Learn from a top leader at one the world’s biggest and best-known gaming companies, EA. Employee Enablement and Communications Sr. Director Alex Masters-Goessling joins host Sherrilynne Starkie and Trilogy Effect’s Wendy Appel to talk about how EA benefited from coaching beyond the C-Suite into the extended leadership team.
Wendy and the Trilogy Effect team have been working with EA leaders for several years having coached top executives across the organization. Now they are working with Alex to grow the internal capacity and capability for self-leadership at different levels of the organization.
EA Leader Alex Masters-Goessling
“I would say the one of the greatest tools that we've learned about, is the Enneagram,” explains Alex Masters-Goessling. “During the onset of the pandemic, knowing the Enneagram helped everyone as we transitioned to support millions of players stuck at home. It's led to a lot of positive self-realization and people have been really receptive.
“The other great tool that we now use all the time is the ‘alignment tool.’ It’s changed the trajectory of our decision making and the philosophy of how we decide. It means we are a lot more agile and can get new things in motion quickly.”
Trilogy Effect’s Alignment Tool is designed to support strategic decision making. Wendy Appel explains, “A good analogy for alignment is to think of a flock of geese flying in formation. They are not in a single file behind the leader, but everyone is heading together in the same direction. Alignment speeds decisions because you are not deciding on every detail but just on the overall strategy or approach.”
In this episode you will learn how leadership development outside of the executive suite benefits your organization by building stronger connections among the extended team, improving teamwork, and creating an environment for fast, smart decision making.
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Being Human Is Good For Business Podcast with
Alex Masters-Goessling
Sherrilynne: Hello, it's Sherrilynne Starkie and welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. Today, I'm joined by leadership expert, Wendy Appel, who is a partner at Trilogy Effect. She's also the author of Inside Out Enneagram, the game-changing guide for leaders, and we are welcoming, as our guest, a leader of one of the world's biggest and best-known gaming companies. Alex Masters-Goessling leads EA’s (Electronic Arts) Customer Experience, Employee and Customer Experience, Enablement and Communications Team.
Wendy and the Trilogy Effect team have been working with EA leaders for several years, having coached some top executives in the organization. Now they are working with Alex to grow the internal capacity and the capability for self-leadership at different levels of the organization. The benefits are legion and include building the company's resilience for periods of change and challenge, as part of a solid foundation for growth and continued success. So, welcome to the show Alex and Wendy.
Alex and Wendy: Glad to be here.
Sherrilynne: So, let's start at the very beginning Alex, maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself in your background.
Alex: Sure thing, so my entire background has been in tech and I've done everything from sales enablement or technical engineers, who were selling test and measurement equipment, to executive communications for the C-suite of a tech company. I’ve been at EA for the last six years and all of my time here has been spent in the Customer Experience organization. I started managing communications and was fortunate enough to meet my boss, who had just recently taken over leadership of the organization and I said, ‘Hey you really need to think about employee experience and what the culture of the organization looks like.’
Fortunately for me, he was really open to those suggestions and we partnered together and have built my organization from there. So it started off as communications and employee enablement and it has grown over the years to encompass training, coaching, development. We do all of the internal processes and we do external self-service content, so anything that's related to words, or people, or the quality of the work that we produce, is my world.
Sherrilynne: Music to my ears really, you’re my kind of people. So, you’re leading the o Organization and, clearly, you took the bull by the horns here, and kind of created this environment for yourself and for your team, for the betterment of your overall organization. What would you say, in your opinion, makes a good leader?
Alex: I think recognizing that what got you here is not going to get you to the next point, is the most important thing for leaders to know. I work with our extended leadership team and I'm on our leadership team for Customer Experience and one part of my role, and one of my favourite parts of my role, is really working on the development of leaders.
