perspectives on you. I think that’s been really critical. I used to say, I didn’t have any mentors. People used to ask me this. And I had a model in my head of a person who takes you under their wing and teaches you. And I really never had that. On the other hand, I had many people who taught me really important things and were supportive and helpful to me. And those change over time, right? Because you grow, the situation changes, and they need to be different.

Lucinda:

I think those kinds of relationships are very important for both people in them. And so it typically is really fun for the mentor to have an impact, to pass on what you know, and impactful from the mentee. I’ve never been in one of those formal programs. I don’t have a sense of whether they work. My guess is it’s a little hit or miss. Great when it does, there has to be some personality match, you have to actually enjoy it on both sides. So maybe it helps to drive those, but certainly they’re fun for the mentor and incredibly rewarding for the mentee. And yes, I think you need a whole set of people through a career.

Alexis:

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I guess that my other question would be the kind of advice, let’s say, if you had one advice to give to people who want to develop themselves as leaders, what would that advice be?

Lucinda:

Oh, by far I’ve been talking about people in general. This is the advice I try hard to give to myself all the time is intentionality. So I think what separates people who are really successful, by which I don’t necessarily mean making money or whatever, being successful is accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish, including things like a balanced life or whatever it is, are intentional about what they do. Too many people, I think, sleepwalk through life, they just sort of take the next thing that comes. And I think if you decide that’s how you want to live your life, that that in fact is being intentional, but in a professional environment, think about what it is you’re trying to do. Think about what it is you’re trying to do for your organization, for yourself. I take this probably to an extreme, I walk out of almost every meeting, unless I’m really, really rushed, I walk out of every meeting and think, “Okay, how could I have done that better? What went well, what didn’t?”

Lucinda:

I look at my calendar for the week and have an intention about what I’m trying to do this week, and do maybe something very tangible, like I want to close that deal, or it may be really intangible, like I need to get more space for thinking strategically, or maybe I’m feeling tired, I better back off some this week. So I think it’s about being very aware of what you’re trying to do, setting that intention, acting deliberately against that intention, and then assessing whether you accomplished it or not. I think that is foundational difference between people who succeed, more or less.

Alexis:

It is excellent. I think I will reuse that way of explaining that. I love it. This is really good. I’m wondering what are the things that are really giving you energy, and what are the things that are draining your energy?

Lucinda:

I will share this. I find, especially if I was doing sort of an in-person talk, I’m pretty high energy and people often assume that I’m an extrovert, and I am absolutely not an extrovert. I’m an introvert. I love those sorts of environments. And I really love working with a team of people that I know. I get energy from that, but ongoing interaction with humans is actually also really draining for me. And so when I think about what gives me energy right now, it’s about the mission and purpose of what we’re doing. If I’m on a sales call or a partner call, I get really amped up and excited. And then it also was exhausting. So it’s a little bit of a yin and yang in terms of people both giving me energy and exhausting me.

Lucinda:

The foundational drivers, the things that really I think give me energy is I love to build things and I love to see things come together. I get so much energy from that and it can be honestly, anything. Doesn’t have to be a work thing or a company thing. I really get energy from building. And then the other thing I’d say that is apropos nothing professionally, but I just love kids. Just being around kids makes me tremendously energetic. So I live in New York City, and one of the things I love about it is, my kids are older now, but you’re just constantly seeing kids and interacting with kids. And so I find that’s one of the things that really works for me. I am a city dweller, so I know nature is supposed to be the key thing, and I do love nature, but I don’t need that. Let me walk through the street. I will literally absorb the energy of New York City. So those are the things that come top to mind.

Alexis:

That’s a very, very good one. I love that. And that can resonate with me a lot. That’s always difficult for me to admit, that as interacting with people, I already like that, I you like the exchange of ideas and working with them, but at some point I need some time for myself.

Lucinda:

Exactly, exactly. Enough, enough. I need to unplug, exactly. And it never fails. A startup, it’s such an intense life, so many hours. And it never fails when I sort of just find 45 minutes in the middle of my day to do whatever it is, [inaudible 00:36:31], and somebody calls me. And I always answer. Not always, but almost always answer. And I’m always fine afterwards, but it is funny how, as one of the things as a leader, I think is you have to give of yourself, right? You have to be willing to just constantly, actually not just willing, want to give of yourself. And I say, that’s one of the rare moments as a CEO when I’m like, “Ugh. Okay. Now I have to do this thing.” Mostly I’m just energized by it. But sometimes it’s a little much.

Alexis:

Excellent. Last question. Is there something you’ve always dreamed of doing, but never dared to?

Lucinda:

So I wouldn’t say never dared to. The closest I can get is I’ve yet to be to Antarctica. And I’d really, really like to go to Antarctica. It’s just a time and priorities thing I haven’t done. I actually think one of the things that I’m really lucky about is I have a pretty balanced way of viewing risk. So I’ll give you an example I use a lot, is I learned to ski really late in life. I didn’t start skiing until I was 48. And I’m a pretty good skier now. And yet, still, I get to the top of a hill. And you know when you’re at a very steep slope and you’re standing at the top, if there’s other skiers and your tips are just out over open space. And from that perspective, it looks basically like it’s just a straight drop. Of course it isn’t, but that’s how it feels.

