IDL50 Season 2: Build a Passionate Team with Ann Hiatt

Are you hiring the correct employees into your company in aid of its growth and passion? How do leaders engage authentically with their employees? Why should leaders intentionally allow and encourage spaces for growth?

Leadership is hard. It’s hard, because, very often, you’re alone. Ann Hiatt recognizes this, and that’s what today’s episode is about. Ann spent a lot of time working in the tech world, a place full of bravado, and yet her book, Bet On Yourself, is strikingly sensitive. It really strikes at the idea of trusting yourself, even when you don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen next. Today she shares her lessons about empathetic leadership and how to grow a company that is adaptive to change.

Meet Ann Hiatt

Ann is a Silicon Valley veteran with 15 years of experience as the Executive Business Partner of Jeff Bezos - Founder and CEO of Amazon - and Eric Schmidt - CEO/Executive Chairman of Google.

However, after 12 years at Google, Ann needed a change. In 2017,she donated or sold nearly everything she owned and became a nomad living and working between the Google offices in London, New York and California. She finally left Google in 2018 and settled in Spain on the beautiful mediterranean coast and founded her leadership consulting company.

Through her business, Ann applies the lessons of innovation, ambition, growth at scale and forward-thinking leadership that she learned at Amazon and Google to expand businesses and individual careers.

This year, she published her first book, Bet On Yourself.

Visit Ann’s website, and listen to the Bet On Yourself Podcast. Connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

•     Engaging the employees

•      Are you hiring correctly?

•    Leaders can help people

Engaging the employees

“People have grit, tenacity, and drive, or they don’t. However, I think most people have it and it hasn’t yet been tapped into effectively. I think a large percentage of the population has something that lights them up.”

— Ann Hiatt

It is up to great leaders to engage with their staff and employees in the ways that inspire them.

It is a two-fold relationship, where the employee must be in a place that excites them, and their leader needs to maintain and encourage that excitement.

This work dynamic becomes especially powerful when both groups are working with integrity.

“This is my favorite part of this next generation’s movement to leadership. They’re not just going to take any job and take the orders … I love that about them. The advantage of them being like, “convince me”, is that we have that opportunity to wake that up in a way that other leaders or mentors haven’t yet. ”

— Ann Hiatt

Are you hiring correctly?

Because the current workforce is ready and waiting to be inspired, working with integrity, and putting their best effort in, leaders need to hone in on their hiring process.

Distill your hiring questions down to the essentials. Do these questions stem from the values of your company? Are you aiming to hire people that resonate with the mission of the business?

 Are you incentivizing accordingly? Hire your staff and then encourage your team to not only hit the numbers but to grow the company further. That is where it becomes important to bring the correct people into the business so that the same mission is shared.

“If you scream for those people in the hiring process, you’re going to find those people who get lit up with what you’re trying to do. When they’re already lit up and motivated it’s so much easier to incentivize. ”

— Ann Hiatt

It will constantly be difficult to be a founder and a leader. However, surrounding yourself and your business with people who share the same mission as you do will save you from having to push them hard every day because they will want to be there.

Leaders can help people

Leaders and mentors do not have to follow old patterns. They can create the lifestyle that they want for their employees by acting with humility and self-awareness.

Rules can provide structure, but be careful of restrictions and shutting down new ideas or approaches.

Allow for growth in your company and different approaches because that will allow growth for you and the employees. Provide staff with the psychological safety to explore.

“It takes so much personal humility to say, “my job is to help steer this and guide this” and not [say] “look at me, look at me, look at me”.”

— Tyler Dickerhoof

Now more than ever before, leaders who show up authentically to their staff are more respected and taken seriously. Employees are far more willing to be led by someone that they respect and know has got their back.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Ann Hiatt – Bet on Yourself: Recognize, Own, and Implement Breakthrough Opportunities

BOOK | Jim Collins – Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Visit Ann’s website, and listen to the Bet On Yourself Podcast

Connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn

The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel

Join the Impact Driven Leader Community

Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

Today is my living legacy: how I spend my time, my money, my resources, and my influence. If I did an audit today of those things, could people reverse-engineer what my values are?

