E7 | The Google Coaching Mindset: Building Trust from Day One | Alexis Ekizian

Welcome to Lead With a Coaching Mindset, a podcast where every conversation sparks new ideas on how the best leaders unlock their followers potential. I am Dr Damian Goldvarg, and I am here to inspire you to become the best leader you can be be sure you subscribe and rate us. Let's jump right in. Hey, Alexis, it's great to have you with us today to discuss how to build effective relationships with new employees. So thank you for accepting the invitation.

Thank you. I mean, I know it's my pleasure to share a couple of minutes with you.

Alexis, tell us a little bit about your position. What are your responsibilities? What do you do? So people get to know a little bit more about your leadership responsibilities.

I'm the head of agencies and partners in Google in Argentina. I'm sitting in Argentina, but I have a responsibility for Spanish speaking Latin. Basically it's Latin without Brazil? Yeah, I manage a team of 10 Googlers, as we call them. I've been at Google for almost 15 years.

We had the opportunity to work together in the past. And one of the things we were discussing, and I know that you are really committed to be a good coach to your team members, your Googlers that you're saying we agreed to discuss about how to build effective relationships with new colleagues. And you were telling me that you have new team members joining you. What would you say that are some of the key strategies? What do you do to build effective relationship with new team members?

One of the constant things that I can say about googo In all my time here is that change is constant. So in my case, I'm a manager for 12 years now. I wasn't when I joined Google, but then 12 years ago, I became a manager. So I had the opportunity of managing different teams and different business units. And each time I have a new team and I start working with new people, I try to devote a lot of time to build relationship with them and to get to know them personally before we go to the professional stuff, I would probably set up a lot of time with them in the first two weeks and the first month, and just to have conversations on where they are in their careers, what they Like, what they don't, the way of working, if they are in a relationship, at a personal level, if they have a pet, what they do out of besides work, which for me, is super important, because I don't believe that there's one leadership hat for everyone. It's like I try to adapt my style to a person. There's a lot of people that probably works better if you are not on top of them all the time, and there's people that probably needs more guidance. It usually depends a lot on the seniority of the people on your team. I try to devote a lot of time on that, and just when I think that I know the person, I can start talking about work and go a little bit deeper on what they're doing, what's working, what's not working, but I can for sure say that the first three months of the relationship, it's me hearing much more than me talking. Then it balances a little bit once we start working, really. But at the beginning of all years, I try to listen and and then come back to them. At the beginning, I'm caring. That's where it started. I invest a lot of time into knowing everyone.

Two main things here. One is that the investment that you do in terms of getting to know the team members paid off later when you're working with them. Doing that, you also spend a lot of time listening to really get to know them and understand them. Now let's translate in results or an effective relationship.

