Preview: When it comes to a situation that needs feedback, that situation could be a long dark tunnel and the feedback is supposed to be a light because this will show you the way out of the tunnel so you can get to the resolution on how to solve it.
[Music]
Lea Alcantara: From Bright Umbrella, this is CTRL+CLICK CAST! We inspect the web for you! Today we are talking about fearless feedback with special guest, Amélie Lamont. I’m your host, Lea Alcantara, and I’m joined by my fab co-host:
Emily Lewis: Emily Lewis!
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Emily Lewis: We are really excited to have Amélie Lamont as our guest today to talk about giving and receiving feedback that helps empower a team. She is a product designer currently working at the New York Times specializing in using cultural studies and design anthropology to inform her design process. Welcome to the show, Amélie.
Amélie Lamont: Thanks for having me.
Lea Alcantara: Absolutely. So Amélie, can you tell our listeners a bit more about yourself?
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, sure. So I guess I’ll start with where I live. I live in New York, specifically in Brooklyn. I have been a designer for the past ten years, actually for longer than that, but at least ten years, and I’m fairly new at the New York Times. I started at the New York Times in August of last year, so yeah.
Emily Lewis: How did you first get into applying design for digital, for the web?
Amélie Lamont: Oh, my goodness. [Laughs] I started that at a very young age. When I was growing up in the 90’s, I was fortunate enough to have a computer, and I remember using my computer and the internet to go on Neopets’ website.
Emily Lewis: Oh.
Lea Alcantara: Oh, I love it.
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, so that’s where I learned, then I also went on Geocities to those Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z fan sites. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Oh my God. That’s my story. You’re my girl. You’re my girl.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, I was a huge, and still am a huge nerd of.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: So that’s kind of how I fell into digital design.
Emily Lewis: I love that story because I think it shows my experience, it’s slightly different because I suspect I’m probably like a decade older than the two of you. I didn’t have a computer, like an actual computer. I had like a word processor in college, but I didn’t have an actual computer until my 20s and there wasn’t like a place you could go to build websites that I was aware of. I wasn’t like clued into anything, so it’s really interesting to see how just a few years can separate whether your household had a computer, and we didn’t even have email at my college until my senior year. [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Wow! Oh, my goodness.
Emily Lewis: It’s the old days. [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Back in the day. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Exactly. So today we’re going to be talking about feedback and I think it would be great to start with a bit of a definition of kind of what that means, particularly in the context of design and teams.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, for sure. So I would say that feedback is the relaying of useful and pointed information about the situation or a product with the ultimate goal of improvement and iteration.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: It’s a good definition. What does it actually look like in real world though?
Amélie Lamont: I think in terms of what it looks like, it depends. I would say just to gloss over what it would look like, it would look like being open and receptive about how you give that feedback and then also being open and receptive to receiving that feedback so that ultimately the two parties, or it could be two or more parties in a conversation for feedback. Basically, it’s trying to get to a common goal as to why this feedback is being given. You don’t give feedback without some kind of purpose. It’s either for improvement or for iteration, and so the delivery of that feedback is incredibly important when giving feedback.
Lea Alcantara: So considering that importance, how much can it affect the team good or bad?
Amélie Lamont: One thing I will say is that I try to stay away from the dichotomy of good or bad.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: I think that, [laughs] and this might sound excessive, but I think that dichotomous thinking can tend to be very dangerous.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: And I don’t think anything is that neatly packaged into black or white, and so I think what’s more important than good or bad is the reception and the perception.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So for example, depending on the delivery of the information, at team can perceive the feedback to be a critique about them as a person rather than as a way to improve, right, versus on teams when you have critique.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And critique oftentimes is considered to be negative. When critique takes the place of feedback, which is supposed to be neutral, it can become a tool for manipulation and exploitation.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So I think it’s really important that when talking about feedback, and specifically fearless feedback, we’re very open and we’re very neutral and we think about the delivery of how we’re giving that feedback to the specific parties that we’re giving it to.
Emily Lewis: So I heard you use “critique” a couple of times, can you share what you feel that is because I think that has like a negative connotation with it?
Amélie Lamont: I think it depends on the mental model.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So I think in our society, oftentimes than not, like say you’re just not a designer, say you’re just an everyday person, you hear the word “critique” or you get some kind of information from another human being and if you feel like you’re being critiqued, it’s often perceived as negative.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: If you’re a classically trained designer, then that means you want to design school and obviously you have very clearly different ideas about what critique is. Critique is often positive, it’s a way to improve.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And I think while that’s a useful definition for designer, I think that with the work that we’re doing as designer, it’s important to keep in mind the definitions of how other people outside of our industry use words.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And so the mental model in society in general is that critique of any kind is negative, which is why I’m trying to push people towards this idea of feedback because if you’re a designer, you’re not just working with other designers, you’re working with product managers, engineers, et cetera…
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: People who do not have the mental model of this positive idea of critique, but the negative mental of critique.
Lea Alcantara: I think what I loved about what you just said here is the importance of having a shared vocabulary, depending on who you’re talking to.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: I think for the past few episodes, Emily and I have been trying to discuss design and development in terms that isn’t just our industry-specific terms, but terms that our clients who might not be technically inclined would say because sometimes there are a lot of assumptions, and they could be even good assumptions about something simply because you’re using a term that can be interpreted in more than one way, but the important thing though is whether it’s being interpreted in the way you wanted it to be in the first place, good or bad.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly.