Ann Hiatt

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome to the Impact Driven Podcast. This your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Glad you are clicking, tuning in, joining whatever you're doing, however, you're listening to this today. I'm so glad you're here. So this is season two of the Impact Driven Podcast. We made it through 49 episodes. This is episode 50. If you've not listened to any one of those previous episodes I encourage you to go back. There are some amazing, great guests that joined us last year. What a pleasure and tribute it was to speak with them, interact with them, build relationships with so many of them. I kind of pinch myself as I look back over the years I did in the previous episode and now as I even do this now recording for the second season, man, how enriched my life has been. That's me personally, from doing these interviews. I hope it was for yourself, listening to them, maybe some of them that you knew, some of them you didn't know, some books that you read, some books you haven't read. And just as a quick side, if you are looking for a program this year to join, to be a part of this curated growth in leadership, join Impact Driven Podcast community, where we have the book club, where you can go along with us, where I submit daily questions. You can engage on our live videos that we have through Mighty Networks, or you could join the round table. At the round table we go much, much deeper. We have a weekly zoom. We really dig into the books, but we deal with what you're going through. And one of the things that I've realized, and as you're listening in that part of leadership is hard. It's hard a lot of times because you're alone on an island. Today's guest, Ann Hiatt, she and I talked about that. She and I shared some experiences, part of this same generation, the same generation that we're all kind of trying to figure out how do we lead? I'm excited for you to hear this conversation. I'm excited for you to get her book Bet On Yourself. And I do have this to share, if you're part of the round table, which you can join today, we're getting just started in January, you can join, and Ann is going to have a conversation with us. We're going to talk about what she's learned beyond the podcast. She and I had such a great time recording this podcast that she agreed to come back and do a special segment for the round table members. So you can go to the impactdrivenleader.com or go to my website, tylerdickerhoof.com. You can sign up to be a part of the Roundtable there. You can join at anytime. There's a seat at the table for you. I'm going to shave this last thing. If you're just listening to this podcast, I'd love it if you subscribe. As well, I'd love for you to rate and review this so other people can find great messages like Ann. It's not about me and hearing me. It is about people like Ann and our previous guest that share so much. So I'd love for you to share this podcast just for them. All right. Get ready, take some notes, Ann and I have a great conversation. Here's the funny thing is we had like a 45-pminute conversation and I never once looked at my notes. It was just a matter of us chatting and having a great conversation. To me that's a lot of fun and I hope it comes out in this episode. [TYLER] All right. Ann, welcome to the podcast. I'm going to call it what it is. We've known each other for like seven, eight minutes here. I've sent flowers delivered at your house. This is something that I, what I've really, I found this in your podcast. I found this in parts of your book. I found this warmth and heart to you. I kind of, I really saw that and I also saw this, these are the parts that I want to dig into and kind of, as I shared this before, audience, you're just coming along in our conversation here. There's parts of Ann's book, Bet On Yourself that I saw and I'm like, Ooh, I want to dig deeper. I want to dig deeper because you've worked in the tech world. You worked in the tech world for 16 years. You worked in that world, which was kind, a lot of bravado in the tech world. Yet I see this warm, kind, soft, vulnerable person, Ann, who I've kind of gotten to know through a little bit of a book and podcast and now getting to share this opportunity where you get flowers and just how you care about yourself. Yet this challenge to almost step into a role that you weren't sure if you deserved it. Did I lay the groundwork, the framework in that ok? [ANN HIATT] Yes. I mean, I feel like that's very generous. I appreciate that angle. I'm so touched and grateful that that came across this. I really wanted, well, my story can often feel larger than life and other worldly and outside of most people's experiences, given the cast of characters and what they grew into. What I wanted most was for the book to feel very, very relatable because what I'm trying to do is really take these great, the playbook of the greatest hits, the best practices of these people who seem like super performers and rockstar, literally like wealthiest, most powerful people in the world and translate it for us, normal people; to use my career as a case study, to show you that this doesn't just belong with the elite. This belongs with you and if I can do it, literally anyone can. So I'm so grateful that that human vulnerable element came across when you read it and you felt that kind of connection. That means everything to me. So I'm really thrilled. [TYLER] To catch up the listeners that maybe haven't read your book yet, maybe don't know much of your story you started with Amazon early two thousands when Amazon was just a shop. They had not really existed at this global giant that they are today and you got to work with Jeff. [ANN] I did. Not only did I work with Jeff in the foundation of the company at the beginning of the internet itself, but I sat at the desk literally physically closest to his, in the entire company as my very first job after undergrad. The overwhelm was real. I think a lot of naivete served me well during the interviewing process because had I fully appreciated what was ahead of me I would've been appropriately terrified, but I didn't really know any better. [TYLER] Well, he wasn't larger than life figure at that point. [ANN] He was not. He was a minor celebrity in Seattle. He had been Times Person of the Year in 1999. So he was a known thing, but Amazon was not yet profitable. They had one profitable quarter, not yet a profitable year at this point in 2002 and everything was just based on faith in Jeff, that he would become, this vision would translate, that he would be able to innovate better than anyone else. But yes, when I was hired, we were in a single building, 15 stories in former hospital on this hill overlooking downtown Seattle. Now Amazon literally has over 1 million employees, but back then it was less than a thousand. So it was really just this tiny infancy of an idea of something that may or may not catch on when I started. [TYLER] So, I mean there's, I mean, I haven't looked yet my notes, which they're hidden behind a screen, which I'm great because that means it's like good conversation here, is like, there's a part of me as you mentioned this, and there's people that get to know Jeff there's people that spent time with Jeff who