Lucinda:

And I always stand there and think to myself, and I go through, “Oh, can I get on the lift and go back down? Is there another way to get down from here?” And I’m going, “Okay.” I just think to myself, and this is the point of this story, I think to myself, “Well, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen?” Worst thing is I’m going to fall. I’ve fallen all the time, right? It’s fine. And then I go. And so I think about almost everything in life that way. Is what’s really the risk? And so it’s not hard to quote unquote dare myself to do things. When I think, “Well, what’s really going to happen?” I’d fail. Okay. I fail, I fall, or whatever. Which means I’ve been pretty lucky because most of the things that I’ve wanted to do, I’ve done.

Alexis:

It’s really inspirational. I loved it. I love the way you end on that question. I have to admit that’s typically the question I would have trouble to answer myself, but I love the way you did it.

Alexis:

That was really great to have you on the show, Lucinda.

Lucinda:

Oh, it was so much fun to talk with you. Thank you for asking me.

Alexis:

Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast. Go to Alexis.Monville.com for the references mentioned in the episode and to find more help to increase your impact and satisfaction at work. You can also check the episode with Ally Kouao for more about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Drop a comment or an email with your feedback, or just to say hello. And until next time, to find better ways of changing your team.

Photo by Tim Mossholder

Le Podcast – Season Two

• 
  Playful Leadership: Helping Others Be Their Best
• 
  Blessed, Grateful, and Human
• 
  Build the Right Product, with Gojko Adzic
• 
  Hiring and Diversity Without Dropping the Bar
• 
  Leadership and Teamwork in a Crisis
• 
  Chief of Staff: The Role, the Craft, the Community
• 
  Belonging, Identity, and Better Hiring,
• 
  What Software Teams Can Learn from Sporting Teams
• 
  Agile and Open Innovation: Building the Bridge Between Tech and Business
• 
  Radical Focus: OKRs, Cadence, and the “Seduction of the Task”
• 
  Human-Centric Agility Coaching: The Expert Paradox and the Ideology Paradox
• 
  The Job of an Open Leader: Context, Trust, and Growing Others

Le Podcast – Season One

• 
  Growing as a Software Engineer: Learning, Sharing, and Impact
• 
  Thirteen Rules for Building Strong Teams
• 
  OKRs in Practice: Learning, Focus, and Common Pitfalls
• 
  The Myth of 10x Engineers: Growing Beyond Technical Skills
• 
  The Anatomy of Peace: Leadership Starts With Who You Are
• 
  Psychological Safety: Creating Teams Where People Can Speak Up
• 
  Leading Distributed Teams: Collaboration Across Time Zones
• 
  Changing Your Team from the Inside: A Practitioner’s View on Leadership
• 
  Why Shared Language Matters: How Terms Shape Collaboration
• 
  How (Not) to Give Feedback: Responsibility, Ego, and Relationships
• 
  Rock Stars and Superstars: Supporting Growth Without Losing Stability
• 
  Do Cultural Differences Really Block Agile Adoption?
• 
  How to Create Great Goals: Using OKRs to Focus on Impact
• 
  Making Change from the Inside: Leadership Beyond Management Roles
• 
  How to Form a Cross-Functional Team That Actually Works

In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I had the pleasure of welcoming Chris Foley. Chris is a Principal Systems Design Engineer at Red Hat, and also a sports coach. Together, we explored a simple question that leads to surprisingly concrete insights: can software teams learn from sporting teams?

A great team starts with clarity

Chris begins with something that often gets lost in modern software organizations: role clarity.

In sport, successful teams have:

• clarity on what each role is supposed to do
• awareness across the team of what each individual brings
• responsibility that comes with that clarity

In software, teams are becoming more cross-functional: they do not just write code, they deliver and run services. This is a positive evolution, but it increases the need for explicit agreements. When “your role is not the color on the org chart,” clarity has to be created intentionally.

Momentum changes everything

One of the strongest ideas Chris brings from sport is momentum.

In sport, a goal can trigger positive momentum: confidence rises, energy rises, and the team builds on it.

The reverse is also true: conceding a goal can trigger negative momentum. If the team cannot stop it, a second goal often follows, and the game can slip away.

In software, the triggers are different, but the phenomenon is the same.

Positive momentum can be triggered by:

• a release that lands well
• a demo where stakeholders are genuinely happy
• a burn-down that is on track
• a big PR merged
• progress becoming visible and shared

Chris makes a practical point: if momentum is positive, you can build on it. Use the goodwill to unlock something valuable, like a spike in an area the team wanted to explore.

Negative momentum also has familiar triggers:

• a severe production issue
• a bug that is not contained quickly
• pressure escalating beyond the team
• a growing feeling of being behind, losing control

The key is awareness. Momentum is not only a feeling. It is a pattern that grows if it is not addressed early.

Leadership is not a role, it is a behavior

Chris maps sports roles to software roles:

• the player is a team member (engineer, QE, docs, etc.)
• the captain is similar to the team lead
• the coach or manager is closer to the engineering manager

But his point is not about titles.

In successful sporting teams, leadership is fostered across the board. Coaches give ownership. Captains are not the only leaders.

In software, the parallel is clear: when team leads invite others to lead on investigations, knowledge sharing, and decisions, they are building leadership capacity, not dependency.

Teams win games

This line matters because it shifts the focus away from hero culture.

Chris insists that in sport, teams win games, not individuals. In software, it is the same. Quality, delivery, learning, and progress are team outcomes.

This is why positive reinforcement inside the team matters. Recognition should not be reserved for managers. Mature teams build a culture where team members notice contributions and say it out loud.

How do you keep score in software?

In sport, the score is obvious.

