Author: Andrew Embry

If you mixed diet mountain dew, funk music, dragons, hip hop, superheroes, and lightning in a blender you’d end up with Andrew Embry. He is part wordsmith and part alchemist, able to use his Batman utility belt to turn anything and everything into a story worth telling that is equal parts insightful, memorable, inspiring, humorous, and entertaining. Andrew is comfortably creative in almost any setting, but especially when he is performing spoken word poetry. His enthusiasm for words comes from the way he loves people and the little nuances of life that make it worth living.

Parenting and the Art of Setting Expectations (4-7-21)

Last week was about recognizing progress. This week is about parenting and the art of setting expectations.

One of my biggest struggles as a parent is setting the right expectations for my kids. My intent is to set high expectations that will stretch my kids to grow AND still be achievable and grounded in reality. My wife and I talk and calibrate expectations a lot, and often my expectations are too unrealistic. I find ways to justify my thinking. I say, “My wife’s expectations are too low” or “I know what they are capable of” or “They know I love them so pushing them so hard is okay.” There might be truth in all of these explanations. At the same time, these unrealistic expectations often fail to look at them as individuals and are often set based on my needs, not theirs. If my expectations are so unrealistic that my girls can’t ever meet them, then they will always experience failure. That won’t motivate them to reach their full potential, it will crush them.

How does this connect to work? The challenge I have as a parent is the exact same challenge that leaders face. How many times have you been handed totally unrealistic expectations at work? How did those unrealistic expectations make you feel? I consider myself an optimist, but I also know I have to embrace the reality of situations (Stockdale paradox). Expectations that aren’t grounded in reality hinder my motivation, because it feels futile to go after something that can’t be reached while knowing I’ll be somehow negatively impacted in the process. Have you ever felt that way?

There is an art to setting expectations. Make the goals too easy, and there is no pride in attaining them. Set unrealistic expectations not grounded in reality, and motivation is negatively impacted. If you set expectations that are a stretch, meaningful, and attainable, then you will motivate people to achieve great things. This is not easy and requires constant calibration.

The challenge: As a leader, how are you calibrating and setting the right expectations?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Parenting and Recognizing Progress (3-31-21)

Last week was about parenting and showing appreciation. This week is about parenting and recognizing progress. Alice can have challenges regulating her emotions sometimes. She can go from 0-100 miles of fury per hour in .2 seconds (I’m sure we’ve all been there). The other night she got really upset and exploded. My wife and I talked to her about this and how she needs to do better. Alice responded, “I’m trying really hard to get better at calming down. You keep telling me I’m not doing this right. I’m not perfect, but you’re not recognizing that I’m making any progress.”

My wife and I sat in silence for a moment. First, I was so proud of Alice for feeling brave and confident enough to say this. Second, I was impressed that she understood herself so well and knew she needed her progress to be seen. Third, I felt like a bit of a jerk. I was so focused on the problem that I lost sight of the journey. I lost sight of how far Alice has come and how hard she is working every day. I lost sight of how important it is for me to show her I see her and recognize her progress (maybe I should reread my blog from last week 😉). After we regained our ability to speak, my wife and I told Alice she was right. We pivoted the conversation to focus on the progress she is making AND how we can help her keep moving in the right direction.

How does this connect to work? I see connections at the individual level and at the leadership level. As an individual, how often do you focus on your shortcomings vs. your progress? This is me all day. I can get obsessive about the misses, while never seeing the tremendous growth I should be proud of. As a leader, how often do we treat teammates the way my wife and I initially treated Alice? How often do we spend most of our effort on judging the work and pointing out all of the shortcomings vs. recognizing the positive progress that has been made? As leaders, we will always be able to see shortcomings in others, because we are all human. If all the person ever hears is us calling out their shortcomings, what will that do to them and our relationship with them?

The challenge: Are you recognizing progress or are you just seeing shortcomings?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Parenting and Showing Appreciation (3-24-21)

Last week was about parenting and prioritization. This week is about parenting and showing appreciation.

My wife and I were hanging out in the living room with our daughters. I started to talk about how proud of them I am and how they’ve been great recently and how much we appreciate them. My girls get a little sheepish and one of them jokingly says, “Here comes the dad talk.” I laughed, gave her a huge hug and said, “Dang right it’s the dad talk!” Then, I continued to talk about how proud I am and how much I appreciate them for being who they are, because one of the most important things I can do as a dad is ensure that my girls ALWAYS know how much they are valued and loved. I try to consistently demonstrate this with my actions and my words, even if the girls give me a hard time for giving the “dad talk.”