almost held his life in their hands at one point. I'll let you get into that or you can read the book, we'll read the book and find that out. But what I want to know, and this is a question that just hit me right before we got started was it the tenaciousness of Jeff to make this happen or was it his ability to really compel others to the vision or a combination of both? [ANN] I do think it's a combination of both. There's something very, very special about Jeff. He is a little bit different than the average human out there, absolutely. People ask me all the time, is this nature or nurturer? Was he just born to be this person? He was exceptionally smart, even as a very young child who was identified as just like off the charts, like smart and intuitive and thoughtful and a fast learner. So he has some nature to it, but it was nurtured into him through his family life, his home life. He really learned to make things greater than the sum of their parts. So it was nurtured into him. But most importantly, not only had he been and curated into the super performer, but he was able to then create a group of like-minded capable people who let's be honest, none of us had any idea what we were doing in the beginning. It wasn't that I, as the junior most person in the company was the only one who was making it up as I went. I saw that modeled for me by senior vice presidents, because we were literally inventing the future. We were doing things every day that we hadn't done before and nobody had ever done before. So he was able to translate those traits, that tenacity, that you're describing and institutionalize that into the culture of this infant company that he had founded. That I think is the very special element. [TYLER] I think now if Jim Collins were to write Good to Great in 2021 going into 2022, now, if he were to write Good to Great, where kind of Amazon in the evidence would fit there because to me there's a part of leadership. This is a leadership podcast. This is to empower leaders our age and a few years younger plus, or minus how to lead through these situations now that it's our charge to lead. I mean, you saw some of that exposed to that and now we're here. And one of the things that I picked up there, and this conversation was not to dwell on Jeff Bezos, by any means, but it's also what you just shared with me. He did a phenomenal job of not only having the acumen himself, but creating an environment that people wanted to play along as well. But you just said having these people involved in the room like you were, that had no idea what they were getting into, but rise and develop and perform and create that banner and carry it, to me, that's a leadership Testament that we can't underscore enough. [ANN] I couldn't agree more. I honestly think this is a part that first time founders overlook. They're so focused on the traditional elements of a business plan of product market fit and being first and all that kind of the what and the how. But absolutely the thing that I've seen is the common denominator between those companies that just survive and those that thrive is assembling a team of like-minded, passion-aligned people who you can ask to sprint a marathon because they're so passionate and aligned that the work pulls them rather than exhaust them and tears them down. That is a really big differentiator. Being able to inspire a group of people to run at that pace for as long as you have to create something this exceptional is a differentiator. But it is curating that group and that is the only way that you, as a founder can continue to carry the load. You just have to be able to replicate yourself throughout that team. [TYLER] So to kind of move the story along here, to have some more depth through our conversation, because we could spend the next 20, 30, 40 minutes talking about that because there to me, there's so many elements to look back and analyze. You left Seattle, you move down to the bay area of California, end up getting a job at Google, but there's a stop in there. There's a stop in there because you were going, you didn't want to be classically educated. There's an aspiration, I think of the, the younger GenXers the older millennials, our generation, that's like, oh, we need to go to college because some of us were the first generation you were aspiring to get your doctorate. Then you pulled the plug. [ANN] I did to my parents continued horror, honestly. My original dream was to be a professor. I was a very serious kid actually. So I just thought the greatest job on earth would be to read and write books for a living. I just really love learning. I love leaning into things I don't understand and just having deep intellectual conversations and debates. So that was my original plan. When I applied to Amazon, I had no intention of having a long career in tech. I just wanted a "real job" before I went into academics, which is more theoretical than the applied. So that was the whole point in working at Amazon at all in the beginning. But then yes, I followed that original dream. I got into my dream PhD program, moved to California and started my program at Berkeley. Then shortly thereafter, Google came calling and eventually talked me into trying out tech one more time. I did not anticipate when they finally convinced me to come to campus for a tour that I would then be at the company for the next 12 years. But yes, I absolutely fell in. It was love at first sight, honestly. [TYLER] So why is that? From your experience at Amazon and what you saw in there and then to Google, what was kind of like, oh, this is what I've been missing because there had to be that? [ANN] There was. I mean I had hedged my bets a little bit. I'd love to make it sound like I was so brave and I just left tech. It got in my blood immediately. Like I was hooked. So when I left Google or sorry, Amazon, literally the last email I sent from my Amazon account was to Udi Manber who had moved from Seattle down to Silicon Valley to head A9, which is Amazon's search engine that they use for doing all that predictive recommendations that get us to buy everything. Udi was now the president of A9 and my last email I ever sent from that account was being like, "Hey, I'm coming to the bay area. I'll be there next week. If you ever need help with some special projects, let me know." He replied immediately saying, "The second you arrive here, come see me." So I had been working at A9. I kept a little bit of that tech in my blood. I went there every Friday afternoon to help him with some projects. So I had anticipated I would miss the pace, but a more accurate answer to your question is the people. It goes back to me, every time it's like that quality of people. I love the way they think, I love their innovative approach, I love their attitude around failure and learning and pivots. And once the Google recruiter finally, after I think the fourth or fifth call trying to convince me to interview, and he talked me into just coming to campus that is what got me to say yes to interview. That campus tour, and I share in the book what that day was like, I ended up sitting at lunch between Ben, ho's one of the original creators of the internet, an astronaut, who had literally been to space and a cyclist who had written on the post office