Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Akil and for
today's episode we covered career opportunities and growth
give you a little insight in today's Tech market and we cover
leadership. What makes a great Tech later
joining me today is Jeff Perry was a career and Leadership
coach, as well as being the founder of more than
engineering. I'll put all the links to a
socials in the description below.
And with that being said, enjoy the episode.
Laptop Mike doesn't do, doesn't doesn't do any good.
Exactly. So, the pockets is part of a
project or part of one of the projects that you're already
working on, what are some others?
Yeah, so I got a few different programs and things that I run
with engineers and Technology professionals around leadership
and career coaching and stuff like that.
So one of them is called the engineering career accelerator
program, that's kind of my Flagship program.
They've been running for almost two years since since I created
it and it's really about helping people make intentional career.
Ins. So especially the pandemic and
other situations people have been like, hey You know, I'm
trying to figure out where I really want to go and my career,
what's important to me and things like this.
And so we try and look at the big picture and move through
this process with a bunch of curated resources that have
created for them. Yeah.
They get one-on-one work with me but also there's there's a group
or Community aspect and training and almost like a mastermind
experience with with other people are also moving through
similar experiences and we do that together through that
engineering career accelerator program.
Built some, I'm in the pilot stage of building some other
programs or more focused on the leadership and personal
development side. I do a lot on mindsets and how
do we actually takes a personal shift?
We want to make whether that's a goal, I have to, to be a better
leader to delegate, and let go more or I need to be able to set
boundaries and be able to take care of myself so that I can,
you know, be who I need to be. Or to be more present with
people. I mean, whatever.
That is a lot of times those sorts of shifts that people are
trying to make, our are not quite as easy to make a change
or learn how to do is like, say, learning a technical thing, like
learning a new software language or or learning a new technical
skill or something like that. In fact, some some psychologists
will call sort of separate those, and One, an Adaptive
change versus a technical change that we're trying to make,
right? The technical changes, pretty
straightforward. You take a course.
You do some practice, you can learn how to do something.
Adaptive change means that we actually need to change
internally, some of our belief systems and assumptions we have
about ourselves and our mindsets and things.
And so there's some I've done a pilot of a program that works on
some of those things. Yeah, also include some things
around, time management, productivity, building,
meaningful, All relationships in our careers and other areas
finding mentors. But so it's really fun to see
people. Really make some some shifts
there and then we can go further with with deeper one-on-one
coaching. Sometimes if people need is was
the so was the main audience? They're like, is it people that
are just out of school more early in career or like the
experienced professionals? Yeah, usually almost always
experienced professionals. People can out and in their
careers, And maybe looking to make that leadership jump or
into senior tech technical leaders.
Yeah, even all the way up to executive level leaders and
things like that with, you know, executive vp's and ctOS and work
with a few of those UPS of engineering.
And so, I worked with the wide range of people and experiences
over the years, but it's fun to see.
Hey, the principles are the same Because really it's we're still
working with people who need to make some shifts, need to make
some changes. And you know, we all we all need
that that help no matter how experienced or you have or
whatever we are. Yeah, I mean the reason why I
ask is because I think the people that are more experienced
in that Curry already, they've narrowed down kind of what they
need to focus on. And usually it's not necessarily
the technical skills, right? When you start off, you're like
okay how do we resolve this on a technical level?
And once you've got that down that kind of fits in your
routine, it's already programmed in you, then you start looking
outside of that and once you notice either, you're not
getting as much influence or you're not communicating how
well you want to or things are just not happening the way you
want to, then you start looking at.
Okay, what am I doing wrong, or what can I do differently?
But I think also because you're looking at experienced
professionals, they've already been programmed in a way of
working or a way of thinking, which is then why if you want
Change that behavior. It's a lot more difficult than
picking up a new tool. If we're talking about skill,
set, and take right? And and it can be a little bit
different. I mean, I think you're right,
they've established most of those technical things they need
to do, but the things that they need to do in terms of getting
clarity's, as far as how they apply those things, and where
they want to create the impact and, and utilize their skill
sets in different ways. And also still at that Point,
like whether they're, I've had people who are just three to
five years away from retirement, or maybe 10 15 years away from
retirement, or in some of the ways still.
Like, they're trying to think of what, what's the Legacy that I
want to leave? How do I want to end this
career? That I'm in that I've worked so
hard to invest my time in my effort into just, how do I want
to finish that and it creates different thoughts and feelings
in terms of what's Really important to them and in this
phase. Yeah.
But still they go back to a lot of the principles that people
need to work on. Is this idea of I caught career
Clarity? Like really defining the things
that are important to them and that's going to shift over time?
It's not like you, you answer one question at one time of year
career and suddenly you've got everything mapped out and x
marks the spot. And you got every, you know,
this perfect treasure map to to this.
Destination. Yeah that would be easy if if it
was that easy that'd be that'd be great.
Maybe I mean maybe it sounds good but also think about if if
things in life were that easy we wouldn't learn and grow very
much directly life. Would be less exciting.
Probably. Yeah.
Yeah, I think would be bored pretty quick.
So so the challenge is, and the struggle and stuff is, is what's
really good for us in so many instances.
