November 1, 2022 • 39 mins
Adrienne Lowe shares her journey as an empathetic leader and how her goal to give people energy (rather than take it away) paved her way through a success engineering leadership career.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep31
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I started out in frontline techsupport you know, with multiple
monitors in front of me with a queueon the wall, seven applications,
open phone ringing off the hook.
And I'm, I'm talking tocustomers about bugs every day.
Well, when I got promoted toengineer, you better believe I was
super motivated to go fix those bugsI was hearing about all the time.
(00:21):
Welcome to Developing Leadership,the podcast for engineering leaders
where Eiso Kant and Jason Warnershare their lessons on the ins and
outs of managing software teams.
Today we're joined by Adrienne Lowe.
Adrienne has had an incrediblejourney from IC to a senior EM to
Head of Engineering at multipletech companies, and is known for her
writing on Compassion and Engineering.
She spoke about aligning your actionswith your values as an engineering
(00:44):
leader, and shared her winning recipeson bringing your full self to work.
We also talked about theanti-patterns and failure modes
in the tech industry, psychologistversus sociologist modes and more.
As always, this episode comes withaccompanying show notes with a deep
dive into the main topics, mental modelsand key moments from this episode.
Find them at developingleadership.coand linked in the episode description.
(01:08):
Hi everyone.
We're back again with anotherepisode of Developing Leadership.
Jason and I have a special guestwith us today, Adrienne Lowe.
Adrienne has been everything froman IC to a senior EM to Head of
Engineering at a whole host ofdifferent technology companies.
I first found out about Adriennethrough her writing on Compassion and
Engineering, and I'm really excitedto have you with us today, Adrienne.
(01:30):
Thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for having me, Eisoand Jason, I'm so glad to be here.
So, while we were talking in preparationfor this episode, you touched upon a
question you asked yourself at some point,which was, "what kind of leader, what
kind of engineering leader do I wanna be?"
And I thought it'd be fitting tostart off today's episode to ask you
(01:51):
to deep dive a little bit into that.
How did that question come aboutand, and how did you answer it?
Thanks.
That's a really great questionand a great place to start.
So, I care an awful lot about people.
I love people and I wantto help those around me.
I wanna help them.
I'm driven by a desire to help folksdo their very best work with clear
(02:13):
communication, clear expectationsetting, driving alignment,
transparency into the work, visibilityinto the work, and supporting my
people along the way and helpingthem feel like they can do anything.
And in preparation for our talk today,I, I went back and I looked at some
of the books and resources that I hadread and, and helped me along the way.
(02:35):
And, and one of them was by AriWeinzweig, who's the founder
at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor.
And he wrote a book called "ALapsed Anarchist's Approach
to Managing Ourselves."
Because I think where this starts is howwe manage ourself, because the way we
treat ourselves shines to those around us.
(02:58):
If we are authentic, if we are kindto ourselves, if we make our choices
mindfully and with intentionality,if we contribute positively to those
around us, if we're kind and creative,it'll show, and it'll show and it'll
create a, a safe place for thosearound us to show the same in them.
(03:20):
So I start by asking myself, whatkind of boss do I wanna be from the
center of valuing self-managementand self-awareness, and then holding
myself accountable to allow myactions to flow in alignment with
that intention and that vision.
We've heard on this podcast before, thequote, I think from Maya Angelou, people
(03:42):
remember how you made them feel, notnecessarily what you may have said or did.
And that's, that's what I, Iwant, uh, to inspire people.
I want them to feel thatthey can do anything.
It's not a matter of any inherent quality,but them having the right resources
and support and access and sponsorship,they can do anything because I, I, I
(04:08):
believe that and I do sincerely care.
So, you know, coming full circle,I have given a lot of thought about
the kind of person I wanna be in theworld, the kind of leader I wanna be.
And ultimately, I wanna besomeone who gives others energy
rather than takes it away.
There's so much in our life that takesour energy away, that drains us every day.
(04:30):
But I wanna be someone who, to thebest of my ability gives it, who
inspires, who helps others discoverand own and honor their own greatness.
That's, uh, that's a beautiful start.
I think it's one of those beautifulstarts we've had on, on, on this podcast
series as if Jason and I are both sittinghere, of your words, I, I want to kind
(04:50):
of double click on one of these topics.
You say, you know, I, you're one ofthe first leaders that I hear off the
bat saying, "I want to make peoplefeel like they can do anything."
Can you go a little bit further into that?
Yeah.
I just, I believe it's possible.
I mean, y'all, I grew up ona farm in northwest Georgia.
My dad quit school in seventh grade.
(05:13):
Neither of my parents have degrees.
I was the first kid in myfamily to get, uh, a degree.
And I put myself through college.
And I don't necessarily feel likeI'm particularly special [laughs],
but I do have this sense of, well,you know, I believe it's possible.
(05:34):
And it's the people around me believingin me and sponsoring me and, and helping
me see my own greatness and what was,what was valid and valuable in, in my
voice and in my unique contributions.
I just feel so inspired to try togive that gift to others, to help them
develop their spirit and, and supportthose in need around me and just
(05:57):
respect and assist everyone I can atevery, at every opportunity that I can.
That said, I do have realstrong boundaries, [laughs].
So, you know, I, I do respectmyself as part of this, right?
I want to help, I wanna be goodfor others, but I am a person too.
And, you know, so I do respect myselfand there are behaviors and there are
(06:21):
things that I see out in the worldthat, you know, I won't be part of.
I, I won't lie, um, I won'tcheat, I won't steal [laughs].
Apart from that, uh, you know,there's a lot you can do to support
someone and, and help and help thembelieve that they can do anything.
And that's, it's just feedbackthat I've gotten over the years
from so many different people, fromso many different walks of life.
(06:43):
You know, just very, very differentpeople telling me, "You made me
feel like I could do anything."
And that's a really wonderful feeling.
So Adrienne, how much do you think, youknow, you went a bit into your background
and you also spoke about the fact thatthere's the things you wouldn't do.
T- this makes me think that youhave seen some anti-patterns
in your industry [laughs].
(07:04):
A few.
You've seen some things.
Do you think it is, is, is yourstory and your background that,
that uniquely positioned you to careabout the things that Jason and I
have spoken a lot about on this-
Yeah.
... podcast of, of-
Yeah.
... of, of compassion and,and, and being genuine?
Yep.
Where does it feel, and, and when itfills on your team or with colleagues
that you or your peers or your report to,how have you, how have you tackled it?
(07:28):
Yeah, no, that's one of the reasons I knewI was in good hands with you two because
you absolutely have covered this before.
And Jason in particular, I have resonatedwith some of the things you've said
in the early episodes about, you know,when you came to Silicon Valley and you
saw these people who you'd, you know,you saw them as just the humans that
they are, you know, were all fallible.
(07:49):
And I, I really, reallyappreciated you saying that.
Because early in my career I did spenda lot of energy myself and then helping
others understand why we don't need to putpeople up on a pedestal, why we don't need
to, you know, make heroes or idols of, youknow, folks in tech who we really admire.
They're just humans like us.
They struggle just like we do.
(08:10):
I think one of the things that, aboutmy experience going to the early part
of your question, Eiso, is I don'tstart from a center of deserving,
uh, or relieving that I deserve to behere [laughs], you know, like that I
deserve to be in my role as directorbecause of my own innate cleverness.
Like, there's something just specialabout me that that means that I
(08:32):
should be in charge or from a placeof just enjoying telling people
what to do just because I can.
That is one of the anti-patterns I see.
Absolutely.
People will get that title of directoror head of, and maybe Jason can speak
to this a little bit, and they take itas a license to just boss people around.
"Well, I mean, I'm imbued with the power.
Why can't I just do it?"
(08:53):
And I mean, I've seen it very recentlywhere very senior people, very, very
senior people have this attitude of,well, they just need to go do the work.
Like what...
You're the boss.
Like, why are they justnot listening to you?
And I think when we walk around all daywith this attitude of, "I'm so clever, I
deserve, uh, to be here," which we do seea lot, it makes it that much harder and
(09:17):
more painful to look within and do thatnecessary self-reflection, which will help
us grow because none of us are perfect.
We may have had through luck orconnections gotten that job, but we
still have some major blind spots.
And if we walk around with this attitudeof, "I deserve to be here, I'm so smart,
everyone should just listen to me."
It is, it is going to make, be that muchmore painful, you know, to look within
(09:41):
and see all of the ways that you don't.
And growth is so critical for howwe grow and deliver for others.
I had a, I had a, a really good friendand his dad is well off, uh, he's
done really well for himself in life.
Started from nothing, built upa busi- a bunch of businesses,
all that sort of stuff.
And, um, one day we were havingthis conversation, this is probably
10 years ago at this point.
(10:01):
And his, he was reflecting onthe conversation he had with
his father and his, his fathersaid something about like, like,
" they just need to go do this.