team with Lance Armstrong in the tour de France. Whether by design or accident, I found myself surrounded by these super performers. That is what I miss. Not because that doesn't exist in academia. It absolutely does. I love the conversation we were having and the important conversations that we were talking about reading and writing about, but there's something about like the pace of technology and that kind of mindset of these super performing people that immediately, I was, okay, this is my tribe. I need to come back here. [TYLER] I think for me as I sit on that and I think about it, it's the classic saying iron sharpens iron. And once you start to get sharpened and once you understand the sparks are good, then you yearn for that. You really want to be sharpened and almost challenged. I'm an Enneagram eight. I don't know if you know your Enneagram. [ANN] I think I'm a three. Oh, honestly, I haven't memorized it, but not an eight. [TYLER] Not an eight. To me that's that challenging, that curiosity, that inquisitive, that wanting to go deeper. And there's elements there that three connects, I'm not an expert, don't get me wrong. I know a little bit. I'd have to reach out to Ian again, who previous episode talked about it to give me some feedback here. But I just see that because I have had the luxury to be in an environment and culture where it's like, you're going till midnight and you're up again at five and it's invigorating. It is the people you're around because you're continuing to layer toward, it's not belaboring. And I've just gathered from you that's what the cultures, not one of them, both cultures were very much of that element. [ANN] You're exactly right about that. Your instincts are spot on. It was a culture where nobody asked me to work hundred plus hour weeks. No one asked me to come in on the weekend, ever not once, but I did it voluntarily because honestly I didn't want to miss it. I didn't want to miss the moment where they figured out that really hard problem, or I didn't want to not be present in that war room when we were trying to patch some kind of security issue or solve some really important tech problem. I just didn't want to miss it because it mattered to me. I felt so aligned with the mission of what we were trying to do in both companies. At Amazon watching not only e-commerce be invented, but the gold standard of e-commerce was such a privilege. I felt it from day one. Then at Google, I was really, really committed to the idea that organizing the world's information and making it not only universally accessible, but useful could literally change people's lives. I saw that so much later, fast forward 15 or so years when I was with Eric Schmidt, the then CEO in Africa and we saw mobile technology being the only access to information for remote communities. I saw villages using it for weather information for when to harvest their crops. I saw women having the only access to education being through mobile technology and learning or their health information when someone was ill. I just, literally that connection, to me of improving the quality of people's lives, especially marginalized communities really lit me up. I just didn't want to miss it. I wanted to do anything I could do add value to that. Now I'm also, I do want to say, like, I am such a fan girl and I know these people and this mission so well, that can come off as hero worship. I just want to add here that there is a note of, I know the weaknesses and the flaws of all these people and companies equally, as well as the best practices that I do find in the most part, it is most helpful to share what those best practices were, but yes, I'm also very aware that there's two sides to every coin. [TYLER] So let's take a side that way because one of the things that, not to, I agree I'm not, and I don't revel in page six gossip. It doesn't matter. We all have, as I like to say, and as some previous guest said, we all pee and poop. Everyone gets up to pee at three in the morning, like get over yourself. But one of the things that I want to take there is is you made this, like you were injected into the passion at Amazon and then you came to Google and you're around the same type of people and you're injected by it. So you're driven by it. Well, you had the opportunity to lead groups. And as we're talking today about leadership and as you coach other leaders and CEOs, and now we're coming into a different generation, because I would say the plight of our generation, against this older gen X, this younger millennial, children of the late seventies, can we say that and be okay with it? I'm aging myself, not you. I'm bald. You look --- [ANN] I know. I'm seventies. [TYLER] It is the fact that work was our drug of choice in a lot of ways. And now we're coming into a generation, and we're seeing in our society today, as I talk to so many people that are like, they don't want to work over time because they value their life outside of work so much. So as a leader, as we're sitting here, and as you think about, you know as you led some of those younger partners as well, how did you either accept that they didn't want to be there for the same things you wanted to be there or how did you inject that into them that they were so engaged, they were there along for the ride too? [ANN] Do we have 10 hours? I have a lot. [TYLER] Go as long as you want. I mean, we could do an episode two, we could have another conversation because again, I'm going to say this because it's fun to me. I haven't looked at my notes yet, so I have no idea, but we're just having a conversation here. [ANN] I have a lot of strong feelings about this. So I'm trying to organize my thoughts of like where to start and how to proceed. [TYLER] Just throw spaghetti on the wall and see what falls. [ANN] Ok, perfect. So my first reaction is you can't inject this. People have grit, tenacity, and drive, or they don't. However, I think most people have it and it hasn't yet been tapped into effectively. So I think the large percentage of the population has something that lights them up. This is actually my favorite part of this next generation's leadership. They're not going to be, they're not going to just take any job and take the orders in the work, you know punch the clock and do the a hundred hour plus work weeks there, law firm requires or whatever. I love that about them. The advantage of them being like convince me is that we have an opportunity to wake that up in a way that maybe other leaders or mentors haven't yet. I love, the silver lining I think of the pandemic in general, whether you're Gen-X or whatever, I think I heard it described as like geriatric millennial. [TYLER] So I call it Zenous. [ANN] I like it. I'm going to steal that. I love it. So us Zenous is yes, I was born in a generation, like my parents are farmers. I'm first generation non-farmer. It's staying. Like work, if you didn't plant it, sow it, preserve it, harvest it, it's not showing up on your table. That's the people, that's the generation I came from. That's the worth ethic instilled in me. There's downsides to that as well. That is also why my mom and dad's generation of all had heart attacks. My grandfather had multiple heart attacks before it eventually took him. That we don't need to