But, you know, but getting this Clarity and we can talk a lot
more about some of the tools and way to do that.
Today, I'm happy to do that. It's fun because it's so
important though. You know, to have a Purpose
Driven approach to be intentional to be proactive in
terms of what we're trying to do, who we're trying to become
in our lives and our careers. And when we can do that with
feel like we're moving towards something, you know, they were
really Driven by that. We're excited about.
Then suddenly we have more motivation, we have that that
ability to push through the challenges that we face.
And we also deliver more impact than we do better work in that
situation, right? So that's some of the things
that I just believe highly and if we can help people get
aligned whether things are important to them, then they can
deliver greater impact, which is critical.
We're talking about engineering and Technology because if we can
put people in the right spots to succeed and do their best work,
then we can deliver those innovations that and really
unlock their potential in so many different ways.
Yeah, it's interesting. If I think back to Clarity and
what that means for me, I've usually had it when I step kind
of out of my daily routine. Right.
I think if people are going to stuck in your own routine, you
get kind of caught up by time and you're in that routine is
hard kind of stepping out of it and being Okay.
What is this routine actually and do we need to make a shift?
This aligned with my goals or what even are my goals?
Or what do I value either in Life or in a job, right?
Those questions don't come naturally.
You have to be triggered through something and it can usually be
a book or a podcast or an audiobook.
For me is usually a conversation with people asking questions and
I'm like God my internal thought process.
All of a sudden I need to communicate and that's what I'm
like, okay, these things we actually need to work on Or
things get a lot more clearer when I actually externalize my
thoughts in that way, how do you get that Clarity or what is your
kind of work process there? Yeah.
So we can talk about a lot of different areas and you
mentioned some but just because I know a lot of people who are
listening here are probably doing something else they're
driving or exercising or doing something else actually put
together a free resource for Beyond coding listeners.
That people can go grab to after or during our session today at
www.findingking.com accelerator.com Beyond coding.
So, so, So people can go grab that and has a bunch of
different tools and resources in their I call it my career
Clarity checklist. Yeah, if you can go grab their
so so as a free resource we can point people to use but I think
you're right. There's some sort of resource or
conversation or something that is outside of our day-to-day
that it's a very introspective or reflective process that we
need to get into to really think bigger than This is what I'm
doing right now. Yeah.
And so there's that there's a number of different tools or
ideas. We can talk about one of them is
getting down to that deeper level of motivation.
Intrinsic motivation, what drives us deeper Beyond.
Like we kind of talk. There's a lot we talked about
goals like this is what I want to do this, what I want to
accomplish and that's kind of a that surface-level piece like
maybe I want to make a certain amount of money in my career.
I want to get it, this sort of title.
Yeah, where I want to live in this city or have this sort of
work-life balance or whatever that is.
Right. But what's the purpose behind
the goal? What's the goal behind the goal?
Right. What's the Y?
And so one of the tools that I use a lot to help people
identify that, I actually learned from my days when I was
in. So after I did software for a
while, I did mechanical engineering but then I was in
manufacturing for a while. And one of the things we are
always trying to do is improve quality and whenever there's a
quality issue, you're creating physical products and software
products to is, Is you have to do like a root cause analysis
and figure out what's really the cause of the issue?
Exactly deeper and so, one of the tools we use, maybe you're
familiar with this is called the five wise where you say, hey,
what's the problem, okay, why did that happen?
And then keep asking, okay, we answer that.
Why did that happen and keep going deep?
At least five levels deep, you know, asking the question, why?
Five times we can apply the same thing with a goal and, and
trying to ask yourself why that's important exactly.
Use a very simple example. Someone has a goal.
They want to make a certain amount of money in their career.
Okay, why is that right? So they might say you know I
want to be able to own a house okay?
You know buy a house okay. Well why is that important?
Well I didn't have that as a kid or I want to be able to provide
for my family or something. Okay.
Why is that important? What I want to be able to give
my family, you know, that experiences they want or I want
to be able Able to grow that investment over time.
Like whatever that is you get it, you're going to uncover
these you ask why? Again you ask why again, go at
least five levels, we can go six, seven, eight levels deep
but in the end you're going to come down to something that's a
lot deeper than. I want to make a certain amount
of money. You're going to come down to 0.
This is really important to me because of something that I
believe about myself or about the world around me or something
and you're going to identify that.
And suddenly that can become this.
Much more powerful piece to understand.
This is why I've had people tell me.
Well, I want to understand and find that Clarity and find a
career that is important to me because I saw both of my parents
be very unhappy in their careers and that affected me as a child
when I was growing up. Yeah.
Okay. That's a much deeper level of
motivation to try and figure this out and build a career of
meaning, then then just making a bunch of money.
Huh. So and so, so so all sorts of
things that could come up and it's Unique to every person.
But that's the beauty of it, we get outside of our daily
routines. Like we've talked about, we go
more introspective and suddenly we can get clarity and and
expose these things. That might be a little more
unconscious and bring it to the Forefront.
Yeah. And and be driven by that.
I'm wondering if you going to peel that onion with the with
the. Why questions are some of those
Kind of underlying goals is there.
How do you say that are their commonalities?