What does this have to do with work? Similar to being a dad, one of the most important responsibilities of a leader is ensuring their people feel valued and loved. Our current environment is making it hard to do this. The world is moving so fast and as we continue to work from home we lose many of the organic touchpoints we would have to demonstrate how much we appreciate each other. With this in mind, we need to be more intentional than ever about making sure people feel valued and loved. We need to slow down and ensure these conversations are happening and that our words and actions cut through all of the noise. Imagine for a moment. What if we got so great at making people feel valued that the next time we started to tell someone we appreciate them they would interrupt us to jokingly say, “It’s the leader talk again.” 😉 Imagine how different it would feel to be at work if this was the case.

The challenge: How are you being intentional about showing appreciation and making people feel valued and loved? What action will you take TODAY?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Screen Time, Value, and Prioritization (3-17-21)

Last week was about identifying your cultural pillars. This week is about parenting, screen time, value, and prioritization.

One of our rules is that the girls get limited screen time each day. During this time they have the option to do different things. They can watch cartoons, play video games, or do something on the ipad. Whatever they choose to do, they still get the same amount of time. The other day the girls had their normal amount of screen time. They chose to watch a cartoon on the main TV. At the end of the episode, I told them it was time to turn everything off. They asked for more screen time. I told them no. They got upset, because they said they didn’t want to watch cartoons, and they had really wanted to play video games. I reminded them that they knew they had limited amounts of screen time and that they chose to watch cartoons. I also explained In the future they would need to be more thoughtful about how to spend that screen time if they were disappointed.

What does this have to do with anything? The girls don’t realize it yet, but we are essentially teaching them a sneaky lesson in prioritization and understanding what you value and want. They have a set amount of screen time, and they have a few different ways they could spend that time. How should they spend it? It all depends. Out of their options, which one(s) would give them the most value? In a similar way, we all have a limited number of hours each week to fit in everything we need to do as it relates to our holistic health, our relationships, and work. How often have you looked back at the day or week and said to yourself, “Whoa, I don’t think I did any of the things I really wanted to do. I wish I could have done X, Y, and Z instead.” I know this happens to me sometimes. There’s no way to go back in time, but I can do a better job of ensuring I know what I value and then making sure I focus my efforts on those things. Sometimes, this means making sure I’m prioritizing and staying focused on important work. Sometimes, this means that I step away from that important work and spend time connecting with others and myself to ensure I’m meeting my other needs. It all depends on what I value and need.

The challenge: What do you value? Are you CHOOSING to prioritize your time to reflect what you value?

Bonus thoughts: When it comes to prioritizing work I tend look at 3 variables: impact to the business, quality of the deliverable, and amount of effort. I try to focus on the things that have the most impact. From there, I’m constantly balancing quality and effort. If the work needs to be A quality, then it requires a lot of effort. This means, I can only do a limited amount of A quality things at a time. However, if the quality required is only a B or C, then that requires less effort and I can produce more work. My opinion is that most stuff really just needs to be a B, because it’s not going to be perfect before it hits the market anyway. Being honest about the quality helps me make sure I put the right amount of effort towards the right things. There is no point putting maximum effort toward something that needs to be a B.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Family Values and Culture (3-10-21)

This week we will kick off a series of lessons I’ve learned since becoming a dad. This week is about artwork my wife created and defining the culture you want to have.

The image on the right is art my wife did that captures the key values for our family. It includes things like, “We can do hard things” (grit), “We write worlds” (creativity), “Experiment, fail, and try again” (learning), and “We belong to each other” (love/inclusion). Having clarity on what we value as a family shapes the behaviors we exhibit as parents. For example, we value creativity, so we embrace messiness. If you come to my house you’ll see multiple experiments, a hot mess creative area, a rope swing, a fort, and likely a dance party. We don’t sweat the mess, because we value creativity. One thing we won’t tolerate is giving up when things get difficult. We value grit, so we encourage our daughters to lean into hard things. We spend extra time encouraging them, helping them learn to cope with frustration, and celebrating their progress.

How does this connect with anything? That board summarizes what is important to the culture of our family, and serves as a guide for how we need to behave to support those pillars. In a similar way, when you’re on a team you need to understand what you want the pillars of your culture to be. On top of being clear on the pillars, you need to be clear on what behaviors support that culture, so you can be aware if you are exhibiting those or not. If you are NOT intentional about defining your culture and the corresponding behaviors, culture will still develop. It just won’t evolve into what you want it to be, and in my experience it will become something that doesn’t necessarily reflect you and what you value.

The challenge: Have you taken the time to define what you want the culture of your team to be? Have you taken the time to think through the norms/behaviors that create that culture? How are you and your teammates currently living (or not living) your culture?