Emily Lewis: You know it sounds like that is a bit of… I mean, that’s a culture shift, not even a bit of a culture shift. I think that would be a challenge. So is that something you have like meetings about to talk about this high-level idea of what you’re trying to do or is it something you strictly model or how do you get the people who are on your team? And let’s just take that example of the term “critique,” they’re comfortable with it, but they do work with other people, how do you get that in that mindset to move away from that language and do something more like feedback?
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, I mean, I personally find the people using the word “critique” the most are designers.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And I would say that I’m lucky to work at a place like the times where the types of problems that we’re working on are so unique. There’s no room for you to just be in this silo or this box without understanding the people that you’re working with and the environment and how fraught it is working in new designs essentially. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And let’s just be real. And so I think that I don’t really have that problem here because as a group of designers, we do use the word “critique,” but when we’re talking to say the developers or we’re talking to project managers or product managers, we specifically talk about giving feedback or receiving feedback.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Timestamp: 00:09:59
Amélie Lamont: And when we talk about feedback as designers with other groups, we make sure to be very specific about the type of feedback that we want to receive because if you’re not specific about the feedback that you want to receive, then that can often devolve into critique or something negative because you haven’t been specific about what you’re looking for and what you want to receive.
Lea Alcantara: So without using the word “good,” I guess the term that would be more useful is “positive” or “productive.” I think productive was…
Amélie Lamont: Productive.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: I like productive.
Lea Alcantara: Right. So what makes feedback productive and fearless, can you share some examples?
Amélie Lamont: Oh, sure. I would break it up into a few parts. So first off, when we talk about fearless feedback, I’m sure people are like, “Oh, my gosh, like what those would even mean? Like what do you mean fearless feedback?” So I want to give like a little bit of a back history behind that.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: I used to work at Apple and when we worked at Apple, specifically Apple Retail, we had this idea of fearless feedback. Basically, if you’re having a struggle or a dilemma say with an employee or perhaps even the way an employee interacted with a customer, you were expected to be brave, because oftentimes than not, when we think about talking to other people, whether it’s feedback or critique, it’s often categorized under this umbrella of confrontation.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And the idea of confrontation is often seen as being negative.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And so in that environment, we decided that the fearless part meant that you’re having the confidence no matter what the situation is to go up to the person and simply have a conversation about them. It’s not about judgment, it’s not about taking them down a notch, but maybe having a conversation about an interaction or how you were treated or some type of situation that happened.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So a great example would be once I was working at the Apple store, I had a coworker who made a comment to me that I perceived to be a snide.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And there are one or two ways to go about that. One is I can be very, very angry, I can be very upset. I can assume that this person is just a jerk or whatever type of words I have in my head, or I can – another Apple phrase is “assume positive intent” – go up to the person and say, “Hey, so and so, you said to me and when you said this to me, I felt this way. Was I overthinking it or was that the correct way to perceive it? Let’s have a conversation about it.” So it kind of defuses the anger that I had felt about this situation, but then it also gives you room to have a conversation about what that person’s actions were and what they meant and what they intended for it to be.
Emily Lewis: I like that because [laughs] honestly, I thought this conversation would be a lot more about design and you just gave a great example of how to use this to just have good working relationships.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. So you have set the tone over how to put things in a better productive situation and remove like overt emotional context, but sometimes we do get those hurtful or perceived hurtful feedbacks. What are examples of what that actually means? Because I do think that it helps to put in some context because I feel like what people perceive as hurtful is not hurtful to others, and because they don’t understand that, they don’t understand it’s hurtful.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly. So I can give you an example from a product and design perspective. Let’s say, for example, I’m managing a team and the team is a mix of different professions; designers, engineers, product managers, project managers, and we have a launch for a new feature, and for whatever the reason, the launch just did not go well, and I know why the launch didn’t go well, but in this case, let me just put myself in this box of a manager who’s not really thinking about why the launch went well, but rather is thinking about how to give what I perceive as feedback to the team about the launch not going well.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So the feedback that I could give is, “Hey Team, the launch of the new feature didn’t go so well. Let’s figure out how to fix it.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: On the surface, it seems really innocuous. It sounds like, “Oh, the manager of the team, she’s just telling us that the launch didn’t go well, like okay, that’s cool.” But if you dig deeper, what you’ll see is that it’s really vague, right?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So if I’m a designer on the team, “Okay, well, you didn’t tell me specifically what went wrong with the launch. Was it my design?” If I’m an engineer, “Was it the code that I wrote?” If I’m in a team of engineers, “Oh, gosh, you know I knew that launch wasn’t go well because so and so when they merged the code into the code base, I knew it was going to break everything, and see, right there, it happened and they’re to blame and now all of us are going to get in trouble for it.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: Because the person who gave the feedback was not specific about why something, in this particular case, did not go well, it allows for the people who are receiving the feedback to run wild with their imagination.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And that’s something that you absolutely, positively, do not want, and so I think the key is that if you are someone who’s giving feedback, you have to have an open mind enough to understand that, “Okay, perhaps it’s not the wisest thing for people’s imaginations to run wild, but you can control that.” So how do you build in – I guess the right word would be – mechanisms to prevent people from running wild with their imaginations or making assumptions because oftentimes than not, whether you’re in a work environment or it’s a personal environment where you’re just talking with someone else, we live in a society where people have egos.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And those egos control everything. [Laughs] And so even if me, as a manager, say that the launch didn’t go well, it was not specifically about one person, it’s very likely that there are multiple people who will think that it has something to do specifically with them.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: And so the right way or the better way to talk about the launch not going well would be, “Hey, everyone, the launch didn’t go well and it’s because of X, Y and Z.” So now the team has the point of X, Y and Z that specifically detail as to why the launch didn’t go well.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And then adding, “So let’s figure out how to solve this.” I think having that specificity is incredibly important. With the vagueness, it’s just not enough for people to grasp on how to, one, resolve the issue that’s happening, but then also how to be at peace with the feedback they’re receiving.