They need to blah, blah,blah, that they need to..."
Something like this.
And he said to his father, hewas like, "Dad, when was the
last time you ever had a boss?"
And he's like, "I never had a boss."
He was like, "You have no idea what it'slike for this person who's running a
bunch of your stores and doing a bunchof things to be in this situation.
(10:25):
You're projecting something."
And I, I see this a lot in SiliconValley where a lot of folks who are in
position to say, just go do something,have never actually been the boss.
They've never, or never had a boss.
They've, they've never been in aposition of being an engineer or a line
marketer or even a line salesperson.
You know, this, a lot of VCsor a lot of CEOs started out as
VCs or CEOs in a lot of cases.
(10:47):
And I find that if you don't understandthat other side of the fence at
all, you don't understand how torun organizations, you know how to
dictate to organizations, but youdon't know how to run organizations.
And I think about that quite abit because I'm sure that all of
us can experience the same thing.
But Adrienne, you and I in particular,I grew up as, as an engineer, and
I came up through those ranks.
(11:07):
And I remember at one point I wantedto become a manager just so I didn't
have to deal with my manager anymore.
[laughs] Yeah.
So just because, so I didn't have tofeel a certain way when I was interacting
with them, but even more so the, thepeople on my team didn't have to either.
Yes.
All my friends who were on thisteam, we were all getting beaten
down and it was not a fun experience.
(11:28):
Absolutely.
And you know, I've listened to a lotof y'all's episodes in the last week
in preparation for coming on today.
And you know, one of the things that Inoticed y'all kept kind of hitting on
and, and Eiso said, "I just wanna putthis to bed forever," is, you know, you
shouldn't mana- you shouldn't manageif you've never been an engineer.
And I was like, why are theseguys keep hitting on this?
(11:50):
I mean, I know, like partof my brain understands.
But ultimately I came down Imade this analogy of they want
empathy, they want empathy.
Empathy versus sympathy, right?
Because sympathy feels good in the moment.
You know, somebody sends you a card,"Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss,
whatever," but they don't get it.
(12:11):
They don't understand.
They're just showing you that they care.
But empathy, they've been there, theyunderstand, they know how you feel.
And I think that's one of thethings that catapulted me so
quickly from IC to manager.
I started out in frontline techsupport, you know, with multiple
monitors in front of me with a queueon the wall, seven applications,
(12:32):
open phone ringing off the hook.
And I'm, I'm talking tocustomers about bugs every day.
Well, when I got promoted toengineer, you better believe I was
super motivated to go fix those bugsI was hearing about all the time.
So I don't know, I just wantedto share that with y'all.
If there are listeners out therelike, "Why do they keep, why do
they keep harping on that [laughs]?"
I think that sympathy empathything is, can be really helpful.
(12:56):
I think...
In your words here, I thinksympathy can be faked-
Yes.
... empathy typically can't be.
So when someone's a genuine personand on the other side of the fence
and they feel it, they're like,"Oh, this person understands-"
Yes.
"... what's happening over here."
And I think on the, and you know, evenmake, taking it a little bit further
too, is I believe you could do that.
(13:17):
And I think a lot of people don'tbecause they don't know how to do that.
They don't, they can't actually beempathetic because they don't understand.
And the lack of understandingactually leads to negative outcomes.
And so the, the other side of thefence, when I think about what I wanted
to do with my career is show that Icould have the outsized outcomes just
like Silicon Valley drives for, butin the style at which I wanted to
(13:37):
do it and I, you know, it might bemore work for me, but it's possible.
And then, you know, along the way peopletold me I was crazy and you know, you're
just, you're absolutely nuts to thinkthat this is going to be a way to do this.
It's just easier to be the thingthat we've known for years.
But then I wanna be who I was.
I want to feel like I wasgoing to be as effective.
I think I would be less effective.
(13:58):
And one of my, the greatest satisfactionsI have personally gotten, even though
I'm not managing people directly anymore,I love the fact that, and my wife jokes
about this all the time, all the time.
But I will have had...
You know, 10 years ago, have hadsome conversations with folks who
basically I end up letting go.
And they will call me today-
Yes.
... asking me for advice.
Yes.
And that is one of the most satisfyingthings in the world because you realize
(14:21):
that they understand now, maybe it wasn'tback then, but they understand now that,
one, I probably had their best interestat heart, even if I had the businesses
best interests, I also had theirs.
And the other side of fence isthey don't have anybody else, which
is a very sad state of affairs-
So sad.
... too that in 10 years timeframebetween when I had my working
relationship with them to now, theyprobably haven't found anybody else.
(14:42):
Yeah.
That is so sad.
And I can absolutely relate.
I mean, I remember once when I had tolet someone go after a long process
of trying to work with that person,the, the first thing I, they said
to me after I delivered that news,you know, today is your last day.
They said, "Thank you so much for yourleadership and the way you've coached
and guided me and tried to help me.
(15:05):
It's been amazing andI, I won't forget it."
And, and just like the people whocontact you 10 years later, like they
feel that authenticity, they feelthat you really do care about them.
And I wish there were more of us, butI think this podcast and your work here
and the work of Lead Dev, I think thatwe are kind of helping a new generation.
(15:26):
But I, I, I hear you like, it is sad thatin that 10 years that there haven't been
others to help coach and sponsor them.
For everyone listening, I have a termfor, a slight term for this, it's not, not
the exact overlap, but I call it I callit psychologist versus sociologist mode.
Yes.
And I've, I might have talked aboutthis already on the podcast and I think
I need to write about it a little bitmore, but executives need to be able
to operate in two modes and use themappropriately at the appropriate times.
(15:49):
And I find that they get flipped.
I find that when an individual executiveis sitting across from somebody else,
they're actually trying to convincethe other person to understand them.
They're, they're saying,"I need you to believe me.
I need you to understand me.
I need you to understand this."
And they're actually trying to sellthe company's outcome and all that-
Yes.
... in an indi- to an individual andthey're having the wrong impact.
And then again, in, when they're in,in the exec room, they're actually
(16:11):
sometimes making business decisionsbased upon a specific person.
"We need to promote this person toVP otherwise they're gonna leave.
This salesperson's thebest, that sort of thing.
And we need to make sure that their regionexpands, therefore we're gonna do weird,
unnatural machinations on the business."
All that sort of stuff.
You need to operate in sociologistmode and make business decisions and
then figure out how they affect thepeople and then understand how you
(16:34):
can have that conversation with thepeople across from them and be in
psychologist mode at any one time.
And again, there's no root to why Ithink that there's massive organizational
dysfunctions in Silicon Valley.
Um, but I think that this is,this is one of the ones that
I find to be the most common.
'Cause people just don't knowactually how to lead and manage.
And they, they, they flipthe modes around quite a bit.
(16:54):
And is so painful when you are the one inthat room with that executive who's trying
so hard to convince you of something.
It's like, "Do you not thinkI'm a person with a brain?
Like I see what is going on here.
Like, I understand what you are tryingto do, and I do not feel heard at all.
I, I feel like you are talkingat me and I am not getting
(17:17):
anything out of this interaction."
Because, you know, for me, I think a lotof what drives me is I love to learn.
I've always been a learner.
I love to learn.
And one of the reasons why I spend so muchtime listening is because I get inputs.
You know, I get inputs that will helpme make better decisions, will help me
more fully understand the situation,the reality of what I'm working with.
(17:41):
You know, I made an analogy in, in ameeting recently where I said, it's
like we're, we're as a group, we'reputting together a puzzle, but all
of the pieces are turned over sothat you can't see the image, right?
And that's gonna be a really hardpuzzle to put together [laughs].
But if we turn those pieces over,if we understand what we're truly
(18:02):
working with, then we can put thatpuzzle together a lot faster and we
can get to our outcomes a lot faster.
And I just, it pains me that thoseexecutives don't see that, you know.
There's something you're, you'retouching upon, Adrienne, that I think
I'd like to take a step back on, right?
So, so getting to that point whereyou are feeling you can really
(18:23):
bring your, your full self to work.
You can show empathy, youcan be confident to...
'Cause showing empathy doesn'tcome without showing vulnerability.
Empathy without opening yourselfup, it's, it's not truly empathy.
It becomes sympathy.
And, and I like that model by the way.
I think it's a useful one and it'sgonna join the ranks of the Developing
Leadership frameworks in the show notes.
So please go check them out everyone.
(18:44):
At what point did you feelyou were confident in your
career to start doing so?
Because that also doesn't come overnight.
You know, I started right offthe bat, y'all, I really did.
You know, I was at a point in mylife where I was a career changer.
Um, I had been a small businessowner and I wanted to learn to code.
(19:06):
And this was about, youknow, 10, 15 years ago.
And I just, I just, I just felt likethere was a moment where, why not be real?
