Increasing Authenticity with Manager Confessions | Tangram Flip Series

January 16 • Written by Julie Dozier

In our Tangram Flip series, we’re sharing the story behind a moment where Tangram flipped the script and did something unexpected to bring about radical results. Read on to learn how workshop input, including the stickies sprinkled throughout this post, turned into a crucial and unexpected design feature.

Right now, we are designing an Emerging Leader program. New manager me from the past is jealous of this chance we are creating to build skills before taking on a people manager role!  

As we started the design process, we gathered the audience demographics for this program and confirmed a few things about the target audience: 

• They are on the younger side.  

• Some are supervising or informally managing someone already.

• Some are prepping for their first opportunity. 

Our Approach

After gathering the demographics, we hosted a workshop for hundreds of new managers and invited them to share experiences from their first year. Through a series of activities, we prompted participants to reflect, get comfortable and open up. By the end, they had shared with us the challenges, questions, realizations, and growth they had experienced quarter by quarter. 

The sticky notes you see throughout are from our actual workshop. So many revealing emotions poured out onto on our collaborative virtual whiteboard. I felt sympathetic anxiety reading them! You could hear each person’s voice in the little snippets they shared and the subtle details they included to give context. 

Our Design Flip

We originally intended to use the new managers’ input to merely inform the focus of the content we are designing. But as their emotions and vulnerability rolled in, we realized that prospective managers needed to hear these exact words, not just content informed by the sentiments. We were sitting on gold and decided to do more with their stories than we’d originally planned.

The Results

For each module of the Emerging Leader course, we are creating intro videos with a fun theme of new manager “confessions.” Actual quotes from — or inspired by — our workshop will appear on the screen slowly and then dramatically fill the frame, emphasizing the ubiquitous and relatable needs that new managers everywhere face. Then, the video will transition to a selfie video confession from a real new manager who has volunteered to share some feelings and needs they had and what they wish they had known.

The goal of these videos is to pull back the curtain and get real with our audience. In the corporate world, we are all so used to putting on a brave face or faking it until we make it. Instead, we want our new managers to see that the challenges and anxieties they are having are very normal. They can and should talk about their questions and setbacks and use them to inspire a growth mindset.

This program is designed to give participants a safe place to relate to and learn from their peers and from experts, and to proactively build their knowledge and skills so they enter a manager role with more confidence and some techniques they can use.