Leadership & Safety
If you’ve worked in a corporate environment, or any environment quite likely, you may have encountered the idea of status reporting via traffic lights. That is, Green when things are going well; Yellow (or Amber) when things aren’t perfect, but not awful; Red when things are off track.
Different companies I’ve worked at and consulted at have different definitions for each of these colours. And in some cases, they’ve created additional statuses (“our project is deep orange, trending to canary”, whatever the hell that means). But that’s not the point.
At one company, I was facilitating a weekly update with each of the leads presenting their status updates to the rest of the group, including the SVP who oversaw the entire group. He was great, and this story is really about him, and how he led. Let’s call him Mark (not his real name).
One after one, each of the leads got up and shared their update. What was going well. What they were struggling with. What open positions they had on their teams. What they were planning on getting done in the next week. What they were planning on releasing, and when.
And then, Suzie (not her real name, either) got up to give her update. I forget the exact details, but it went something like this:
“My seven person team is down to three. I have two open positions that I’m working with our recruiting team to fill, but two other analysts from my team have gone to help another team since their work is really going to be impactful if we can get it into market this month. We don’t have access to the new database of customer data, so haven’t been able to generate the insights for the next campaign we’re looking to launch. And even if we could access the data, we don’t have a commitment from the vendor or from our engineering team to deliver it in the timeframe we’d need it delivered in order to be valuable for this season…”
There might have been more, but you get the idea, I hope.
And then, she announced, “So, our team is reporting Yellow.”
Silence in the room, waiting for me to call on the next Team Lead. But I didn’t. What felt like hours was likely mere seconds, I said: “Suzie, how many more things need to be wrong for you to report your status in red?”
Suzie paused, looked down at the floor, and reluctantly said, “yeah, I guess we really are red.”
It was what happened next that was amazing. Mark said, “Suzie, what do you need? What can I do to help?”
There ended up being some conversations, and two weeks later, Suzie came to me ahead of the status update meeting and told me how much she appreciated being called out. You see, in the previous two weeks, she’d received all of the help she needed. Projects were back on track thanks to additional support she’d been receiving. The vendor and engineering teams had stepped up to help. And she had a five really promising interviews lined up for later that week.
In addition, Suzie said to me “Jeff, I don’t want to go back to any other status. I’m getting all the help I need to be successful right now.”
But this was all because of Mark, and how he responded to Suzie acknowledging that she was in that forsaken Red status. She’d shown a huge amount of courage to admit that she needed help, in front of her peers, all A-Type personalities (seriously), and in front of her manager – someone who was responsible for her bonus and possible promotions.
Mark had responded the best way a leader could. It would be easy to blame Suzie – but Mark had made it safe to ask for help. He’d set an example that others could follow. He’d thanked her for letting him know how he could help. This could’ve gone the other way, so easily.
If you’re a leader, my challenge to you is this:
How can you support your people?
How can you foster an environment of trust and safety for your people to ask for help when they need it?
How can you build them into stronger people, and stronger leaders themselves?
Many leaders say the right things, but their actions don’t match their words. How can you be sure that yours do?
By the way, I’m not really a fan of the R/Y/G (or R/A/G) status reporting in most instances. The world is too complex to be represented by a single colour in my experience.
But the status that I’ve come across which is my favourite is “watermelon”…
It’s green to everyone on the outside, and bright red on the inside.