carry forward. I don't think. And now as an American living abroad in Europe, I often describe my move from Silicon Valley to small town in Spain is culture whiplash. It very much was but now I so appreciate that there is this element of in actually enjoying your life. So going back to my point of like, I do think this is inside, this is inherent in each human, but we do need to be more purposeful as leaders of how to tap into that. First, not everyone's going to have that same passion alignment. Not everyone has the same definition of that because that pulls you instead of you pushing it. So I think a, my first step is, are you hiring for that? Literally this is something I've done with almost every single one of my CEO consulting clients. We look at their hiring questions and say, does this stem from the actual values of your company, the passion, the mission alignment you want to see from your employees? Are you interviewing for that second? Are you incentivizing accordingly? Are you just hitting number targets? Are you hitting mission targets? So if you hire, if you screen for those people in the hiring process, you're going to find those people who are lit up by what you're trying to do. When they're already internally lit up and motivated it's so much so easy to incentivize. It is exhausting as a founder or leader to try and push your team for very long. Pushing that rock up a hill every day, you're going to burn out. Your team members are going to burn out. Nobody's going to be happy. That's not a good culture. But when you hire for it and incentivize from it and let people be there because they just don't want to miss it, that's so much easier to be successful. It's still really hard to be a founder and a leader, but then I think that gets us over that hump. So I object to the general concept that the new generation doesn't work that hard. I appreciate that it does take a little bit more work in the onset to find that alignment and to ignite it but once you do, I think they're equally unstoppable. [TYLER] To me, I think where you start that off is that everyone has grit and tenacity and passion in them. It is just understanding where it's at. And that's the great opportunity of leadership and I think as we start off this, go ahead ... [ANN] I'm sorry, you just woke up an idea in my head that, I didn't want to interrupt your flow. [TYLER] I saw have the lights go off. If you're watching the video, you saw it and if you're not too bad, you need to watch the video, but you just saw her, oh, there's a moment. So go ahead. [ANN] Well, now I just lost my train of thought. So it was like, you were talking about, we're lighting it up. We're igniting. We're finding, I think, gosh, dang it, like the light bulb went off and then it like immediately lost [crosstalk]. [TYLER] That's my bad, my bad. We'll come back to what I was saying and once it comes in, just hop in. It's all good. [ANN] It'll come back to me in just a sec. [TYLER] We all, everyone has grit and tenacity and passion in them. Our great opportunity as leaders is to uncover that and find that. I think one of the great opportunities is I'm going to go back to your experience, you're sitting in the office in Redmond. You're sitting there, you're working beside Jeff, you're working on this door that is a desk as the story goes. All of a sudden, if he walks in one day and is like, Ann this isn't the place for you. I see the grit, the tenacity, the passion you have. You need to be over there. And just think, if that would've happened and I'm just making this story up, but how much reverence would you have for him for recognizing that you might even say yes, but that's for later, I want to be here because you saw it in me. To me, that's our great opportunity as this generation of leaders. It's not to dictate and demand. You have to be here and you have to show up and you have to do this work with excellence. It's taking the time to say all right, I invited you onto this team because I saw that. I saw that effort, that willingness, that wanting to be there but now I see it blossom in a different area. How can I bring that on, which ultimately may enhance our team exactly like we needed. [ANN] What a gift that would be. While I have worked with people I consider the greatest managers and leaders of our generation at a minimum, if not more, that has literally never happened to me. So that conversation where they come to me and say, "Ann, I've noticed this untapped talent of yours and I was thinking about how to utilize that has literally not ever happened. That was on me. When I came to them with my observation of like, "Hey, I think I could contribute something outside my job description or far above my current seniority level. But I think I could be helpful. I could, I'll figure it out." They said, yes and that is the exceptional leadership because I see so many people right now wanting to level up, especially when they see companies floundering and pivoting anyway, and they raise their hand and leaders are like, yes, no. That usually happens more in like legacy companies where they're so entrenched in their policies and their prime for disruption. They're less embracing of when employees raise their hand like that. But great leaders lean into that and say, yes. When I started managing team for the first time, this was part of my hiring conversation, was what do you want to learn here? What expertise will you leave this next section of your career with? Because that informed me as a leader to be able to know what should I be looking out for that I can throw their way that maybe I wouldn't have considered them for otherwise. I think that's something that easily any leader could do, even if your team is small, your budgets are very limited, you don't have a lot of room for failure or a long runway to be playing with, when you early discover that passion alignment, and then you can open those doors for them, they can and open for themselves. That is the most fun I've ever had as a leader and manager for sure. [TYLER] I think that's our great opportunity is as I look forward this torch to carry, to help people, help leaders help new executives find that as opposed to feeling like they have to fall into the trap of a previous generation of just put so many your restrictions on that this is the only way we operate. The problem is you might find some people, but you're also going to exclude a lot of people that can bring your organization to a different level and you could grow in areas you didn't even realize. I think that that takes so much personal humility to say, my job is to help steer this and guide this and not look at me, look at me, look at me. [ANN] I think a great way of doing that so many leaders miss is just giving people that psychological safety to try some stuff they're not going to be good at in the first time. I definitely learned that in my first role at Google, when I was working Marisa Meyer. At the time she was VP of search products and user experience, which is a long title that just meant we made really cool stuff. Other people figured out how to monetize it, but we just made this stuff that is now entrenched in our daily lives like maps and image search, and voice search, all that kind of stuff. But Marisa really taught me