Past Learning Initiatives

Past Initiatives

Please note all information on this page is for reference and preservation only. None of these programs are currently running.

Monthly Continuous Learning Call Overview

The Learning and Development (L&D) team previously hosted a monthly Monthly Continuous Learning call. The series was intended to showcase all of the L&D initatives taking place at GitLab as well as provide a space for team members to ask questions. The series was replaced in FY22 with involvement in company-wide Group Conversations in an effor to increase participation and attendance in the calls.

Goals

1. Spur a culture of curiosity and continuous learning by highlighting all the initiatives we have taking place in learning & development.
2. Increase engagement and improve team member satisfaction and productivity by advancing understanding of available L&D resources

Additional background information on this initiaitve is available in the Monthly Continuous Learning Call issue

Past Monthly Continuous Learning Call

Check out recordings of previous Learning Speaker Series calls!

• 2020-10-21 Monthly Continuous Learning Call
• 2020-11-18 Monthly Continuous Learning Call
• 2020-12-16 Monthly Continuous Learning Call
• 2021-01-20 Monthly Continuous Learning Call

Hosting a Monthly Continuous Learning Call

The following process outlines steps for the L&D team to take each month when planning and implementing monthly calls.

Planning Issue Template: Open an Monthly Continuous Learning Call issue template in the L&D Project. Steps outlined below are also included in the issue template and are included here as reference.

1. Create a HelpLab request to coordinate a Zoom meeting on the company calendar. This meeting should be set up to live stream to the GitLab unfiltered YouTube channel. Consider hosting the call at least 2 times to best accommodate for multiple time zones.
2. Create slide deck for presentation. Make a copy of a previous month’s presention in the Continuous Learning Campaign Google Folder
3. Coordinate slide deck with appropriate enablement audiences (i.e DIB, Field Enablement, Professional Services, Marketing Enablement, etc)
4. Update slide deck for presentation with feedback from coordinated audiences
5. Open a feedback issue for questions and comments to be shared asynchronously.
6. Coordinate an announcement of the call in the #company-fyi Slack channel from Sid or another executive/manager who will be featured that month. The post should be shared 1 business day before the call. This post should include a link to the slide deck and coresponding issue. See notes below for a template that can be shared.

Text for CEO share in #company-fyi channel

Join the Learning and Development team on [DATE] for the Monthly Continuous Learning Call. This month's call is all about [TOPIC]. You can review the slide deck for the call [HERE], and post questions you might have in the call adenga doc [HERE]. Looking forward to seeing you there!

What to Expect

The video below gives an overview of what the Crucial Conversations training looks like.

A detailed training outline is included below:

Total program length: 4 Weeks Time commitment per week: 3 Hours/week: ~2 hours self-paced and 1 hour live practice session per week.

Week Number	Topic	Commitment
1	Get Unstuck, Master my Stories 1, and Master my Stories 2	3 hours
2	Start with Heart, State my Path	3 hours
3	Make it Safe, Learn to Look, and Seek Mutual Purpose	3 hours
4	Explore Other’s Paths, Move to Action	3 hours

Upon completion of the self paced material you will earn an official Crucical Conversations certification from Crucial Learning.

Results

Completion breakdown of managers and ICs

Team Member Role	# Certifications Earned
All Team Member Completions	61
Manager Completions	11
Individiual Contributor Completions	50

Last updated 2022-04

Feedback

Percentage of participants who agree	Feedback Question
100%	This course increased my confidnece in having crucial conversations with my manager
92%	This course incresaed my confidence in having crucial conversations with team members who are not my manager
97%	I would recommmend this course to a colleage
94%	The live session scenarios were relevant to my work at GitLab
80%	I am interested in participating in post-training review sessions

Reviews

Overall I loved the course and the material. It felt very relevant and relatable. I especially liked the prompts that were created for the breakout sessions because it felt like there was a lot of thought put into trying to make the scenarios relevant to how we work at GitLab.

This course taught me alot about myself and how to make improvements when having crucial conversations!

Crucial Conversations course provides a simple-to-understand set of tools and techniques that will help me be more candid and assertive in both professional and personal conversations. The self-paced study combined with weekly live sessions was moderately demanding, it provided nice accountability that nudged me towards learning each week.

