About me

Hey there 👋, I'm Jean (🔊).

I live with my wife Tracy 💁‍♀️ , quadruplet daughters Grace 👧, Isabella 👧, Hannah 👧, and Jane 👧 and 3 dogs Cody 🐶, Maddy 🐶, and Max 🐶 in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa 🇿🇦 .

Our family loves the outdoors, whether hiking in the mountains ⛰ or spending time at the beach 🏖. You'll also find me frequenting any restaurant with kids' play or entertainment areas to buy me some quiet time 🤫.

When I can wrestle the TV away from my kids I love watching documentaries that teach me something new (I'm a fan of Curiosity Stream), standup comedy (my favorites are Trevor Noah and Hasan Minhaj), or playing on my PS5 (mostly sports, strategy, story-driven, or city simulation games. Not a big fan of FPS games).

I'm a Christian ✝️, striving to live in harmony with God, humans, and nature 🌍. In terms of living out my Christianity I try to focus on what Jesus asks us to do: "A new commandment I give to you, that you ❤️ one another: just as I have ❤️ you, you also are to ❤️ one another".

I strongly dislike social media platforms 🙅‍♂️. You won't find me engaging on any, except LinkedIn, which I deem a necessary tool for work purposes as a hiring manager. My dislike stems from social media platforms' use of algorithms that focuses on driving engagement but has the side-effect of creating echo chambers reinforcing people's views. That, and the pervasive tracking 👁 that they do to target you with ads. Humans also seemed to have lost the ability to disagree and have civil discourse 💬 on these platforms.

I'm an introvert. Meeting new people or being in large unfamiliar crowds is draining to me. Yet, you'll find me more than happy to engage in social activity in an environment of friends or colleagues. Even so, I find refuge in solitude and choose to recharge in isolation from others.

I also like emojis 🤷‍♂️💩.

README

If I'm your manager or colleague, the information in this section will help you understand how I approach things and how best to work with me.

Management style

I don't have a one size fits all approach to managing my reports. I believe that as humans we are all unique and have different strengths and and preferences. I work to understand my reports and how to get the best out of each of them.

My baseline approach to management is to hire smart people, set clear expectations, offer my collaboration and then hold you accountable.

Work-wise I'm mostly a hands-off manager, however, I am always happy to get involved in the work when you need me. I will only intervene if I deem the direction you are going in to be deterimental to the goals of the team or business.

I place a lot of emphasis on career development and personal growth with my direct reports. I believe that part of being engaged and fulfilled at work requires people to be growing. Not only will you then be happy, but the team will benefit from it.

I use the CliftonStrengths assessment to better understand your unique strengths to help create the opportunities for you to utilize them.

Trust

Trust is the single most important component in my management approach.

As my report I implicitly give you my trust from day one. I don't expect you to do the same. I recognize that there is a power imbalance in our relationship and that it is my responsibility to earn your trust. I aim to achieve this by showing you that I care about you as a person, your ambitions, keeping my commitments and being consistent.

Getting to know you

If I am your new manager, in addition to our regular 1-1s, I will go through a series of four steps to learn more about you.

These steps are:

1. Understanding your strengths.
   I will ask you to complete a CliftonStrengths assessment.
   This gives me insight into your unique strengths.
2. Tell me about the story of your life.
   Starting from grade school, include whatever you deem important and comes to mind that you are comfortable to share with me.
   This helps me understand who you are, your history, and what is important to you in life.
3. What work environment fulfills you.
   I ask you to imagine that your partner tells you they've never seen you as engaged, motivated and happy at work.
   I then ask you to explain to me what your work environment needs to look like for this to be true?
   This gives me insight into how to get you to feel fulfilled at work.
4. Reflecting back to you
   I will reflect back on all the things you shared with me and how I interpret it.
   This is to ensure that I understood you correctly
   I also share with you how I believe I can set you up for success in your role and help you be fulfilled at work.

1-1s

I do weekly 1-1s with my direct reports.

This time is my commitment to you and I aim to preserve this time at all cost.
It is your opportunity to raise any topics with me that are top of mind for you.

I don't rely on these sessions for status updates on work, however, if discussing a particular work project is important to you I'll hapilly engage.

We will have a shared document we use to capture notes and set agenda items async. I will add topics that I'd like to discuss in the lead up to the session to the agenda. I encourage you to do the same.

Growth log

Separate to our 1-1 doc, but very much a feature in our 1-1 conversations is your growth log.

This is simply a document where I ask you to capture all the accomplishments you are proud of whether they are big or small. It is similar in nature to the brag document that Julia Evans blogged about. It is just a simplied timestamped version and I refrain from using the word “brag” since some people struggle with this.

I will contribute to this document when I observe you doing things that I felt you excelled at. I will also add feedback, both positive and constructive, to this document.

Why do all this you might ask? As your manager I will only ever observe a small amount of your interactions and achievements. I want to ensure I have the full picture of your impact so that I can be an effective advocate for you when I represent you during performance reviews.

This also helps me avoid recency bias and ensure I don't forget anything.

Skip-level meetings

I do skip-level meetings with all my indirect reports once a month.

The goal of these meetings are:

1. Connect with the team member and learn more about them.
2. Understand the challenges they and their team might be facing.
3. Give context to questions they might have around happenings in the business.

I view skip-level meetings as an invaluable activity to ensure I keep my finger on the pulse of what happens day-to-day, understand the challenges faced, and to gather feedback I can give to my managers.

Feedback

Feedback is one of life's greatest gifts.

For me

First I want you to understand that I really value feedback and it is one of the highest forms of respect you can show me. You don't have to be concerned with how you deliver it. Raw unfiltered feedback is totally fine and I will assume positive intent from your side.

If you therefor have any feedback, questions, concerns, or anything else that you want me to know about, please don't hesitate to contact me directly. Send me a message via email, Slack or schedule a time for us to video chat (my preference).

If you wish to remain anonymous, you may use the following form: https://forms.gle/FE2B29J9zhCA8nA69

For you

If you are my report, you can expect me to regularly give you positive and constructive improvement feedback. I aim to praise my reports in public (Slack channels, team sync/retrospective meetings). Constructive improvement feedback will always be in private.