Transparent Leadership

Tullio Siragusa (00:11):

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Tech Leaders Unplugged. I'm Tullio Siragusa, your host, and today I am getting unplugged with Gustavo Barbosa, who is the VP of Engineering at Loadsmart. Hey, Gustavo, welcome to the show. How are you?

Gustavo Barbosa (00:25):

Thank you very much. Super happy to be here.

Tullio Siragusa (00:27):

Great. Well, having an interesting conversation today. The topic of the conversation is about transparent leadership and how to grow teams under a culture of trust. Now, this is a very timely topic, considering that in the past year, a lot of trust has been eroded, especially in tech with large companies that historically were very safe. That changed the name of the game in the past year with massive amounts of layoffs. And so, trust has definitely been eroded, you know, and, and the key thing here that we're going to talk about is transparency and how to build more trust. So, before we dig into that and see what we can learn from Gustavo's experience, let's get to know you a little bit. How did you get here? Tell us a little bit about you and Load Smart, please. Thank you. Yeah,

Gustavo Barbosa (01:25):

Of course. Thank you Tullio. Yes, I've, I've been a Software engineer for more than 15 years now. I was born and raised in, in Brazil, the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. I've worked for big companies in Brazil, also like small startups. Some of them succeeded, others not much. And then back in 2015, I was contacted by these guys from Loadsmart, like the founders of the company. They were looking to fund the company and to start, their engineering team. They were not tech, they were not in tech. So, they wanted someone that they could trust and that would delegate the whole responsibility of growing the engineering organization within the company. So that's, that's how they found me. I was a senior engineer back then. I joined the company to work as a software engineer, working primarily on their mobile applications, like building both iOS and Android apps from scratch with them. And then, of course, the company started to become successful and grow and grow and grow. And then that was the moment where we decided that maybe we need some organization here, and maybe we need to, like, create, like proper teams define their, their domains responsibilities. And that's when the managerial challenges start to happen, right? So, management was something that I was always curious about. Like I had like smaller experiences in the past, but I wanted to get back to it when I could. So that was the first opportunity. And then I, I became a tech lead manager that was maybe five, six years ago. And then the company continued to grow, grow, grow. I, I became a director of engineering and then most recently, two years ago, a DVP of engineering, at the company. So here, here is where we are right now. It's a very different challenge from, the one when I joined the company eight, eight years and a half ago, but still super, super exciting.

Tullio Siragusa (03:42):

Just to talk a little bit about your growth trajectory here. When you joined, I think you said there, there were eight people in the company,

Gustavo Barbosa (03:51):

Correct. I was the eighth one, yeah.

Tullio Siragusa (03:54):

And now there are how many, how many are now?

Gustavo Barbosa (03:58):

Now, I think a little over 600. We were, we got to a point that we were 800, but we, we reduced the team a bit. Now we're 600 and some.

Tullio Siragusa (04:07):

Okay. Big growth. So, in eight years, it's over a hundred, almost a hundred people a year. So let, let's talk about the topic of conversation today. You, you've chosen to talk about transparency. Why is that such an important topic as it relates to building trust in the organization? We talk about that, but what does that actually mean? Like, is that a foundational thing? How do you foster that? What does that mean from your point of view?

Gustavo Barbosa (04:43):

Yeah, for me it's, it's, it's part of the culture. And I always believe culture, culture is, is a top-down thing. Like, it, it doesn't matter how the team thinks about what the culture is. If someone at the top, their leaders don't think alike, then in the end, it's going to be their decision. And those decisions will directly influence the culture downwards. So, it has to be something from the top. So when, when it comes to transparency for me, it's well, some, some people think that transparency is about like telling everyone everything that, you know, I don't think that's the case. It's more, much more on the lines of not hiding what you don't need to hide. And that's when you start to connect with people. I remember my past experiences, like questioning decisions and why, why are these leaders doing this or that. Like, why am I, the last one to know about this? Like, what was this thing, like being hidden from the rest of the team for this whole time? And the answer sometimes was like, I don't know. And just, just because like, those things start, start to happen, I think that's when you start questioning the, the why and why those decisions were hidden. So, I think I, again, like it's much about, much more about like creating a connection, knowing that like we're, we're there to listen to, to everyone to get their feedback to pass along the message that we can. And that will like eventually create trust. Because if they know that you're doing whatever you can when it comes to giving this transparency that is needed, I think, you make stronger relationships in the end. And this could go even beyond the company you know, or professional, you know, professional circle, even like your personal lives. But that's in essence, what I believe.