This course is fantastic! Within the first week, I was already able to apply real skills to conversations I have every day. I’ve always considered difficult conversations to be an area where I could really benefit from improvement and now I believe if I continue to practice and improve these skills, I will see significant results both in and out of work.

The Crucial Conversations course helped me understand how I can be a better individual in all aspects of my life. There are a bunch of skills covered in the course that I can use in both my personal life and professional life that will help me better communicate with those around me, and - crucially - be more effective at moving through tough conversations about important topics.

Crucial Conversations Alumni

After you’ve completed the Crucial Conversations course at GitLab, there are a few ways you can continue to practice your skills:

1. Attend the Crucial Conversations Alumni sync session. This 25-minute call happens every other month starting in January 2022. Check the GitLab team member’s calendar for the invitation
2. Star and check the #crucial-conversations Slack channelfor async discussion every other month, starting in February 2022
3. Fork or copy this GitLab project for practicing Crucial Conversations. Use the issue templates in the project to create your own issues, set due dates, and practice your skills after you complete the certification.

L&D Administrative Tasks: Setting up the Training

1. Open an issue on the Growth and Development issue board to organize sign ups and manager approval
   1. Here is an example of a past issue
2. When cohort is full, create Google sheet to organize participant information
3. Tag the Total Rewards team on the issue with the participant user sheet and request that the license costs are added to their Growth and Development budget totals. Close the issue.
4. Email Crucial Learning and requst an order form for the licenses needed. Indicate the start date as the day you’ll have team members sign up for the course (1 week before self paced learning starts)
5. Open a Coupa request for the purchase of the licenses
6. Upload the order form in Coupa and request a legal stamp
7. Send order form with legal stamp for signature from Finance using DocuSign
8. Re-upload the signed order form to Coupa and send the signed order form back to Crucial Learning
9. When prepared, download the Purchase Order (PO) PDF from Coupa and email it to Crucial Learning
10. Crucial Learning will send back the invoice via email. Forward that email to AP with a note and link to the related req in Coupa
11. Send email and Slack message to all participants with instructions on how to activate their license. Crucial Learning will send an email teplate for this.
12. Use the Crucial Conversations Course Manager Tool and [Course Manager Guide].
13. Add all cohort participants to the #crucial-conversations Slack channel
14. Add all participants to the live event calendar invites
15. Create a subfolder in the Crucial Conversations Google Drive to organize cohort materials
16. Use the live session template to organize GitLab-customized Crucial Conversation scenarios for each live session

Slack Training

Learning Objectives

GitLab team members participating in this training will:

1. Build confidence in their ability to use Slack as a form of informal and formal communication at GitLab.
2. Improve efficiency using tools built into the Slack app.
3. Contribute to reaching our target of percent of messages that are not DMs.
4. Review and reinforce GitLab values within the scope of Slack.

Requirements

1. You’re a GitLab team member (this is not available to external learners)
2. You can commit ~5 minutes per day for 10 business days to review and take action on tasks in Slack
3. You commit to completing a post-training Google form to provide feedback on your experience

No prior experience with Slack or GitLab is needed to participate. The content reviewed is directed to brand new users in the GitLab Slack instance, however, team members are welcome to participate regardless of time at the company.

If you meet these requirements, please use this Google form to sign-up.

Training Details

Here’s what to expect in the Slack training:

1. After signing up, you’ll be added to a training cohort Slack group and the #slack-training Slack channel. The current goal is to run at least one cohort per month.
2. The training will run for 10 business days.
3. Each day, you’ll get one Slack group ping with your daily task instructions, posted publicly to the #slack-training channel.
4. Messages will be scheduled by the L&D team and are triggered to send at 3pm UTC.
5. On the final day of the training, you’ll be asked to complete an end of program survey to share your feedback and learning from the training.

