Limor Bergman Gross: What it takes to be a Great Leader and Manager in a Remote World

Limor Bergman Gross is a career mentor that specializes in mentoring women in the technology field.  Prior to embarking on her career as a professional mentor, she spent over 20 years working in tech as an engineer, manager, and director of engineering.

Limor is an important voice for supporting women’s career growth in the technology industry and I’m grateful she was able to spend time with me. Here’s our conversation:

Clinton Henry: I'm so excited to have you here. You talk a lot about becoming a new leader and one of the things that I've noticed leaders struggle with is the ability to put down the screwdriver. When you're giving advice on young leaders and how to delegate, what are some tips that you share with them about transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager?

Limor Bergman Gross: That's a great question Clinton and I always make the distinction between leadership and management because those are two different things. And a manager is not necessarily a good leader and a leader doesn't have to be a manager. So typically, I challenge my coachees to think at the next level, whatever that may be. Whether it's an individual contributor role or a leadership role or management of some sort, to think about the next level. And what can they do today that demonstrate their ability to move up to take a bigger responsibility, and that's the best way to be noticed, to be recognized and to be promoted. So always think about what's next. And if you're talking specifically from IC to a manager, then I would say, okay, how do you work with others? How do you influence others? Because I see tend to okay, they focus on the work that they do rather than how they make an impact on a larger group of people. So it's always about how do you help others, how do you work with others, how do you communicate, how do you influence and develop those kind of skills?

Clinton Henry: I see. I love that you differentiate between a leadership leader and a manager. Because we've all had managers that are not great leaders and vice versa, people who you want to follow who might be an individual contributor. As a manager, how do you determine what you should delegate versus do yourself?

Limor Bergman Gross: You cannot believe Clinton how this question arises every single time. I mean, especially for new managers. Why do I delegate? Because the natural tendency for us is to do everything we used to do up until the the next level and then add more. And that obviously leads to not doing a good job as a manager to burning out and having your team super frustrated and feel that they are not trusted. So usually I ask questions about what are the things that you feel makes a greater impact? Like what are the things that if you do them are making the greatest impact versus what are the things that you do that someone else could do, maybe sometimes even better than you? And this is by the way another challenge of becoming a manager, that some people are better than you. They may be better than you at the individual contributor role. That's usually intimidating to managers like, Oh, if I delegate, I'm not needed because this person is doing even a better job than I am.

Clinton Henry: That's so true. The question of if you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to? It's a really important one because as a manager, I can do everything. But if I do everything, I'm not going to be able to do probably something more strategic. So the ability to hand that off is very important. I think it's a very, very succinct way of putting it. So thank you for that. In a world where obviously remote work, I'm talking to you from my home office, I think you're talking to me from your home office. Everyone is working from home or a lot of people are working from home. As this becomes more common to manage teams that are working from home, what are some tips to do that effectively?

Limor Bergman Gross: It's all about building connections. One of the things and I love working from home. I love the benefits that remote work and the flexibility that it allows. I've been doing that since 2016. However, it does bring challenges, and it's mostly about communication and creating connection. We are people and when you work with people in the office, maybe you don't think about it. But you have opportunities to connect, whether it's meeting for coffee in the morning and chit chatting or just walking down the corridors and stopping for a few, Hi, how are you? And stuff like that. You don't have that when you work virtually. And you find yourself especially as a manager like jumping from one meeting to another one after the other talking all about work stuff and not connecting with people you work with. It makes it even more difficult when you actually hire those people and you never knew them. I mean there's a distinction between people you already know and you used to work in an office setting and now everyone is remote. But still you know them and they know you versus someone that from day one was hired as a remote employee and you didn't have a chance to get to know them and how do you build connection?

I recommend doing different things. Allocating time for checking in and trying to do some team kind of happy hour or different setups that are not just work related. So if you cannot meet face to face, I always recommend if you can invest the money and meet occasionally face to face and do some fun stuff. But if you cannot, then try to do it virtually. Try to make some something unofficial that allows people to connect. Because when you have conflicts or any challenges and you don't know the person, you can assume different things. When you know someone is a good person and you like them, even if you have the conflict, you tend to be kind of okay, I have a conflict with this person, but I like them. I respect them. I know them. But if you don't know the person that will, that can lead to a lot of frustrations to not working very effectively together.

Clinton Henry: Yeah, it's so interesting. You talk about conflict resolution. It's a big challenge for remote work because we are pattern seeking creatures. When there is no pattern, we will assume sometimes the wrong thing. It's really important. So thank you for that. Let's say you moved into management and a lot of times we have the opportunity to kind of rearrange our organizations or our little fiefdoms. I had this a couple times as as executive leadership to kind of add a 200 person organization. I had 20 direct reports. I should retool this and make this a little bit more sane for me to work operate with. Do you have any advice or important things to consider when you're trying to restructure an organization as a manager?