That's the biggest opportunity that I see when working with the leaders in our organization, is that they think continuing to do what they've always done is going to make them successful at the next level of leadership. I think we all know that's not usually the case, because with every promotion that you get, the landscape changes, the scale changes, the perspective changes, the amount of context that you have changes, the expectation for you to make decisions changes, and you have to really reframe what you're doing. I think it's the same skills and the same opportunities, but it's just a different level of all of that, so you have to get really introspective about what can make you be the best version of you.
That's something that I’ve talked to folks a lot about, when they're struggling with the feedback they're getting in their next role. They've just gotten promoted and they start getting a lot of feedback and they're like, ‘Oh, I thought I was doing a really good job. I just got this promotion and now I'm getting all of this feedback that’s saying you could do better.’ Then I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been there and it’s not fun, right?’
It's like someone holding up a mirror to you with all the worst things that you've thought about your performance and having them validated. It's not a great experience, but I think with all of that feedback, there's always something that you can take from it. Sometimes you have to sit with it for a really long time because it doesn't feel good, but there's something that's there and you have to think about what you want to grown into. And what do you think that you're capable of and take that feedback on.
Wendy: Then I think the other thing is going from a doer, to a person who leads others, because everything that you've gotten acknowledged for, and recognized for, and rewarded for, is getting stuff done and doing it well and being productive, no high quality, et cetera. Now you're not going to get your accolades from that, you're going to get accolades from getting things done through others, so it’s, ‘How do I motivate and inspire other to do high quality work, to be productive, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and mentoring and coaching and developing others. Would you agree, Alex?
Alex: Yes, totally. I tell people they have to redraw their star chart to, ‘What are you going to get gold stars for and what does success look like at the end of the day?’ It's not dissimilar from parenting in that most days, you don't end the day thinking like, ‘I did so well today, I really nailed it.’ I tell managers that a lot, where you've got to relinquish a lot of control, as a people manager, and set the parameters up to invite people to step up and be successful, which is a total change when you've been the highest performing individual contributor for most of your career. It's a big shift and I don't think people appreciate how hard it is for most of us. I have one manager on my team and it wasn't hard for her and she is exceptional, it was hard for everyone else, and so that’s been the rare exception that I’ve seen.
Sherrilynne: I'm wondering about these kinds of high performers that we were talking about that are coming up through the ranks and now they're in this leadership position. Then one of the first things that you asked them to do is to be quite introspective, to really do a bit of soul searching and kind of look at themselves in ways that they may not have ever had the opportunity to before. So, what is the reaction when people are coming up and like, ‘What do you want me to what? You want me think about what?
Alex: That's an interesting question and I think it really depends on the person in the situation. Some people have been working towards this promotion for a really long time and they've built it up to be something in their mind. Then they get there and find the expectations and the realities are really different than what they imagined that they would be and I think that that’s a surprise to a lot of folks. Like you always think that the next level has it more figured out than you do and so when you get there and you realize that they don't, it's a little disappointing, that there's not someone with magic answers there and it’s kind of resenting that there’s not a clearer path.
I think that the human nature element of it is always at play. Some people are really excited and lean into it and, I think, some people really struggle with it and because they struggle, they resent what you're asking. That's where I think the choices are at play and you have to decide, you’re that only person that knows what you’re capable of. So I I think the choice that everyone has to make is, ‘What is the version of myself that I'm striving for and what feedback am I willing to take on? What work am I willing to do to get there?’ Some people aren't willing to do that work or aren’t able to do that work because of circumstances, right?
Wendy: Yeah and I would also say that sometimes people don't know what they're capable of. It sometimes takes a coach, or a mentor, to help them see themselves through their eyes and to help lift up and elevate that person. There's that great expression. ‘It takes at least two to know one.’ and we don't see ourselves often that clearly and sometimes we're our own worst critic. Often we don't realize we have agency, that we actually can make a choice to try on new behaviours, to do something differently. So sometimes others have to help us see ourselves, both the things that trip us up and our blind spots, they're called blind spots for a reason, and also the best of who we are and set those high expectations for us because we see others and what they’re capable of.