Because I would either assume that a lot of goals are very
personal. Exactly with the example that
you gave my parents were unhappy or that reflected on me or I
always saw that stuff like that. I don't know if those would be
common or not. What have you would have you
noticed there? Yes.
Oh I don't some things are common, right.
When people are trying to dive in and figure out, OK, why do I
want to make this change while a lot of people have this desire
for growth? Yeah.
Where a lot of people feel maybe at some point there there
stagnated in their life or their career.
You know, there's this drive like I don't want to just be
complacent and just stay where I'm at because I feel like I'm
stuck I'm not enjoying I'm doing very much and I'm not engaged or
growing and so that things like that are pretty common.
Yeah. Right.
Like the desire to continue to grow and improve but those
deeper level of things may be connected to family systems or
in some cases traumatic events, whether it worked or home or
family, or other things. Like those are very personal and
aren't don't see. A lot of commonality.
Exactly. But that's also where people get
a lot more personal and vulnerable and connected to
those big goals and why it's really important to them.
Yeah, right. It's a it's important to have
both of those, we can find those common goals.
Yeah, there's common drivers. But the more people are willing
to dig a little bit deeper the more impactful.
It can be for them. Yeah, that makes sense.
As you lay it out like the goals or the the reasons behind the
goals would I would obviously be personal, right?
Because every context is different the way you grew up
the environment, the diversity in there is huge so yeah, right
probably makes sense. That there's not a lot that is
common there, but the thing that is common, the thing that you
laid out, people feeling stock idea, you wouldn't have that
right? Ideally you would have something
within the organization that they could go to and they can
get unstuck, right? Whether it's It's a new position
or some challenging new thing in what they're already doing.
Ideally people shouldn't feel stuck yet they do.
Right, is there something from an organizational level?
That is lacking. Are they lacking those
conversations? They're having when they're
talking to you like, why why do people feeling stuck in the
first place? All sorts of reasons sometimes.
Yes, sometimes, no. That there's something going on
in the organization, right? Sometimes, an organization can
do right by the employee, by actually supporting them to go
and do something else. Yeah.
Right, like for so many reasons, whether that's alignment with
the purpose of the organization and someone just realizes over
time, that that's not aligned with the things that are
important to them, you know, in terms of causes or products or
This is, you know, whatever the organization is focused on and
that's okay. Like you wouldn't want people to
stick around long term, it's not going to be great for the
organization if they stick around.
Yeah. Right.
You want people who are really aligned and that's okay.
Because I had people who had experiences in medical devices
and some, some people really love that and like really wanted
to go into medical devices because they have a huge passion
for the healthcare industry. I had one person.
Person who specifically wanted to get out of that, you know,
because they really just didn't feel connection to that.
But they really wanted to get into green energy and
Sustainable Building and things like that.
And so that's it's a different context and it's not the thing.
Nothing that the organization was going to change to make that
better for that person, right? So sometimes the organization
can't do anything but absolutely some of those conversations
you're talking about how do we engage this person?
Make sure that we Are utilizing their strength.
Continuing to give them opportunities to be pushed.
Yeah, and learn and grow all too often, I think organizations or
leaders can sort of just put people in a box.
That's what we hired you to do. And this is what you're going to
continue to do, right? Yeah.
And and just sort of hope that, that person is going to run and
continue to operate that way and forget to connect with the
person, right? They sort of see.
Some of the employment experiences in the people in the
organization as as transactional.
Yeah, right. We're just, you know, we're
paying you to do a job, we expect you to do the job and
hopefully you do, you know, you do well at it puts rather than
shifting to a transformational approach?
Hey, in hiring you, we expect you to do great work, but we
also want to support you in growing and becoming who you
want to be. And if we can do that, that's
going to be a win-win. Both of us because you're going
to want to stick around, you're going to be more engaged.
You're going to do great work, you can get in to deliver great
impact, you know? And and this can be great for
us, it's also going to be great for for you.
And so, trying to take a transformational approach to
leadership and employment and building people can have a much
greater impact in some organizations do that.
Well some some don't some sometimes it's very team
dependent with especially with in very large organizations.
Yeah. You know, I hear I hear great
stories and horror He's from from some of the biggest names
in Tech and it, you know, so everyone's got different
experiences but but in all things were trying to align the
organization, the team goals with the individuals, how we put
the right people in the right seats, in the right situations.
Yeah, and so that everyone can win.
Now, make sense. It does.
When you say people see People see people as part of a process
or as a transaction. Right, a means to an end, that
is quite sad and I think it's I think it is an outdated thought
and I do she it shifting towards the better more and more because
a lot of information is out there and open and organizations
will get a lot of flack. Rightfully so for not treating
their people as people as humans, right?
If they're treating them as part of a process, then it will get
out there the last A few examples of scene is because
lots more layoffs are happening right now.
When a leon Lai when layoffs are imminent, or when information is
not fully transparent, people, go on LinkedIn.
People go on Twitter and you know, exactly which
organizations either are going to have layoffs.
Or I just really bad at giving out the information and putting
people at ease for their job security in their their
livelihood, right? Because right.
You can say how it's not about the money.