Tullio Siragusa (06:54):

So, trust can help improve team productivity, collaboration, and overall employee satisfaction. But that has been very much eroded in the past year. So how do you rebuild that, you know, is transparency enough? What, what is, what else is needed in your experience, having seen the kind of growth you have? How do you keep building trust? And how do you leverage transparency in a way as a way to do that to enables more collaboration, more teamwork, and even more productivity? Like, what are some of the keys, if you had to pick two or three key things that you practice on a day-in and day-out basis, what would those be?

Gustavo Barbosa (07:39):

Right. Yeah. And as you mentioned, trust is, is, is very difficult to build and very, very easy to lose trust, right? And you have to like restart from the beginning sometimes. So that's, that's why we have this in our minds all the time. So, a couple of things that we, we have been doing here. One is, and possibly the thing that I'm most proud of is I, since, since Covid when many people started losing their jobs, I think that was the moment where the market shook a little bit. And people would have questions all around, and they would, they would talk to each other all the time. Like, engineers are peers. They would talk to each other like this is how I feel. I don't feel super great. What do you think is going to happen? And that was the moment where I started to see this happening over and over again, knowing that we're like parallel conversations, like happening in the background. And I, I saw that as an opportunity to, you know, to be closer to the team and to and to make them like listen to directly from, from myself and the other leaders. So, so we started to do what we call our engineering town hall meeting. Some companies called this hands meeting. We were all remote at that time also because of Covid, of course. And we would have like live surveys q and sessions that people would ask us questions in that, in that, back, back at that time, it was only me, but people would send me questions in an anonymous way. So, I don't know who is asking the question. They could ask, they could, they could like, ask me whatever they want. And here, you have to be prepared. Cause some of those questions, they're, they're tough, but I would much rather like, hear those tough questions and give them a chance to hear directly from me than not listening to anything and keep them like talking to each other and know, not knowing exactly what the answer from someone is at, at the leadership level of the company. So, we started doing this every single month. We still do questions that come in all flavors like salary or is, is there a roundup layoff coming. Eh, why can't I don't know, like work from a different country, I, everything. Of course, we needed to have someone from HR working together with us because most of the questions, were more toward HR But we created this group of people me now the CTO as well as some of our HR business partners that would answer those questions like, live out of the bed. And that started to create some trust because people know that okay if he's lying, it's very difficult to lie. And us not like, feel that that's a lie. Like, it's kind of like, because like you making up something you, like, people can tell that, like when you're talking to engineers, like those are super smart people, right? So, they know, they feel it. So that was a chance for us to tell them like, this, this is, this is like a simple, honest question. Like, you ask me, I give you an answer. If I have the answer, I'll give it to you. If I don't, I would like to try to find it. But that was, I think for me, one of the best things that we have done. Other than that, I think we are trying to also provide more clarity on the situation of the company all the time. Like financials, as we share with them where we are like being super honest, like, this is the situation. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad, then those are the things that we need to improve. But connecting them to reality and not hiding what doesn't need to be hiding even is, is what we have been practicing. And I, I believe that we're collecting good results now.

Tullio Siragusa (11:41):

Okay. So, it sounds like you guys are being proactive in your transparency. You're seeking out opportunities to share the details of what's going on in the company. What about the decision-making process? Is that something you guys are sharing in those town halls? And how are you balancing issues of privacy with transparency? Have you guys landed on something that's working better than, you know, not? What are your thoughts on that?

Tullio Siragusa (12:15):

Yeah, privacy is a very important topic in our case. Because again, our end goal is to be honest even if they, if, even if the answer is not the answer they were like expecting to hear. But like, if someone asks me something that I cannot share, I'll seem to say unfortunately I cannot share details about this. And if, if, if we have another topic, we can like happily discuss it, but this is a decision that I cannot make myself. And that's, that's good. Cause that's enough for them. Cause That's, that's also transparency that that's them knowing that I did all of the… all that I could. And, even with that being the case there are things that I can't talk about and things that I cannot. So, like, again, just being honest, even if the answer is not exactly what you're expecting

Tullio Siragusa (13:14):

Now, there are some people that challenge the ability to be transparent and something that can't be measured in terms of business outcomes. What are your thoughts on that? Can you create metrics around transparency? Can you quantify the benefit?