Sherrilynne: So are you finding that your team is settling into this kind of hybrid or new normal, I guess new normal situation, are they adapting, how is that going?
Alex: We've been at it for a year and a half and I think people are in some kind of a routine. It may not be the routine that they like, but they're in a routine at this point and Wendy and I've talked about this before. The majority of our team, and our leadership team for Customer Experience, is in Austin, so we’re an Austin-based business, but we’re also a global business, we have people in Ireland and we have people in India. I think the change was most disruptive for our team in Austin, because they were the majority and so we went home and it was a new experience of being on Zoom. So what does all this look like, versus for my team, and the majority of my team, is not in Austin. They had a great equalizing experience where, of course, there was the big change of going to work from home in a pandemic. Like that's the heavy blanket over everything that we're doing, but they were now an equal box, on Zoom, that had their voice being heard versus being a box and a team of people in a room, in a different continent.
So it was really nice for them, because the change has made us recognize the distributed nature of our workforce and just because we're in a pandemic and working from home, doesn't really change the way they've been working this whole time and it's actually much more inclusive.
Sherrilynne: So you’re not returning to normal rituals. You are returning to a new normal and the new normal will be different from where you set out, but not completely transformed.
Alex: Yeah and I'm excited about the new normal. I think it's going to be better and I've heard a lot about it because there's so much press about this right now. There are so many opinions and perspectives and it doesn't really all translate to your specific work environment. EA has a great culture and we have a great work environment, normally. EA has been an incredibly supportive employer through this process. It's made it really easy for me, as a manager, to do the things that I needed to do to support my people through a really tough time.
So, as we move towards a new normal I'm hopeful that we'll be able to preserve some of the good habits that’s come from being in a less structured daily format and use the inclusivity and equity of being in a Zoom room for our global team. I'm excited about that and excited to see what sticks and what we can really preserve.
Sherrilynne: So can you tell me a little bit about your own personal leadership story, like where, at what point in your career did you start getting some leadership development or leadership training?
Alex: I had wanted to manage people for a while. I moved, as an individual contributor or high-performing individual contributor, from several teams. My manager had a global team of employee communications, internal communications folks and I didn’t really think that they were getting the supervision and support that they needed, so I volunteered for that. She said, ‘Okay, great, take this on, see what they're doing.’ So I've learned a lot about that because these were people in Malaysia, these were people in Europe and they needed support that they weren't getting, Nobody was talking to them during the day and we had very limited hours of overlap and I made a commitment to them that I would respond to them in my day so that they had whatever they needed by the time they got into work the next day. That was my first dynamic of managing people and then I started building a team and that has resulted in that I have a pretty large global team, now.
When I made the real transition from being an individual contributor, with a small team, there as a working manager to being like a leader of an organization. It was so hard and I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. I think a Leadership 360, no one is going to come out of that with a glowing review. You’re going to get a lot of tough and constructive feedback and that's the point. But that's not how Annual Reviews are designed, right? You can get through an Annual Review with only good feedback, versus a 360. It's intended to point out your blind spots and it's intended to point out the rough spots and it's intended to point out the things that you don't really want to admit to yourself. So I did that and I had a coach for a year and we worked on a framework and identified what my big leadership goal is and that is to lead people, to do career defining and meaningful work and I really don’t see that change. I think that’s something that will stick with me for life.
We've partnered with the Trilogy Effect team several times, for great success and it goes over really well. I think, most of the time, people appreciate development and the way that we've framed development with this group has gone over really well.
Sherrilynne: Wendy, could you give us a bit of an overview on the kind of work that you've been doing with the extended leadership team?