You should also enjoy, whatever. You're doing, but it is your
livelihood, it's kind of the only for the most people, the
only source of income they have. So when it is at stake, man,
it's incredibly bad. If organizations?
Don't don't treat that well, Right.
And on the other side, I've seen great examples on LinkedIn and
other places where organization. I mean, sometimes the realities
of business, you know, layoffs need to happen, right?
So, it's not like a big bad business, they lay off their
there, an evil thing, but sometimes that's just the
realities because in order for them to continue survive and
employ, anybody, you know, they need to do that, right?
So it's not always a terrible thing, but the way you're
talking The way they go about doing that.
And I've seen experiences and examples of other sorts of
companies who have done that really well.
And we're even through that really difficult situation.
Yeah. Employees have felt supported,
they felt like, hey, the people in the organization, the leaders
that made that decision were supporting me and helping me to
create that transition whether that's they were very willing to
be references. Say hey, anyone who worked for
me even though they're not on my team like we can employ them
anymore, I I will vouch for any one of them or I'm going to open
up my network and anyone that I can to help these people get
something new. Yeah, it's a completely
different approach and that's going to build loyalty even to
and and great feelings. Like we're not Burning Bridges.
We're creating Bridges exactly for people to New Opportunities
and situations. And that that's going to when
you credibility and loyalty in the marketplace as well as those
people. Who they're always going to
still talk about their experience of that company.
Quite positively, even if they got like a yeah, just because
the realities of business sometimes.
Yeah. Like the analogy of the The
Burning Bridges, right? Because if you create those
bridges for the people that you can't keep on, right, whatever?
Whatever the reason may be, it's still increases your longevity
of a company, right? If you all of a sudden you're up
and coming again and you start hiring either, people will know
because they've read something or they will remember because
you've done something, right? Right?
And I think if you burn those bridges, you're all but done,
right? That is one of the final things
that happens before you actually go under the ground.
So keeping those relationships and building those bridges or
creating new ones. As you say, I think that's
incredibly an incredibly good job.
If you do that as a company, Right.
Right? Because so much of business and
stuff is relationships and just the way that people feel about
you, your product, your service? Yeah.
And that's going to Spur all sorts of different results for
you. If you can do that in the right
way and how you treat your employees, Says a lot about how
you're going to treat your customers and how people feel
connected to that. Absolutely completely agree with
that if we if we look at the market now or let's start with a
few years back, there was a huge boom and people were being hired
left and right, right? It was in the middle of covid.
A lot of stuff was remote anyways, especially in Europe,
especially in Amsterdam where I live.
People saw opportunities, that weren't there before.
There was a lot of overseas companies hiring salaries went
up the Roof different skills here.
And there, there was a lot of opportunity and now it's
trending towards more recession, and you're seeing a lot more
layoffs happening in that way. I think it's one of the biggest
kind of reality checks, for a lot of people in Tech that yet,
it's not always going to be booming.
And you're not always gonna earn your dream salary in a way
because I do think it's declining.
Where do you see? It's going?
Or what's the trend you've seen so far?
Yeah, so I don't have any crystal ball here, but I still
see a mix, right? So, I still see some people in
some Industries and some functions, you know, demanding
and getting big salaries, and huge pay increases, and things
like that. Yeah.
But you're right. I mean, that was always really
inflated. It's really hard for people for
companies to keep people. There's a lot here in the US and
I don't know how much this trickled into conversations in
Europe and things talked, a lot about the great.
Nation. We had more people quitting
their jobs, you know, during that time, especially like 20
21. Yeah.
Then in any other period in the last like 40 or 50 years like
deciding to move to something new and that's that's whether
they had a new opportunity or they're just saying you know
going through all covid stuff and saying, this is not how I
want to live my life. I got to take a reset and
sometimes they just quit with nothing on the other side, all
sorts of different reasons but but Higher rates of people
leaving than any other point in the last few decades.
Yeah. And but absolutely is, we've
come in here some of the economic, you know, things of
have trickled through the system with a lot of inflation and
other things that a lot of business realities, some of the,
some of the economic things, cooling down for companies and
some of that's purposeful on the economic side because to reduce
inflation, you need to reduce demand a little And so business
revenues are going to go down. Yeah, which means that
businesses need to relax some of their opportunities as far as
how many people they can employ or how much they can pay no
right to be able to continue to operate.
So yeah, some of that is absolutely happening seems like
almost every day. There's another lay off that I
hear about and sometimes a very large companies or and certainly
you know startups and things are feeling it.
But So there's this mix, right? So some people are having a hard
time being let go and some people have great opportunities
and it's about how can an individual, you know, line and
figure out, how do they navigate, whatever the market
situation because some things we can't control, right?
We can't control the market situations.
What we can control is how we operate inside of it.
Yeah, exact, how we go about doing that.
So whether that's you know, really hot.
How do I find the best opportunity and maybe, you know,
you know, use that as an opportunity to get a higher
paycheck or find a new opportunity that might not have
been available before. That's a great opportunity in a
more constrained Market, okay? There's still plenty of jobs out
there. Plenty of people are hired but
and and how can you still optimize and figure out?
How do I go back to those Clarity principles?
