Interview: Hacktown Brazil meets Anna Gullstrand, VP People of Mentimeter.

Thank you Carlos Vilela at Hacktown Brazil, the biggest innovation festival in Brazil, for the chat. Do you understand Portuguese? Head over to the official version of the interview here.

1 - Hi Anna. Let our readers know yourself. Who is Anna Gullstrand?

I am a curious and creative person, who always have been passionate about how we all can live life to the fullest. I love to explore questions like: What makes me happy and why? What feels meaningful? Where can I impact? What does my soul tell me to do? 

I never liked the term work-life-balance, since it suggests that “work” and “life” were separated. We actually only have one life. And there is only one planet. Since we spend ⅓ of our lifetime at work we should make sure that we do meaningful things, have fun and feel good. That we take care of each other and our planet. That is my mission. 

I got grounded in my values at the fantastic program Digital Media Creative at the globally recognized school Hyper Island where I studied back in 2002. During my career I have been mostly working in the creative agency industry, as strategist and CEO for agencies in Sweden, Finland and Russia. I have also worked as a facilitator, process designer and coach. A few months back I joined the amazing and fast growing company Mentimeter as their first VP People. We work to make more voices heard, which feels purposeful to me. 

2 - You have the role of VP People at Mentimeter, a company who offers a tool that makes meetings, workshops, and presentations more inclusive, interactive, engaging and valuable. Tell us more about the company and your role there?

Ok! Let us start with the problem. 

Imagine how many boring meetings you have been in. 

How many lectures you have listened to without remembering anything afterwards. 

How disengaged you become when people only talk and do not listen. 

How devastating it is when your opinion is not asked for, nor valued. 

Mentimeter is all about making more voices heard and helping people to collaborate. It is about unleashing the full potential of a group - no matter if they are five or five thousand. When you as a teacher, presenter or manager invites the group to participate actively, you also invite magic to the room. 

Our culture at Mentimeter is built on the same principles. We know that the best decisions are taken by the people that are close to the knowledge, and we know that we need to make an effort to include everyone actively to get all important voices heard. We have a flat organization that runs effectively because of our commitment to our values. 

My role as VP People is about enabling all co-workers to do their magic. Practically it means that I work with creating a learning environment (high performing teams, self-leadership-trainings, coworker experience, leadership coaching, feedback culture, resilience etc). When people grow, so does the business. Today Mentimeter has clients all over the world and over 100 million users. We are based in Stockholm, Sweden, and will open up our second office, in Canada, next year. 

3 - What about the Mentimeter tool itself? How does it work?

It is super simple. You can create your whole presentation, training or workshop design in our tool (create a free account at Mentimeter.com), and add the interactivity that you prefer. It can be for example a poll, a quiz, or letting people send in ideas, ask questions, vote or prioritise. By adding interactivity you make all participants feel more included and engaged, plus most importantly, you get their valuable input. The participants interact through their mobile devices or computer, and they do not have to download any software. People use Mentimeter for taking their communication, teaching, and facilitation to the next level! 

A fun fact is that Brazil is one of our fastest growing markets, just last month as many as 10% of our new presenters came from Brazil. We started seeing this pattern a year or so back, and then we actually went to Brazil to listen more to users to understand how they were using Mentimeter. An interesting insight we got was that in Brazil, Mentimeter was described as a communication tool to a larger extent (compared to a presentation or a polling tool). 

4 - What is the relevance of the culture through which a company operates? And how to build a culture that unleashes the full potential of a team in terms of creativity, engagement, motivation and high results?

Numerous studies, both within the fields of behaviour- and neuroscience, confirms that psychological safety is crucial for innovation and performance. If you are a leader I believe that is your most important mission - to make people in your team feel accepted, valued and safe. Safe to be themselves. Safe to show vulnerability. Safe to dissent or fail, without fear of being punished or excluded. When you have that you create a fearless organisation that can operate in a complex fast changing environment. 

As a leader you need to role model this behaviour. You need to show that you are human, that you are vulnerable, that you do not know everything and that you also make mistakes. And you need to show a great deal of compassion towards your co-workers, when they dare to do the same. All of this takes courage, since it is quite far away from the traditional idea of a “strong” leader. Research shows that transparency creates safety. When people feel that all information is surfaced and there is no hidden agenda. 

At Mentimeter we work very conscientiously with active inclusion, transparency and appreciation. For example we have a praise channel in Slack that goes warm everyday. This is one way we create happiness and wellbeing (positive psychology research tells us that showing gratitude and appreciation is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness). 