Bonus thought- You can apply the same thinking to define your leadership principles as well. In case you’re curious, mine are love, purpose, synergy, and movement. I try to act in act in a way that people know I care deeply about them and the work we do together (love). I stay connected to our greater purpose and also try to help the team understand why we are doing what we are doing for any given project (purpose). I believe we are all superheroes, and I’ll work to leverage the superpowers of others (synergy). Last, we will always find a path forward no matter the obstacles (movement).

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Understanding the Other Side (3-3-21)

This is the last in our series about Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Last week was about setting the stage to welcome authenticity. This week is about trying to understand the other side before passing judgment. This contains some SPOILERS about the video game.

In most video games (or stories for that matter) there is a clear hero and a clear villain. My daughters know this, so when they played Spider-Man with me they assumed that whoever Spider-Man was trying to stop was obviously evil. In the game, there is an energy company called Roxxon and there is a character named The Tinkerer. Spider-Man fights the Tinkerer early in the game, so my daughters assumed they were evil was evil. As the game unfolds, you learn that Roxxon is doing some shady things and that The Tinkerer is leveraging some outside of the law means to try to stop them. When this is revealed Alice says, “Wait. So is the Tinkerer a good guy or a bad guy?” I replied with, “What do you think?” Alice responded by saying, “I don’t know. They are doing some things I wouldn’t do, but I also understand why they are doing it. This is tricky.”

What does this have to do with anything? Too often in life we assume that all situations are black and white. We see something that we wouldn’t necessarily do, declare it is wrong, and decide the “other” is bad. We don’t always take the time to understand their situation and where they are coming from. The fact is that it’s rarely ever so cut and dry. Trying to truly understand the other person is the first step to seeing the problem and ultimately finding a solution. We see this play out in politics, personal relationships, and even work. How often have you been part of a conversation where someone decided the other person was wrong, before ever trying to understand them? How often have you been that person who passed judgment without understanding?

Here is what makes listening to the other side even harder. It’s human instinct to want to be heard before we try to understand the other person. If we don’t feel like we are being heard, it’s too easy to close our mind to what the other side is saying. I know something I’m continuing to focus on is seeking first to understand before demanding to be understood, even if the other side isn’t originally listening to me.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Burnout and Boundaries (3-1-21)

I kind of hit a wall last week, so I spent the weekend recharging. This led to some reflections I want to share with you.

There are different types of rest- The 7 types of rest that every person needs | (ted.com). This weekend was all about mental, sensory, and creative rest. I completely unplugged, hung out outside, and spent most of the time reading and blogging. It was the recharge I needed. Make sure you’re filling your bucket.

Setting boundaries for yourself- Speaking of burnout, it’s important we set boundaries for ourselves. Here’s something I do. Whenever I have a new colleague I’m working with I get to know them and then we spend time discussing working styles. I always talk about how my family time is sacred, so I do what I can to avoid being on my computer at night. This means they won’t see stuff from me at night and shouldn’t expect to. Of course there will be times when it’s all hands on deck and everyone is putting in extra hours, but that shouldn’t be all the time. If it is, something is wrong. Priorities aren’t clear, expectations are unrealistic, or you’re not clear on what your boundaries are.

Setting expectations for others- While we set our own boundaries, it’s important to set and reinforce expectations for others. A vendor sent me an email on Sunday and said, “I’ll be standing by all day if you have questions.” This morning I sent him back the below message to clarify my expectations, because I don’t expect or need him to work all weekend for me.
- I appreciate you saying in your email that you’d be standing by on Sunday to answer questions if needed. I want you to know that I do NOT expect you to be on call for us over the weekend. You’re not some random vendor to me, you’re a teammate. When it gets close to crunch time, we will all be working long hours, but until then I want you and all my other teammates to spend time unplugging, refueling, and spending time with friends/family/important people in your life. In fact, if there is ever anything I can do to help alleviate any work burden you might have on the weekend please let me know.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Authenticity (2-24-21)

Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about representation. This week is about Spider-Man: Miles Morales and appreciating authenticity.

One of my favorite parts about Spider-Man: Miles Morales is that it feels different from the first Spider-Man game, where you play as Peter Parker, a white middle class college student from Queens. The developers could have made the second game feel exactly the same, but they didn’t do this. Instead, they gave each game its own personality with its unique characters, setting, story, music, etc. The developers never tried to force fit Miles into being Peter, because that would not have been true to who Miles is. As a result, you get two games that are true to themselves. This only works, because there is a large enough audience willing to embrace all the different ways someone could be Spider-Man.

How does this connect with anything? In the video game analogy, the audience had to be willing to embrace a different kind of Spider-Man. They needed to be able to look at Peter Parker and Miles Morales and say, “Both of these individuals create compelling stories because of who they are as individuals.” Even if the developers wanted Miles and Peter to be authentic to themselves, it wouldn’t work unless the audience embraced who those characters are.