In software, it is easy to fool ourselves if we do not create visible checkpoints.

Chris points to an important evolution: more frequent delivery and more frequent feedback loops make it easier to track progress and detect misalignment earlier. In waterfall-style projects, teams could “discover the score” after months. With shorter cycles, the feedback loop becomes part of the work.

Feedback loops exist in sport too

A useful correction Chris brings is that sport does not only have feedback during games.

Sport has:

• frequent training
• short loops
• coaching feedback after each session
• small challenges focused on specific improvements

This creates a learning rhythm. A coach might say: you did this well. Now reduce that mistake from ten times to six.

It is not grand transformation. It is focused improvement.

Training versus performance: software can rebalance

One of the most interesting parallels is the difference between training and performance.

Sports teams train often and perform less often.

Software teams perform almost all the time. Training becomes rare, generic, or disconnected.

Chris suggests a different approach: use what happens during performance to define what to train next. Not “go learn a random technology,” but focused training based on real frictions:

• improve charting and visibility
• automate a painful part of the pipeline
• remove a recurring quality issue
• sharpen stakeholder communication
• strengthen a weak coordination habit

Training becomes small, intentional, and tied to value.

Play to your strengths, not only fix weaknesses

Chris also brings a sports habit that software teams often underuse: play to your strengths.

Software retrospectives often drift toward what went wrong, what needs to be fixed, what was missing. That is useful, but incomplete.

Sports teams also ask: what are we already good at? How do we win on our terms?

For software teams, this can mean:

• using strong technical skills to raise standards and speed
• using strong teaching skills to onboard faster
• using strong product sense to influence direction
• using strong communication to make the team’s value visible

Weaknesses matter. But strengths are where disproportionate value often comes from.

Owning the product, the process, and the tools

Chris ends with a theme that connects everything: ownership.

Successful teams own:

• the product they build
• the processes they use
• the tools they rely on
• the way they improve

And they extend ownership outward by influencing stakeholders, decisions, and direction. That requires a final capability: communicating at the right level, without hiding behind jargon.

Because the ability to explain simply is often what makes a team easy to support, easy to trust, and easier to follow.

Here is the transcript of the conversation:

Alexis:

Hey Chris, can you tell us a little bit more about you and your background?

Chris:

Hi, Alexis. Thanks for having me. Yes, of course. So my name is Chris Foley, principal engineer at Red Hat in software for about approximately 23 years now, I was with Erickson initially out of college, worked under 3G. I have a management system, developing for about five or six years, moved into telecoms research after us for about six years and worked on kind of FP7, so Framework Seven European Research Projects. Then went back to industry and went into the financial domain and into the Airlie lifecycle software life cycle around gathering requirements, kind of done some business system analyst role there, and then went back to telecoms with a company called Oracle and worked as a senior engineer team lead in distributed antenna systems. So basically that’s networks and then to Red Hat and was involved with the mobile product in Red Hat, and fulfilling kind of engineering improvements role inside Red Hat in the child services department.

Alexis:

Very interesting and diverse background, Chris. We are here today because we had a chat about sporting teams and software teams, and I’m really deep into what makes a team a team. What makes a team, a group of people that will really increase their impact and satisfaction? What’s make a team a great team? You told me there’s probably things we can learn from sporting teams about that. And I’m curious about what it is and how it works for you.

Chris:

So maybe a little background on my sporting life. So I started playing sports right from a very early age of nearly four or five, was heavily involved in the Gaelic games here in Ireland, hurling and football played soccer. A lot of my forte is predominantly team sports, even though I played individual sports. So I feel the role as a player as a senior player on the group, as a captain, on to coach for juvenile and adults, and then even to manage juvenile and adult teams. So that’s a little bit flavor of my sporting background and I continued to be involved as a coach. My playing career is over now, but I’ve been looking up to be involved with successful teams. But also have took many of these things on sports teams. So as you know, sometimes you learn more from your defeats than your victories.

Chris:

There’re many aspects I think that makes a good team. A lot of the best teams have a lot of clarity in their role, in what they’re trying to do. I think that clarity of role is something that in a group that’s successful. There’s an awareness across the group. That’s an awareness individually of what your role is. And in turn, I think there’s an awareness across the group of what each individual brings to the group. That’s something that’s very evident in success for sporting teams. If we looked across at the software team and looked at that same kind of artifact currently in software, now we are actually creating very cross-functional multi-purpose teams, which is a very good thing. So they don’t just develop software. Now they actually deliver software, they develop, they write the docs, they test the architects. They have all of the components.

Chris:

We are trying to share that responsibility, which is very positive, but I think ensuring that we keep clarity within the group is also, we shouldn’t forget that because with clarity of where our role becomes, there’s a responsibility and there’s an ownership. And once you have that within the group, I think that makes it very strong. I think one aspect is clarity of your role and responsibilities is a fundamental piece that with a successful sporting team, they’re very clear and evident and in turn with software, especially now as we transition across to the multi-purpose cross-functional teams that we have, so we don’t just write the code and throw it over the fence, the testing team that doesn’t happen anymore. So we’re very intertwined and ensuring we keep clarity is key. That’s one aspect, I would say.

Alexis:

It’s a very important one. And as you said, that as we evolve to more cross-functional teams, we don’t have the traditional roles of division by functions. So your role is not the color of your chart. That’s probably something more septal. So we need to clarify the roles, make sure that the expectations are clear. We can have a real team working. What else do you think are things that are connecting what happens in sporting teams and software teams?