that being ready to take on a challenge like that and raise your hand for something outside your current expertise means you're ready to just try it. It doesn't mean you have to be ready to do it perfectly. That's because she sought that out. She encouraged it. She gave me the room to play with. If I had a curiosity about it or a talent, or just wanted to explore it, she gave me the leash to do so. That's where I think leaders can, just in expressing it's okay if we're learning really fast and moving quickly, and you break a couple things on the way, like I'm here for you, as long as we are all moving towards that same north star. Your job as leaders give that common definition of success, which is that north star and let your people be innovative in their approach of how to accomplish that. They'll probably come up with things that you wouldn't have thought of yourself that are better than those traditional solutions. [TYLER] Love it. All right. So another big pivot here that it's, and I think this fits in, for me as an early forties, male, and looking at this world and I come back to this title Bet On Yourself, one of the things that I picked up and I almost felt like this coming out in the words and coming out, as you speaking it is, I was having to bet on myself because no one else us. I think there's a tremendous amount of virtue to that, but I also believe as the world that we're in today, that people shouldn't have to feel like they can't bet on themselves. And one of the things I picked up and why I'm prefacing this is, a previous guest, a cardiac anesthesiologist, she were talking and I about this is that if you have a male candidate, if they're qualified six out of 10 times, they're going to imply and say, I can do the job. Yet a female they're either 10 out of 10 or maybe nine out 10 and they will actually feel like they could do it. Who knows if they'll apply. So I felt that just undergirding this. And again, it's a world that I'm not aware of, but I'm seeking it and I want to understand it and I want to help be a better leader. That's why I love this conversation. Again, the opportunity vulnerably ask you is how much of that was felt in this world that I better, better myself because all the chips are against me because that's the way that the structure has been set up? That's what I want to know deeper there. It's like, if you're sitting here and you're talking to a the 23-year-old Ann and saying, you're going to face some barriers that probably shouldn't be there, bet on yourself. Did I read that right? [ANN] Yes, that's absolutely true. It's interesting because I have, it's a common question I get. It's because so much of my career, I was the only woman in the room. The majority of every single day, I was the only woman in the room. And even now as a consultant and I go in to negotiate some things I'm often the only woman in the room still, and this is 2021. So it's not like that's been overcome. With that said it's not like I, and maybe it's again, kind of my naivete. I forgot very quickly I was the only one. I would notice it immediately when I came in and then I would let it go. I don't know. So it's not like I had, I felt like I had something to over overcompensate for or over to prove necessarily about gender. I did maybe because education has always been very emphasized in my family. I did feel that insecurity around the fact that I didn't go to an elite, I didn't go to MIT, Stanford, or Yale or Harvard, like everyone else intacted. I went to public schools always. All the way through high school, public, my undergrad university was public, even my PhD, even though Berkeley's a top 10 university, it's the only public top 10. So I did have that kind of inferiority complex that came from that. I did find that it actually gave me disadvantage because I was constantly trying to overprove my value. It made me hustle a little harder, do a lot more self-imposed homework, test out my ideas to exhaustion to be sure that my instincts were correct. So I actually think that what could have made me feel like an outsider was my greatest strength when I overcompensated for it and leaned into that and didn't let that insecurity set my back. It fueled me improving myself and hitting my goals anyway. I described in the book, that held me back in my early life. I was so of that imposter syndrome moment where you're discovered of like, you shouldn't be in this advanced class and whatever chemistry or something. That for me, was built up this skill that became my greatest strength and I got known for being the one who was always at the right place at the right time asking the right questions, assembling the right experts, because I didn't just rest on believing that my ideas were the best possible. So I kind of had a village approach to showing that up. [TYLER] Yes, totally. I mean, I love that aspect of it and it's, you through essence of like, I'm not going to get it handed to me and I don't gather in this. And maybe it's again the ideology that your parents had. Again, if you want to revert back to that, I think that's something I appreciated, is growing up on a farm and it's like, hey, no one else is going to do it. So you better figure out how to do it and if you don't figure out how to do it, well, then it's not getting done and then that's a problem. That can be a big weakness. I will have to admit that's been big, because it's sometimes hard to ask for help and it's understanding, hey I'll just figure it out. And I think that's where ultimately in that, and again, this title, this idea, this thought, I better bet on myself because if I'm not betting on myself, no one else is. Yet if I could bet on myself, then other people are going to be more willing to bet on me. I think that again is such the, again, underlying and I look at that from a leadership perspective of being able to instill that in others, like, hey bet on yourself, because I want to bet on you. But if I bet on you and you're not betting on yourself and we're playing out the words a lot, then neither one of us have gotten anywhere. [ANN] I think it's interesting as I'm thinking about the concept. For me it's not so much proving other people wrong. Like I didn't enter a room thinking like everyone's underestimating me. I got to show them. It was to your point, it's proving to myself, like that's not their job actually. I think that was my approach, which maybe is a differentiator that I didn't consider that someone else's job. It was my job to discover this untapped talent or to polish or let the pressure turn my coal into a diamond strength. I always considered that my responsibility. And maybe it is my farmer heritage, or maybe it's being the oldest of seven kids and like, hey, you're going to have to afford your own path real quick. I'm so grateful for that because it very much led me, even in the earliest moments of my career to purposely put myself in the driver's seat, because I did not assume someone else was going to drive this bus for me. I had to throw myself up there and we were going full blast from day one. It was like pedal of the metal and it wasn't going to slow down. So I wanted to be in the driver's seat. I found that empowering. [TYLER] Which brings in a challenge. As I said my weakness at some point, and