Emily Lewis: So in this situation, you described it as people running away, their imaginations running wild or them taking it personally because they think they know that it’s them. What are the broader implications for that kind of environment? So I’ve been an employee at a large corporation and meetings just like that and having feelings like that, I know what it feels like as an employee, but I wonder if leaders understand. What are the implications of having your staff feeling like that? [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs] I mean, that’s part of the reason why I’m giving this talk this year because I don’t think a lot of leaders fully understand. It kind of reminds me, I’m going to just veer off topic a little bit about some of the conversations that we have in tech and design about diversity inclusion where we talked about, “Oh, you know, we want to make the space super inclusive and we want everyone to be involved.” So if you listen to that statement and you unpack it, yeah, those are good intentions, but the people who are watching you and hearing you and seeing you, they can’t see those intentions.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: While you as a leader might have the best of intentions, unless you’re actually putting those intentions into tangible actions that people can see and interact with, your intentions will fall flat, and I think that’s really important to think about with feedback because I’ve had that happen to me as well where I’ve had leaders talk about a project that didn’t go so well and you’re sitting there wondering like, “Am I the cause of it?”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: But you don’t get enough information as to why there is a problem and what that eventually does, it literally erodes the camaraderie and the morale on the team because, “Well, when we do the next launch, maybe I’m just going to screw it up or I’m pretty certain my designs were the cause of that launch failing so maybe my designs are going to screw up the next launch, like why am I even here like I just suck,” or things like that.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. I remember, and this reminds me there’s a meme going on around right now on Facebook about how people quit because of their bosses, not because of their jobs [Employees Don’t Quit Their Job, They Quit Their Boss].
Emily Lewis: Oh, so true. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: It’s so very true. [Laughs]
Timestamp: 00:19:41
Lea Alcantara: Because it’s not the actual work that’s demoralizing, part of it is because of feedback that can be perceived as hurtful. I just find it really fascinating, especially because I’ve been reading a lot of business negotiation books and one of my favorite ones is Never Split the Difference, and one of the things that he wrote in the book was if you’re going to have a difficult conversation, he said, “Sit down and actually write it out.” Like write out the scenario, don’t just put yourself in a good mindset and then confront this person.
He suggested to sit down, actually write out all the potential things this person could say that’s negative and then write out all the positive ways you could respond to that so by the time you actually approach this person, you’re prepared. You’re prepared and you already have all the positive ways you could respond to this person as opposed to the kneejerk (unintentional words being used) reaction.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly, and I love that because I have used that strategy for myself where I think that when we talk about feedback, it can go both ways. It can be a leader giving feedback, but then also an individual contributor giving feedback to a leader.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So I’ve had the latter where I was working with a high-level individual and executive and they gave me feedback that I thought was less than savory. I interpreted it as critique and so I took some time away. I stepped away from the situation. I went home that night and I wrote down what happened, what the situation that she gave me feedback for, but then also tried to step into her shoes to see how she perceived it.
So once I did that, I wrote an entire list of why she may have delivered the feedback in the way she delivered it and I wrote responses to how I would have a conversation with her when it was time to have that conversation. So it took me about an hour and a half to write and then the next day I scheduled a meeting with her first thing in the morning and literally I told her, I was like, “Look, emotions are running high and I want this to be a productive meeting.” So I pulled up like my notepad.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And I was like, “I have everything here. We’re going to go through it point by point because we need to resolve this because by the end of this meeting, we’re going to be like cool, okay? Because we’re not going to leave this meeting wanting to bite each other heads off.” But it does work, like being able to parse away that emotion. It’s not to say that emotions aren’t important.
Lea Alcantara: Right.
Amélie Lamont: But I think if you just head into it just to confront the person about the feedback that you were given or that you received, you haven’t had time to process.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: You really need time to cool down and figure out maybe why they give you that feedback and why you perceive it as critique and what are some talking points that you can talk about when you connect with that person so that you can find common ground.
Lea Alcantara: What I also liked about what you just said before you even went into the points that you have to talk about is you set the tone in a positive manner right away. You basically set what the end conclusion was in that, “We’re going to be cool at the end of this.”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: Before any of this happen, you’d try to make sure that everyone is at ease and that you’ve set the tone that this is going to be a positive outcome.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly.
Emily Lewis: And you already demonstrated that this isn’t just in relation to getting a design or a product moving forward, it has a huge role in terms of interpersonal relationships, and I can just say that this is an area that I’m not great at, not specifically feedback but I’m an emotional person, and so I tend to process things emotionally first. And this idea of taking the time to gather your thoughts and remove yourself from the emotion of the moment before you address it, it’s so important in business, but it’s really important in life and I’m also discovering that, in a way, Lea is like my training wheels for healthy relationships.