Topics Covered

Below you’ll find the topics and links covered in each day of the training

Training Day	Topic	Links
0	Training introduction + Slack profile updates	N/A
1	Organizing channels in the Slack side-bar	Custom section Slack docs
2	Using public channels	Why we avoid direct messages at GitLab
3	Marking all messages as read	Quick commands Slack docs
4	Follow keywords in Slack	Custom notifications Slack docs
5	Using threads to organize conversations	Slack usage at GitLab
6	Review of here and channel tag usage	Reducing reliance on Slack at GitLab
7	Blocking time to catch up on Slack messages	Do not Distrub mode Slack docs
8	Using the /remind command	Remind command Slack docs
9	Moving conversations out of Slack and into Issues or MRs	Slack usage at GitLab
10	End of training survey	N/A

Metrics

We measure success using the following metrics:

Metrics	How we measure	Goal
Percentage of new team members who complete the training per quarter	Completions of end of program survey	30%
Impact on target of percent of messages that are not DMs	Tracked on Slack handbook page	Correlation of course completions and target

Future improvements

The following topics will be prioritized in future iterations of this training:

1. Increase automation - explore tools and plugins that can automatically assign and trigger this training based on team member start date
2. Improve metrics - track impact of training on team member behavior in Slack
3. Create a Slack training 2.0

Learning Speaker Series

The L&D team hosts quarterly Learning Speaker Series open to all team members. The calls provide a space where internal and external experts can share relevant topics to engage and teach team members lessons learned from their own careers.

Goals

1. Provide a forum where team members can learn from established leaders and industry experts.

Past Learning Speaker Series calls

FY23 Q3 Series: Emotional Intelligence

Date	Session Title + Link
2022-09-20	Being Human with Claire Doody
2022-10-19	Diversity in Emotional Intelligence with Reini Chipman
2022-10-24	Emotional Intelligence for Modern Leaders with Christopher Connors
2022-11	Trust and Know your Audience with Camilla Boyer

FY23 Q2 Series: Collaborating with Compassion

Date	Session Title + Link
2022-05-11	Mental Health Awareness Month Discussion with Britt Turpack + 8 Minute Meditation
2022-06-22	Self Compassion Practice with Dulce Orozco
2022-07-20	Compassionate Feedback with Maria Moss and Feedback Exercise Resource

FY23 Q1 Series: All-Remote Communication

This series included a mix of 5 internal and external speakers. The session recordings and topics can be found below. You can also find all recordings collected together on this GitLab Unfiltered YouTube Channel Playlist.

Date	Session Title + Link
2022-01-20	Video and All-Remote Presentation Tips with Lorraine Lee, Prezi
2022-02-14	Understanding Tone in Text-Based Communication with Maria Moss
2022-03-09	Communicating your All-Remote Career Development with Lavinia Mehedintu
2022-03-24	Internal Panel - Cross-Cultural Communication at GitLab
2022-04-13	Managing Information Overload with Joana Pais Afonso

FY22 Series

Date	Session Title + Link
2021-06-01	Buildng your Rest Ethic with John Fitch Session 1 and Session 2
2021-11-18	Building Internal Culture with Google Team Members
2021-12-13	Managing Burnout with Skylyte
2021-12-14	Well-being Week with Krystal Wilkinson

FY21 Series

Date	Session Title + Link
2020-11-19	Building Trust with Remote Teams Learning Speaker Series
2020-12-10	Managing Burnout with Time Off with John Fitch

Hosting a Learning Speaker Series call

The following process outlines steps for the L&D team to take when planning and implementing the calls.

Planning Issue Template: Open a learning-speaker-series issue template in the L&D General Project to host a session. Steps outlined below are also included in the issue template and are included here as reference.

1. Collaborate with exec team, mid-level people leaders, and other interested GitLab Team members to gauge interest and availability to be featured in the call. Be mindful to include diverse voices from across the GitLab team.
2. Plan on a quarterly basis if possible. Create a series based on a topic that is high need for managers or ICs at GitLab.
3. Ensure external speakers have been validated and that the topic covered aligns with our values.
4. Create a calendar event and share it with the GitLab Team Meetings calendar. Invite the everyone alias. Post in the #people-connect Slack channel to accept event on the team meetings calendar. Consider hosting the call at least 2 times, or varying session times throughout a quarterly series, to accommodate for multiple time zones.
5. Test Zoom functionality with the speaker at least two business days before event.
   • If external speaker, ensure they have downloaded Zoom.
   • Have speaker test audio and video.
   • Check that speaker will be able to share a presentation if necessary.
6. Send speaker calendar invite with all details for the call (including, but not limited to, Zoom link, agenda, slides, etc.).
7. Create an agenda for the presentation. GitLab team members can access templates in this Google folder.
8. Coordinate an announcement of the call in the #what’s-happening-at-GitLab Slack channel at least 1 business day before the call.
9. Use Canva to create internal marketing that features each speaker’s headshot and session title.