Limor Bergman Gross: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously every situation is different. But as you said, if you manage 20 people, that's not a good thing. I mean, that's too many. And like a rule of thumb for me would be not managing more than 8 to 10 people maximum directly and even fewer is better. You need to take different things into account. It could be areas of expertise, it could be personalities, it could be by the way a combination and depending how the organization operates. If it's for example like an engineering, it could be vertically organized or horizontally it can be organized per project or it can be organized per expertise like front end, back end, database, whatever. Each of them have pros and cons. You need to see what works best. Sometimes you try and if it doesn't work, you change. But taking into account personalities is also very important. I remember one of the companies that I started as a manager, the team knew each other for a long time and it was like 25 people from day one. And I had one manager reporting to me. So there are two managers for 25 people. One of the things I noticed immediately that the manager that reported to me did not get along to say the least with one of the engineers. I noticed those things immediately. The people that had I would say conflict of values, they're very different. And they didn't get along very well. So I separated because I don't think you should force people to work together unless you don't have any other choice. Maybe they're not the best match so that's another thing you need to take into account, not just the business outcomes.

Clinton Henry: It's a very smart way of looking at it. When you as a manager have performance issues with your teams, do you have specific strategies or approaches you take to address those performance issues and taking into account potentially dumping remote versus an in-person?

Limor Bergman Gross: It starts with setting clear expectations. Usually what happens especially when you work remote, everyone makes a different assumption. What you assume need to be happen, not necessarily was understood correctly by the other side. So you need to make extra effort to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Like every person that works with you understand exactly what you expect from them, what are the outcomes. If you need, communicate in verbal. Sometimes it takes a more deliberate effort to communicate, not just in meetings. But in writings as well, writing or videos or what have you to make sure that everyone is on the same page. A lot of times a strategy that I was taking was writing down what I understood, sending it for review. That's the first thing. You need to make sure expectation is met. The second thing is feedback should be timely. Small to big, good to bad. One of the things I don't like in companies and I understand it needs to be some kind of process, but the annual performance reviews, I never liked it. I think it's not a good practice, but just think about it. How many times it happened to you that your manager gave you feedback like an annual review and you find out all of a sudden something that you didn't know about? You don't want it to happen. The feedback should be timely.

Clinton Henry: Yeah, there should be no surprises in your annual performance review. That's the worst experience. What do you mean? We could have talked about this four months ago. We talk every check ins every week or every other week. Why didn't this come up then? So that's very important.

Limor Bergman Gross: But even if you give timely feedback, a lot of times you will get rejections like maybe the other side do not agree with you or a lot of times they will try to be defensive. Usually it comes with confidence issues or what have you. And if someone is trying to behave that way, they reject the feedback that you provide, they become defensive that sometimes you need to ask them how do they see things? What do they suggest? Why is it that? They need sometimes to justify to you. Like if someone is not performing on time, why is it taking so long? Maybe they are too busy, maybe they have other stuff maybe they don't know how to manage their time. Sometimes again, we make a lot of assumptions. Oh, this person is very bad. They are very slow, but sometimes it's about, oh, they lack some skills that you can help them develop. Maybe they lack some tools. Maybe they are too shy to ask for help. You need a lot of time to be curious and identify why.

Clinton Henry: This is actually a really important point because I talk to a lot of managers who say I gave that individual feedback and they disagreed with the feedback or they did not correct the behavior that I talked about. And there's all these techniques out there. Positivity sandwich where you say something positive and then the criticism. And then another thing positive and all they heard was the positive and we have other people that you say ten compliments on one piece of criticism and all they hear is the piece of criticism. So I think the idea of asking them what they think and their viewpoint is a really important idea because you're basically putting the onus on them to be an advocate or to give you more perspective. Because we know what we think as a manager, but maybe we'll get more information by asking them why or how something happened versus just assuming.

Limor Bergman Gross: Exactly. And a practice that I think many companies now do is self reflection. They ask the employee to first write their own, write the accomplishments and plans and all that. Actually I like that practice because it allows you to first see what your team member thinks, how they see things from their side, and then identify if there are gaps. If someone think that their performance is superb and you think they are underperforming, then you see very quickly that there is a gap. Now you need to understand why? Why there is a gap? What's your responsibility? Maybe you didn't set the right expectations with them and how can you help? And if nothing comes eventually after everything you try to do, then sometimes you have to just part ways. But first, you need to take responsibility as a manager and make sure that you do everything you can to support that person.

Clinton Henry: Clearly agree. That's great. When you talk, you talk a little bit about branding. I think one of the challenges and we are speaking specifically about engineers here, but I guess we can go big picture. There are a lot of introverts in engineering. There are a ton of them. I self define as an introvert with extrovert like tendencies, but mainly an introvert. Go to a party and then I want to go in my cave for a little while and just decompress. Is there advice for introverts on how to network and build their brand within an organization?