Chris:

So there’s one piece that I think that is very evident on the sporting side, but maybe yeah, I think it’s happening on the software side, but maybe people that does not as, it’s not as clear and evident. So the whole concept of momentum in sport is a very big thing. So what do I mean by momentum? Like if you look at a sporting game, one team score the goal. Once that happens, what you’ll see is that team that scores, their confidence increases, as they play the game. Even their aggression levels, all of them go upwards what’s happened is momentum has been triggered the team that are starting to harness that confidence and positivity and that momentum. And then what you’ll often see is that they’ll actually score a second goal. So they are actually build on it and they used that to their benefit.

Chris:

So that’s an example of positive momentum. You must also consider there’s negative moment. And on the negative side, it’s the team that’s actually conceived that goal. So they’ve taken a hit or a blow, conceded a goal. It’s their reaction to that. It will define them if that builds, that negative momentum builds and they concede that second, then potentially the game is over. So it’s how they react to negative momentum and how the team that scored, who reacts to positive. And the other thing there is to know what triggers that. In this example, the goal is very simple trigger. Now, what does that look like on the software side?

Alexis:

Yeah. I’m already curious how we can apply that, how we can benefit or how we can realize what are the triggers, how to build on the positive momentum or the opposite. How to make sure that we are not engaged in a downward spiral.

Chris:

Yes, the potential triggers, they’re there in every day software kind of live sector, right? So like if you do a release after a sprint, that’s a positive impact on the team. They have achieved. And if you do a sprint demo and it does go as well, and your product owner or your stakeholders are giving you a big thumbs up and they’re delighted with the work, that is a trigger positive momentum. If your manage a big PR, it even could put it on to that level. If you look at your burn-down chart for the team and it’s on track, or maybe it’s ahead of your schedule delivery days, all of that are potential positive triggers for the group. How do you actually build on that then?

Chris:

You’ve done your sprint demo went really well. And your team lead maybe there was an area that they wanted to investigate for the last couple of weeks but didn’t get an opportunity. You talk to your manager and say, “Look, this went really well. First, could we, could we do a spike into this specific area?” And your manager says, “Of course, yeah.” Your harness and the momentum at that point, the goodwill that’s around us and the team got this opportunity maybe to do a spike in an area that they’d love to investigate. So that’s a potential parallel missing the positivity and momentum.

Chris:

On the other side or negativity, so severity one bulb comes in on yourself for like, if you don’t get on top of that quickly, if you don’t stand the tide there potentially, that goes on for hours and maybe some days to negativity builds around the team that there’s severity one bulb in there. So really getting the group to put their shoulder to the wheel there and try and stop it in its tracks is very key, because of the rolling stone and it gets bigger and bigger. In software, it’s having the awareness of these things to happen and being able to pick up on that and either harness it or address it as quickly as possible.

Alexis:

Can you give me an example of one thing that really is building negativity and how you choose to address it? How you raised the awareness and the team to address it.

Chris:

That big bug coming in, right? So it’s not like we all look bugs in software. It happens. But if there’s not some resolution to that reasonably quickly, then the manager hears about it, the product owner hears, or most of the stakeholders, it just gets bigger. And have no, it’s not the team’s fault, but it’s the team’s responsibility to try and address that. Try and put some resolution in place such that can assess the underlying problem, if that goes on over time and it’s not addressed that increases the whole negativity increases around it. And that’s the same as conceding the score and maybe conceding the second score and another one. And then once it picks up that, as I said negative momentum, it can be very hard to stop. It’s the team lead or the manager or the engineers the group, and the team awareness. Let’s try and put a resolution in place as quickly as possible.

Alexis:

You mentioned in your background, in your sporting background, there were roles, like player, captain, coach, or manager, how does that relate to the roles in the software team? It’s probably very different, but maybe there are some similarities.

Chris:

Yeah. So I think that the player is your team member, right? So on the software side could be your software engineer, your QE, your docs person could be any of them team member. And I think the captain maps fairly clearly to the team lead. And then the coach manager side is kind of the engineering manager on the outside in a one sense or what I would say, I know from the sports side, we would have a term like teams win games, right? So it’s not really the management it’s the group, it’s the players and captain and in software, it’s that software team like it’s the engineers. They do the work, they release the software, they test the software, they ensure it’s of high quality. So I think that’s why the focus on the team is so strong, in sporting terms.

Chris:

And I think it’s heading that way as well on the software side. And the other thing is just to call out the captain concept there. In the sports side, yes there is a captain boss, successful sporting teams encourage leadership across the board. So they foster leadership. And how do they do that? They give ownership of, to a young player coming in and say, “You take the corners for the soccer team.” So they give them that ownership. So they foster leadership. It’s not just the captain leads. It’s everybody, if at all possible. And I think in the software side, it’s the team lead, or tech lead for the group, saying to an engineer, “Could you investigate this area and come back and talk to the group?” You’re fostering leadership there in the sense that you’re given the opportunity to investigate a new area.

Chris:

And then you’re asking them to come back and articulate the group. So you’re doing knowledge sharing as well. So I think a very clear overlap between what’s happening on the sporting side and on what’s happening on the software side. But I think again, really good team. It’s not about which hat you wear, are you a team member or your team captain? It’s about contributing to the goal of the team and what’s right for the group. And I think on the outside the manager, they are really like, they’re just facilitators. They’re ensuring that there’s no blockers in the way of the team. They have what they need to do their job and do it well. And that’s what you’ll find again, in the sporting side, the manager or coach really facilitates the team, once the team start to, once they really start to mature and become strong, they will drive a lot of it themselves.