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs] Because she’s really patient with me when I do get emotional and gives me the space to like ground myself, but every time I have a successful difficult conversation with Lea, it’s like, “Okay, I do know how to do this and I can also do this with my partner, which is even harder sometimes.
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs] I will say that I have used these techniques on my mom and it works fantastically. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: It’s great because my mom is like on a whole other level. She is just like this very brazen Jamaican woman where she’s always right, she’s never wrong and so I’m the same way, like I tend to react through my emotions first and I definitely react with emotions when it comes from my mom.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: So these techniques, they’re definitely helpful because it’s like, “Okay, obviously, she’s my mom so she knows exactly how to grind my ears, so I should take a step back, let me make a list and let’s have a conversation about it after I like remove myself a bit from the emotions.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And what’s nice about being an emotional person and taking that time away to actually like write down what you want to talk about, instead of directing your emotion towards the person in the moment on the fly, you’re able to get through that emotion out when you’re writing things out, which is really nice.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: Yeah, totally.
Lea Alcantara: So do you have any other ways people can receive feedback a little bit better? So we’re talking like we talked extensively about like, okay, taking a step back, grounding yourself, writing things down. Are there any other techniques?
Amélie Lamont: I think that there’s one other technique that people need to be aware of when it comes to feedbacks, so one of the things that I want to make very clear when it comes to feedback is that I don’t want anyone to think that when they receive feedback that is potentially less than savory than they would like, they should automatically withdraw into themselves and think that maybe that they are at fault.
Lea Alcantara: Yes.
Amélie Lamont: I think that everyone should take that step to write down what went wrong with that situation and how they want to essentially flip the switch and give feedback to that person who gave them the less than savory feedback. I think it’s important when you’re doing that step to think about the company culture if it’s a business environment and what that feedback could have possibly meant.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: Because there are two facets, right? There is that one facet where if you’re an emotional person or just, like I said, as a society, we’re full of egos, so you might just be thinking that this is directed specifically towards you, but then there is the other facet where you need to be able to have the skills to differentiate, “No, this was not feedback, this was critique disguised as feedback, and this was quite literally meant to harm me.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And I think that’s a skill that takes time to develop.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So for example, if you were in a one on one with a manager and your manager said to you as a designer, “Well, you know, your designs, they’re just not good enough.” [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: Oh, it hurts. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, that would really hurt, but what does that mean? So depending on the company culture, you can dig and find out what that means like, “Is it because my wireframes aren’t strong? Is it because my research isn’t strong? Is it my visual design? Is it my user experience design? Is it interaction design? What part of my design process makes it so that my designs are not strong? And in the future, can you give me a more specific feedback so that I don’t have to wonder about what you meant?”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: Or is it just the environment, it’s just so toxic that that is the kind of critique disguised as feedback that is given and even if you were to dig deeper, you would get absolutely no answer?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And if it’s the latter, then that’s not someone you want to be because at the end of the day, that’s just a destruction of your mental health.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: Because you’re not getting feedback, it’s purely critique for the sake of critiquing.
Emily Lewis: So you’ve given some really, really great examples of how you could receive good feedback and I heard you say that in terms of giving good feedback or I’m sorry, positive feedback, that one of the things that can help with that is to be specific and also not making it personally specific, but specific to like, for example, something that went wrong with the launch, you could say it was this particular shopping cart functionality or whatever.
Anything else that people can apply whether they’re a leader or an individual contributor or a peer on a team in terms of giving positive, productive feedback, and like should you do it only one on one because some people might feel – I don’t know – embarrassed if it was in a group or something?
Amélie Lamont: I think it depends on the environment and not just the company environment, but also cultural and societal environments. So for example, studies have shown that when you’re a woman in a meeting, you’re more likely to be cut off and that’s by both men and both women, right?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And so if you’re a woman in that situation who is constantly interrupted or cut off when you’re about to say something, someone giving you public feedback that is positive, on the larger scale is good, but you weren’t prepped for it and that’s not a behavior that often happens in that environment so you’d be taken aback and you might even be embarrassed and you might even be a little frustrated because it kind of feels like you got called out, even though it’s positive, and so I think understanding the societal structures and I know a lot of people like to separate the work environment from society, but we cannot, so I think that understanding even just sociological structures in how a society operates is important when giving positive feedback.
If you want to give positive feedback in this situation, for the example that I just mentioned, you would want to set an agenda or a rule with your team or even the company, if possible, that, “Hey, we want to recognize people in the company for the work that they’re doing, so we’re going to start giving public shout outs or public recognitions.”
Timestamp: 00:30:21
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So they’re not like taken aback randomly.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly, exactly.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: So setting the tone for that. In terms of giving personal feedback, personal feedback is tricky in a work environment because again, you still have to think about sociological structures and the person that you’re giving positive feedback to as well as perhaps you receiving positive feedback from someone else because, again, even though the intent might be positive feedback, it might not be perceived as that.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So for example, if I am a designer and for whatever reason – I’m trying to think of something good – well, I’ll go back to the sociological, so I’m a designer and I’m a woman and a male coworker says, “Oh, I really like your skirt today or your legs were really great in that skirt.”
Emily Lewis: Eew. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, you see, right, right? Yeah. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And so like that’s technically a nice thing to say, but not from a coworker. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: Not in a work environment, and I’m sure it’s very possible that the man who gave that compliment did not mean it in any way, shape or form for it to be sexual or for it to come out as crazy, but just the fact that you said, “Eew.” [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Yeah. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: It’s like very clear that you have to be aware of like sociological structures and also boundaries that people have.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Right.