How do I figure out how to find something that I'm aligned with?
Yeah, I'm excited about that. I can utilize the great skills I
have, and also grow upon them and deliver great impact.
And, and if you can do that, well, you're going to get paid.
You're going to get paid well because you're delivering impact
that someone needs like to say if you're trying to find a new
career opportunity, one of the best ways to think about it is,
is how do you become the solution to a problem that needs
to be? Yeah, right.
Every, every position in a company is maybe a new position
that's open or position that already exists.
Like, you're expected to solve a problem inside that company.
Whether that's a capacity issue or particular skills or new
technology that needs to be built, whatever that is.
How do you position position yourself as a solution to the
problem that a company needs to be solved?
You can show that you align their then you're going to I
have opportunities. Yeah, I'd like that because
that's, that's the reason why a company exists as well, right?
To solve a certain problem, and you do that by creating a group
of people that have the skills to solve that certain problem,
right? And short, bringing together,
that group of people is going to create new problems.
But then again, you bring people to solve those problems, either
tools or Solutions, you can be part of that as well, just
figuring out what the problem is and how you fit within that
puzzle that eventually solves that business problems.
Right, right? What I think is right now, the
tech landscape is quite huge when it comes to different
Technologies, right? I am a software engineer.
Now, I didn't start off like that.
I didn't, I had no clue what I wanted to do.
It was through experience that I learned in that, I grew into the
position position that I have now, but I do notice that at
some point when you're an engineer, the focus on growth is
not as heavy. As it is, in the beginning,
right? Getting to that experienced
professional level, it's pretty clear on what you want to work.
On, because a lot of those skills are the technical ones,
right? Being actually able to solve
those problems on a technical level.
But then, as you want to grow beyond that, it's usually for
me, or for what I've seen, it's either increasing your sphere of
influence and you can do that by being the best tech guy.
Basically knowing the tool sets that are current and that are
probably going to be future proof and being able to adapt on
a technical level or you're going to go more High over right
Inspire be A Visionary and multiply the people that then,
do more of the technical responsibilities.
I think those are the two but I don't know a lot of
organizations that offer either or both within the same
organization, right? It's quite sad that you actually
do need to sometimes transition to a different organization,
even though you don't want to all of the time before you can
get that opportunity. I don't know why though because
I think if organizations focus on personal growth a lot more
and offer offer up those doors to new opportunity, people
wouldn't have to transition that much yet they don't.
So people do Yeah, so again sometimes it's just business.
Reality is there are some times that the next level of growth
for a person just isn't necessarily a need for the
organization at the time. Yeah.
Right. Because the organizational size
and what they're working on like, you know, that, that next
step just is not a need for the organization.
So, so and again, that's not necessarily that anyone is doing
wrong. Yeah, you know, in the
organization should support them and okay if that's alright next
steps and then go do that. Please.
And as you can be great, and if things change and you go, learn
some new skills than, and we'd love to have you come back
because we love you. Yeah.
And we'd love that the work that you do, right?
So, maybe again, we want to keep those bridges open.
We don't want to burn those bridges, but plenty of
organizations that are huge, right opportunities, abound in
all sorts of different functions, and skills, and
levels of employment, and things like that.
Again, sometimes lose sight of, you know, and maybe within A
team that leader in a person that they have a stewardship to
grow. Maybe it's just really focus on
again, that transactional piece like, hey, I need this person is
and if I leave if they leave to go to do something else, well,
then they're gonna and I'm not going to have them to do this,
and I'm going to have to pick up all that slack and all that
stuff. So they so they like clamp down
more and more instead of helping them, you know, person grow or
sometimes, they're from a leadership perspective, one of
the things that technical leaders, especially I find
really struggle with. Is this idea of letting go of
some of the technical pieces? That they may, you know, because
they've grown up become great. Technical experts.
Yeah, right. But to, as they start leading
teams and multiplying that effort in that way, not actually
giving that responsibility to others, they hold that back
because they want to hold on to that control.
Well, that's actually diminishing their ability to
grow, and it's actually holding you back from your own growth by
the way. And by the way, when you hold
onto things like that, you're actually more encouraging people
to leave because they're not going to see that growth and it
makes it even worse for you and for them is.
So is it? Because people don't want to let
go? Or is it because they don't know
what they would do. Otherwise Could be both, right?
Yeah, either way it's going to fear, fear driven, exactly.
Because if I don't know what's on the other side of me, owning
a certain level of technical competency, then then that's,
you know, me, holding on to what's familiar, exact, same
thing with race that uncertainty and and grow in that way.
But sometimes it's control. And so, so again, the same
behaviors could be driven by different motivations in
different. For them in order to really make
that shift. We need to uncover those deeper
challenges of things that are holding back.
It's almost like tethering us back from you from making that
change so that we can bring that forward and actually let some of
that go and there's some processes that I get to work
with people through that and some of the coaching work.
And so it's fun to see that people kind of have realization
to things that they didn't recognize that really holding
them back before. But when we can make kind of the
unconscious conscious young, that awareness allows us to
start really making progress exactly.