Why not tell people what I'm trying to do?
And I actually started a blog, a, awebsite called Coding with Knives because
I was a, I was a professional chef.
(19:27):
I, I owned a catering company andI was a, I was a private chef for
lots of families in the, the citywhere I was located at that time.
And so I could make kind of cookingand coding analogies, uh, and,
and give recipes and share aboutmyself as I learned how to code.
And I talked about how it was hard, andthankfully there were few key people in
(19:49):
the industry at that time, like JacobKaplan-Moss, Carol Willing, Russell
Keith-MaGee, who were also talking aboutthe importance of being vulnerable.
And they were, they weresaying that they struggle too.
And I was like, "Well, if, if thesegreat people can talk about, you know,
how they're struggling and, and how theyhave self-compassion through it, you
(20:11):
know, maybe I, what do I have to lose?"
And so I've, I've just kind of been doingit from the beginning and it is hard.
I mean, I'm nervous tocome on this podcast today.
But I have found again and again thatthe reward for taking the risk and
trying is so much greater than not.
So, so why not try?
(20:33):
One of the things I think you saidthere, said there too is, interesting
because I think the vulnerabilityis one thing I think we can talk
about more on the podcast too.
I have always thought of thisas, I just wanna show people
that I'm an actual human too.
And I don't, I didn't ever approach itwith a nec- with a idea of necessarily
(20:54):
being vulnerable, but I just wantpeople to know that I was a human
too and I struggled with things andI had my own fears and wishes and
wants and all that sort of stuff.
Or I was going through my ownshit at home with the kids or
the spouse or whatever it was.
Because I think that's importantto, to show them on the other side.
One of the, the failure modes I seein this when people bringing this
(21:16):
up and say, "This is who I wanna betoo," what I find is that there's this
dichotomy between being a leader andbeing a person's manager sometimes.
And this can get confused,which is I am here to protect
you as opposed to lead you.
And a lot of failure modes I find whenpeople are on this side of the fence
(21:38):
and they're overly here, is I will be...
this is...
and I think Google termthe term shit umbrella.
Which is, it's us against everybody else.
It's our team.
We're the land of well put togethertoys and everyone else is the, the
island of misfit toys type of deal.
We'll be the, that sort of thing.
And I find that if, if thatis where people are in that
spectrum, universally, that fails.
And they themselves burn out, faila- all across the board because it's,
(22:01):
it's, again, it's actually a disservice.
It is, that is to me, a fakedempathy, sympathy land, which is more
of a, I'm not sure how to describethis, but it, it never works out.
No.
And it's a bit of an overcorrectionas well, just to be fair.
You know, a lot of peoplehave had terrible bosses.
They have seen anti-patterns, theyhave literally been yelled at.
(22:22):
And, and I, I see that from somegreat folks it's an overcorrection.
You know, they say, "I don't wanna bethat, and so I'm gonna go way over."
But you're absolutely right.
I think one of the ways I'vebeen blessed is very early in my
leadership career, I saw that the shitumbrella thing was a total illusion.
It was a total dead end.
(22:43):
It is not the kind of person that Iwanted to be or how I wanted to lead.
I don't want to protect people.
I want to live in the world ofreal things of reality and the
shit umbrella is not reality.
You know, that is protection and thatis just, it's just not the truth.
And-
Well, it's a coddling of a different type.
It is, it is, it is.
And I, I don't think folks alwaysrealize that they're doing that, but I
(23:07):
think it, it's along the same vein ofbeing afraid to give difficult feedback-
Yes.
... because you're afraidof the re- uh, reaction.
Yes.
And we should never withholdconstructive or difficult
feedback out of fear of reaction.
Lord knows, I don't.
I mean, I have only ever builttrust by being real and giving
(23:28):
that very difficult feedback ina loving way, in a compassionate
way, not in an asshole way at all.
But it's when you, when you acknowledgethe behavior, when you state the
behavior, we state the impact of thebehavior and you encourage a different,
more effective future behaviorthat is a winning recipe, you know?
(23:49):
There's a, this goes backto podcast we just literally
released yesterday on Calendar-
[laughs] loved it.
... this is about being liked-
Yes.
... as well.
Because I find that, again, likethere's again, many different, there's
never ever one reason why somebodydoes a certain type of behavior.
You can fall into behavior or patternfor a lot of different reasons.
But one of the most common onesin my, my view is that someone
(24:10):
wants to be liked by their team.
And so they'll, they believe thatto be liked by their team, they
need to foster this kind of attitudeor, or approach or whatever.
And again, you know, GitHub, Heroku andCanonical is my most recent history, and
I would say that I've seen, seen thispattern emerge, which is the, the most
telling way I've always seen it, is us vthem internal to the company mentality.
(24:32):
And in that case, it's like theyhave a small, tiny tribe of people
and they're going to, to work likehell to keep that tribe together.
And is always been confusing as anexecutive for the past 10 years, is I try
to foster the inside versus the outside,the email domain type of attitude.
And this is like subdomain mentalityand it gets really hard to work through.
(24:56):
And I would hope that we as peoplein the world would generally
speak, think of like inside oroutside the earth boundary domain.
But we're never gonna get there.
Like just, we're never,it's never gonna be a thing.
But at a very minimum, I wanna beinside or no, outside my family and
inside the, outside the email domainfor work and, and that sort of approach.
A lot of this comes down to what we,we see as the personality types or the
(25:20):
environments that make people want tobe king or queen of their own kingdoms.
Right?
Like an extreme, andthis is academia, right?
Anybody who's been in academia, and, andif you think about it, most people coming
into academia do not have that mindsetof wanting to, to own their own little
tribe and their own little domain, but theenvironment in which the incentives are
set out, the size of the organizations,like start encouraging this.
(25:43):
And all of a sudden you find yourselflike in, in, in that environment.
I think at companies, we startseeing the same thing happen
directly correlated with size, right?
Because we, we just start falling offlike, I dunno if it's Dunbar's number or,
or if it's something else, like we startfalling off the fact that all of a sudden
both size and incentives no longer alignto actually put the company first, because
(26:07):
that's what we're talking about, right?
And, and putting the, and, and I thinkpeople not realizing that putting
the company first does not mean notputting people first inside the company.
It's, it's gotta be avery clear distinction.
I think because again, like going backto sociologists and psychologists mode,
like it's putting the company first is,is absolutely putting people first too.
If you take the mentality of,you know, rising tide rises all
(26:29):
boats, there's an approach to this.
Now what happens, I think overallhere is that we lose sight of that.
The incentive structuresare really important.
They break down because it actuallyfosters internal competition or
a whole bunch of other things.
And then there's the notion of whatyour day to day looks like and where
you as a leader or manager sometimescan draw your energies from too, or how
(26:50):
you re you might reflect upon yourself.
And again, going back to what I wantedto be liked early in my career, and
I was not as confident, that wasan important feedback mechanism.
How my team responded to me wasan important feedback mechanism
that I over-rotated onto.
And then I'll flip around to oneother thing is when a company
basically says, we're going to measurethe morale of our organization,
(27:15):
and it's abstracted from leader.
So Google's really famous for doingthis, which is, "Hey, we're gonna
measure the overall morale of anorganization of several thousand people
to see how the executive is doing."
It's actually I think it's one of theworst things you could possibly do if
you're taking a company view approachfirst, because you actually have to do it
at the micro level to understand how it'sworking on your team, not the division.
(27:35):
And it's it just causesall sorts of bad behaviors.
But it's not easy.
You can, how, how How easy is it tomanage several hundred thousand people-
Sure.
... and actually incent to the right behaviorsand stuff that's not, not straightforward.
Yeah.
I, I was, I was delighted when Eisoasked you that question in that episode,
how important is it to you to be liked?
(27:55):
And I feel like, you know, Jason beingvulnerable here, you and I took kind
of opposite paths, you know, earlierin your career you were more concerned
with being liked, early in my career,I got feedback that I was intimidating.
Okay, now we know thatthat's pretty common.
Women get that, you know, feedbackthat say we're intimidating, you
(28:17):
know, when maybe we're behavingjust as the men are, but for some
reason with us it's intimidating.
Setting that aside, there was somewisdom in that feedback at that time.
You know, I, I did carrymyself with authority.
I did speak authoritatively in meetingsand there was an element of that that
I needed to grow through and understandthat I didn't need to, you know, maybe
(28:41):
be as forceful as I was being, youknow, because I, I had legitimacy in
that room I was there for a reason.
But so now later in life I find myselfcoaching managers who are very concerned
with being liked even though they'vebeen in the industry for a long time.
And when I've found that, you know, comeup on my teams, I've tried to get them to
(29:05):
focus on the outcomes and the, the what wewant, you know, whether we're doing sprint
planning or, you know, capacity planning.
Like what is the outcomethat we're going for here?
Because the outcome of beingliked, frankly, who in the
world does that help [laughs]?
I mean, it doesn't evenhelp me really that much.
(29:25):
It certainly doesn't help the peoplearound you or the company, and it's
not, you know, ultimately what any ofour ICs want as a desirable outcome.
They want you to helpthem grow in their career.
They want you to help themgive them good opportunities.
They want you to make sure thatthey're doing valuable work
as part of the critical path.
Whether they like you necessarily,that's, that's not super
(29:50):
top of mind for them, right?
Um, we should create collegialenvironments where people can feel
safe to fail and they can experimentand they can be who they really are,
but that hyper focus on being likedcan, can really cause some issues.
Can you, I, I wanna throw, uh...
and, and while I agree with you, I,I want to throw a tough question.
(30:10):
We talk a lot about safeenvironments, high empathy.
Can you sit in a room with someone wherethere's high empathy and it's a safe
environment when the person acro- when youdon't like the person across the table?
I can, I'll take a stabat this one real quickly.
Um, I think you can, while difficultto do it, it's not the default.
(30:35):
And I think that no matter who youare, you will fail doing it more
times than you don't in some cases.
Now, the way that I think you canapproach it and do it is you, you, you,
again, you divorce yourself from theperson and you make it about outcomes
and you make it about certain behaviors.
I, I, a- again, something else I've saidon here too is I don't need you to agree
(30:57):
with me, I might need a behavior change.
Yes, absolutely.
And that is, that is a distinctdifference is sometimes we're trying
to get each other to agree with us.
And actually at the end of the day, Idon't actually like care about that,
in many situations I just might needa behavior change or something else.
And the, the only time I've ever hadthis where I still, I can still have
(31:18):
empathy and almost vi- visceral dislikeof the person is when they're subterfuge
or there's, this person who's likeintentionally trying to sabotage you or
your career, your, your reputation, butthey also have a shitty home life and you
know that they were brought up poorly.
But at the end of the day, here'ssomething else I want people on
(31:39):
the podcast to take accountabilityfor too, to hear from the
podcast and, and everyone else.
If, if you reach adulthood and you'repaying taxes and you're 30, but if you're
particularly 40 years old, you need tobecome a fully formed functional adult
and you need to live in the real world.
And, and yeah, we all, a lot ofpeople grew up like I, you know,
Adrienne and I sounds like we grewup very similar in a lot of ways.
(31:59):
You, you get one, that might get you ina door, but it doesn't keep you anywhere.
Absolutely.
It can't keep you anywhere.
You might be able to get througha door or whatever because of the
way you were brought up or, orsome of the other functions, you
actually have to still do the job.
And if you're not doingthe job at the end of...
that's all I'm gonna say, yougotta, you gotta do the job,
(32:19):
the...
Yeah.
You, you have to be the adult.
You have to be able tosit across from somebody.
And even if you don't like themto use a phrase, you have to find
a way to be effective with them.
And for me, I don't mind being adork, I don't mind sounding dorky.
I will literally say thingslike, "Look, I wanna win.
I wanna win and I wantyou to win with me."
(32:42):
And how fricking dorky does that sound?
But I don't care.
And so I really try to let peopleknow where my heart is, even when...
And, and Jason, you and Iabsolutely have this in common.
I have dealt with some major manipulationin my career and that hurts because
I'm an earnest person and I, I'msomebody who trusts people and you
(33:04):
know, when I see that, that that isvery difficult for me, but we still
have to work through it as best we can.
We have to be grownups and youknow, we have to focus on that
outcome and get there together.
I think you said something Adrienneand, uh, I, I usually, I, I don't
talk as much about my, my past on,on this podcast as Jason does you do
(33:25):
say something that really resonates.
What most people don't know about meis that I, I switched schools probably
close to about eight or nine times,having been bullied a lot growing up.
And, uh, and until I was inmy mid-teens, I was pretty
much scared to talk to people.
It's kind of funny 'cause I do a lotof talking these days, but I have
learned that because of that I becameincredibly hypersensitive to being in
(33:49):
environments with people who are assholes.
And, and if you, if you ask me, youknow, "Why is it good to be a founder?"
[laughs], and like you said, get theopportunity to, to be the boss and then
you never are truly the boss becauseyou're, you're part of a, of a massive
team of people trying to accomplishsomething is actually, I always say,
(34:10):
well, you know, well you get to createyour own bubble and, and I think
this is the part where the, the shitumbrella becomes difficult, right?
Because when you have a leader whois trying to create a great positive
well and winning team bubble insidean organization where the environment
doesn't necessarily lead to that, it comeswith the good and the bad sides of it.
(34:34):
And that's the tricky thing here, right?
I think the shit umbrella can probablybe brought out into some framework
that we think about it some daythat separates it into, you know,
the, the, the shit umbrella for goodreasons, the one for bad reasons.
The, the separation between still puttingthe company first and putting the, the
people first, but in the right way.
And I think this is what we keep coming ontoday that there, there's good parts to it
(34:55):
and there's there there's bad parts to it.
Well I think it comes down to intention.
Adrienne, before the podcast, youmentioned intention a couple of times.
I feel like that is what, what,what's your the real motivation
for creating the shit umbrella?
Is it a personal gain or is it becausethere's so much anarchy outside of it?
And yeah, you're, you can still exposeyour team to it and say, "Hey listen,
(35:17):
this is going on and be real aboutit and here's what we're gonna do."
But you know, the intention is stillto, to create a high performing team.
Not, not, not something maybepersonal or, uh, selfishly motivated.
Yeah.
And I think that's one thing thatI've tried to do with my managers is
create a safe space where they reallycan explore that motivation knowing
(35:38):
that I'm not gonna judge them or I'mnot gonna think less of them when the
ugly things come out of their mouth.
Like, I mean, I've discovered partof the motivation for some of this
behavior is I'm afraid I'll lose my job.
You know, if people aren't happy andthey leave, well then I'm gonna be
judged on retention and then I'm goingto get a lower performance score.
And I'm like, you know, thankyou for sharing with that.
(36:00):
Thank you for being real.
I'm glad we've been able to createa space where you can share that.
But we need to talk about, you know,what we're really optimizing for here
and know that I'll have your back.
You know, people leave for allsorts of reasons and we will
talk through that as part of yourperformance review if we need to.
But yeah.
(36:20):
I think there's two things, andprobably worth explaining in
another future podcast too, Eiso.
But one of the things would be this is,they have a saying which is, " It's never
a good time to introduce yourself toyour neighbor when your house on fire.
That work should have beendone a long time ago."
And [laughs], I think about this withyour reputation inside organizations.
'Cause you get a lot of leeway if you havea, you know, cultivated a good reputation.
(36:43):
And this is about having people acrossthe organization know who you are.
And you know, in that way, thatsaved me a couple of times because
in some pretty caustic environments,people would say some nasty things
about you that weren't true.
And like, this is the weirdest thingabout Silicon Valley is that people
will literally just make stuff up.
They absolutely will.
And, and it's, and it's crazy.
(37:03):
But the thing that saved me personallyin that situation, I think others, is
that, you know, most people who wouldhear it be like, "Yeah, that, that sounds
like that dude that sounds like him.
Okay, whatever."
And they dismiss it.
And interestingly, they dismissed thepeople who are bringing it up more.
So I'm very thankful that that wasa work that was done on my part and
I felt good about it and that myreputation preceded myself that way.
(37:25):
But the other important part about someof that as well is that it actually,
again, it broadcasts out to theorganization some values that you hold
and, you know, everyone has differentversions of these for themselves,
but also says who you're going tobe and what you're going to go do.
And many people don't do that.
So they're unmoored in those valuesand they can change on the whims
(37:48):
and things of that in, in the world.
But you don't, you don't need to.
Everyone gives you a lot moreleeway and benefit of the doubt too.
Yep.
And, and one of the ways I help do areset on one of the teams where I was
seeing this as a particular issue isI, I did an all hands with the group
and I just said, "Look here, we'rehere to drive value for our customers.
(38:09):
We are here to deliver real things.
Shipping is our heartbeat,Shipping is how we learn.
Shipping is how we do better.
But why does all of this matter?
Um, it matters because it's what we'rehere to do, but it also matters because
it helps you and I care an awful lotabout you and helping you grow and
helping you create a track record ofdelivery that you are proud of, that you
(38:31):
are excited about, that will help yoube able to go anywhere and do anything.
So let's use every day, every ceremony,every moment, every opportunity to
make it the best that we absolutelycan so that you can build that
track record so you are unstoppable.
And hey, your managers aregoing to help you with that.
They are going tosupport you through that.
(38:52):
They're gonna make sure expectationsare clear and that you have the
tools you need to be successful."
And that is the expectationI'm setting as a senior leader.
And that is what I'm holdingthem accountable for.
Adrienne, I don't think we could havebetter words to end today's episode on.