Amélie Lamont: So when giving positive feedback, I think it’s important to make sure that the positive feedback is also very specific and also that it’s not too personal as well.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So if I were going to give personal feedback, whether it’s in person or in public or one to one or in public, one way I could do it is I’m a designer, I’ve got these mockups that I put together and another designer comes over and says, “Hey, I really love the way you organize the information hierarchy on this page, it’s very well thought out and I really think that our users are going to get great value from this.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: That’s very specific, so now I know, “Oh, it’s the information hierarchy that you like within my mockup for this particular design, and unless I have more questions about that, I can ask you specifically about that, which is great.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: What I like about what you’ve been saying here, too, is that people need to be careful about their positive, productive feedback almost as much as the “critical” or “negative” or “something that needs to change” type of feedback because even if intentions are good, things can derail real quickly.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly. And even if you have a culture like Apple’s where the ideas spur you to assume positive intention, it’s a lot easier to say that you should instill positive intention versus actually doing it and assuming a positive intention. I think there are just so many things that happen in the moment, and the one thing that I want to stress is that I know people might here this and go, “Oh, my gosh, that’s too hard to worry about negative feedback. It’s too hard to worry about positive feedback.”
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Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: It’s really not that serious.
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: It’s not like you’re walking on egg shells. You just need to be understanding and receptive of the people and the environment around you, and one way to do it, which is – this might be a little faulty, but I’ll say it anyway – is based on a type of feedback that you want to receive, try to think about how you might want to give that to others, especially when it comes to improving.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And I know that’s like a very fine line to walk, but for the most part, for most human beings, it’s impossible to improve without very specific pointed feedback and guidance.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So feedback, the way I like to think of it is that when it comes to a situation that needs feedback, the situation could be a long dark tunnel and the feedback is supposed to be a light because it’s supposed to show you the way out of the tunnel so you can get to the resolution on how to solve it.
Emily Lewis: And I think that’s the part that leadership, decision makers, the people in charge of large companies or even small companies, for that matter, have to think about because I have worked for companies where I could see them being like, “This is ridiculous. I’m not going to spend this extra time. They need to like get a stronger backbone or whatever.” And the reality is that I left that place, [laughs] so it says a lot about it.
Amélie Lamont: [Agrees]
Emily Lewis: But it almost has to be quantified for leadership in some way to understand that this is worth making an effort towards and investing and trying to build the culture because ultimately, it’s going to drive your product towards success.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly. Because it also means that you understand how to even ask for feedback from your customers.
Emily Lewis: Oh, good point.
Lea Alcantara: Right.
Amélie Lamont: So yeah, because I mean, it’s kind of like when you’re a designer and you go into, say, usability study and [laughs] you can tell a really good usability study from a really bad one.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: So a really bad one would be like [laughs] the facilitator gets into the room and is just talking to the user and goes, “Yeah, so like tell me what you think about the color of that button.”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And you’re just like, “Really, do you want them to tell you what they think about the color of the button, the color which is subjective and has nothing to do with the actual functionality of this application? Okay, okay, all right, I’m going to let you do that. Okay.”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Then you have, on the other hand, a really good usability study where the facilitator really isn’t saying much and the user is kind of walking through the application or the scenario themselves, and even when the user asks questions like, “So what should I do here?” And the facilitator will say, “You tell me.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: Or the user will say, “Oh, you know, I don’t like when the dropdown has that animation,” and the facilitator, instead of saying, “Oh, me neither,” the facilitator says, “Tell me more about that.”
Emily Lewis: It’s like a good therapist actually, like a good psychologist.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: They don’t talk, they make you talk.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly, and so I think it’s really important when it comes to feedback. When we were talking about it, I was really going on the podcast so we were like breaking it down into small pieces that feel very granular and very minute and very stressful, if you will.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: But that’s not how it’s going to work in real life.
Emily Lewis: Right.
Amélie Lamont: It’s very nuanced and I think there’s a skill in being able to massage that nuance out of the situation so that you can do it a little bit more each time you encounter the situation, whether giving or receiving positive or negative feedback.
Lea Alcantara: Actually, that makes me wonder since you work at the New York Times and technically a good reporter also isn’t placing words into the mouths of whoever they’re interviewing so they have like open-ended questions and the person answering is the one that’s giving their actual feedback or opinion. Do you feel since working at the New York Times that because that’s a news organization, that’s something that’s trickled down to production staff and development staff?
Amélie Lamont: Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the things that I really enjoy about working here is that if there’s ever any issue that you might have, it’s literally very easy and as simple as just either sending an email to set a coffee or tea with someone to have the conversation about it.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: But that’s it.
Emily Lewis: Is there anything? I mean, obviously, I hear you on the skill, I totally feel that. I do feel this is a skill, and I think there are things that leaders can do to model it, but is there anything else that can be done to help foster this kind of mindset, I think is maybe the best word. Like for example, is it something that when a new staff member comes on board that this is expressed as how the organization wants to be in and it kind of sets the tone, like it’s part of an employee manual or even something that when you get an annual review or an assessment, or whatever the term is wherever you work, that they also address how well you communicate or something like that.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah. So I think that in terms of to your point for new employees, that would be onboarding, so I think that’s definitely something that you should mention in onboarding because, again, going back to Apple, that’s what were taught to us in onboarding.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: They taught us about fearless feedback and assuming positive intent and giving us this tour to be able to have conversations and have basically – I want to say confrontations, but that’s such a loaded word.