Alexis:

You said, teams win games. I love it. But I feel that for a soccer team, it’s fairly easy to know when you win or when you lose, it’s fairly easy to identify your progress. The score is really clear for everybody. At least the results will be already clear for everybody. And you can measure the progress during the game. What happens for software team? How do you keep the score and how to make sure that we all agree what it means, what winning means?

Chris:

I think software is changing a lot. At least when I started working in software a good while ago, when I was that’s nearly more than 20 years ago, we were very much in that waterfall model. We started and we drawn a big plan as to what the project would achieve. And then we may be developed for months, months on end. Maybe even a year and then we’d go and try and test it all. And maybe at the end we find, “Oh, maybe this is not where we want it to be.” It was very difficult I think, to keep the score when the methodology was like that. Now I think it’s improving. I think we’re starting to deliver more frequently. I think that has helped certain teams now are starting to move towards more and more agile approach.

Chris:

They attempt to deliver maybe quarterly in a year or even some of them down to every sprint, which would be every two, three weeks. You will get checkpoints more frequently there. You can track them whether the team is, let’s say, winning or producing what the stakeholders are looking for with regard to, if you were in the waterfall approach, you might hit that issue until maybe six months or maybe 12 months on. So I think keeping the score on that was easier and software is in a sense, a young science towards other sciences. So I think it’s really made massive strides over the last decade, I would say. So that has helped a lot keeping the score now because there’re checkpoints, which are customer, or your stakeholders very frequently. So that’s a big help.

Alexis:

There’s one aspect that I don’t find exactly in the same way when I was thinking about the parallel between sporting teams and software teams. When we deliver more frequently in a software team, we have the opportunity to get feedback from our users and to know if what we are working on is the right thing. That feedback loop is interesting. In sporting teams, I’m not sure where is the feedback loop. Are the public or the fans the user of the game? Or how does it, how would you make the parallel between the two?

Chris:

The feedback loop on the sporting side actually happens very frequently and I would even leave the fans out of it to a degree. Yes, there’s feedback from the fans. Of course, if you’re successful or not. The feedback you’d want in the sporting world. Like if they play on say the weekend, when they train Tuesday, Thursday. After every training session, and I speak from experience here because I’m currently coaching. At the end of every training session, we would take 10 minutes talk to the players and say, “You done this well. I was impressed with…” You’re giving them very positive feedback there. Very frequently. You’re at least giving them Tuesday, Thursday feedback. On the negative side there if you want to, there was an issue often I would add in a challenge for them.

Chris:

Like if they can see the 10-3s I would say, “Can we reduce that? Can we get that down to six or under?” So sporting side, the feedback loop is very frequent actually. And when you’re in that environment, you’ll see that. It’s good on the software side that we get feedback from our stakeholders may be every three weeks. Maybe we could even do more within the team, within the group. What you’ll see the benefits of the feedback on with, from sporting side, you’ll see the player, reacting, the team reacting, reducing that number of threes. So maybe I think there’s a learning there in software that within the team itself, that’s okay. Maybe you don’t do it on your daily standup, but maybe your facilitation in another way in your say, three weeks sprint there’s feedback and saying this done, this was really good. That positivity is so important to the group. And I think we could harness that.

Alexis:

You introduced a lot of interesting concepts there. First of all yes, of course the sporting team are not performing every day. Even if they perform every weekend or every week, they will train more often than they perform. So that was the first thing that is an interesting learning probably for all teams. So let’s come back to that in a minute, but I noticed that when you speak about feedback after the training sessions, you nearly only spoke about positive reinforcement. And do you see that as the best way to provide feedback and do you see that happening in the software world?

Chris:

Early in my sporting career, if you went back, I think sports has changed to be honest, all you think that it was more negative feedback when I was younger in my career. I think it has changed massively. I’m not sure what exactly influenced that change, but it’s quite clear that reinforcing the positives, there’s more value. You’re dealing with human beings here. If you keep praising them, you don’t get anything back. If you try and highlight the benefits in what they’re good at and trow in the challenge, then I think that it’s to have that balance that you highlight the positives and also notice the improvements. That’s so important for any of the leading, either leading players, captain, coach noticing improvements and calling them out, and then adding in your challenge to bring them to the next level. We would always talk in the sports world about having smaller wins. It’s not about going out to win the championship. It’s about maybe improving a skill or being able to execute a skill more frequently. Positive reinforcement there brings value to the whole group. So I would say, definitely think that’s very important.

Alexis:

And if we look at what the software team is doing is the role of providing that positive reinforcement, providing that feedback that, “Oh, you done that really well.” Is it something that is the sole responsibility of the coach or the manager, or is it something that the team members the players could do themselves?

Chris:

Yeah, I think this is what the mature team that are successful and performing really well. You will see that it’s not just a manager. You have this shared awareness among the group. As I said, it doesn’t matter what hat you’re wearing in the group. You can say, “Alexis, that’s a really good job there, that’s very beneficial to the group what you’ve done.” So I think absolutely the very good team that’s performing well have a shared responsibility, not just for the work they do, but for being aware of the benefits others bring to the group and sharing that and calling that out. The responsibility lies with everybody. And it might just be that maybe you created some pipeline to test the software or something. And if I got a lot of benefit over that, just as a team member. Calling that out is really good, just that positivity within the group is massive I think.

