Leadership

Research and tips for picking your path, owning your space, helping others, and growth.

Mar 01, 2025

I have had a couple people reach out to me recently wanting advice on owning career, and on leadership. These two things can be interlinked, but I’ll focus on leadership here.

First, I’m an ambivert. Walking around smiling and saying hi to everyone is not my comfort zone. Also, working in tech for >20yrs means for the most part I’ve been the only woman at the table (the table is getting better). Who knows what will happen with the DEI unraveling (note: DEI is good for business), but unconscious behaviours happen – people trained and lived in certain situations know those situations so it isn’t always ill intent.

Here are my tips…

In general:

Leadership is about others, not about self. In partnership think about what the other person needs, and how collectively you move forward to drive progress for the team and business. If you have a little voice in your head saying “I don’t belong here” or “they’re not listening” you can bet others do too. In fact most people (only 1% of the population is psychopathic, 2-3% is sociopathic[1], and 7.8% is narcissistic[2], which tells me the rest of us get all the feels sometimes). In 1937, Dale Carnegie wrote “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The crux of the book is to really see other humans as … humans. People want to be heard, seen, feel needed. Don’t you?? You can find a good summary here: LINK.

Find your passion, pick your path. There are three things I keep coming back to on this point…

1. Ikigai[3]: a methodology to really look at what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at. The ven diagram helps find leadership paths you may find more fulfilling, and you’ll be great at.

2. PR/FAQ[4]: when I was at Amazon I was a working backwards “bar raiser in training” meaning I’d help people around the company write fake press releases and frequently asked questions for new business proposal. I also wrote a bunch of my own (happy dance, most launched  ). Every 3-5 years, I take a beat to write a PR/FAQ about me. What do I want to achieve and then what are the steps to get there.

3. Know your elevator pitch. Most of us have a resume and/or linkedin page. But what’s the crux? Know your key points around who you are, your super powers, your energy drivers, and your energy drainers. Spend as much time as possible on the super powers with energy drivers. And recognize the drainers (for me, the biggie is the next point!) Here’s mine:

Keep it in the pants. There are lots of crass body part phrases that I’m sure are no longer PC, but I’ll use them. Don’t be a dick – don’t be the person who humiliates others in the room. I had a VP yell at me once at Amazon with spittle coming out of his mouth. I still remember it (and now laugh a little when I see posts on leadership from him). Don’t be a pussy (I just learned this phrase from someone I admire so much - will ask if I can cite her as a source!). If something bad happens, don’t implode. Hold your seat and hold your integrity. Keep the armor on. It’s good to be real! But sometimes to get through a situation you need to breathe, and guide progress. Then address bad behavior when people are ready to hear it.

Preparation for a conversation, meeting, or big event:

Know your shit! You got a seat at the table knowing something, rad! Keep learning, keep being curious, and keep leveraging data/historical knowledge/research and combining experiences. Be prepared. Again, the Amazon experience taught me to prep a memo with all of the facts – numbers, not wiggle words. If you’re going to speak on something, speak to fact. If you don’t know, state that and get the facts.

Get big in the bathroom. Often before a presentation or a big meeting (even a 1:1), I’ll go into a bathroom and get big. Literally. I’ll stand up tip toes, put arms in the air, and stretch. If anyone walked in I bet they’d think I was doing a routing for the potty – but I’m not. Amy Cuddy has a great talk on power posing and getting into a posture of confidence[5]. The neat thing, is this power pose can impact the brain increasing testosterone and decreasing cortisol to help you feel better/present better[6]. Science is cool.

During the conversation, meeting, or big event:

Eye contact. If you want to be seen, see other people. Look people in the eye, connect, and then move to the next person. Don’t spray your eye contact, this can look fidgety and weird. Have real connection – even in a room of 1k this is feasible, you just anchor on parts of the room, then move to the next.

Speak slowly and louder than you think you need to. Remember, the audience is hearing things for the first time. Even if you want to be done talking, slow for the listener – make sure they get it.

Bottom line, don’t burry people in detail. This one is key in helping people understand – especially with international groups. State a message in 1-2 sentences, stop, and ask if people want more. People don’t need your whole resume or process, they want to know the proposal or fact and if they want backup they’ll ask.

Box breathing. When things get tense, breathe it out. The cool thing is you can do this with no one noticing (for a little tmi, I do this while flexing my tummy to give myself an added power feel). Box Breathing is a relaxation technique where you breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4, breath out for 4, hold for 4. Then do it again[7].

Laugh a little. If someone cuts you off or repeats something, simply say “ah, maybe people needed to hear it a second time to get it? Thank you.” Humansplaining is on them, not you.

After the meeting:

Hold the pen – they who send the notes, own the story. Early in my career I was an EA. My boss called me a “CEO in training” but I did a combo of setting up meetings, making business development calls, and teaching communications skills – a bit of a trifecta. A big thing I learned was note taking. Bottom lining actions and notes helps to anchor back to truths from a conversation. My brain processes through taking notes, but also being the one to send them helps foster the work together.

Do victory laps. Growing up in the Bay Area, I feel like we were trained to constantly state how great we were. Cover of the local paper for track, ribbons for participation, heaps of celebrations at school. Then in work, there were always win reports. In New Zealand there’s a phenomena called Tall Poppy Syndrome where people criticize or resent others for success (I’m simplifying)[8]. I believe sharing wins is helpful for three reasons:

1. You celebrate others, not just self – which goes back to thinking about and caring for others

2. Wins are a form of teaching – we can all improve when we see what’s working

3. You (and likely a team) put in the work and summitted the mountain (or whatever the task was). Enjoy it!

A mentor of mine at Nike once told me “every night before you go to bed, do victory laps. Think about every good thing from the day.” I’ve done this ever since. Turns out, celebrating wins is good for mental health and team health and is even linked to triggers of dopamine (the “feel good” neurotransmitter that enhances mood and motivation.)[9]. Celebrating wins also reduces stress[10] which is pretty neat. In a path to leadership we’re often thinking about what’s next – the next mountain, the next challenge… but doing that filled with stress will only slow us down.