Emily Lewis: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: Basically, I can say conversations or powerful conversations with people, depending on the situation that might have happened, but I think that in terms of an organization, I think baby steps, right?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: Because like I said, it’s a skill and it’s not going to happen overnight. So I think in terms of an organization and what can be done is setting up what I would like to call, let’s say, tools, tools for success. If anything, the tools are more like guidelines. So when you get into a meeting, at the beginning of every meeting, for example, you might be in a company culture where there are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of meetings. There are lots of companies that are like that, that just have way too many meetings.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And the reason for companies having way too many meeting is because people just think that, “Oh, well, if I have a meeting, then I can get it get it solved.” And then they come to the meeting and it doesn’t get solved and then they have to have more meetings about this thing that didn’t get solved in the first meeting.
Timestamp: 00:40:03
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And then by the end of it, you’ve got like 30 meetings, but still no resolution. The reason for that is because you don’t have a tool to stop having so many goddamned meetings.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And that pool. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: That pool would be an agenda.
Emily Lewis: Right.
Amélie Lamont: And so at the beginning of every meeting, you would have an agenda laid out and if anyone deviates from the agenda, you can say, “So and so, I hear you, and that’s great, but that’s not really on the agenda for today so let’s cover that at another time.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And I think that those are tools, and tools like that would be useful for feedback as well, and so again, just setting the stage for feedback, “Hey, everyone, we’re trying out something very new where we’re going to be giving fearless feedback. If you received feedback that doesn’t sit well with you or feedback that you really enjoy or if you want to give feedback to someone else, these are the steps on how you would do it.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And maybe it could start off with a shared company idea of what that fearless feedback is and how it should be done as it relates to the company’s goals. Obviously, not something crazy like, “Oh, give feedback when someone like punches someone in the face. Yeah!”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And this is like terrible. Don’t do that. That’s not good feedback. Don’t do that. But it could be set up as, “Hey, from here on out, whenever someone has done a really good job, I want you to go up to them and tell them that they did a good job and tell them specifically where and how they did that good job.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: It can start off very small like that and that way you as a person giving that feedback, you don’t have to think too much about nuance because we’re starting off as a company first with giving positive feedback and then once people get comfortable doing that, when that becomes a norm, then we can start slowly moving into different phases of feedback. So how do we give feedback that would be may be perceived as hurtful, but we don’t want it to be hurtful, so how do we create tactics to make sure that both parties feel safe when giving and receiving this feedback?
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: So I’m a little bit curious in that so far we’ve been talking about feedback and it seems a lot of it is sort of one to one really or the leadership being better at giving just overall project feedback, for example, right? But sometimes a conflict starts within a team and I understand that many want to have managers or leadership step in to help resolve that particular conflict. How do you think that can be facilitated as being trying to be the objective third party, but you’re still in a leadership role?
Amélie Lamont: Yeah. I think the best way to facilitate that would be to listen to both sides and try to understand where both sides are coming from. I saw this GIF last night where I think the caption was, “This is how everyone on the internet fights.” And it was basically this gate opening and it was just one dog on the left side of the gate and like five dogs on the right side of the gate and they were just barking at each other, and then as the gate opened, they just kept like following the gate at it moves, like they just want to stay behind the gate just so that they could bark at each other.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And then when the gate completely opened, they like ran away from each other. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And I found that to be so funny and I think that’s so relevant to this because I think oftentimes when we have conflict with someone else, that’s kind of what it is. It’s like there’s no room for reconciliation or conversation. We’re just so upset with one another that someone else such as leadership or management has to get involved, right?
Emily Lewis: Right.
Amélie Lamont: And so with you being someone who is leadership or management, the worst thing that you could do is, one, obviously, take side, and two, not get this to a resolution. So the first step would be talking to both parties to see where they’re coming from. No one’s feelings and perceptions are invalid. Even if you don’t agree with them, they’re not invalid.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: They exist, they’re happening, they’re real and there’s a reason for them.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So you need to find out why that perception exists and what is happening. I think once you find out why that perception exists for each person, then the next step would be for you to take a step back, make sure the two people are still separated from each other and then distill what is going on. So let’s say, for example, one person has said something about my code, maybe they’re like, “Oh, your code is sloppy.”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: And I just turn around and go, “Huh, screw you, your face is sloppy.”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: I’m not very good at that, by the way. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: This is like the best I can do. Anyway, thank you. I tried. So obviously, now, there are like two people who are in conflict, myself and that developer who told me that my code is sloppy, and so I can have a conversation with my manager and then that developer can have a conversation with our manager, and then that manager should step aside and go, “Okay, this is what this person said.
Now, this is what this other person said. Where are they coming from? Why does Amélie feel this way? Why was Amélie so hurt when so and so said that her code is sloppy? And why was so and so hurt when Amélie said their face was sloppy?
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Understanding that reasoning is really important and then once you understand that, then you can bring the two parties into the room and have a mediated conversation about it because I think, ultimately, when you’re that third party, your goal is not necessarily to place judgment or to wag a finger at someone and say, “You’re a bad person.”