When you feel appreciated you feel more safe, and you will also react less defensively if you get developing feedback on what to improve. Another example related to feedback is that we give it to each other two times a year in a structured 360 process. We base the feedback on our core values: include everyone, work smart, be responsible, be humble and have fun. 

5 - How does the Mentimeter tool help companies build a culture like that?

We use Mentimeter to create transparency, to get important feedback, to learn and to grow as an organisation. In our weekly team meetings, when all 100 co-workers participate, we have a lot of polls, scalings, Q&A:s and reflections going on. Also, we activate the chat so people can comment on the presentation in real time, which makes everything super open and engaging. 

Mentimeter is very efficient in a big group when you want to make sure that the information provided is clear for everyone. For example, at our meetings anyone can ask an anonymous question to Johnny, our CEO, through Mentimeter, and he will answer right away. 

Our teams use Mentimeter in their meetings all the time. For example when running a workshop or sprint-retro. Or when evaluating a project. Of course we create our presentations directly in Mentimeter and have abandoned KeyNote and PowerPoint :) In that way we get a seamless flow. And not to forget, the quiz is always on for after work. 

If you want to try Mentimeter for yourself, go to mentimeter.com and register. It is free!  

6 - I read once that every year Mentimeter relocates the entire team to a new city somewhere in the world for an entire month. What is that like? And how does that contribute to the company's results?

Yes, for one month we relocate the whole company to another city in Europe to celebrate last year's success. It is fantastic. Daytime it is work as usual, inspired by our new surroundings. And in the evenings there are a lot of social activities going on. In a new context you get different input and are pushed a bit outside your comfort zone, which will fuel your creativity. 

At our relocation people are getting to know each other better and builds deeper and more resilient relationships, which creates the psychological safety that I talked about before. It is also important for motivation and engagement to have friends at work, and our trip builds those relations for sure. We believe strongly in the combination of playfulness and professionalism, and that they do not contradict each other. 

We measure our engagement levels continuously, and our numbers are extremely high. Research shows that companies that succeed with engagement are more profitable, which of course is important for us. But actually, we also do the relocation because of what I mentioned when answering your first question; the basic fact that you only have one life. This is it. We are building an important product together, and we make sure to have fun while doing it. 

7 - When speaking about culture, a lot is said about Growth Mindset as a strategy for Growth. What is your take on that? 

My take on it is that it is true. People with a growth mindset show higher performance over time. Research shows that we can train our brain and mindset, the same way as we go to the gym to train our muscles. 

Growth mindset is about realising that you will be on a learning journey your whole life. We foster it by experimenting, doing evaluations, giving each other feedback and sharing our personal learnings, insights and reflections. We also invite all employees to different self-leadership training each month. 

One very obvious thing is that we do not have individual bonuses in our sales team. It is because we believe that it would trigger more competitive behaviour where people do not share knowledge or learnings with each other. At Mentimeter we are inspired by each other’s success and help each other to succeed. 

8 - Where does leadership fit in all this? How can leaders play a relevant role in building a growth mindset for their teams?

A leader inspires a growth mindset by how they behave and talk with the employees, what questions they ask and what type of meetings they invite the team to. It is the difference between saying “Why did you fail?” and “What have you learned?”. 

A growth mindset leader is embracing challenge and uncertainty with a positive spirit. He/she learns, both from successes and mistakes, and inspires the team to take the next bold steps. It is also about not giving up and being persistent, because it sometimes takes time to learn something new and get it right. This type of leader organizes project evaluations and feedback sessions on a regular basis, and takes part on equal terms. 

9 - Last, but no least. You just published a book, "Facilitera!". Tell us more about it.

Oh, thank you for asking. For me it is a dream that has come true, to publish a book! 

It is about Facilitation as a skill, and how you can have a facilitative approach as a leader. A facilitator takes the role of an impartial leader of a workshop or meeting, and focuses on the process design and how the group actually cooperates and behaves towards each other. I believe a lot in creative processes and the fact that a team can do wonders together if they get some support on the way. 

For a long time the creative business has circled around a toxic idea that some creatives are rock stars, and that they just sit in a room and hatch award winning ideas. The same goes for some entrepreneurs. I believe that each and every one of us are rock stars, and that it is a collaborative and learning culture that will win the race in the long run. It is all about the power of together. That is what my book is about, and that is what Mentimeter is all about. It is the fantastic co-workers who are the reason why we are so successful. 

This interview was made by Carlos Vilela at Hacktown Brazil, the biggest innovation festival in Brazil. You find the official version in Portuguese here.