this was a defense was I just put my head down and push. But at the same point for you is how did you learn to involve others? Because anything you accomplished didn't happen because Ann just did it. It happened because you involved and enlisted the work and everything else of others. How did you develop that skill? [ANN] Well, first you make me laugh because you're reminding me the very hardest part of editing my book. So versions one and two of the manuscript were kind of more about content and flow and version three the hardest edit, my editor Harper Collins gave me was you need to go in there and remove negative belies. This is your book, you're the expert. This is your story. You're the authority figure here. That gutted me because to your point, everything I did was we. Everything was a team effort. Everything was assembling the right minds, the right creativity. So these, if you read it like going in certain 90% more, because that's how I wrote it. But I think I did it one because I knew that I couldn't just rest on my own laurels. I felt like I was so lucky and so blessed to just have a seat on this rollercoaster so I really wanted to prove my value. The only way I could find to make up that difference fast was to assemble my team of experts. And I think I'm just naturally collaborative maybe because I come from a big family, but it is kind of my comfort zone. A lot of people, I think the people who lead in the spotlight who want all the attention and only volunteer for the sexy projects that are going to get them all the credit, they actually burn bright, but they burn out really fast. I saw that over and over again, especially in the early years of the internet. I saw people doing that. They wanted the results now. They wanted the credit now. They wanted the promotion now. I recognize very, very quickly that does not have the longevity that I want. So I was playing the long game always. I would volunteer for the seemingly undesirable tasks because it was going to teach me an expertise that I could see being beneficial in the long run. I would run war rooms and teams to learn how to use the best sum of all of our parts to really accelerate it. So one, I think it's my nature. Secondly, I watched it modeled around me. The greatest leaders, the literal smartest people in the room were utilizing their teams in that way. There's something in Silicon Valley we call the hippo effect, which is the highest individually paid person's opinion. Once that's expressed a lot of times creativity and innovation leaves the room because everyone just agrees with the boss. All their jokes are good and all their ideas are funny. But the leaders that I worked for did the opposite and, in fact, they built in operational systems to prevent the hippo effect and they drew out those academic debates, those dissenting voices, and they encouraged it. So honestly I saw it modeled around me and I just tried to replicate that leadership stuff in my own tiny version, in my own little projects and how I could display that in my own career. Then later as I became a leader and now as a founder, I can do that on a bigger stage. [TYLER] What challenge are you seeing that leaders that you work with and talk to, and getting feedback from your book that they're most up against that you're kind of like, Ooh, I never thought about this or two, okay, this is what I walk through some of those experiences? [ANN] I mean, it's really hard to be a founder right now, honestly, because there's so much exhaustion. We've had to go into survival mode, which was its own set of like blueprints and best practice and that was kind of more compartmentalized sprint. It ended up being a much longer sprint than of us originally planned our energy resources for. Then we had into this reset where we were kind of, let's take the data and see how the world is pivoted, how can we optimize and a lot of wonderful efficiencies and advancements have come out of that. It's been so inspiring to see people who've leaned into the opportunity to like shake up their practices having so much better off on the other side of the pandemic and they would otherwise, or at least accelerated their progress 10 years in. The struggle now is a lot of this fatigue. High performers, especially were super fatigued. We are having a heart that we feel emotional, overwhelmed. Okay, I'm doing, I'm talking about myself right now. I should stop saying we, I. [TYLER] So let's talk about Ann. [ANN] Let's do some therapy. [TYLER] Did this turn into therapy? Exactly right. [ANN] Can we get the therapist? No, it's really like, we've had, it's such a gift. I have realized it's such a gift to be able to reexamine our values, our mission, our impact in the world to think about what tribe have I curated around myself and how can I utilize that in a new and efficient way? And that is what I see shared among high performers in my clients, in my peers. It's this desire to truly align ourselves, really get down to the line, of what is my living legacy? I think we've all come to appreciate that we have no idea where the finish line is in this beautiful gift of our singular life. And now having the attitude of today is my living legacy, how I spend my time, my resources, my money, my influence, if I did an audit today of those things, could people then reverse engineer what my values are. And that I think is beautiful. It's really hard gut-wrenching work when you have those conversations with yourself, because you're realizing that some of our old habits no longer service and deserve to be outside. But it's so empowering and beautiful once we get to that space. But I have found that to be a exhausting work and so worth it. [TYLER] I think there's a thought there, that, again, from a generational point of view is we now better understand that dichotomy between what people do at work and what they do at home. And now we're understanding if you're not holistic, I don't want to follow you. I think that is, that's been this changing of the guard and it's bringing on this change to say, what values are you saying and then what values are you acting and they better be in accordance. And if you have no idea what values are, we haven't discussed those. As I've learned the values are the foundation of leadership. We can have different values but we could have different value level, but if we have the conversation about the values, as I found, then we end up having a relatability to where I can accept that your values are different, but now I know about it and we've had this open discussion. I think in leadership, in organizations that ability to do so, hinging back to what you said is what is this holistic leader as a person? How am I looking at that? How am I staying on top of that? But not only just about me. What am I doing for Ann? What am I doing for Charlie, what am I doing for Mary, what am I doing for Jennifer? What am I doing for them? Because if I'm not looking out for them, as we've seen our organization won't go very far because if they're not bought in, and if we're not willing to navigate through these potholes at times, then we have nothing. [ANN] It's so true. I was just reflecting on how even just Google over the last 20 years, I think they're literally 20 years old or 19 years old now, in the