Learning Sessions

Live Learning

Live Learning sessions are conducted on an ad hoc. There will be a Zoom video conference set up for each session. Official dates and topics will be added to the schedule below as confirmed. If you were unable to attend a live learning session but still want to learn, check out our past live learning sessions below. At GitLab we give agency, but if you are attending Live Learning sessions, you will be asked to be engaged and participate with your full attention.

Format for Live Learning Sessions

Format for 25 minute sessions:

• 10 minutes - introduction/content
• 10-15 minutes - Q&A

Format for 50 minute sessions (times below are approximate):

• 10-15 minutes - introduction/content
• 10-20 minutes - breakout session
• 10-20 minutes - debrief
• 5 minutes - conclusion

Past Live Learning Sessions

2020

• January - Compensation Review: Manager Cycle (Compaas)
• January - Ally Training
• February - Receiving Feedback
• June - Delivering Feedback
• June - Recognizing Bias
• September - Manager Challenge Pilot
• November - Belonging
• November - One Week Challenge - Psychological Safety
• December - Introduction to Coaching

2019

• November - Communicating Effectively & Responsibly Through Text
• December - Inclusion Training

Social Learning Through Live Learning

Social Learning is the cornerstone for how L&D designs, develops, and delivers live learning sessions. Social learning focuses on how team members interact with peers for just-in-time learning and skill acquisition through knowledge retention. Live learnings serve as an opportunity for team members to build relationships and a sense of community with team members. Social Learning occurs when team members come together in a virtual forum synchronously to learn from others through networking, breakout groups, storytelling, lessons learned reflection, and collaboration on solving scenarios with role playing. The live learnings enables learners to pull knowledge fro experts and peers within the organization instead of having knowledge pushed to them.

Example of a Social Learning Live Learning Session on Building High Performing Teams

Social Learning can also occur in GitLab’s Learning Experience Platform - Level Up and asynchronous forums using GitLab. (i.e. Elevate)

Learning & Development Quarterly Newsletter

The L&D team hosted a quarterly newsletter for five quarters for the community.

Take Time Out To Learn Campaign

Focus Friday’s are a great benefit at GitLab. We try to schedule minimal meetings on Fridays to catch up on work and grow our skills professionally. Use Focus Fridays to take time out to learn. Team members can work with their manager through a career development conversation to determine what skills that want to grow in the future. Aspirations can be documented in an individual growth plan.

From there, identify what will be needed to attain the new skills and consider using the Growth and Development Benefit or expensing professional development opportunities such as coaching, worskshops, conferencces, self-service learning, etc.. Block time off your calendar every week or month to devote to learning new skills. Share what you are learning with team members and in the #learninganddevelopment slack channel.

Consider documenting the steps you are going to take learn new skills in the individual growth plan. Check in with your manager and ask for accountability from them to help you stay aligned with goals.

Internal Learning Campaigns

Learning campaigns at GitLab have an asynchronous focus and are used to raise awareness around a specific topic or set of resources. These campaigns are inspired by the structure of a learning challenge but without the required engagement or tracking. For example, the L&D team is using a learning campaign structure to host a mental health awareness week

Learning campaigns use a combination of GitLab issues and Slack announcements to raise awareness and spark discussion. Following the campaign, the L&D team will aggregate comments and resources that have surfaced and document in the handbook. Learning campaigns can be used to build buzz around a live speaker series or to start conversation about a common question or issue that GitLab team members are facing.

CEO Handbook Learning Sessions

GitLab’s Handbook pages grow every day. Each page serves as GitLab’s primary source of learning and development material. Throughout FY22, the L&D team and the CEO held recorded learning sessions to analyze Handbook pages. The goal of the sessions will be to incorporate more video-based learning into the handbook.