One thing that maybe I didn't mention is that, once I get a new team, I do a kind of session with all of them. The first thing I do, in fact, it happened to me, like a couple of weeks ago, when I joined the new team. New team for me. The team was established. It was new for me. I have a two hour session with all of them where I tell them, who am I? Because in all the one to ones I have with them, I asked more about them, and they talk to me. So just that I don't have to say the same about me 10 times, I do one session where I tell them about myself. I'm married, I have two girls. I love soccer, and what they can expect from me and what they can't expect from me. So I try to set expectations very clearly from the beginning. For example, I tell them that I'm not a micromanager. I will try to guide them as most as possible. I'm always available for them, but I'm not a micromanager, so don't expect me to be on top of what you're doing daily. So that's one expectation, right? I tried to set the tone on about myself. Then I go to hearing mode that I was telling you once the hearing mode is done, what we do. And we have a lot of tools here at Google, but there are simple tools that you can do this in a spreadsheet, like. So we try to set very clear expectations for the year. Maybe if you're managing the team for the whole year, in my case, I'm just starting, so it'd probably be for the second half of the year. As I was saying, we have tools for this. We do it at the beginning of the year, and then every quarter, we review how you're doing and see if we need to change anything based on new stuff that emerged, or maybe something that's obsolete, we delete it, but setting expectations is one very important part of our jobs as managers. Why? Because we will have expectations then it's very tough to do a performance review to guide to coach. As you were saying, it's almost impossible to coach someone if you don't know if what they're doing is right or wrong, and maybe the best way is to be clear between manager and reportee what is expected from that person and what's expected from me as manager, because we are reviewed too as managers, you know, and we're very clear with that. So we are in the sales team, so we have a very heavy part of numbers. You have to achieve this target, then we have another part on how you should achieve that. It's not the same you can achieve, but there's stuff that you can do that's not correct, and there's stuff that it is correct. And then any other side projects that you're working for that might have impact on the team, on the broader company. So we try to set all that at the beginning of the year in terms of expectations, and going to your question, that's what hasn't a direct impact, then in results. Because what I believe is I try to build trust within the team, understand the person that they get to understand me, and the way of working, we will have set clear expectations, and then we start working. And in most cases, it flows, because what I believe I've done, and we as managers tend to do, is to wield psychological safety with the team so that the team is open to sharing with me what's working, what's not working, share it in on an open an open table, because we have weekly team meetings. Share there. No one's going to harass you or go back to you for something. You say you can be honest on what's working or not. That's another thing that when I introduce myself to a team I I tell them, right? It's like, I'm very direct, I'm very transparent, and I expect the same from you. If there's something that I'm doing that's not working, please tell me, and don't save it to the ear review in one year, because it will be too late. I do the same with my teams. I try to be very direct, and when something's not working, give me immediate feedback, because if not, and this is based on a lot of experience that I had, and I've learned from it. If you don't have the tough conversation early on, it explodes 10 months later, two years later, it always comes to that. So at this stage of my career, I'd rather be very honest and transparent and have the different good conversation with someone right at the moment, and don't save it for the feedback survey. That's once a year. That's the way I work on how we try to build relationships to get results.

So it sounds like to be effective, you have a foundation where you spend time getting to know them also, then getting to know you. And as a result of that, you build trust, and that trust people to learn from you. And I'm hearing that you're open to feedback, that feedback is a regular part of your activities, to the extent that, like you were talking about your new team and introducing yourself to all of them, so get for them to all getting to know you at the same time. It's a one on one. I think that you said there, but it's interesting, because people don't have a crystal ball, so they don't know many times who is the leader and what's happening in their lives. So to the extent that the team member get to understand and know the leader, there is also more empathy in that direction. So many times about being empathic and being flexible as a leader, working with your team members, but also by knowing each other, you have a better foundation for that psychological safety that allows for more quality relationships.

Yeah, exactly. We have very open communication with all the technology you have today as human beings not having like, instant communication, it's no excuse. Something that I always tell my teams is that we are all going to make mistakes. It's going to happen. None of us are perfect, so mistakes are going to happen. The important thing is like, Let's communicate very quickly on what happened, and let's find the solution. The only thing that we can manage is our response, because, again, mistakes are going to happen, so let's try to solve it as soon as possible. And again, we have a lot of tools. We have our internal chats, we have emails, we have audios we can send. We have world meets, in our case, to have meetings, so no communication. It sounds like lame excuse to. Day,

in your case that you work with a sales team, you even have stress of having to find and meet this quota. How do you deal with that, to bring all of the performance and getting results sales, you have some number that you need to achieve and at the same time all of these way of working. Do you think that sometimes the stress, or the tension of the work, yet, in a way, in some way,

I guess that in every company, the sales team has a pressure. Pressure is here, of course, the target setting is always a pressure that we work with, and is there. And everyone here knows that we have a number that we have to achieve. We work really hard. What I try to do is I do focus a lot of the well being of my teams. I honestly believe that first we're person, then we're salesmen or sales women, and I'm very clear with that. With my team, I regularly use a quote. I don't recall where I got it from, but like, happier people get better results or something like that or perform better. I truly believe that if someone my team is having a tough time because of a personal thing, we have a lot of tools here at Google, like as managers, to allow the people to some time off or talk to someone, but I'm on top of everyone in my team when it comes to how they're doing, and I try to have honest conversations. If you need some time, just take it. If you need a morning off, take it. It's not good for anyone if you are here, but you're thinking in another thing that you have to solve, besides all the tools that we get as managers. I'm very conscious of that, and try to to set well being as one of the most important thing. As I was saying, first we are persons, then we are Googlers. As we say here, we need to be in a good work life balance to function. If we're not there, we try to help. We try to help the person. But sometimes I can't because I'm not in the position to help. But what I can do is tell the person to take the time you need. We will cover you. Don't worry, you can take days or whatever you I'm talking about time, because in many cases, time without work is what the person needs in many cases. But it could be talking to a professional, could be anything. So I'm very conscious, and once well being is there, if the team really feels that they are in a good balance. I think that the sales pressure that you're coping or talking about or coping with stress is something that everyone understands, that is there, and we have to work with that. But if my life's okay, if I'm doing well, it's something that I'm okay with.