Alexis:

Let’s come back to the train and perform part. I feel that the train and perform balance for sporting teams, they are performing from time to time and training a lot. And I feel that for software teams, they are performing all the time and not training at all. Do you have a different experience of that? And then how can we introduce more balance?

Chris:

When I originally started to kind of think through this whole thing, the angle was can software teams learn from sporting teams? I think in this scenario, I think the learning maybe go some way or the other way. And the example I gave here is that in sporting world, you could train for two weeks and maybe your game is coming in three weeks’ time. Sometimes you would go and play a challenge game. We played a game and you’d often hear the coacher or mentor saying after, “Hey guys, this has worked for your training session.” What the methods that’s common true there is that there’s more value to be got by playing rather than training. So I think the sporting world has some way some learnings there. The question then is have the software world, are they like they’re probably 95% performing while 5% training.

Chris:

One thing I would say is the learning that you could take from sport here is once the sporting team plays, and I know I’ve done this myself as a coach, you will see things in the game that you’ll say to yourself, actually, we need to improve somewhat there. Or I might see that player is very strong in certain skill or certain area or certain position. So my reaction would be the week after the training, I would organize the training such that I might try and improve maybe weakness that I saw, or I might say that, “Oh, this player’s really good in this position.” So I would restructure the training to see what that work again. So the training is very focused on the previous game. Now, how could software do that? Like I think the training that we do in software is, “Go do a course on NodeJS or Java or OpenShift.

Chris:

So it’s probably generic, but maybe we could focus our training better in smaller pieces to say that maybe the charts that we produce from the data that we gather in the system, maybe they could be better. Something very focused and small. Maybe there was a comment in a sprint review, maybe pulling the team together and focus in on how could we improve that the charting? Such that we get more value from the data we gather? So I think that there’re learnings both ways there that training on the software side could be a lot more focused for that team where as I said, I think there’re learnings on the sporting side too, that they need to play more and train less.

Alexis:

Yeah, it’s interesting. So we can learn from a formal training sessions and we can learn from the game we play. So what that means in the software world, even if the balance between training and performing is different we should intentionally learn from when we are performing. That’s what you say, in a way?

Chris:

Yes, exactly. Yeah. That’s where you learn more. And that’s where the comment that you’ll get in this. As I said, in that sporting analogy of the challenge game, the code saying this has worked five training sessions. And what they’re really saying, is the learnings that we’ve got here are so important that we wouldn’t maybe have seen in the training environment. So I think the software side, because they play so frequently, there’s continual learnings there and there’s checkpoints like our sprint review, et cetera, demos to stakeholders, there’s all the learnings there. And not even on the stakeholder side, even within the team dynamic that maybe some of the pipelines maybe not as automated as we would like. Smaller tweaks there could bring a big improvement and more automation could give us time to do other things. So there’s lots of opportunity to pieces out that with a small bit of focus training could reap our rewards.

Alexis:

So it’s interesting, you mentioned two different kinds of improvement, there’s improvement we can make on the product itself, on the results of what we are working on. An improvement we can make on our wealth working, on our tuning. So it’s even three aspects of it. Being intentional of seizing the opportunities to improve is something really important. How do you get to that mindset of having all the team that is really interested in working on those things? Interested in learning on improving?

Chris:

Like, I think the key is identifying clear value. We’re not doing something just for the sake of, “Oh, look, we’re trying to improve this.” It’s identifying clear areas where we can extract the value. So if we invest time, there’s value to be gone. If team members see that, then they’re a lot more inclined or a lot more motivated to put that effort in for improvement. That trying to identify value is of the product value that’s clear and the team are not the only people need to do that. Your product owner stakeholders, et cetera. So clear value is on the product side, clear value on the tooling, clear value in our process.

Chris:

So we don’t introduce process just for the sake of it. If we introduce some process that we get some value back, then the team will invest in general. But don’t just do things just because we’re seen to be trying to improve. Identifying the value, getting the team in that mindset. If you think there’s value there, let’s discuss it. Let’s have the discussion to see. So I think that’s what you’re trying to get their mindset thinking that way is to say where’s the value to be out here.

Alexis:

So in reality, they own improving the value on all the different aspects. So they own the process. They own the tooling. They own the product as a result. They can really work on the value on improving the value because they own those benefits too.

Chris:

Yes. I know at the start I mentioned ownership and responsibility. Successful teams feel responsible for the group or for what they’re trying to achieve or in the software world for the product they’re trying to build, for the process that they go through that helps them build that product or helps and release that software. That sense of ownership is absolutely key. And if you don’t have that, if you’re trying to impose teams on the team and they don’t feel that they’re responsible and own, then it’ll be different. But if they take up the mantle and seize the ownership, then again, I go back and say on the sports side, you’ll hear that the best teams are what our player driven. So the team drive them what that is, is responsibility and ownership. And they’re taking the lead. It’s the same with software. If you have that taking the lead on the product, helping steer the direction with the stakeholders, ensuring the process facilitates them well. If you have that in place, that team would be successful.

Alexis:

When clearly the team is not in short of some aspects and that’s outside of the team that maybe decisions are made or whatever. And you mentioned the stakeholders and working with the stakeholders to do it. So it means, yes you can earn your future in a way that you will, of course, work within your team to do something, but you will also work outside of your team to influence the decisions that are made outside of the team.

