Hi there, I’m Darragh!

Interacting with people can be complex and as a subset of people, this is also true of managers. To try to somewhat help with this complexity, the following is my humble attempt at capturing some context and details about myself as a manager and a person.

This is intended to be an aid for those I work with and is not required reading - I make no assumptions, it has been read and this is definitely not a replacement for building a working relationship together.

Over time I will undoubtedly change and evolve as a person and a manager, meaning so will this document. That said, I welcome any feedback about this document; refinements, clarifications or if you feel something does not match with my behaviour.

 

My Role

I have a long list of responsibilities in my job description but my personal TLDR version of this is to empower teams to deliver and achieve. My goal is to positively impact the work and lives of all my coworkers so we can accomplish great things together.

How we achieve this together is constantly evolving, and my goal is to evolve with these needs.

 

Things you can expect of me

You will be able to expect many things of me, which we will explore in 1-1s and beyond, but I’d like to call out some key behaviours to get us started:

• Open: I am personally a very open person and I will be honest with you about my personal and professional life. However, I never expect someone else to share beyond what they are comfortable with on a personal level; I may ask personal questions in a bid to connect, but it will never offend me if you decline to answer. I will always try to create a safe space for open discussion of fears, worries and struggles should you wish to have those conversations.

• Trusting: I want you to be autonomous. I’m here to help, and I will listen to issues and give aid where I can but my aim is to simply be a guiding light. I will always defer to trusting you to drive your own work and your own personal growth.

• Direct: I find being direct is the fastest way to help teams and individuals move and grow. I am not afraid to lean into hard conversations but I do my absolute best to do this in an empathetic and respectful way.

• Feedback Focussed: Feedback is an incredible tool for growth, and I am a big fan. I believe good feedback is respectful but candid and I will try to foster a culture of this. I will give feedback whenever I have it.

• Curious: Questions are a big part of my manager runbook but I have found the intent of questions can sometimes be unfortunately misunderstood, notably:

  • If I ask questions about timelines or statuses; A huge part of my role is context dissemination and to gather this context I need to ask questions. If I ask questions about these areas please don’t feel targeted or judged. You can trust that if I do have feedback it will be more direct (see feedback comments above).

  • If I ask critiquing questions about your proposal or idea; I want to help you find the path for the optimal results (see Trusting), and to achieve this I may ask questions to help guide the way and to help avoid any nasty potholes. With that in mind, it doesn’t mean I disagree with your idea when I ask probing questions.

 

Giving Me Feedback

I believe everything I said above about feedback when it’s coming in my direction. I know giving feedback to a manager can be an awkward feeling, but I promise you I will appreciate it.

Face to face, email or Slack DM is fine, whatever format you are comfortable with. If you feel uncomfortable giving the feedback directly to me, I encourage you to give it to my manager.

 

Best ways to Reach Me

I do check emails, but DMing me on Slack is likely the best way to get my attention. I endeavour to treat being there for my team as a priority so if you need an immediate response please say so, and I will give it precedence. I am trying to avoid slack during focus periods though, so my response SLA here may be a few hours.

If I receive messages out of hours that are not indicated as urgent I will wait until the following day to respond. If I message you out of your hours, please don’t think I am expecting a response. In fact you’re more likely to be reminded not to be online during these times.

 

1:1s

I will have regular 1:1s with everyone who reports to me, as well as irregular skip meetings with the wider team as time allows. I do not expect these to be status reports, but I will listen if that’s what you would like to share. I like to emphasise that this is your time; I may have information or feedback to share but for the most part I expect you to set the agenda. That said, if you have no agenda in mind, I am always happy to just catch up and chat.

If we don’t have a 1-1 scheduled and you’d like to connect, please just reach out and I will make the effort to catch up.

 

How I work

For some people it’s their calendars, for others it’s email, but I live and die by my todo list (shout out to https://todoist.com/). I use this to organise everything from small actions like messages I need to reply to, to quarterly plan sheets, all the way to the big initiatives I want to put time into. Chances are if it’s not on my list for the day I’m likely to forget it.

 

My background

I have been at Xero since October 2021 and before this the majority of my career was at start up or smaller companies (though I was part of a large non tech focussed company following an acquisition).

I started dipping my toes into people leadership a decade ago, but it is in recent years that I committed myself to this wholeheartedly. (I am more than happy to share my journey here if you would like to know more!)

Tech wise, I started my career as a BE engineer, mostly in Java though I expanded into other areas and tech as time went on. I have always had an interest in infra tech, see https://www.darraghmc.com/this.site/, and my most recent language love affair was with Golang. That all said, I haven’t seen a line of production code in over 2 years at Xero so being on the tools feels like a distant memory.

 

Some Personal stuff

A few odds and ends about me, which I will undoubtedly talk your ear off about anyway.

I am Irish, born and raised in Dublin.

I moved to New Zealand in late 2017 (by way of London for a few years). My partner is a Kiwi. We got married in Feb 2023 (on that one sunny weekend between the Auckland floods, and cyclone Gabrielle).

I very much enjoy living in New Zealand and believe I am here for the long haul.

I have trained Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for 12 years and it is a large part of my life. Luckily, I have done it long enough to know that most people don’t want to hear about it, so I will not mention it unless asked (buyer beware). I am a black belt and often teach morning classes. You may notice the out of office periods in my calendar.

I have in recent years become an avid runner.

I am a big coffee fan (I drink it black and filter is my usual brewing preference).

I do drink, with beer or whiskey being my preference, but despite the stereotypes I am usually a fairly moderate drinker.

 

Pronouncing My Name

WIth my name being uncommon in this corner of the world people occasionally mispronounce it and then feel undue embarrassment. To avoid making anyone feel uncomfortable I thought some guidance might be helpful; It’s pronounced DAH-RA (i.e. the gh is silent). I can assure you though I will take absolutely no offence if you make an honest mistake in attempting it.