That was fantastic.
Thank you so much for being,uh, with us here today.
Thank you so much.
I started out in frontline techsupport you know, with multiple
monitors in front of me with a queueon the wall, seven applications,
open phone ringing off the hook.
And I'm, I'm talking tocustomers about bugs every day.
Well, when I got promoted toengineer, you better believe I was
super motivated to go fix those bugsI was hearing about all the time.
(00:21):
Welcome to Developing Leadership,the podcast for engineering leaders
where Eiso Kant and Jason Warnershare their lessons on the ins and
outs of managing software teams.
Today we're joined by Adrienne Lowe.
Adrienne has had an incrediblejourney from IC to a senior EM to
Head of Engineering at multipletech companies, and is known for her
writing on Compassion and Engineering.
She spoke about aligning your actionswith your values as an engineering
(00:44):
leader, and shared her winning recipeson bringing your full self to work.
We also talked about theanti-patterns and failure modes
in the tech industry, psychologistversus sociologist modes and more.
As always, this episode comes withaccompanying show notes with a deep
dive into the main topics, mental modelsand key moments from this episode.
Find them at developingleadership.coand linked in the episode description.
(01:08):
Hi everyone.
We're back again with anotherepisode of Developing Leadership.
Jason and I have a special guestwith us today, Adrienne Lowe.
Adrienne has been everything froman IC to a senior EM to Head of
Engineering at a whole host ofdifferent technology companies.
I first found out about Adriennethrough her writing on Compassion and
Engineering, and I'm really excitedto have you with us today, Adrienne.
(01:30):
Thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for having me, Eisoand Jason, I'm so glad to be here.
So, while we were talking in preparationfor this episode, you touched upon a
question you asked yourself at some point,which was, "what kind of leader, what
kind of engineering leader do I wanna be?"
And I thought it'd be fitting tostart off today's episode to ask you
(01:51):
to deep dive a little bit into that.
How did that question come aboutand, and how did you answer it?
Thanks.
That's a really great questionand a great place to start.
So, I care an awful lot about people.
I love people and I wantto help those around me.
I wanna help them.
I'm driven by a desire to help folksdo their very best work with clear
(02:13):
communication, clear expectationsetting, driving alignment,
transparency into the work, visibilityinto the work, and supporting my
people along the way and helpingthem feel like they can do anything.
And in preparation for our talk today,I, I went back and I looked at some
of the books and resources that I hadread and, and helped me along the way.
(02:35):
And, and one of them was by AriWeinzweig, who's the founder
at Zingerman's in Ann Arbor.
And he wrote a book called "ALapsed Anarchist's Approach
to Managing Ourselves."
Because I think where this starts is howwe manage ourself, because the way we
treat ourselves shines to those around us.
(02:58):
If we are authentic, if we are kindto ourselves, if we make our choices
mindfully and with intentionality,if we contribute positively to those
around us, if we're kind and creative,it'll show, and it'll show and it'll
create a, a safe place for thosearound us to show the same in them.
(03:20):
So I start by asking myself, whatkind of boss do I wanna be from the
center of valuing self-managementand self-awareness, and then holding
myself accountable to allow myactions to flow in alignment with
that intention and that vision.
We've heard on this podcast before, thequote, I think from Maya Angelou, people
(03:42):
remember how you made them feel, notnecessarily what you may have said or did.
And that's, that's what I, Iwant, uh, to inspire people.
I want them to feel thatthey can do anything.
It's not a matter of any inherent quality,but them having the right resources
and support and access and sponsorship,they can do anything because I, I, I
(04:08):
believe that and I do sincerely care.
So, you know, coming full circle,I have given a lot of thought about
the kind of person I wanna be in theworld, the kind of leader I wanna be.
And ultimately, I wanna besomeone who gives others energy
rather than takes it away.
There's so much in our life that takesour energy away, that drains us every day.
(04:30):
But I wanna be someone who, to thebest of my ability gives it, who
inspires, who helps others discoverand own and honor their own greatness.
That's, uh, that's a beautiful start.
I think it's one of those beautifulstarts we've had on, on, on this podcast
series as if Jason and I are both sittinghere, of your words, I, I want to kind
(04:50):
of double click on one of these topics.
You say, you know, I, you're one ofthe first leaders that I hear off the
bat saying, "I want to make peoplefeel like they can do anything."
Can you go a little bit further into that?
Yeah.
I just, I believe it's possible.
I mean, y'all, I grew up ona farm in northwest Georgia.
My dad quit school in seventh grade.
(05:13):
Neither of my parents have degrees.
I was the first kid in myfamily to get, uh, a degree.
And I put myself through college.
And I don't necessarily feel likeI'm particularly special [laughs],
but I do have this sense of, well,you know, I believe it's possible.
(05:34):
And it's the people around me believingin me and sponsoring me and, and helping
me see my own greatness and what was,what was valid and valuable in, in my
voice and in my unique contributions.
I just feel so inspired to try togive that gift to others, to help them
develop their spirit and, and supportthose in need around me and just
(05:57):
respect and assist everyone I can atevery, at every opportunity that I can.
That said, I do have realstrong boundaries, [laughs].
So, you know, I, I do respectmyself as part of this, right?
I want to help, I wanna be goodfor others, but I am a person too.
And, you know, so I do respect myselfand there are behaviors and there are
(06:21):
things that I see out in the worldthat, you know, I won't be part of.
I, I won't lie, um, I won'tcheat, I won't steal [laughs].
Apart from that, uh, you know,there's a lot you can do to support
someone and, and help and help thembelieve that they can do anything.
And that's, it's just feedbackthat I've gotten over the years
from so many different people, fromso many different walks of life.
(06:43):
You know, just very, very differentpeople telling me, "You made me
feel like I could do anything."
And that's a really wonderful feeling.
So Adrienne, how much do you think, youknow, you went a bit into your background
and you also spoke about the fact thatthere's the things you wouldn't do.
T- this makes me think that youhave seen some anti-patterns
in your industry [laughs].
(07:04):
A few.
You've seen some things.
Do you think it is, is, is yourstory and your background that,
that uniquely positioned you to careabout the things that Jason and I
have spoken a lot about on this-
Yeah.
... podcast of, of-
Yeah.
... of, of compassion and,and, and being genuine?
Yep.
Where does it feel, and, and when itfills on your team or with colleagues
that you or your peers or your report to,how have you, how have you tackled it?
(07:28):
Yeah, no, that's one of the reasons I knewI was in good hands with you two because
you absolutely have covered this before.
And Jason in particular, I have resonatedwith some of the things you've said
in the early episodes about, you know,when you came to Silicon Valley and you
saw these people who you'd, you know,you saw them as just the humans that
they are, you know, were all fallible.
(07:49):
And I, I really, reallyappreciated you saying that.
Because early in my career I did spenda lot of energy myself and then helping
others understand why we don't need to putpeople up on a pedestal, why we don't need
to, you know, make heroes or idols of, youknow, folks in tech who we really admire.
They're just humans like us.
They struggle just like we do.
(08:10):
I think one of the things that, aboutmy experience going to the early part
of your question, Eiso, is I don'tstart from a center of deserving,
uh, or relieving that I deserve to behere [laughs], you know, like that I
deserve to be in my role as directorbecause of my own innate cleverness.
Like, there's something just specialabout me that that means that I
(08:32):
should be in charge or from a placeof just enjoying telling people
what to do just because I can.
That is one of the anti-patterns I see.
Absolutely.
People will get that title of directoror head of, and maybe Jason can speak
to this a little bit, and they take itas a license to just boss people around.
"Well, I mean, I'm imbued with the power.
Why can't I just do it?"
(08:53):
And I mean, I've seen it very recentlywhere very senior people, very, very
senior people have this attitude of,well, they just need to go do the work.
Like what...
You're the boss.
Like, why are they justnot listening to you?
And I think when we walk around all daywith this attitude of, "I'm so clever, I
deserve, uh, to be here," which we do seea lot, it makes it that much harder and
(09:17):
more painful to look within and do thatnecessary self-reflection, which will help
us grow because none of us are perfect.
We may have had through luck orconnections gotten that job, but we
still have some major blind spots.
And if we walk around with this attitudeof, "I deserve to be here, I'm so smart,
everyone should just listen to me."
It is, it is going to make, be that muchmore painful, you know, to look within
(09:41):
and see all of the ways that you don't.
And growth is so critical for howwe grow and deliver for others.
I had a, I had a, a really good friendand his dad is well off, uh, he's
done really well for himself in life.
Started from nothing, built upa busi- a bunch of businesses,
all that sort of stuff.
And, um, one day we were havingthis conversation, this is probably
10 years ago at this point.
(10:01):
And his, he was reflecting onthe conversation he had with
his father and his, his fathersaid something about like, like,
" they just need to go do this.
They need to blah, blah,blah, that they need to..."