I think it's it's getting more difficult as kind of Technology,
emerges. And as there's more stuff to do
on a technical level more problems to solve to figure out
where your place is with in this and I don't think there's going
to be an end station. I think it's more that probably,
as you said in the beginning, as you're building your legacy,
you're going to have a few stops, right?
And those stops can be different positions that can be lateral.
Moves are vertical moves or more with people or more with tech.
I think people if people see it more like that, they'll be more
happier in the current because that's also an opportunity to
learn from right. You're not going to be in your
best position or in your ideal position all of the time.
But all the positions you're in all the opportunities and the
context that you're in, you're going to learn from, you're
going to grow from and you're going to bring that with you,
right? It's not a lost kind of
experience because all science makes you who you are and you
get better because of that. Absolutely, you know, make the
comparisons to the products or Services.
We work on is Engineers of Technology people, right?
So we go through prototypes. We create MVPs minimum.
Viable products. Yeah.
And we put something out in the world.
We we go through an iterative growth and change and
improvement process on the products and services that we
deliver. Yeah, well, same thing about our
careers, in the situation that we find ourselves in every stage
is sort of like a prototype, right?
It's not an end state. Eight necessarily it is a
current state, but, but we're collecting data, we're learning
what's working? What's not working?
And how do we want to grow and continue to progress?
And and some of that we need, we want to be deliberate about
intentional and say this is where I want to grow and take my
my career and think I want to try out new technologies.
I want to learn new skills. I want to build, right?
But sometimes there's, you know, new things come our way and so
we also need to have an emergent Approach to allowing things to
come our way to explore. Hey, I didn't expect this.
Yeah. But this is something
interesting that I might want to try.
I want to explore. I might want to learn more about
and that happens again in the marketplace with products and
services were building. You know something comes our way
we didn't expect that. That's not necessarily our
product strategy but it came our way.
We're like, okay, we need to try this same thing in our careers.
Again, we're not going to map every single step along the way,
but we can have some Sort of a direction.
Maybe a North star. We can be pointing towards the
things that are important important to us.
But also be a little bit emergent as things come our way
and say hey this is you know let's explore this.
But but at any point we continue to re-evaluate and say is this
working, is this not working? What are the things that I'm
really enjoying? Yeah.
Or areas I want to grow and then we can map out what's
essentially the next prototype, the next iteration, the next
experiment, I want to run in my life and my career and we can
take in Collection. Try that out whether that's
within or without your current organization and take that step
collected data, see what works. And what doesn't like don't feel
like, just because your own one function now, that's where you
have to be forever. Yeah, you can make those
changes. You can try new things.
Absolutely. As we move through these
different iterations and in stages of our lives and careers.
Yeah, I really liked and I really subscribe to the thought
of that kind of experimental mindset, right?
I'm doing it. That is also my put lots of
experiments and that's how I explain it.
But my life and the stages that are in my life for the stops
that I have, those can also be experiments right and Gathering
that data and learning from that on to the next one.
I like that mindset a lot. What I'm really curious about
and it's also because it has to do with my personal career, is
how people that are more technically oriented or have
that technical background transition into becoming
technology leaders, right? I have seen leadership of scene
management and I'm not They're bad.
I'm saying there's a mismatch in what I expect and what because
I'm doing the work. What would I think?
And expect of them versus probably what they expect of the
role they have, right? And if there is a mismatch, then
usually people say Well, they're bad managers but I'm also see as
there is a mismatch and it's not going to be filled by itself so
that we can have a conversation and that mismatch is going to
stay or we can grow towards you stare at each other hopefully
because that would be the best scenario and be a better
organization or team or Or whatever it may be because of
that. But I think because people
transition from a technical background, they don't quite
know or at least, I wouldn't know how to be that technology
leader that is expected of the people that you're leading.
Yeah, that's a difficult thing. For a lot of new technology
leaders and even even the experienced ones, yeah, they
move into this new role and the role in the focus and the impact
of it completely changes when they're moving from Individual,
contributor as a technical, maybe a senior technical person
to now they manage and people and projects and things like
this. Yeah, like the focus of what
they're trying to deliver in. Where their impact comes from in
their work is very different. But like you said, if you were
to move into that space you wouldn't know exactly what that
looks like. It's a lot easier to identify
has certainly as an employee of a manager or something what bad
management looks like. Then to become a good leader.
Yeah, right but, but really recognizing that companies have
this responsibility for going to put people in leadership
situations. They have this To take take care
of and, and build the people and the teams in the projects that
they know own. How do we set them up for
Success, right? And all too often just kind of
throw them in the deep end and there's plenty of lessons, you
can learn from being thrown in the deep end and trying to learn
how to swim. Yeah, recognize that, that may
not be the optimal way to learn right to have the, you know.
So mentorship coaching support training.
And And also just things like standards and building a culture
around what is good leadership look like?
Yeah, rather than just sort of it being a free for all and
hopefully everyone kind of figures it out.
You know, some of those things can help set people up for
success rather than just sort of throwing them to the wolves and
hope they figure it out. But if they don't have that
Vision that understanding of, this is now my responsibility
and where I deliver my best work.
Well, We're going to default to again.