Gustavo Barbosa (13:35):

Yeah, that's, that, that's a good question. I see maybe two or three ways of getting metrics around this. I think one is definitely turnover rate, like we have been having like low, low turnover rates for, for some time now. And one thing that I will always make sure that we capture is whenever we are doing our exit interviews for those little cases, we want to capture what's their per se perception of our leadership, the engineering leadership. And if that was one of the reasons that that may be there, make their decisions. So that, that's one, it's a bit like not quantitative, more of a qualitative type of feedback, but it's still turnover rate can, can be quantitative. Another one, and this one I like, I like a lot because it tells me a lot, lots of things. But when we do the town halls as, as I was saying, they can send the questions anonymously. They choose if they want to send it anonymously or not, and they can simply put their names there if they want to. So, every single [INAUDIBLE] at the end of it, I try to collect out of all the questions, how many were sent anonymously and how many people identify themselves. Like that's a percentage. And I remember one day we got, I don’t know like maybe more than 30 questions, and around like 60% of them were people identified themselves. They were not anonymous to me. That tells me many things. And, but then, the most important thing is that they're safe to ask me whatever, whatever the question, right? They, they don't, they don't fear the consequences, the consequences of asking those questions and me knowing exactly who asked that question to me, for me, that, that's great because that, that creates a safe zone, a safe environment for them to ask whatever question that is, regardless of how tough they, they are. So, the third one I would say is our NPS, our net promoter score. And we do this, every six months, and we always go through the answers as well. And we check one, because one of the topics, and one of the criteria is trust in leadership. So, we use that score as a thermometer to know exactly if what we're doing is working or not. So yeah, I think there's, there are three examples. Are good too.

Tullio Siragusa (16:20):

I'd really like this example I mean that's very measurable, the idea that you put a survey out or a question out and how many people will self-identify versus being you know, anonymous. And that tells a lot about whether they trust that they're safe to just express themselves. And that's a very interesting metric. Anyone who's questioning whether transparency works should try that and see, see how many people willingly give their names in giving feedback on issues of the organization. Exactly. so, let's, let's dig in a little bit more. You know, one of the outcomes of having more transparency is really a sense of more ownership, right? If I know what's going on and you're open with me, I also have the ability to openly share and be transparent the other way around. It's a bilateral collaboration. So, there's an increased sense of ownership creativity, even if there is say, a better improvement a better sense of belonging and which leads to higher retention and even a highly engaged workforce. I'm curious to see how it works the other way around. Are people proactively more open to coming up with ideas, and challenging the status quo? What have been some of the benefits of along those lines, you know, in terms of more creativity, innovation, people taking more ownership have you seen that come to life more as you began to be more transparent and more engaging, for example, in these monthly town halls?

Gustavo Barbosa (18:11):

Absolutely. Yeah. You, you nailed it. Engagement is definitely the first thing that you see as a consequence of this. I think the more people trust their leader and the company, the easier it is for them to give a hundred percent and be really engaged. Cause the opposite is also true, right? If you don't know what's happening, then you start to challenge decisions. And then at some point, you stop having faith on, on whoever is making those decisions. And whenever you're being asked or you know, you, you are given a task. If you're not on a good day, if you're not in a good mood, if you don't feel like, like they're giving to you, whatever you're giving to them, then it's, it's very difficult to be your true self and to deliver the best thing that you can. And in my opinion, I have never met, I have never measured this, but in my opinion, I think it's even difficult to have like when, when it comes to coding, like the quality of the code, the quality of your solutions I do think are impacted by this. When, when you're super happy and super engaged you trust whoever is working around you. I think that's what, that, that's the environment that is created around you that makes you feel safe. And you don't have to think about those things, but because someone else is taking care of those, you can solely focus on doing what you do best, which is like you, your craft. So, I think again, like everything starts with transparency and trust and connection then we start. So, to then have, you know, those consequences, there are like engagement, retention delivers you’re a hundred percent the quality of a craft. And you know, in the end, people's happiness, like we spend eight plus hours a day working with each other. It's a, it's a lot of time. If during those eight hours, you're not happy with whatever you're doing, then chances are you're not happy with your overall life. So how can we make that a place that yet, yes, it is challenging, but at the same time it is still you know well and you feel safe and you feel like you can be your true self?

Tullio Siragusa (20:43):

Well Gustavo, it's been great to have such great points and tips here. I mean, truly it requires a high level of emotional intelligence and vulnerability to be transparent. And you know, a lot of companies are so focused on spinning up all the positive and sometimes you just got to be open about here's what's happening and that creates more engagement, but ultimately creates psychological safety for people, right? If, right, if the company from the top is willing to share the blunders, then I can, you know, share my blunders too and grow and we can all grow together. And that's ultimately going to create a very powerful team environment where everybody's working with a lot of intimacy towards the same goal. So, congratulations stay with me as we go off there in just a second. It's been great to have you. So next week come back. We're going to have more shows. We're going to have Prashant Sarode who is the co-founder of Theorem Labs. That's going to be on the 24th. We're going to have Wesley Belden, CEO of Ray's Financial on the 26th, and we're going to have Irv Lustig optimization Princeton of Prince Princeton Consultants on the 27th. So come back next week as we dive into more topics and get unplugged with these technology leaders. So have a great weekend everyone, and thanks for joining us.

Gustavo Barbosa (22:19):

Thank you very much.