Things I learned and unlearned to become an inclusive leader

As a team leader, how do you balance the need for inclusion and performance? How do you adapt to diverse needs while giving fair treatment to all?  

In this heartfelt interview, Xavier Noëlle, Senior Staff SRE Lead at Criteo, openly discloses the challenges and lessons learned that have made him grow as a person and a leader.

Drawing from his own experience, he shares how leading a team with a diverse typology of profiles, disabilities, and specific needs requires you to rethink your whole management style so you can embark and support everyone the right way.  

What is it that you do at Criteo?  

I’ve been with Criteo for 14 years now, managing 6 different teams whose scopes range from Infrastructure to Product. I currently manage the Hardware team, which owns the tech watch, procurement and lifecycle of servers used to run Criteo’s business. We’re a team of 10 people all stationed in France.  

Do you remember your first steps as a team leader?  

Shifting toward leadership sort of happened to me. Criteo was going through a fast, hypergrowth phase, and my VP encouraged me to leap. I admit I went in without much preparation or training at first, but I learned by doing as I grew. I never regretted that career move as I just love creating a sense of purpose and agency for the people around me. It’s such an amazing feeling to know you’re contributing to someone’s personal and professional growth.  

What challenges you as a leader? 

When managing 9 people, any HR process can become heavy fast, and it can be frustrating for some people. The one thing I really care about, which requires constant adaptation, is figuring out how people could grow and which steps will help them get there. Sometimes, it is my assessment of the target that may be wrong. Sometimes, they’re the ones taking longer to understand the target correctly and what it takes to get there. In any case, it’s important to be patient and adapt your approach along the way. 

What typologies of profiles and needs do you have in your team exactly?  

Age-wise, I manage people who just got out of school together with people in their 40-50s.  

Gender-wise, we only have one woman in the team. Though it’s not unusual in our scope, it’s important to be attentive to potential silent biases. There’s also a diversity of gender expressions and orientations in the team, and everyone is very open about it.   

Neurodiversity-wise, some people are diagnosed with ADHD, others are on the spectrum (ASD) or exhibit different forms of neurodivergence. Some struggle with anxiety or severe mood swings that make them very sensitive in certain contexts. Some also have difficulties disconnecting mentally from work. 

Some struggle to walk, are extremely tired during large temperature variations, and can suffer from chronic headaches.  

In what ways do you adapt your approach to meet those needs?  

The first important thing is team spirit. The team itself is very supportive, open, and understanding of other’s differences and needs. This helps a lot even though I believe that the manager still plays a crucial role in a team’s behavior. As a team leader, I am always attentive to non-inclusive behaviors some people can exhibit without even realizing it. Our world is full of discrimination and exclusion; we’re not immune to it, but we can be attentive to both weak and strong signals. 

On a personal level, I know I will always have something else to learn on how to deal with diversity in general. I read books, listen to podcasts, attend conferences... I push myself to see beyond my own biases, keeping in mind that what may seem like radical views today might as well be the norm tomorrow. 

What behaviors did you have to learn and unlearn to become more inclusive? 

I tend to be very transparent and honest when providing feedback, but I’ve learned I need to tone it down a bit sometimes and wait until the timing’s right for some people.  
 
When it comes to managing people with anxiety, I’ve come to learn that some situations that generate interrogations for most people can generate anxiety for others. I try to be ahead of such situations by pushing for more explicit communication, providing complementary information, and asking whether something remains unclear. 

I also rely on 2 people who act as tech leads, meaning they’re accountable for the day-to-day operations and technical choices for each half of the team. On top of that technical responsibility, I empowered them to run their own 1-1 with team members, so they have 2 people they can speak to, and we can help each other out when tricky situations happen. 

What has surprised you the most when managing people with special needs?  

My biggest surprise was how very few people are informed or equipped well enough to approach disability in general, even in HR. Most of the time, people with disabilities cannot work or end up adapting themselves to what feels like a hostile work environment. We’ve had to adapt and adjust some things that didn’t fit to better support people with complex situations. 

For instance, one person in the team is now working part-time but not in the classical sense. Their part-time is organized throughout the year; they alternate months where they can work almost full-time with others where they’re unable to put in the same amount of work. We’ve worked through it together. What matters in the end is that they’re set up for success and can work enough over the year. While challenging, Criteo found a way to make it work.  

What transferable management skills have you learned?  

I’ve learned that achievement-oriented performance appraisal is key. Besides some checkpoints and meetings people are expected to attend, it does not matter whether they’re more efficient one day or the other. Their goals are at the scale of Agile sprints (2 weeks) and performance evaluation (6 months). Anyone can benefit from that, because whether with a disability or not, nobody can be fully operational every day. 

I’ve come to question increasingly what seems like a given or a normal situation, putting myself in other people’s shoes and wondering how it could be problematic for them. I ask myself: How inclusive is it? Could this generate anxiety? For instance, what sometimes seems like a small issue can end up being a big one if faced by a person suffering from anxiety, and it might be an issue for others to various degrees. 

I’ve also learned to rethink career growth and opportunities, as some people cannot exhibit the soft and social skills that might be required of them at a certain company level. When this happens, I need to consider everyone’s specificities regarding performance and figure out a better way their work and skills can contribute to Criteo. 

How do you balance the need for inclusion and performance?  

Even though we must continue our efforts to hire more diverse profiles, we don't hire people for the sake of inclusivity targets or for brand reputation only. We hire the people we feel are right for the job and a good cultural match, so anyone joining the company is appropriately skilled. This already helps decrease possible impostor syndrome. 

We also evaluate people based on their achievements to assess performance more objectively. People are evaluated based on their work, not on how many hours they’ve put to get the results. They can therefore adjust their work schedule and rhythm as they see fit as long as they deliver. This gives them more agency to manage their personal situation, which they know far better than anyone else. 

Finally, I am very involved in how we hire and manage performance. The complexity here is to set high standards while making sure that everyone with the right skillset is empowered to reach them.