This is what we were talking about before going to have a
hard time letting go. They're going to default to what
they know. You know what they've done
really well for years as a technical person and might not
actually grow into becoming that effective leader that the
company and the team needs them to be because it's just not
something. They have a vision of right now.
Yeah, I can see it because it's I see some things.
Some puzzle pieces are falling in my head right now.
Let's say I wanted a leadership position, right?
I would go Go. If it wasn't in my organization,
I will go to the market and seek kind of leadership position that
I would want. But even if it's an experiment
but because I haven't done that yet because I haven't been
coached, I don't have the right guidance for that.
I'm already expectant or there are expectations of me being in
that role, right? I don't know what they are so I
might not even be able to fulfill them but because it's a
switch in that way. Nothing is gradual.
Right. All of a sudden you are that
person you fulfill that role. There are expectations whether
you know the Not you going to do something, and that's going to
have impact on more people, because your position by virtue
as impact on more people, right? If it is within the
organization, which it not always is exactly, as you say,
you might outgrow the organization, if the
organization is not ready for your growth, you're not going to
find that position within the current organization.
If it is. However, I hope you would be
able to do it more gradually because then you can be like,
okay, these are the things that Are expected of me.
Let's grab a little bit more of that and gradually moving that
into that position, right? Exactly.
Like you would do with people that are more Junior, you would
give them more of the complexity stuff.
More exactly what they can handle, right?
Not too complex, not too easy and gradually.
They will grow through that. I think a lot of the leadership
positions don't have that. Gradual approach is that
something you've seen as well? Yeah, sometimes again don't have
that opportunity to do that. If someone leaves and someone
needs to step in and fill those shoes, but in a perfect world, a
good leader would have some sort of succession plan and someone
that they and the organization has identified to groom into
that position. If something were to happen or
if they were to leave and would already be working on mentoring
and coaching someone to build the skills necessary, if they
were to grow in that way. And then the starts with Hey,
you know, identifying where do people want to grow in their
career? Some people want to become
managers and so we want to help them build those skills have
opportunities to take leadership of projects, may be mentored
more Junior people, and have those sorts of opportunities,
where I can take on those increased level of
responsibilities before they get thresh right into now, I'm
actually managing a team. Yeah.
Right. But some people don't want that
and we don't need to shove them into that just because there
Great technical person, if that's not aligned that, that's
again, that's going to be a mismatch exactly what they even
want to do. Let alone are going to be good
at. They're always going to be going
back to that technical stuff because that's where they want
to be, right? And some people might not know,
you know, or just need that extra time.
So so again in a perfect world where identifying and connecting
That the needs and desires of the individuals and the needs
and the future needs of the organization and helping groom
people to become that easier said than done, you know, that
the principal makes sense, but it's harder in practice because
we have all these responsibilities of all the
things we need to do right now. And it's easy to lose sight of,
you know, the, the future of not just the business and the
products and services were working on.
But the people that are in that and making Happen.
Yeah. But that needs to be a whole
part that we can't let lose sight of in terms of our
strategy of success. Yeah, exactly.
Well and and the manager doesn't isn't the only person that owns
that as an individual No One's Gonna own your career more than
you know right. So don't wait for your leader to
come and say hey, where do you want to go in your career?
What do you want to do? How can I help you do that?
You need to Advocate and ask for that.
If there's something you want to do if there's you know if
there's an opportunity to take on a new assignment, learn a new
skill, raise your hand, no, take on a new project, take on a new
responsibility, let your leaders know what you want to learn what
you want to accomplish and then they know right but they can't
help you find something or build something.
If they don't know that something you want to do.
So you also need to make that explicit And make that known.
If there are areas you want to learn and grow.
So so everyone needs to take ownership of their
responsibilities and their part in this process and growing and
developing individuals and the business.
Now everyone can have that ownership mentality then and
we're more likely to be successful in that.
Yeah, yeah. I completely again, I stand
behind that, right? You are in control.
There's a lot of outside factors and all the stuff you cannot
control but how Are you responding to the circumstances
or the context that you're in? You're always in control.
So you can choose how to decide or what to do, or how to act,
right? And those are your decisions,
you own that and no one's going to tell you.
It's going to be right or wrong. You're going to make those
decisions. You're going to going to
experience yourself, right? If it's the right decision or
wrong decision in the end, it doesn't matter because you
experience it and you grow better because of that that is
part of how you grow. Right now.
I needed a second to gather my thoughts.
What I was still thinking is when you grow into that
technology leader position, right?
Your sphere of influence increases, what is either the
single most, or a few of the most important skills that a
person can have or a skill. They can cultivate within being
in that position. Yes, so I'm going to shift the
the answer, the question a little bit away from the skill
and more from the mindset and mentality as you go into a
situation like that. Okay, okay.
And and folk and we've talked about this a little bit earlier,
but again, moving from, am I seeing the people that I'm that
I'm leading as people? But I care about that, I
understand what they're trying to accomplish both the people
that I'm leading and also my peers, the other stakeholders my
really considering what they're trying to do and accomplish.
Yeah, and then building that into my work and processes and
things like that or am I seeing it all as a transaction or
seeing people as objects as a means to an end?
And so that mindset and approach to how we go about interacting
with the individuals with the teams to stakeholders.