Often we put the responsibility of being authentic on the individual. We tell people, “You just need to bring your authentic self to work.” We say this like it should be easy to do, and it isn’t. Bringing your authentic self only works if the audience is able to say, “Bob and Joe are different people with unique backgrounds who each bring their own perspective to the role, AND they both are able to deliver BECAUSE of what makes them unique.” If we are being honest with ourselves, often we aren’t to the point of fully embracing the authenticity of others. We still get hung up on the way we think things SHOULD be done. Rather than put the responsibility of being authentic on the individual, this responsibility falls on our leaders and co-workers. Leaders set the tone and co-workers help set and/or embrace the tone that is set. If these individuals (the audience) isn’t willing to embrace the authenticity of others, the individual can never be their authentic self.

The challenge: How are you creating the space that encourages people to be who they are?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Representation, and Inclusion

Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about challenging biases. This week is about the video game Spider-man: Miles Morales, representation, and inclusion.

Alice (8) was watching me play the game and there is a scene where Spider-man (Miles Morales) uses sign language to communicate with a character who is deaf. Alice asked, “Why isn’t she talking?” I explained that the character is deaf and often individuals who are deaf use sign language to communicate. Alice then said, “Why would they do that in a video game?”

It was an interesting question and a powerful moment, because I realized that Alice had never seen someone who offered this element of difference. I told Alice, “She’s in the video game, because the people who created this video game understand that she has a story worth telling. On top of that, the people who made the video game understand that she represents the people out in the world who are like her and also have stories worth telling. It’s kind of the same way with Miles Morales. How cool is it to have a Spider-man who is Black and Puerto Rican? How cool is it to have a Spider-man who can tell different stories? We all are unique, and we all have our own stories to tell. I say the more different stories we can see the better.” Alice paused for a moment and then said, “Yeah, that’s pretty cool!”

How does this connect with anything? If you pause for a moment and think about the things you watch on TV and the people at your work, how many of them look like you and are like you? The majority of the world looks like me. This sends clear signals that I’m welcome and included in a variety of situations. The same can’t be said for all people. While it’s easy to look at the progress we’ve made with regards to diversity and inclusion, the fact is that non-majority group members are still vastly underrepresented at all levels in an organization. A lack of representation, a lack of people who look and are like you, is often a signal that you aren’t necessarily welcome and included in an environment. If we want to live in a world where all people are valued, then we need to work to ensure all people are represented and are included.

The challenge: How will you include a wider variety of people in your work and life?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Challenging Biases (2-10-21)

Last week was about video games, milestones, and ambiguity. This week we are going to look at Spider-man: Miles Morales and challenging biases.

I mentioned earlier in the series that Miles Morales is Black and Puerto Rican. Throughout the game there are times when he speaks Spanish to his mom and other characters. At one point, my daughter Violet (6) asked, “Why are they speaking Spanish?” I responded by saying, “Why shouldn’t they be speaking Spanish? What’s wrong with that?” She said, “This is an English video game and an English TV, right? So shouldn’t they speak English?” I paused for a moment and then explained that Miles is Black and Puerto Rican, and was raised in multiple cultures. This means he speaks English and Spanish. I explained that this is a story about Miles, and if Miles is being true to himself, then he should speak Spanish. He should embrace who he is, and this gives us a chance to see the beauty in who Miles is and where he comes from. From then on, Violet had an appreciation for Miles being who he is.

Do you see the connections? When she asked me that question all I could think about is how often I’ve heard other white majority members say similar things. “Why do they have to speak Spanish? Why does that person act so Black? Why can’t she just act like one of the guys?” Maybe you’ve said or thought these things (I know I have, especially when I was younger and more ignorant). Maybe you’ve heard other people say those things. Maybe you’ve been the target of those statements. All of these statements (and ones like them) are racist, sexist, etc. because they are all based in the assumption that the majority way of doing something is superior and the right way of doing things. When Violet asked her question what she was really saying was, “I’m closer to the majority. Those characters are not the majority. Why don’t they just assimilate and act like the majority? Isn’t the majority way the best way? Shouldn’t they assimilate to that?” Those statements and mindsets are signals that individuals are not welcome and will not be included. It was challenging the assumption of why that behavior is inferior or wrong that got her to realize that it wasn’t and she was wrong to view it that way. In a similar way, we all have these built in biases. Unless we are actively challenging our biases, we will never get better.

The challenge: How are you confronting your biases and assumptions to be a better human?

Bonus: Last year I read, How to be an Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. It opened my eyes to how often I have had and continue to have assimilationist views and how those are harmful. Worth checking out.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry