BehavioralPeople Management

How do you prioritize diversity and inclusiveness in your work and what steps have you taken to promote it?

Engineering ManagerML Engineering ManagerData Science ManagerData Engineering Manager

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Anonymous

4.2Exceptional

For build a high performance team making everyone feel valued becomes very important.
There are few things which I do in my teams to make everyone feel empowered and valued

* Fostering a culture open communication

* Enabling people to do experimentation

* Collaborative decision making

* Supporting career and personal growth

* Reviews and feedback

* Rewards and recognition



Fostering a culture open communication - Anyone irrespective of their experience level should be able to respectfully critique any idea. Showing empathy towards each other in team while challenging each other to become better as a group. Started monthly ideation contest. A lead in one of the teams came up with an idea that we need to break out login flow dependency from lending. This was picked immidiately as this would have helped us launch other products in fintech domain.

Enabling people to do experimentation - Team members look at a problem from a multi dimensional point of view and do spikes to analyse the approaches before fixating. We wanted to integrate cloud specific API gateway when one architect proposed using an open source API gateway. Quickly did POC's and evaluated Krakend, Kong. Captured the data points around maintainability, extensibility, community support, scalability, observability etc. Presented the same to the team and we chose Krakend as it checked all points and was aligned with company wide KPI of reducing cost.

Collborative decision making - Involving all members for critical team decicions e.g. querterly/yearly goal setting, meetings, vision doc, grooming, planning, prioritisation calls, ideation. Empowering team to take decisions autonomously

Supporting career and personal growth - I work closely with team members to align their personal and career goals with business objectives, providing opportunities for growth within the team and beyond. Provided an opportunity to an EM to run cross team project about notification system overhaul where EM would get an opportunity to work on skills related to stakeholder management, persuasion, project management strategy involving multiple teams, managing business and technology.


Reviews and feedback - Doing retrospectives about what went well, didn't go well as planned for participation and improvement. Working on the areas of improvement as a team. Timely prividing constructive feedback for something which should be continued, changed, stopped. I use various frameworks like SBI, GROW, COIN, CEDAR for providing feedback during 1:1's and skip level meetings.



Rewards and recognition - Using different options, positive feedback in team meetings, spot award, employee of the month, word of appreciation in newsletter/townhall, vouchers. 

Anonymous

4Strong
First realize that no two people are the same and hence the same techniques will not work on everybody the same way. There are some steps that I prioritize diversity and inclusiveness
1. Meetings : When I participate or own meetings with a mix of in-person and remote attendees, i ensure that the remote attendees have fair opportunities to participate. Conversations in the room are impossible to avoid but I pull in the people in the video conference and ask them for their opinion or call on specific people since they have expertise. 
2. Participation : There are always people who tend to be silent even if they are experts in the field. I identify and work with them 1:1 and let them know how valuable their more recent interaction was and that I would like to call on them initially in low pressure situations and cultivate their habit of participating. For example I had a recently promoted Senior Engineer who start attending my leadership meetings. He however remained silent for most of the meeting which was dominated by well established SDMs and Senior Engineers. In my next 1:1 I spoke to him about how he had earned a place in the room and how his insights have helped in meetings and told them that I would like to call on them more.
3. Cultural : There are people who need specific considerations, such as people who need standing desks, additional time off on Fridays for prayers or some physical disabilities. I listen to their needs and only asking for information if they are willing to provide it and give them the flexibility as long as it does not affect the rest of the team. For example, I organized a weekly leadership meeting on fridays after lunch as a low pressure meeting to review weekly progress, brainstorm new ideas, and identify opportunities. One of my managers, indicated that he would need to miss 30 min of the meeting every week due to prayers. I subsequently discussed with the team to move the meeting prior to lunch without indicating specifics of why I wanted to, thus preserving confidentiality.
4. Opportunities with leadership : While some people naturally tend to have an audience with leadership, I identify opportunities to provide people a chance to present or speak to senior leaders. I talk to them about their strengths and why they would be good at presenting a specific opportunity and guide them through it
5. Document reviews : Document reviews are a great opportunity to get people involved and any presentation or document that the team writes, I ensure that all relevant people get to review and comment on it. If I identify somebody being silent, I reach out during my 1:1 to help them participate
6. Generating Ideas : Ideas come from all sorts of people and taking them out of their normal roles and responsibilities helps them to come out of their shell. I have organized hackathons about twice a year where I partner with a peer organization and encourage both organizations to work together to come up with innovative ideas outside of their normal roles.

Anonymous

3.6Strong
Of course! One time I had an employee who was Muslim, and they participated in fasting for Ramadan. They asked me if they could shift their hours around to accommodate the fasting schedule. I checked in with the other teams' managers that he was working with and everyone signed off, so we shifted his hours around to let him still contribute and also keep his commitment to his religion.

Anonymous

3.6Strong
1. Giving them chance to present their work to leaders and seniors
2. Making sure they know and understand the impact of their work on the product and company. How their work is creating value and is important for the team and company
3. Each individual's needs and requirements can be different and so does the motivators, making sure each individual gets the unique support they need to be able to perform at their best.

Anonymous

3.2Strong
Conducted a group brainstorm on problems we should be solving in the coming year 
Organised a team wide hackday with presence to leadership 
Encouraged the team to host brownbags and invited team globally to attend
Organised a team sport 

Anonymous

3Strong
I made sure every individual get right work and proper recognition. I create an opportunity to showcase their skills in wider forum.

Anonymous

Of course! One time I had an employee who was Muslim, and they participated in fasting for Ramadan. They asked me if they could shift their hours around to accommodate the fasting schedule. I checked in with the other teams' managers that he was working with and everyone signed off, so we shifted his hours around to let him still contribute and also keep his commitment to his religion.
  • How do you prioritize diversity and inclusiveness in your work and what steps have you taken to promote it?
  • How do you create and maintain a diverse and inclusive work environment?
  • Can you describe the measures you have put in place to foster diversity and inclusiveness in your work?
  • Could you explain the steps you take to promote diversity and inclusion in your workplace?
  • What initiatives have you implemented to ensure that all individuals feel valued and included in your work environment?
  • How do you balance diversity and inclusiveness with the need to maintain a positive and productive work environment?
  • Can you describe the actions you have taken to create an environment that is inclusive to all individuals?
  • How do you make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in your work environment?
  • Can you discuss the strategies you have put in place to ensure that all individuals feel comfortable and welcome in your work environment?
  • How do you work to promote diversity and inclusiveness in your workplace and make everyone feel valued?
  • What steps have you taken to create a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone is respected and appreciated?
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Interview question asked to Data Science Managers, Engineering Managers, ML Engineering Managers and other roles interviewing at Kajabi, Grubhub, Altice Europe and others: How do you prioritize diversity and inclusiveness in your work and what steps have you taken to promote it?.