Partners and everything that changes not just what we do, but
how we do it. Exactly.
And that has a huge impact on our leadership.
Effectiveness, the other thing we've talked about this little
bit as well, but just to reiterate that your shift at
becoming a leader, Your impact is no longer in your ability as
an individual to deliver a technical solution, right?
Your impact as a leader is much more measured by your ability to
organize a team, you know, to accomplish that technical
solution and your responsibilities often to get
out of the way, or to reduce or eliminate roadblocks that are in
the way of your team. I'm accomplishing this goal and
helping them aligned with the vision of what they're trying to
do, what they're trying to accomplish and helping pave the
way to make that happen. Exactly.
So you're organizing and optimizing the people and their
ability to do their work, but it's not you as an individual
delivering, a technical solution anymore.
And so, you have this now responsibility to Shepherd and
grow rather people. And so it goes back to the same
mindset of caring about them young about what?
Musicians trying to trying to accomplish rather than you being
seen as the hero and coming in and solving the technology
problem that you want to enable them to do that.
Whereas I think coming in and being it is a very see that all
the time with with new leaders like a junior person comes and
they have a problem like oh yeah, let me just fix that for
you because in the moment yeah it seems faster for me to just
do that for them because I know how to do that, right?
But that That doesn't help them learn and grow, and develop, and
become, you know, a better member of the team now, you just
solve the problem. You you fished for them, you
give them a fish instead of taught him how to fish.
It's exactly a towards, right? And so want to teach, teach
people how to fish, help them grow, and develop, and it's
going to be able to improve your results as a team.
Yeah, I mean, based on based on what you said I can see now how
it can be a lot harder to let go of, then I thought it Chilly.
Right? Because being the hero, the hero
connotation already in and of its own feels good, right?
It's probably a bit addictive. You're the guy that solves the
problem or they call you when they have a problem because they
respect you and trust you to solve it.
Although some, they do not do that anymore, you need to be
responsible for the hero Team, all of a sudden, which means
you're kind of probably more behind the scenes, right?
You're facilitating. Removing roadblocks.
Exactly. As you said, right, the person
on stage, is only that good because the The people behind
them, and you're going to be one of the people behind them,
facilitating it that way just as crucial or probably even more
crucial. But definitely bit more behind
the scenes in that way as well, right?
And we talked a little bit about earlier about kind of ownership
and responsibility. I think from a leadership
perspective, you want to give that ownership and
responsibility to your team members.
But but as far as I taking taking responsibility, when
something goes, right, You want to give all of that credit to
your team exactly when things go wrong, the buck stops at you and
so that's hard. Like you don't get all the
credit for all the wonderful things that your team
accomplished like you want to, you want to push that to them
and say, hey I see this a lot. I mean, I'm a sports fan, so I
love great. Great team, sports and
basketball and soccer, and, and American football, and things
like this. And I see the great coaches,
right? Of great teams.
When, when When a team does really well, they win a game.
They will always give credit to the team, you know, team did
great, they really do that. And if, and if the team loss or
something went wrong, it will always take responsibility.
I didn't prepare my team as a coach to help them be
successful. I made some decisions and we
didn't get them ready to do this or that at the other, your never
pointing the finger and blaming blaming other people is never
helpful. Exactly.
If you can put, people up and own your own responsibilities
and and then move forward. With that, your team is going to
be a lot more loyal to you and and be willing to, to go slay
dragons for you if they need to. Yeah, yeah, I love that analogy.
I'm going to think back to how my leaders did that actually,
because I don't have great examples of what I've seen.
I need to reflect on that. I, I really liked how this
conversation flowed kind of starting from career
opportunities. Grow that mindset, a little
insight into the current job market.
And then how to become a great A technology leader, either
transitioning, or cultivating those skills and that mindset
that comes with it, right? Lifting people up and not finger
pointing and blaming because that's the worst you can do.
Is there anything that's still missing within that that you
still wanted to share our? We could talk for hours and I
hear about different things here but I think just just going back
to every individual, you know because because the people who
are listening here are individuals are trying to About
their own career. Become the person, the
professional that the leader that they want to be.
Just trying to ask that question.
Be intentional be reflective. Get outside of your your current
situation. Ask who do I want to become?
Yeah, right I'm do. I want to become a leader maybe
now, maybe later if so great. If not, that's okay too.
Can you you know what are the Technologies?
You want to learn, what are the areas you want to grow?
And how do you balance that with a things are important to you?
Your personal life because my career is a big part but it's
not the only part. We're living a whole life here
and look at that big picture. And so again some more, some
more tools are people, go grab put together that the resource a
career Clarity checklist at www.ge.com rear accelerator.com
Beyond coating for the listeners of the podcast and hopefully
they go there and they find resources that can help them.
We talked about a few of those tools as a bunch of other tools
and Resources there that might be helpful to them getting
Clarity on what's really important to them.
Then if you can figure that out, then you can start taking the
actions to get where you want to go good stuff, man.
Good stuff. I'll put all the links to the
socials of Jeff Perry in the description below as well as the
the website already forgot. That's why it's going to be
there in the description below. Thanks for coming on and we'll
see you on the next episode.