Chris:

Yes. I think it’s massive in the software side, because you do have the engineers working at the coal phase. So they understand the products or the subsystem really well. So I would envisage them as key contributors or key stakeholders to the direction of that subsystem or product. Obviously, they need to work with the more business stakeholders, with the architects so it’s a bigger group. But they have a big say. And I think another aspect here comes to the fore is the team need to be able to communicate that at the right level. So sometimes you’ll find engineers will talk technical. So it’s another skill set of a very good team that they can abstract that value kind of away from the technical details, if necessary, and to pitch it to the other stakeholders, to say, “Here’s an avenue or here’s a direction that could be worth considering,” Such that the stakeholders can grasp that.

Chris:

That it’s not entangled in technical details, that they can see the value. So that’s another part the team can, should be able to play that they communicate and articulate at the correct level, such that their view is taken into consideration at the direction of the product.

Alexis:

This is really an important one. I remember working with several teams and there was teams I realized in my personal reflection that I didn’t really want to work with them. I didn’t really want to talk with them. And there was also teams that I was really happy to work with them, to engage with them, to try to listen to what they were doing to try to help them. And I was thinking why it’s happening. So I was thinking maybe it’s the people, maybe there are some seeing that. And I realized, no, it was not that. There was teams when I was discussing with them, I was unable to understand what they were discussing. Everything sounded so complicated that I was unable to understand what they were trying to achieve. So I felt excluded and I was not able to contribute to help them. And there were teams, I had that impression that when they were explaining something, I was really smart.

Alexis:

I was able to understand everything. And I realized that it was not the technology. They were working on the same product that was just pieces of the same product. So it’s not the complexity of the technology. It was the ability to explain to outsiders what they were trying to achieve and to put it in simple words enough. So I could understand where I could play a part. And that was really incredible. And that was just a few people that were able to do that, who will care about doing that in a way. So I bet they understood that if they want to reach to external help, that was already good way to do it.

Alexis:

It took me some time to realize what was going on there at the beginning. I was looking ready for personal relationship. When you have a good fit with someone. And I realized it was not that it was exactly that ability to communicate at the right level. They were in a way, probably communicating with me at a more easy level. They were, their technology for them is just for me. So I would be able to help them. That was an interesting realization at some point.

Chris:

I think it’s very important for the software team to have that skill set. It may not be all the members of the team have that. They definitely need one, two members that can understand the business schools and be able to meet in the middle to say, “Technically, we can do this, and I know your business ask is this.” And to kind of talk in that medium, in the middle of such that we have full engagement with the business side of the house. The technical side is portrayed in an understandable way. And often I think, because I played the role as a business systems analyst and product owner, I feel the role is more play them. But I think that’s absolutely key that if the communication’s lost there, because they talk different languages. If you go down and sit in your daily stand up with the engineering team, or if you sit in maybe product roadmap discussions with the business unit, they could be talking about the same product, but are very different. Even terminology, language, everything. So being able to bridge the gap between both is I can really big scale for the team itself.

Alexis:

Yeah. You mentioned that you worked in the Telco world. And my first encounter with some people in Telco. I think after the five, the five first minute there was, there were so many acronyms they mentioned that I was totally lost. And I said that “Okay, I have a problem that I’m totally foreign to your world. I am not able to even think I will be able to engage with you.” And one of them said, “Oh yeah, that’s not a problem. In reality, it’s really simple. Let me draw a simple picture to you so you will understand the basic concept of all that.” And he drew a simple, he made a simple drawing about where you have an antenna or how it’s called. And then you realize that you are able to understand, you can see your mobile phone is there, that’s your internet at home is there. And that’s how it works. And then that’s how it goes back in the network. And that’s all those things.

Alexis:

And then he put all the acronym on it and I said, “Oh yeah, okay. I understand how it works.” And now when there was an acronym mentioned, I was able to connect that with the big picture he drew on the white board. And that was so much easier. And he did that in five minutes. And I asked him about that. And he said, “You are not the first one that is trying to come into our world. So I’m really good now at doing the drawing because I did it probably hundreds of times.” That’s absolutely not a problem. And I totally understand that you need it. Yeah. We need those kinds of people that really care about being inclusive of other people in teams. That was really an amazing experience for me too, to have that opportunity.

Chris:

Teams that don’t want to say controlled or destiny, or at least to kind of bring their team and their product in the right direction. We actually realize that they need to be able to do this. They need to be able to communicate and articulate at the right level with other stakeholders. So you’ll get the very good teams need and become aware of that very quickly. And then speak the language that allows that to happen. That their voice now is heard and understood. For another aspect there, I think that’s worth calling out is in the sporting world there’s a term like play to your strengths. Sometimes maybe in the software world. Sometimes we focus a little bit on where we hear a weak there. Like if you do your retro after your sprint or after your release, you’ll say like, you do look and say, look, this went well. But it often drifts towards, this didn’t go that well, this needs an improvement, which is perfectly fine.

Chris:

What you would find in the sporting world is they will, they’re constantly saying “We’re good at this. We have speed in our attack. Let’s try and play that game. So let’s try and use the strengths we have.” That’s maybe another learning that software could take is that understand the strengths of the team really harness them by all means improve weaknesses. A lot of the time, the strengths of the group, if somebody is really good. Maybe developer, Java developer, no, Java developer, should you have them kind of maybe architecting, maybe not. That their strength is in development. And normally what you’ll see is that their strength is there because they enjoy use, I think software could definitely look at that side somewhat more that really harness your strengths and even build on them.