Three types of CEO handbook learning sessions:

1. Handbook Readout: Bite-sized recording where the L&D team and the CEO review what is on the page. (5 minute video)
2. Handbook Discussion: Interactive discussion where L&D facilitates an engaging conversation with the CEO and e-group members. We openly discuss the concepts on the page and allow senior leaders to share best practices implementing them. (25 minute video)
3. Handbook Interview: The Learning and Development team will create new pages, create sub-pages, or update existing pages based on interview topics discussed during a targeted Q&A. The video will serve as the foundation for new learning content at GitLab.

The video below from Sid and L&D further explains the concepts:

Steps for L&D Team when setting up a CEO Handbook Learning Session:

Preparing for the Call:

1. Review topic relevant Handbook pages.
2. Determine what topics you want to cover each week
3. Research the respective page that will be discussed or section of a page
4. Complete some work on the page before the session if you can, create an MR that clarifies information or asks Sid for clarity on the topic discussed.
5. Set up a meeting with CEO through EBA. Invite other e-group members if applicable.
6. Create an agenda with talking points and areas to emphasize during video recording with CEO
7. Send Sid the agenda in the #CEO channel at least 24 hours in advance
8. Hold a handbook learning session and ensure the discussion is fluid and interactive with open and honest dialogue.

During the Call:

1. Give CEO and other speakers, if applicable, a few minutes at the beginning of the call to populate answers.
2. Once everyone is ready, stream to YouTube Live.
3. Make the title of the agenda, the same as the YouTube Video.
4. Do a quick introduction.
5. Go through the questions on the agenda.
6. If questions come up during the interview, add them to the end of the agenda if there is time
7. When there’s nothing on the agenda left, thank him for his time and end the live stream.

After the Call:

1. Determine if L&D can create bite-sized videos with the content. Post bite-sized and long-form video on YouTube Unfiltered channel
2. Update Unfiltered page with more information after the Live Stream. See the description in this example video.
3. Edit the live stream thumbnail with a Title Page for each topic. Here is the template for the videos. Write out a new title, screenshot the image, and update thumbnail.
4. Embed video on the related Handbook page.
5. Edit page with new content, create sub-page, send MR in the #CEO channel with a proposal for an interactive handbook discussion.

List of CEO Handbook Learning Sessions

Playlist

1. Common misperceptions about Iteration
2. No Matrix Organization
3. Making Decisions
4. Individual Contributor Leadership
5. Bias Towards Asynchronous Communication
6. High Output Management
7. Giving and Receiving Feedback
8. Managing Underperformance
9. Transitioning from IC to Manager - Engineering
10. Manager Mention Merge Requests
11. Working Groups
12. Skip Level Meetings
13. Product Strategy
14. Mental Wellness Discussion

FY22 Topic Outline

This is the list of topics that were covered in FY22.

• April: Managing Stress
• May: Effective Communication
• June: Coaching
• July: Culture of Feedback
• August: Career Development
• September: Manager of One
• October: Emotional Intelligence
• November: Gratitude and Recognition
• December: Resilience and Reflection
• January: Team Member Well-being

FY23 Topic Outline

This is the list of topics that will be focused on in FY23.

• February: Setting and Achieving Goals
• March: Managing High Performing Teams: Orientation
• April: Managing High Performing Teams: Building Trust
• May: Managing Mental Health at Work
• June: Allyship
• July: (Suspended due to learning system tranistion)
• August: (Suspended due to learning system tranistion)
• September: Creativity

Organizing a Skill of the Month

The following process outlines steps for the L&D team to take when planning and implementing the Skill of the Month.

Anyone or any team can recommend a topic for the future! If interested, please fill out a Learning & Development Request template to begin the process.

Planning Issue Template: Open a skill-of-the-month issue template in the L&D General Project. Steps are outlined in the issue template.

Learning Resource: Building Resilience

This Building Resilience learning resource is available to help team members understand and build resilience. It also highlights additional resources to support team members’ well-being, mental health, and growth of resilience.