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: It’s to facilitate mediation of some sort to get to a common ground in the resolution. Obviously, if someone said my code is sloppy and I like punch them in the face, like they can just fire me. There’s absolutely no mediation to be had. That’s ridiculous.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: But I think in terms of when there is conflict between employees, I think being able to get that information and also deliver feedback to both parties about what their behaviors were like and how it could potentially be perceived.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And so it’s kind of like you are running damage control between the two parties and then once you get them to reconcile, give them feedback on that entire situation. But then there’s also stepping away from that situation once it’s resolved and then also giving feedback to the entire team about how incidents and situations like that would be managed from here on out.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: So making sure that unless your behavior is completely egregious, yes, we want to work with you, yes, we understand that emotions get high. No, we’re not necessarily justifying bad behavior, but we do want to understand where you’re coming from and why you may have said what you said or did what you did to cause that conflict between yourself and other employees and this is how we’re going to handle it moving forward in a way that’s safe and inclusive, but still makes sure that everyone’s rights are maintained within the company.
Emily Lewis: And this kind of what you’ve just described, it just really underscores how important it is. So I think this is true everywhere, but we do have a problem in tech, but having dedicated, really qualified, really good Human Resources, because what you just described would probably be extremely challenging on, let’s say, a CTO. He or she has their own responsibilities. They do have team members, and maybe their area of specialty is obviously tech, not people, so this is why having a dedicated and a really good HR department is so, so important for a healthy company culture.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly. And to your point, I think a lot of people don’t realize that in terms of mediation and helping to facilitate those conversations about feedback, Human Resources should be that kind of in between to kind of help those conversations happen in a safe way that isn’t heated and overrun with emotions.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Although I would have to say, at least this is my opinion that if leadership takes responsibility for the health of their own team and they want to make sure everything is good that trickles top down.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Because I talked to a few colleagues of mine who have gotten into these types of conflicts and stuff and they told me that they gained so much more respect for their boss because their boss actually helped resolved everything and it really strengthened even though it started with a conflict at the beginning and they actually made everyone stronger because it was handled so well.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly. I mean, I think for all of us, the expectation is that HR is supposed to handle it, so when a manager or leadership does step into the point of them being busy like, “Wow, you were super busy, but you value this team so much that you’re willing to take time aside to resolve this for us and to help strengthen the team, which is really important.”
Lea Alcantara: Yeah.
Amélie Lamont: So yeah, I totally agree.
Emily Lewis: So you also run a list of inclusive companies and safe work environments on Twitter. It’s @goodforpoc. Is that list deciding in companies to include on it? Is this type of culture, this openness, this trying to respect where everyone is coming from and understand their perspective. Is that something that you’re using to gauge whether a company should be on this list?
Timestamp: 00:50:01
Amélie Lamont: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, one thing that is tricky about the list and the database is that it’s based on people’s experiences, so there’s no way I can necessarily confirm because oftentimes than not when it comes to people of color, their experiences are often – what’s the word – ignored or seen as being exacerbated or exaggerated.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And so what we wanted to do with Good For POC is make sure that it’s literally just this database where you can talk about how, if you identify as a person of color, what the environment for you is like at this tech company.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: What we do on our side, myself, Catt Small and Jacky Alciné as founders, is we’ll do a research once we get submissions in on the company. So for example, we had one company submit and we went to the website and we realized that the only two people of color in the entire company were cofounders, and we were like, “Hmm, yes, you are a person of color, but if you’re founder of the company, you’re going to be biased about how great your company is, like I’m sure you think your company is great because you’re a founder.”
Emily Lewis: Right.
Amélie Lamont: So for that company we actually put it on hold and we didn’t put them on the website because we’re like, “You need more employees who identify you what color to fill out this survey to let us know what they think about the work environment.”
Emily Lewis: And this list, what’s your goal for this?
Amélie Lamont: Yeah. I think it’s funny that you ask about the goal because we actually had a meeting I believe it was last Saturday, yeah, where we talked about our goal. I would say the ultimate goal and mission of Good For POC is to help people of color find inclusive and safe tech companies to work for.
If you Google me, you’ll find out what my story is in tech and what I have personally gone through, which is kind of the impetus of creating this, and Jacky and Catt have also has similar stories, and we also heard from our friends who identify as people of color, they also had similar stories as well.
And so I think we were just frustrated and we know that a lot of our friends were frustrated, and people of color in this industry are just frustrated so we’re thinking, “How can we, instead of just having this grapevine that’s like maybe through DMs or through back channels talking about like which company is safe or you should go there or no, you shouldn’t apply there, like how can we make this public for anyone who identifies as a person of color?” So it’s meant to literally be a resource for people of color to find companies that will accept them for who they are or also finding ways to accept them into the culture as they are without trying to change them to conform to their company culture.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Lea Alcantara: Very interesting. So I love this episode. I think this is necessary for everyone in our industry to really not only internalize, but put into action, and speaking of that, do you have any final advice about creating the culture of fearless feedback?
Amélie Lamont: I see that my final advice for creating a culture of fearless feedback would be to be bold.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: I know that sounds kind of cheesy and kind of like motivational poster.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: But I really do think that when it comes to having conversations, a lot of people just get so scared they’re like, “Oh my gosh.” Any type of talking to someone is just confrontation and I just hate confrontation, like I hate confrontation so much that I won’t even call the pizza restaurant on the phone to order pizza. It’s got to be Seamless.”
