Leading with Candor

I want to talk to you a little more about remote work. We kind of touched on it earlier. So many companies now have distributed workforces. Is that the case for GoDaddy as well? And if so, what have you found to be the biggest challenges to team effectiveness amid this trend of increased remote work and what strategies have you come up with to address those challenges?

I think having more frequent meetings is something that we’ve done very quickly, having more touch points than perhaps before the pandemic, has been really important to help people feel connected even though for a long time, we were isolated in our homes.
One of the challenges—I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with instant messaging platforms. They can be great, particularly for quick questions, but not that effective in my view for more nuanced conversations. It’s really hard to read tone. It’s really hard to capture nuance, I think, through those tools.
And so kind of knowing when to say, you know, we need to just jump on a video call for this, is really important because if we let it go too long and leave things open to misinterpretation in writing, it actually can take longer and create more turns.

Yeah. Things fester…

Yes.

…If you don’t just address it right away. How do you help the people you lead to successfully navigate all the changes that we’re experiencing right now?

I think creating the forums for the exchange of ideas and open communications, coupled with as much transparency as possible. There’s been a tremendous amount of change everywhere in the past two years and a lot of uncertainty knowing that people have been juggling uncertainty at work, uncertainty in their personal lives. Everybody has a different situation, in terms of schooling or elder care.
And so being as transparent as possible and frankly, candid, when we don’t have the answers. My view has been incredibly important that people feel like they’re part of the process and knowing that we’re in this together.