Wendy: Sure, and I just want to say Alex has been an amazing partner in all of this, in terms of how she set it up at EA. It was really in such a thoughtful way to be able to pull threads through in between our sessions, build upon what we've done, get feedback, feed us the feedback, be with us in the design for the next session. It’s really understanding that one session kind of opens the door to the next session, to the next session, rather than we're going to roll out this program, because we never really know what’s going to happen inside one event that will spark the need for something else. So Alex has been great at working with us, and the emerging process, in all of this.
So we've done quite a bit of Enneagram work with the extended leadership team and that was really wonderful. I'll let Alex speak to all of that, but we did that. We have several tools for communication and collaboration and decision-making that we've shared and we're trying to embed as best we could with their team. Alex, of course, and the leadership team will bring that forward and pull those threads through, so I’ll let Alex get more specific about it and what she sees as the benefits.
Alex: Yeah, I would say the two greatest tools that we've learned are the Enneagram and Alignment. So, with the Enneagram, the leadership team went through this first, a couple of years ago, incidentally, right before COVID, which I think helped everyone as we made this big transition. We transitioned an entire Customer Experience organization, globally, supporting millions of players, overnight. As you can imagine, lots of people wanted to play video games during a pandemic and we were there to support them and we had to work really closely together to make that shift happen and support the increased demand of helping players get the most out of their games.
So we had done this, Enneagram work right before that and went through the ‘Typing’ session with Wendy and it's led to a lot of positive self-realization. People have been really receptive to another tool to understand how they approach the world. We've done Discovery Insights, we've done Strengths Finder and we've done different things over the years and Enneagram has definitely had the most traction with our team, I think just because of the applicability in life and the depth of resources and learnings that it presents. The other great tool that we've learned and have used is the Alignment Tool around decision-making. We just went through this last week with our extended leadership and the leadership team's been doing it for, going on two years.
It has really changed the trajectory of our decision-making and the philosophy of our decision-making. So we are an agreeable bunch and I would say we like each other more than most leadership teams. I think liking each other, which is a good problem. Wendy's laughing because there was a lot of piling on. I remember prepping her for this, offsite, and she was like, ‘What do you think the problems are?’ I was like, ‘People just keep talking, like our meetings go on and on, and I have places to be and I’m a very punctual person and this is inhibiting my daily routine.”
Wendy’s like, ‘Okay, I have this tool for that.’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, all right, let's see how that goes. You show me a tool that's going to solve this problem and we'll be in business.’ So we go and she's like, ‘All right, alignment agreement and authority here in the decision-making models and here's what alignment sounds like,’ and it really changed the tone of our meetings. We got to the point a lot better and got ideas in motion faster. What is the phrase you always say Wendy? “Like, is it good enough to be in play?”
Wendy: Good enough to get the game in play.
Alex: ‘Good enough to get the game in play,’ and that's totally it. We have so many decisions and the people that are on our leadership team and on our extended leadership team are in their roles for reasons. They are smart capable people that are trusted with a lot of authority to make decisions on big things. We all want to weigh in and there's sometimes a time and place for that, but we need to get aligned on the general direction and then let that person go. So that tool has been really instrumental In helping us get moving.
Wendy: Yeah and so their team was what you, what you all called is, they would get into violent agreement, which was this conversation that kept going on and on and on. It's like, keep talking about how they agree with each other. So it was pretty funny.
Sherrilynne: Wendy, can you give us a bit of an overview about this tool, because I don't think we've talked about this so far in any of our podcast episodes.
Wendy: No, we haven't. It's a very structured and particular conversation that can feel quite awkward, at first, because it's not something people normally do. But once you start getting the hang of it becomes just the way you do things, the way you make decisions and it's not always appropriate for every kind of decision, but alignment is really for more strategic kind of decisions and to get things moving fast, as Alex said.
It's for when you're trying to move faster than ‘getting to agreement’, which is another
term for consensus, which is very time-consuming, and knowing that it requires more communication, more relationship, to stay on the decision you've made. It's not a one and done, but it's as Alex said to get a direction going. So think of a flock of geese that is aligned in a direction, that's alignment. It's more about sort of surfacing disagreements, than it is about surfacing agreements. So knowing where people can't align, which means good enough, like, ‘I may not fully agree with everything, but I can agree enough, I'm in it enough, that I'm willing to go in this direction for now.’
It’s rather than people leaving the room saying yes, and then going out of the room and doing what they want to do anyway and we’ve all been in those meetings. So this is really making sure you're surfacing where people have an issue with the proposed direction and talking about that.
If there's a counterproposal, surfacing that until you feel it's good enough. ‘It's good enough and I can go along with this and let's get this in motion.’ Agreement and consensus are really good for tactical kinds of decisions where you need more precision and authority. Of course, it’s something you want to use more sparingly, for when you need compliance, if it's a regulatory kind of decision, it’s not really a decision, it’s just that you have to comply. So you use authority and those kinds of things, and sometimes, if you can’t come to an alignment, or you can’t come to an agreement, the leader can say, ‘Look, we've been around the block on this, and I'm going to just make an executive decision now.’ It's usually really good to state upfront, what kind of decision-making model you're using so that's kind of the short shrift of what this is.
Sherrilynne: It sounds incredibly powerful, especially for anyone that's ever done that sitting around the table thing and you're like, ‘We've been over this a million times, can we just move on please?’
Wendy: Or you leave the room and you’re not sure what the decision was. I’ve been in those meetings too, like, ‘What did we decide, what was that?”
Alex: I think the best part about it is it really entrusts the right people to figure out the details instead of a group, figuring out the details. My background is Executive Communications and there is nothing I like less than group editing, where everyone is in a document and they're mincing words, nothing good is going to come from this. Having five people edit something is only going to make it worse so, ‘Let's get aligned on the big key messages, then you all get out of the document and I'll do what I'm going to do, and we're going to go from there.’ That’s the most basic example of it, but you expand that out to big decisions that you're making for your team or for your organization, or about the direction of your strategy.
If you trust the people that you're working with, you can get to alignment easily and I think there's levels of alignment, like, ‘Are you aligned that I'm going to make this investment? Are you aligned that we're going to head in this direction?’ We talk about that a lot, but we have conversations for alignment every day.
Wendy: I love that. When we did this work with them at the leadership team right before everything shut down because of COVID they just took the ball and ran with the whole alignment conversation.
Sherrilynne: Alex, what would you say has been the main benefit of working with Trilogy Effect?
Alex: What I like about working with the trio is their thoughtfulness. I always want to cram more ideas into a session and they have an ‘intentionality’ about the spacing and time and rhythm of development sessions that really engages people and makes it work. I think that space is probably the most impactful piece, in addition to the development sessions that we've been doing lately. We tend to do these sessions in kind of clusters throughout the year and this is our peak season and we were releasing all of our games in advance of the holidays and so people are contacting us, they need help. They want to get the most out of their game, whatever it may be.
So we scheduled our development sessions smack dab in the middle of peak. I made sure to point this out to people, when we opened the sessions that, I was, in fact, not crazy and not blissfully unaware of what was going on in our business. That this was an intentional decision to give people time and space for connection with their peers to build close working relationships and to learn tools that they could apply tomorrow to the work that they were doing.
When I ask people what the most valuable part of that is, they always say that the connection with their peers they're like, ‘ The tools we're learning are valuable and I'm applying them to what I'm doing day in and out. The time with these people and building deeper relationships, particularly in the world that we're in right now, where we're not seeing each other, is the greatest thing.’
Sherrilynne: Thank you to Alex and Wendy for joining me on today’s show and thanks to all you listeners. I hope you never miss an episode by subscribing to our podcast and liking us and sharing us with your friends. Please leave a rating or review that really does help people find our podcast. Thank you, once again, for joining us until next time. I’m your host, Sherrilynne Starkie and this is the Being Human is Good For Business podcast.