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, only Seamless. I think like getting away from this idea that having a conversation with anyone equals confrontation because that’s just not true. Just find the courage to talk with someone about it. If you have feedbacks that you want to give that you feel is a little scary, try to take a step back and figure out how to deliver it in a way that doesn’t feel so scary.
Emily Lewis: [Agrees]
Amélie Lamont: And if you are receiving feedback and you feel that it was less than savory, also take a step back and figure out how you can flip it and give that person feedback that isn’t less than savory, but also let them know how you felt in that situation.
Emily Lewis: And I think I love to just add on something that just occurred to me as we’ve had this discussion, but at least in my own experience, I feel when you take some of these steps to have a way to have a hard conversation or confrontation or whatever you want with someone and you start to see the other person’s point of view, they see yours, and this is a colleague that’s someone you’re working with all the time, it gets easier. This is not this thing that you have to like sweat each time. I feel that Lea and I is another perfect example, like I think now I just give you a bunch of thoughts.
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: We don’t even have to know where I’m coming from and where you’re coming from because we know. We’ve established this camaraderie of working together.
Amélie Lamont: Exactly.
Lea Alcantara: Yeah. So that’s all the time we have for today, but before we finish up, we’ve got our Rapid Fire Ten Questions, so our listeners can get to know you a bit better.
Amélie Lamont: I’m ready.
Lea Alcantara: All right. So first question, introvert or extrovert?
Amélie Lamont: Introvert.
Emily Lewis: The power is going to be out for the next week, what food from the fridge do you eat first?
Amélie Lamont: Shrimp.
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Hmm, yum.
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: What’s your favorite website for fun?
Amélie Lamont: Sorry. This is hard. Let’s say dramafever.com.
Lea Alcantara: Oh my God.
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: You and I need to go out for coffee seriously.
Amélie Lamont: I’d love that. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: Seriously. Boys Over Flowers, yes? [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Yes. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Yeah.
Emily Lewis: All right, what’s the last thing you read?
Amélie Lamont: Okay, so the last I read was a journalistic study on human behavior between the pitfalls of dichotomous thinking and how that relates to childhood growth.
Emily Lewis: Oh, my gosh, I was a Psych Major, I do not miss school at all. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: I used to read stuff like that. [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs] I love that stuff. It’s like my stay home. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: So what’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve received?
Amélie Lamont: Fear is excitement on pause.
Lea Alcantara: Oh.
Emily Lewis: I like that.
Amélie Lamont: Right.
Emily Lewis: How about the worst piece of advice you’ve received?
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs] If I were you, I would un-publish that story that you published.
Emily Lewis: Ah.
Lea Alcantara: What’s your favorite color?
Amélie Lamont: Blue.
Emily Lewis: If you could take us to one restaurant in New York, where would we go?
Amélie Lamont: Oh my God.
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs] You’re our second New York person who’s like, “This is impossible to answer.”
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Amélie Lamont: Oh, okay. So since it’s Thursday, I would take you to Speedy Romeo because I’m craving pizza. It’s like artisanal pizza which is like disgusting to me, but it’s delicious. I’d like to do that thing. [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: What’s your favorite board game?
Amélie Lamont: Oh, people are not going to want to talk to me when I say this, Monopoly. [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: All right, last question, Hulu or Netflix?
Amélie Lamont: Oh, Netflix because of all the Korean dramas, duh.
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs] Nice. Nice. Thank you, Amélie.
Amélie Lamont: Thank you.
Emily Lewis: In case our listeners want to follow up with you, where can they find you online?
Amélie Lamont: So you can find me on Twitter @amelielamont, and then you can also find me on my website www.amelielamont.com, and if you like Pinterest, I’m also on Pinterest. I don’t know why I’m on Pinterest, but I’m there, which is also @amelielamont. The only thing that you’ll see on Pinterest is me pinning bathroom shower curtains because that’s been a thing that I’m into lately. Don’t ask me questions about it. I don’t want to talk about it.
[Music starts]
Emily Lewis: [Laughs]
Lea Alcantara: [Laughs]
Emily Lewis: Thank you so much. This was really, really interesting discussion.
Amélie Lamont: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun.
Emily Lewis: We loved it.
Lea Alcantara: CTRL+CLICK is produced by Bright Umbrella, a web services agency obsessed with happy clients. Today’s podcast would not be possible without the support of this episode’s sponsor! Many thanks to Craft CMS!
Emily Lewis: We’d also like to thank our hosting partner: Arcustech.
Lea Alcantara: And thanks to our listeners for tuning in! If you want to know more about CTRL+CLICK, make sure you follow us on Twitter @ctrlclickcast or visit our website, ctrlclickcast.com. And if you liked this episode, please give us a review on iTunes, Stitcher or both! And if you really liked this episode, consider donating to the show. Links are in our show notes and on our site.
Emily Lewis: Don’t forget to tune in to our next episode when Lea and I are continuing our special series this year on demystifying the web for clients. In the second episode, we’ll talk about web development, specifically front end in a client-friendly manner. Be sure to check out ctrlclickcast.com/schedule for more upcoming topics.
Lea Alcantara: This is Lea Alcantara …
Emily Lewis: And Emily Lewis …
Lea Alcantara: Signing off for CTRL+CLICK CAST. See you next time!
Emily Lewis: Cheers!
[Music stops]
Timestamp: 00:59:15