Something like this.
And he said to his father, hewas like, "Dad, when was the
last time you ever had a boss?"
And he's like, "I never had a boss."
He was like, "You have no idea what it'slike for this person who's running a
bunch of your stores and doing a bunchof things to be in this situation.
(10:25):
You're projecting something."
And I, I see this a lot in SiliconValley where a lot of folks who are in
position to say, just go do something,have never actually been the boss.
They've never, or never had a boss.
They've, they've never been in aposition of being an engineer or a line
marketer or even a line salesperson.
You know, this, a lot of VCsor a lot of CEOs started out as
VCs or CEOs in a lot of cases.
(10:47):
And I find that if you don't understandthat other side of the fence at
all, you don't understand how torun organizations, you know how to
dictate to organizations, but youdon't know how to run organizations.
And I think about that quite abit because I'm sure that all of
us can experience the same thing.
But Adrienne, you and I in particular,I grew up as, as an engineer, and
I came up through those ranks.
(11:07):
And I remember at one point I wantedto become a manager just so I didn't
have to deal with my manager anymore.
[laughs] Yeah.
So just because, so I didn't have tofeel a certain way when I was interacting
with them, but even more so the, thepeople on my team didn't have to either.
Yes.
All my friends who were on thisteam, we were all getting beaten
down and it was not a fun experience.
(11:28):
Absolutely.
And you know, I've listened to a lotof y'all's episodes in the last week
in preparation for coming on today.
And you know, one of the things that Inoticed y'all kept kind of hitting on
and, and Eiso said, "I just wanna putthis to bed forever," is, you know, you
shouldn't mana- you shouldn't manageif you've never been an engineer.
And I was like, why are theseguys keep hitting on this?
(11:50):
I mean, I know, like partof my brain understands.
But ultimately I came down Imade this analogy of they want
empathy, they want empathy.
Empathy versus sympathy, right?
Because sympathy feels good in the moment.
You know, somebody sends you a card,"Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss,
whatever," but they don't get it.
(12:11):
They don't understand.
They're just showing you that they care.
But empathy, they've been there, theyunderstand, they know how you feel.
And I think that's one of thethings that catapulted me so
quickly from IC to manager.
I started out in frontline techsupport, you know, with multiple
monitors in front of me with a queueon the wall, seven applications,
(12:32):
open phone ringing off the hook.
And I'm, I'm talking tocustomers about bugs every day.
Well, when I got promoted toengineer, you better believe I was
super motivated to go fix those bugsI was hearing about all the time.
So I don't know, I just wantedto share that with y'all.
If there are listeners out therelike, "Why do they keep, why do
they keep harping on that [laughs]?"
I think that sympathy empathything is, can be really helpful.
(12:56):
I think...
In your words here, I thinksympathy can be faked-
Yes.
... empathy typically can't be.
So when someone's a genuine personand on the other side of the fence
and they feel it, they're like,"Oh, this person understands-"
Yes.
"... what's happening over here."
And I think on the, and you know, evenmake, taking it a little bit further
too, is I believe you could do that.
(13:17):
And I think a lot of people don'tbecause they don't know how to do that.
They don't, they can't actually beempathetic because they don't understand.
And the lack of understandingactually leads to negative outcomes.
And so the, the other side of thefence, when I think about what I wanted
to do with my career is show that Icould have the outsized outcomes just
like Silicon Valley drives for, butin the style at which I wanted to
(13:37):
do it and I, you know, it might bemore work for me, but it's possible.
And then, you know, along the way peopletold me I was crazy and you know, you're
just, you're absolutely nuts to thinkthat this is going to be a way to do this.
It's just easier to be the thingthat we've known for years.
But then I wanna be who I was.
I want to feel like I wasgoing to be as effective.
I think I would be less effective.
(13:58):
And one of my, the greatest satisfactionsI have personally gotten, even though
I'm not managing people directly anymore,I love the fact that, and my wife jokes
about this all the time, all the time.
But I will have had...
You know, 10 years ago, have hadsome conversations with folks who
basically I end up letting go.
And they will call me today-
Yes.
... asking me for advice.
Yes.
And that is one of the most satisfyingthings in the world because you realize
(14:21):
that they understand now, maybe it wasn'tback then, but they understand now that,
one, I probably had their best interestat heart, even if I had the businesses
best interests, I also had theirs.
And the other side of fence isthey don't have anybody else, which
is a very sad state of affairs-
So sad.
... too that in 10 years timeframebetween when I had my working
relationship with them to now, theyprobably haven't found anybody else.
(14:42):
Yeah.
That is so sad.
And I can absolutely relate.
I mean, I remember once when I had tolet someone go after a long process
of trying to work with that person,the, the first thing I, they said
to me after I delivered that news,you know, today is your last day.
They said, "Thank you so much for yourleadership and the way you've coached
and guided me and tried to help me.
(15:05):
It's been amazing andI, I won't forget it."
And, and just like the people whocontact you 10 years later, like they
feel that authenticity, they feelthat you really do care about them.
And I wish there were more of us, butI think this podcast and your work here
and the work of Lead Dev, I think thatwe are kind of helping a new generation.
(15:26):
But I, I, I hear you like, it is sad thatin that 10 years that there haven't been
others to help coach and sponsor them.
For everyone listening, I have a termfor, a slight term for this, it's not, not
the exact overlap, but I call it I callit psychologist versus sociologist mode.
Yes.
And I've, I might have talked aboutthis already on the podcast and I think
I need to write about it a little bitmore, but executives need to be able
to operate in two modes and use themappropriately at the appropriate times.
(15:49):
And I find that they get flipped.
I find that when an individual executiveis sitting across from somebody else,
they're actually trying to convincethe other person to understand them.
They're, they're saying,"I need you to believe me.
I need you to understand me.
I need you to understand this."
And they're actually trying to sellthe company's outcome and all that-
Yes.
... in an indi- to an individual andthey're having the wrong impact.
And then again, in, when they're in,in the exec room, they're actually
(16:11):
sometimes making business decisionsbased upon a specific person.
"We need to promote this person toVP otherwise they're gonna leave.
This salesperson's thebest, that sort of thing.
And we need to make sure that their regionexpands, therefore we're gonna do weird,
unnatural machinations on the business."
All that sort of stuff.
You need to operate in sociologistmode and make business decisions and
then figure out how they affect thepeople and then understand how you
(16:34):
can have that conversation with thepeople across from them and be in
psychologist mode at any one time.
And again, there's no root to why Ithink that there's massive organizational
dysfunctions in Silicon Valley.
Um, but I think that this is,this is one of the ones that
I find to be the most common.
'Cause people just don't knowactually how to lead and manage.
And they, they, they flipthe modes around quite a bit.
(16:54):
And is so painful when you are the one inthat room with that executive who's trying
so hard to convince you of something.
It's like, "Do you not thinkI'm a person with a brain?
Like I see what is going on here.
Like, I understand what you are tryingto do, and I do not feel heard at all.
I, I feel like you are talkingat me and I am not getting
(17:17):
anything out of this interaction."
Because, you know, for me, I think a lotof what drives me is I love to learn.
I've always been a learner.
I love to learn.
And one of the reasons why I spend so muchtime listening is because I get inputs.
You know, I get inputs that will helpme make better decisions, will help me
more fully understand the situation,the reality of what I'm working with.
(17:41):
You know, I made an analogy in, in ameeting recently where I said, it's
like we're, we're as a group, we'reputting together a puzzle, but all
of the pieces are turned over sothat you can't see the image, right?
And that's gonna be a really hardpuzzle to put together [laughs].
But if we turn those pieces over,if we understand what we're truly
(18:02):
working with, then we can put thatpuzzle together a lot faster and we
can get to our outcomes a lot faster.
And I just, it pains me that thoseexecutives don't see that, you know.
There's something you're, you'retouching upon, Adrienne, that I think
I'd like to take a step back on, right?
So, so getting to that point whereyou are feeling you can really
(18:23):
bring your, your full self to work.
You can show empathy, youcan be confident to...
'Cause showing empathy doesn'tcome without showing vulnerability.
Empathy without opening yourselfup, it's, it's not truly empathy.
It becomes sympathy.
And, and I like that model by the way.
I think it's a useful one and it'sgonna join the ranks of the Developing
Leadership frameworks in the show notes.
So please go check them out everyone.
(18:44):
At what point did you feelyou were confident in your
career to start doing so?
Because that also doesn't come overnight.
You know, I started right offthe bat, y'all, I really did.
You know, I was at a point in mylife where I was a career changer.
Um, I had been a small businessowner and I wanted to learn to code.
(19:06):
And this was about, youknow, 10, 15 years ago.
And I just, I just, I just felt likethere was a moment where, why not be real?
Why not tell people what I'm trying to do?
And I actually started a blog, a, awebsite called Coding with Knives because
I was a, I was a professional chef.
(19:27):
I, I owned a catering company andI was a, I was a private chef for
lots of families in the, the citywhere I was located at that time.
And so I could make kind of cookingand coding analogies, uh, and,
and give recipes and share aboutmyself as I learned how to code.
And I talked about how it was hard, andthankfully there were few key people in
(19:49):
the industry at that time, like JacobKaplan-Moss, Carol Willing, Russell
Keith-MaGee, who were also talking aboutthe importance of being vulnerable.
And they were, they weresaying that they struggle too.
And I was like, "Well, if, if thesegreat people can talk about, you know,
how they're struggling and, and how theyhave self-compassion through it, you
(20:11):
know, maybe I, what do I have to lose?"
And so I've, I've just kind of been doingit from the beginning and it is hard.
I mean, I'm nervous tocome on this podcast today.
But I have found again and again thatthe reward for taking the risk and
trying is so much greater than not.
So, so why not try?
(20:33):
One of the things I think you saidthere, said there too is, interesting
because I think the vulnerabilityis one thing I think we can talk
about more on the podcast too.
I have always thought of thisas, I just wanna show people
that I'm an actual human too.
And I don't, I didn't ever approach itwith a nec- with a idea of necessarily
(20:54):
being vulnerable, but I just wantpeople to know that I was a human
too and I struggled with things andI had my own fears and wishes and
wants and all that sort of stuff.
Or I was going through my ownshit at home with the kids or
the spouse or whatever it was.
Because I think that's importantto, to show them on the other side.
One of the, the failure modes I seein this when people bringing this
(21:16):
up and say, "This is who I wanna betoo," what I find is that there's this
dichotomy between being a leader andbeing a person's manager sometimes.
And this can get confused,which is I am here to protect
you as opposed to lead you.
And a lot of failure modes I find whenpeople are on this side of the fence
(21:38):
and they're overly here, is I will be...
this is...
and I think Google termthe term shit umbrella.
Which is, it's us against everybody else.
It's our team.
We're the land of well put togethertoys and everyone else is the, the
island of misfit toys type of deal.
We'll be the, that sort of thing.
And I find that if, if thatis where people are in that
spectrum, universally, that fails.
And they themselves burn out, faila- all across the board because it's,
(22:01):
it's, again, it's actually a disservice.
It is, that is to me, a fakedempathy, sympathy land, which is more
of a, I'm not sure how to describethis, but it, it never works out.
No.
And it's a bit of an overcorrectionas well, just to be fair.
You know, a lot of peoplehave had terrible bosses.
They have seen anti-patterns, theyhave literally been yelled at.
(22:22):
And, and I, I see that from somegreat folks it's an overcorrection.
You know, they say, "I don't wanna bethat, and so I'm gonna go way over."
But you're absolutely right.
I think one of the ways I'vebeen blessed is very early in my
leadership career, I saw that the shitumbrella thing was a total illusion.
It was a total dead end.
(22:43):
It is not the kind of person that Iwanted to be or how I wanted to lead.
I don't want to protect people.
I want to live in the world ofreal things of reality and the
shit umbrella is not reality.
You know, that is protection and thatis just, it's just not the truth.
And-
Well, it's a coddling of a different type.
It is, it is, it is.
And I, I don't think folks alwaysrealize that they're doing that, but I
(23:07):
think it, it's along the same vein ofbeing afraid to give difficult feedback-
Yes.
... because you're afraidof the re- uh, reaction.
Yes.
And we should never withholdconstructive or difficult
feedback out of fear of reaction.
Lord knows, I don't.
I mean, I have only ever builttrust by being real and giving
(23:28):
that very difficult feedback ina loving way, in a compassionate
way, not in an asshole way at all.
But it's when you, when you acknowledgethe behavior, when you state the
behavior, we state the impact of thebehavior and you encourage a different,
more effective future behaviorthat is a winning recipe, you know?
(23:49):
There's a, this goes backto podcast we just literally
released yesterday on Calendar-
[laughs] loved it.
... this is about being liked-
Yes.
... as well.
Because I find that, again, likethere's again, many different, there's
never ever one reason why somebodydoes a certain type of behavior.
You can fall into behavior or patternfor a lot of different reasons.
But one of the most common onesin my, my view is that someone
(24:10):
wants to be liked by their team.
And so they'll, they believe thatto be liked by their team, they
need to foster this kind of attitudeor, or approach or whatever.
And again, you know, GitHub, Heroku andCanonical is my most recent history, and
I would say that I've seen, seen thispattern emerge, which is the, the most
telling way I've always seen it, is us vthem internal to the company mentality.
(24:32):
And in that case, it's like theyhave a small, tiny tribe of people
and they're going to, to work likehell to keep that tribe together.
And is always been confusing as anexecutive for the past 10 years, is I try
to foster the inside versus the outside,the email domain type of attitude.
And this is like subdomain mentalityand it gets really hard to work through.
(24:56):
And I would hope that we as peoplein the world would generally
speak, think of like inside oroutside the earth boundary domain.
But we're never gonna get there.
Like just, we're never,it's never gonna be a thing.
But at a very minimum, I wanna beinside or no, outside my family and
inside the, outside the email domainfor work and, and that sort of approach.
A lot of this comes down to what we,we see as the personality types or the
(25:20):
environments that make people want tobe king or queen of their own kingdoms.
Right?
Like an extreme, andthis is academia, right?
Anybody who's been in academia, and, andif you think about it, most people coming
into academia do not have that mindsetof wanting to, to own their own little
tribe and their own little domain, but theenvironment in which the incentives are
set out, the size of the organizations,like start encouraging this.
(25:43):
And all of a sudden you find yourselflike in, in, in that environment.
I think at companies, we startseeing the same thing happen
directly correlated with size, right?
Because we, we just start falling offlike, I dunno if it's Dunbar's number or,
or if it's something else, like we startfalling off the fact that all of a sudden
both size and incentives no longer alignto actually put the company first, because
(26:07):
that's what we're talking about, right?
And, and putting the, and, and I thinkpeople not realizing that putting
the company first does not mean notputting people first inside the company.
It's, it's gotta be avery clear distinction.
I think because again, like going backto sociologists and psychologists mode,
like it's putting the company first is,is absolutely putting people first too.
If you take the mentality of,you know, rising tide rises all
(26:29):
boats, there's an approach to this.
Now what happens, I think overallhere is that we lose sight of that.
The incentive structuresare really important.
They break down because it actuallyfosters internal competition or
a whole bunch of other things.
And then there's the notion of whatyour day to day looks like and where
you as a leader or manager sometimescan draw your energies from too, or how
(26:50):
you re you might reflect upon yourself.
And again, going back to what I wantedto be liked early in my career, and
I was not as confident, that wasan important feedback mechanism.
How my team responded to me wasan important feedback mechanism
that I over-rotated onto.
And then I'll flip around to oneother thing is when a company
basically says, we're going to measurethe morale of our organization,
(27:15):
and it's abstracted from leader.
So Google's really famous for doingthis, which is, "Hey, we're gonna
measure the overall morale of anorganization of several thousand people
to see how the executive is doing."
It's actually I think it's one of theworst things you could possibly do if
you're taking a company view approachfirst, because you actually have to do it
at the micro level to understand how it'sworking on your team, not the division.
(27:35):
And it's it just causesall sorts of bad behaviors.
But it's not easy.
You can, how, how How easy is it tomanage several hundred thousand people-
Sure.
... and actually incent to the right behaviorsand stuff that's not, not straightforward.
Yeah.
I, I was, I was delighted when Eisoasked you that question in that episode,
how important is it to you to be liked?
(27:55):
And I feel like, you know, Jason beingvulnerable here, you and I took kind
of opposite paths, you know, earlierin your career you were more concerned
with being liked, early in my career,I got feedback that I was intimidating.
Okay, now we know thatthat's pretty common.
Women get that, you know, feedbackthat say we're intimidating, you
(28:17):
know, when maybe we're behavingjust as the men are, but for some
reason with us it's intimidating.
Setting that aside, there was somewisdom in that feedback at that time.
You know, I, I did carrymyself with authority.
I did speak authoritatively in meetingsand there was an element of that that
I needed to grow through and understandthat I didn't need to, you know, maybe
(28:41):
be as forceful as I was being, youknow, because I, I had legitimacy in
that room I was there for a reason.
But so now later in life I find myselfcoaching managers who are very concerned
with being liked even though they'vebeen in the industry for a long time.
And when I've found that, you know, comeup on my teams, I've tried to get them to
(29:05):
focus on the outcomes and the, the what wewant, you know, whether we're doing sprint
planning or, you know, capacity planning.
Like what is the outcomethat we're going for here?
Because the outcome of beingliked, frankly, who in the
world does that help [laughs]?
I mean, it doesn't evenhelp me really that much.