Limor Bergman Gross: Yeah I mean, I consider myself an introvert as well, but I evolved. I worked on things that I felt I needed to in order to advance my careers. And I told that a lot of times to people that reported to me that were very, very introverted and that eventually it hurts them. I even had a case when I tried to promote someone to a very senior role in engineering. And I got pushback from other peers, from my peers. I don't know that person. How do you suggest to promote? So they need first to understand why? Why is it important for them? Because we don't want to change anyone. I really believe in strength based leadership. I mean, identify strengths and utilize them as much as possible. So if someone is super introverted but they are doing very good job, you don't want to change them. But they need to understand how they behavior eventually can hinder their career progression and what can they do that fits who they are as much as possible to externalize what they do. It could be maybe if someone is very, very uncomfortable with presenting, maybe sending emails, maybe creating pre-recorded videos, maybe created conference pages and maybe one on one mentoring. They need to find the right ways for them. And as a manager, you need to help them and maybe show possibilities, open their eyes. One of the things I do with my coaching clients, a lot of times is just opening their eyes to possibilities. They think there's only one way you can brand yourself. I have to go in the company all hands and present something. Well, it's one way can be very effective, but it's not the only way. You can take other routes and find the routes that are right to you but make yourself always a little bit uncomfortable, otherwise you can't grow. Even introverts sometimes need to do something that feels a little bit uncomfortable to them.

Clinton Henry: Oh, absolutely. That's great. You talked a little bit about LinkedIn, and I think it's very powerful for building your personal and even your corporate brand on the platform. Do you have any tips for people trying to leverage LinkedIn to build their brand?

Limor Bergman Gross: First of all, be there. You cannot believe how many engineers I had that rejected having a profile on LinkedIn. It sounds kind of weird, but a lot of them said, No, I'm not going to have a profile. So first of all, you have to be there, otherwise you don't exist. And that's not the place to be modest. And this is one of the challenges I have mostly with women that I'm coaching, that they are very modest. They feel uncomfortable. They see this bragging. If they highlight who they are, what are their achievements, you need to be considering LinkedIn as your marketing collateral and you need to act as a marketing person. If it's hard for you, maybe ask someone else to reflect to you what they see in you and help you come up with the things that you have achieved and done above and beyond. So that's the first thing. You need to present yourself in a way that someone after five six seconds can know who you are. Take into account people don't spend more than few seconds on your profile, so you need to be utilizing picture, background picture, headline about section that will strongly present you as what you want to be presented by.

Clinton Henry: I think that's great. You are your own best advocate. And if you're uncomfortable writing your LinkedIn profile, there are services out there. That are coaches that can help you write it. You can probably even leverage ChatGPT to write it for you.

Limor Bergman Gross: Oh, God, leverage it all the time, by the way.

Clinton Henry: Oh, me too. I had a really random funny story. I had this announcement that I had to make. I had to write a company wide email. I had like 15 minutes and I'm like, I have a degree in English literature I can write, but not in 15 minutes where it's going to be spellcheck. Because I confuse Microsoft Word with my attempted spelling sometimes, so it's not that good. And I leveraged ChatGPT to get me a rough like I got to make this announcement for this thing, this org. And it spit out something that I was like, I got a lot of compliments on it. I was like, Oh, this is great. I'm like, What? So yeah, I think if you're not comfortable doing it, leverage the technology out there. We're all engineers. We can think and write. If you can write code or think about an engineering or Visio diagram, you can definitely write an eloquent ChatGPT prompt to do the heavy lifting for you. I totally agree. Be your own advocate and get out there on LinkedIn. It's so stunning that people don't have profiles at all or they don't have a picture or it's like the last update was five years ago and it's like, just put your certifications and what you've been doing. It's a very powerful tool.

Limor Bergman Gross: I agree. And utilizing ChatGPT is great, but you need to feed it with the right information. ChatGPT doesn't know you and you need to feed it with the right information and then ask ChatGPT to create the content for you. And it's a great tool. I utilize this all the time.

Clinton Henry: Yeah. Agreed. And on the LinkedIn piece, some people use it more like a Facebook with their dogs and stuff. It is a professional tool. I think the nice thing about it is, it's not just a job hunting tool. A lot of people think, Oh, I'm there on LinkedIn a lot. They're looking for a new job. If you're in a large organization with thousands of people, the most people looking at your profile are people that work with you. Probably two individuals removed and they're just trying to figure out who you are and what your role is within the organization. So it's how you communicate internally as well as externally within an organization.

Limor Bergman Gross: Absolutely. I agree with you.

Clinton Henry: This was very insightful, very helpful. I'm going to put your website in the show notes. I would highly recommend anybody out there. I know you work with both men and women, but I know your passion is helping women, climb the ladder and move to the next step in their career. So I would highly encourage them to do that. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Limor Bergman Gross: Thank you Clinton It's been a pleasure.