So to start rubbing up Alexis in terms of building your relationship with Unity members and you just started with a new team. Do you find any challenges in building the relationships when you're meeting a new team that you have not worked with before?

Yeah, well, the first challenge is that I need to be very patient to getting to know them to a level of knowledge I had with my old team. For example, I was working with my old team for seven years. The way of working, I knew everything about every one of them, if they were in a relationship, they were parents or not, I knew everything. But to reach that level again, the first challenge that I have to surpass is that with myself, I need to be very patient. I won't be at that stage within a week, a month, or probably three months, I need to be patient. So that's the first challenge. The second challenge is for the team to feel that it's not someone that's coming new. Oh, now we have to start everything over. So that's something that maybe it happens to everyone to that has a manager. We all have managers. So when a manager changes, it's, oh, I have to build trust again with this person. I try to take it slow, and I try to not break anything that's working. That's the first thing. So I do have a session with all of them, like a typical start, stop, continue session, where we try to understand what's working, so we won't touch that what they would like to start doing and what's not working. In many cases, something that's not working appears, but the team is usually happy with, in my case, is my own experience, the team is usually happy with what they were doing. So okay, let's keep it that way. Of course, I want to make some changes always. I understand that stuff's working, so I leave it like that for time. Why we will trust and then when trust there, we can start tweaking some stuff to a way I see it, or the way I feel it, could help us all more those challenges. I see them always. And the other challenge is more personal. I need to understand the business that they already understand, and I don't. It's a little bit about the imposter syndrome. I'm getting to a place and I'm the. Manager, but everyone here knows the deal much better than me. That's at a personal level. It's again, I need time. It's all in my mind, in my head, and I need to be very patient, and I'll get there. I'll get there at some point, I will know what the process is. I will know all the customers, the agencies, the stakeholders, internal stakeholder, external stakeholders, and that's a lot, and that takes time. I've been through many changes within my life at Google that I'm conscious of that. So I know it takes time. If we were having this podcast, like 12 years ago, I would be probably in a very different state of mind at

this stage. So it's only because of your experience that you are aware of what to expect. And sometimes, when you are studying with a new team, it is a normal experience, feeling that it takes time to show each other, to understand the business, to understand the changes, and it's a process.

I would dedicate most of my first month to get to know my team as a person each one, so it doesn't allow me to have a lot of time to understand, for example, the processes or the business itself. I know that I will have to do that in the second, third month, but at the same time, I'm managing a business, which I don't know about a lot. It's kind of weird. But as you were saying, I need to establish a very, very good foundation with my team, or nothing will work in six months. So I'm very conscious about

that the best investment that you can make exactly, exactly we need to wrap up. I want to thank you, Alexis, very much for joining us today, for sharing your experience, your wisdom. I think for leaders who are listening are going to be learning. Some of them may be doing what you do, and for some it may be something different or new. So I hope that this brings some awareness and how when we're building and developing a coaching mindset, leader needs to pay attention to how to build the relationship. So any last thought. Anything you want to say before we finish,

thank you for having me. It was my pleasure. And I also want to thank you, because at one stage of my career, you coached me on different things. I think it was like five years ago. It was honestly really useful for me at that point. So I want to thank you because you are part of my growth and my career. So it was very, very useful. Thank you.

And because I also as a client, I admire you that I wonder YouTube. Thank you. Thank you. Part of that, I know that people will learn from you. So thank you for accepting.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

Let's wrap up for today's LEAD with a coaching mindset. I am Damien Goldberg, thrilled to help share this time with you. Don't forget to subscribe and give us a rating. Stay excited for more episodes. Take care and keep living with a coaching mindset. You.