(29:25):
It certainly doesn't help the peoplearound you or the company, and it's
not, you know, ultimately what any ofour ICs want as a desirable outcome.
They want you to helpthem grow in their career.
They want you to help themgive them good opportunities.
They want you to make sure thatthey're doing valuable work
as part of the critical path.
Whether they like you necessarily,that's, that's not super
(29:50):
top of mind for them, right?
Um, we should create collegialenvironments where people can feel
safe to fail and they can experimentand they can be who they really are,
but that hyper focus on being likedcan, can really cause some issues.
Can you, I, I wanna throw, uh...
and, and while I agree with you, I,I want to throw a tough question.
(30:10):
We talk a lot about safeenvironments, high empathy.
Can you sit in a room with someone wherethere's high empathy and it's a safe
environment when the person acro- when youdon't like the person across the table?
I can, I'll take a stabat this one real quickly.
Um, I think you can, while difficultto do it, it's not the default.
(30:35):
And I think that no matter who youare, you will fail doing it more
times than you don't in some cases.
Now, the way that I think you canapproach it and do it is you, you, you,
again, you divorce yourself from theperson and you make it about outcomes
and you make it about certain behaviors.
I, I, a- again, something else I've saidon here too is I don't need you to agree
(30:57):
with me, I might need a behavior change.
Yes, absolutely.
And that is, that is a distinctdifference is sometimes we're trying
to get each other to agree with us.
And actually at the end of the day, Idon't actually like care about that,
in many situations I just might needa behavior change or something else.
And the, the only time I've ever hadthis where I still, I can still have
(31:18):
empathy and almost vi- visceral dislikeof the person is when they're subterfuge
or there's, this person who's likeintentionally trying to sabotage you or
your career, your, your reputation, butthey also have a shitty home life and you
know that they were brought up poorly.
But at the end of the day, here'ssomething else I want people on
(31:39):
the podcast to take accountabilityfor too, to hear from the
podcast and, and everyone else.
If, if you reach adulthood and you'repaying taxes and you're 30, but if you're
particularly 40 years old, you need tobecome a fully formed functional adult
and you need to live in the real world.
And, and yeah, we all, a lot ofpeople grew up like I, you know,
Adrienne and I sounds like we grewup very similar in a lot of ways.
(31:59):
You, you get one, that might get you ina door, but it doesn't keep you anywhere.
Absolutely.
It can't keep you anywhere.
You might be able to get througha door or whatever because of the
way you were brought up or, orsome of the other functions, you
actually have to still do the job.
And if you're not doingthe job at the end of...
that's all I'm gonna say, yougotta, you gotta do the job,
(32:19):
the...
Yeah.
You, you have to be the adult.
You have to be able tosit across from somebody.
And even if you don't like themto use a phrase, you have to find
a way to be effective with them.
And for me, I don't mind being adork, I don't mind sounding dorky.
I will literally say thingslike, "Look, I wanna win.
I wanna win and I wantyou to win with me."
(32:42):
And how fricking dorky does that sound?
But I don't care.
And so I really try to let peopleknow where my heart is, even when...
And, and Jason, you and Iabsolutely have this in common.
I have dealt with some major manipulationin my career and that hurts because
I'm an earnest person and I, I'msomebody who trusts people and you
(33:04):
know, when I see that, that that isvery difficult for me, but we still
have to work through it as best we can.
We have to be grownups and youknow, we have to focus on that
outcome and get there together.
I think you said something Adrienneand, uh, I, I usually, I, I don't
talk as much about my, my past on,on this podcast as Jason does you do
(33:25):
say something that really resonates.
What most people don't know about meis that I, I switched schools probably
close to about eight or nine times,having been bullied a lot growing up.
And, uh, and until I was inmy mid-teens, I was pretty
much scared to talk to people.
It's kind of funny 'cause I do a lotof talking these days, but I have
learned that because of that I becameincredibly hypersensitive to being in
(33:49):
environments with people who are assholes.
And, and if you, if you ask me, youknow, "Why is it good to be a founder?"
[laughs], and like you said, get theopportunity to, to be the boss and then
you never are truly the boss becauseyou're, you're part of a, of a massive
team of people trying to accomplishsomething is actually, I always say,
(34:10):
well, you know, well you get to createyour own bubble and, and I think
this is the part where the, the shitumbrella becomes difficult, right?
Because when you have a leader whois trying to create a great positive
well and winning team bubble insidean organization where the environment
doesn't necessarily lead to that, it comeswith the good and the bad sides of it.
(34:34):
And that's the tricky thing here, right?
I think the shit umbrella can probablybe brought out into some framework
that we think about it some daythat separates it into, you know,
the, the, the shit umbrella for goodreasons, the one for bad reasons.
The, the separation between still puttingthe company first and putting the, the
people first, but in the right way.
And I think this is what we keep coming ontoday that there, there's good parts to it
(34:55):
and there's there there's bad parts to it.
Well I think it comes down to intention.
Adrienne, before the podcast, youmentioned intention a couple of times.
I feel like that is what, what,what's your the real motivation
for creating the shit umbrella?
Is it a personal gain or is it becausethere's so much anarchy outside of it?
And yeah, you're, you can still exposeyour team to it and say, "Hey listen,
(35:17):
this is going on and be real aboutit and here's what we're gonna do."
But you know, the intention is stillto, to create a high performing team.
Not, not, not something maybepersonal or, uh, selfishly motivated.
Yeah.
And I think that's one thing thatI've tried to do with my managers is
create a safe space where they reallycan explore that motivation knowing
(35:38):
that I'm not gonna judge them or I'mnot gonna think less of them when the
ugly things come out of their mouth.
Like, I mean, I've discovered partof the motivation for some of this
behavior is I'm afraid I'll lose my job.
You know, if people aren't happy andthey leave, well then I'm gonna be
judged on retention and then I'm goingto get a lower performance score.
And I'm like, you know, thankyou for sharing with that.
(36:00):
Thank you for being real.
I'm glad we've been able to createa space where you can share that.
But we need to talk about, you know,what we're really optimizing for here
and know that I'll have your back.
You know, people leave for allsorts of reasons and we will
talk through that as part of yourperformance review if we need to.
But yeah.
(36:20):
I think there's two things, andprobably worth explaining in
another future podcast too, Eiso.
But one of the things would be this is,they have a saying which is, " It's never
a good time to introduce yourself toyour neighbor when your house on fire.
That work should have beendone a long time ago."
And [laughs], I think about this withyour reputation inside organizations.
'Cause you get a lot of leeway if you havea, you know, cultivated a good reputation.
(36:43):
And this is about having people acrossthe organization know who you are.
And you know, in that way, thatsaved me a couple of times because
in some pretty caustic environments,people would say some nasty things
about you that weren't true.
And like, this is the weirdest thingabout Silicon Valley is that people
will literally just make stuff up.
They absolutely will.
And, and it's, and it's crazy.
(37:03):
But the thing that saved me personallyin that situation, I think others, is
that, you know, most people who wouldhear it be like, "Yeah, that, that sounds
like that dude that sounds like him.
Okay, whatever."
And they dismiss it.
And interestingly, they dismissed thepeople who are bringing it up more.
So I'm very thankful that that wasa work that was done on my part and
I felt good about it and that myreputation preceded myself that way.
(37:25):
But the other important part about someof that as well is that it actually,
again, it broadcasts out to theorganization some values that you hold
and, you know, everyone has differentversions of these for themselves,
but also says who you're going tobe and what you're going to go do.
And many people don't do that.
So they're unmoored in those valuesand they can change on the whims
(37:48):
and things of that in, in the world.
But you don't, you don't need to.
Everyone gives you a lot moreleeway and benefit of the doubt too.
Yep.
And, and one of the ways I help do areset on one of the teams where I was
seeing this as a particular issue isI, I did an all hands with the group
and I just said, "Look here, we'rehere to drive value for our customers.
(38:09):
We are here to deliver real things.
Shipping is our heartbeat,Shipping is how we learn.
Shipping is how we do better.
But why does all of this matter?
Um, it matters because it's what we'rehere to do, but it also matters because
it helps you and I care an awful lotabout you and helping you grow and
helping you create a track record ofdelivery that you are proud of, that you
(38:31):
are excited about, that will help yoube able to go anywhere and do anything.
So let's use every day, every ceremony,every moment, every opportunity to
make it the best that we absolutelycan so that you can build that
track record so you are unstoppable.
And hey, your managers aregoing to help you with that.
They are going tosupport you through that.
(38:52):
They're gonna make sure expectationsare clear and that you have the
tools you need to be successful."
And that is the expectationI'm setting as a senior leader.
And that is what I'm holdingthem accountable for.
Adrienne, I don't think we could havebetter words to end today's episode on.
That was fantastic.
Thank you so much for being,uh, with us here today.
Thank you so much.
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