Chris:

If you’re good at something, why not, you can get better. So I think what you’ll see is sport do that a lot. Sport and teams, they would even use the term like, they want to play the game on their own rules. And what they’re really saying there is, “we want to play a real physical game, or we want to play a really fast game.” Because that’s what they’re good at. Once a problem arises in a sporting team like that. One of our defenders is struggling because their opposition are too physical. What will happen is the coach will go and find one of their physical player to bring them across, to kind of address the issue, playing to your strengths, making them all of them and building on them is something maybe that software can incorporate maybe more.

Alexis:

Yeah, this is a very good one. And you think that we can really play off strengths and overcome or weaknesses playing our strands.

Chris:

I think there’s more to be got. There’s more value to be extracted. Those are strengths. Don’t get me wrong. You should always try and address your weaknesses by all means. But I think sometimes we don’t have that balance that the weaknesses get more attention. And we try and improve that, which is all well and good. But maybe there’s a different solution. Maybe we have other strengths in the team that we could solve that wish for the group as a whole to try and understand that. Do we have the strengths in this group to address whatever problems there, or to enhance some things? So I think that keeping that in mind is important and there’s more value to be extracted from your strengths than maybe we are doing currently.

Alexis:

It’s not an individual realization. It’s a realization as a team. So you are several strengths in the team and maybe you are missing some. And so you will maybe try to find that outside of the team, external support, or in your next hiring session, you will focus on specific strengths that you are looking at, that you miss in the team. So it’s not just looking at the individual and hoping that you will have perfect player that have all the strengths possible in the world. That’s looking at as a result, how the team is composed and what do you have in the team? What kind of strengths do you have already?

Chris:

Yes, exactly. And that’s the awareness of the group. The leaders in the group, at least the senior members should have a really good feel for the skill sets. And it’s not just the technical skill sets. One other thing we have noticed, in the software side actually, sometimes a team with a member who has a kind of teaching acumen or a knowledge sharing skill, some team members might be very kind of focused on getting their job done, where others might have a great skill to share knowledge. That’s a great skill set in the team, because if you bring in somebody in a new member having that kind of teacher/coach-like skill in your group, you can pair them up. So bringing somebody up to speed very quickly. So there’s lots of skills you can harness, but the awareness that they’re there is the first step.

Alexis:

Thank you very much, Chris, for sharing all that today. Maybe one additional last word?

Chris:

Yeah, I think it’s kind of a cross-pollination of ideas from different domains can often be very rewarding. And I think, I suppose I should maybe do the reverse and say what sports can learn from software. The team is the fundamental piece and the fundamental building block. And I do think software has absolutely realized that and are investing in that. And it’s great to see, and I think that’s a harness thing that positivity and momentum is beneficial for everybody. And if you get that team functioning well, everything else falls out of that. I think investment in the team culture team dynamics awareness is so fundamental for all enterprises, not just software. People are really now at this time, fully aware of the impact of good, strong, healthy, functional teams. So it’s great that we’re even having this conversation I think Alexis, and I appreciate the time for us to have this chat.

Alexis:

Thank you very much, Chris. I learned a lot today. I really enjoyed your parallel between sporting teams and software teams and yes, you’re right. Probably all teams. I really love that level of awareness is there. And I hope it will reach more people in the world. Thank you very much, Chris.

Chris:

Thank you.

Alexis:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Le Podcast. Go to blog-blog-alexis.monville.com for the references mentioned in the episode, and to find more help to increase your impact and satisfaction at work. Drop a comment or an email with your feedback, or just to say hello. And until next time, to find better ways of changing your team.

The music is Funkorama by Kevin MacLeod (Creative Commons CC BY 4.0)

The picture is by Danylo Suprun.

Le Podcast – Season Two

• 
  Playful Leadership: Helping Others Be Their Best
• 
  Blessed, Grateful, and Human
• 
  Build the Right Product, with Gojko Adzic
• 
  Hiring and Diversity Without Dropping the Bar
• 
  Leadership and Teamwork in a Crisis
• 
  Chief of Staff: The Role, the Craft, the Community
• 
  Belonging, Identity, and Better Hiring,
• 
  What Software Teams Can Learn from Sporting Teams
• 
  Agile and Open Innovation: Building the Bridge Between Tech and Business
• 
  Radical Focus: OKRs, Cadence, and the “Seduction of the Task”
• 
  Human-Centric Agility Coaching: The Expert Paradox and the Ideology Paradox
• 
  The Job of an Open Leader: Context, Trust, and Growing Others

Le Podcast – Season One

• 
  Growing as a Software Engineer: Learning, Sharing, and Impact
• 
  Thirteen Rules for Building Strong Teams
• 
  OKRs in Practice: Learning, Focus, and Common Pitfalls
• 
  The Myth of 10x Engineers: Growing Beyond Technical Skills
• 
  The Anatomy of Peace: Leadership Starts With Who You Are
• 
  Psychological Safety: Creating Teams Where People Can Speak Up
• 
  Leading Distributed Teams: Collaboration Across Time Zones
• 
  Changing Your Team from the Inside: A Practitioner’s View on Leadership
• 
  Why Shared Language Matters: How Terms Shape Collaboration
• 
  How (Not) to Give Feedback: Responsibility, Ego, and Relationships
• 
  Rock Stars and Superstars: Supporting Growth Without Losing Stability
• 
  Do Cultural Differences Really Block Agile Adoption?
• 
  How to Create Great Goals: Using OKRs to Focus on Impact
• 
  Making Change from the Inside: Leadership Beyond Management Roles
• 
  How to Form a Cross-Functional Team That Actually Works