beginning, it was very much about hiring for culture alignment. But when you hire for culture alignment, you get a bunch of 20 year old white guys who all come from the same privileged background. We don't have that diversity, which adds that, fortifies you for the long haul. The beautiful shift in how they've changed, not only the way they hire in the past, like owning their ability to influence that has been so beautiful. And now we see the shift instead of hiring for culture alignment they're hiring for what you just described, which is mission alignment, which is passion alignment. We can have different core individual values and that really can be a strength. If we come from different cultural influences or family or societal expectations, you're going to have different drive. You're going to ask different questions. You're going to lean in in different moments in the person next to you. That's a group that's stronger together than apart. And I think that is what I love seeing so many corporations that are going to survive this crazy experience we've just been through. They are the ones who are leaning into that. Those that really dig in and they stay within that safety bubble, ironically, counterintuitively, they're the ones that are going to burn out because so many of us, okay, again, I, in the pandemic had this instinct to curl up into a little ball of my safety zone of here's what I know how to do well. I'm just going to stick with this until this whole madness blows over. And then those who stayed in that little safety bubble too long, you start to fatigue because you stripped yourself everything that has meaning, which is learning, which comes through mistakes, which comes through growth, which comes from trying things you don't know how to do perfectly. And those that are going to survive and come out stronger on the other side, have started reinserting this into their work and their life and even their social circles. I mean, it takes some examination of literally even the social media that we're consuming right now. Like think about, we've all heard the saying that we're the average of the five people we spend most of the time with. Social media is a big percentage of people's lives and so be really careful of curating a tribe around us that lifts us up, makes us feel better about ourselves instead of by comparison of this false perfection that is out there on social media. [TYLER] I love it. And that's something that I see and I think there's a great opportunity for us to help people through that process, because it's a process that we've either had to do personally and or walk through with others. But then we see kind of the carnage in society from not. And it's a great test to, oh, this is what happens when you do curl up in a ball, as opposed to this is where you open your arms and saying, "Hey, I don't know the answers, but who can I link arms with and let's figure this out together? To me, those are the big descriptive visions of a healthy leader compared to unhealthy leaders. The one that curls up on the ball, I had this all figured out. I have to be cold, hard. You're not going to win. You're going to break broken down everyone around you. It's the ones that are like, let's go, let's figure this out. Help me. I'll help you. Let's go. [ANN] I think you're so right. Those leaders who really showed up in full authenticity, especially early in this madness, have really earned the respect of their team. I'm thinking about one client in particular, Matt. He was going through, his family was going through un-COVID related major health crisis. His daughter was very, very ill. He hadn't really shared that with the company. It happened right before the pandemic. She got her diagnosis. So he was in a vulnerable place already. Then this happened where his company needed him to be more than fully present, you know how are we going to survive this, let alone thrive in the long run. And he just, in one of our consulting sessions, he's like, how am I going to stand on stage tomorrow with our team, like all hands and project any kind of confidence that I know how we're going to survive this? I don't know. And I said, say that, tell them where you're coming from. Say, I don't know, but here's what I'm going to base my decisions on. These are the markers that I am watching for as indicators that our efforts are well spent, that our revenues okay, that we're making the best use of our limited runway that we have. He stood up on stage and shared that and then he hadn't expected to, but he shared what was going on in his family as well. And his entire company rallied in a way that just, I literally have goosebumps right now thinking about that. [TYLER] You and I both. [ANN] It's such a powerful moment as a leader to show a bit of vulnerability. He didn't make them think that no one's manning the ship. He said, I've got these eyes on these markers that are going to indicate if all our efforts are paying off and I'm going to know early if it's not working and we're going to pivot. But here, I just don't know what those answers are yet, but I'm on it. And they just came together full force and they're just an incredible powerhouse as a company now two and a half years later. It's beautiful. [TYLER] It's a true testament. The thing that scares us the most is uncertainty. And if we can have clarity, even in uncertainty, we have clarity and we can rally behind that and say, let's figure it out. We have that grit. We have that tenacity. We just need something to unlock it and align it with. Ann, it's getting late in the night. Thank you so much for joining me. I truly appreciated it. I'm excited for people to get your book. It's now available in Europe as well and I'm so thankful that you took the opportunity to write it and share and share your story and really use it as a lesson for people to yearn for something greater in themselves and to use as guideline and a guidebook. I think there's also a workbook, right? [ANN] There is. Thank you. So while this book is written as a, I mean, yes, it is full of like crazy fun stories from the foundation, the internet and the version 1.0 of these now celebrity CEOs and it is like a fun read that you can do plow through literally in a day. What it matters to me most is that this is translatable into challenges and best practices that you can apply today. So I've literally written in accompanying workbook. We'll give you like literal downloads of having that promotion conversation or writing your own mission, vision, and value statements. And so, yes, I hope everyone will check it out. All the details are on the book's website, which is betonyourselfbook.com. But I really want to thank you for inviting me. And also I'm going to like wake up at 3:00AM with whatever that light bulb moment was that I couldn't --- [TYLER] What you do, let me know, and we will share it. [ANN] Thank you. Okay, I will. Thank you very much. This is fun. [TYLER] Thank you, Ann. [TYLER] Part of the conversation that really, I guess, impressed on upon me and I enjoyed so much with Ann, Ann's just a real person. And if you've listened to one of my episodes I'm a real person. As the previous guest Mike Arietta has shared, and as I shared in this episode, we all pee and poop to. To me, that's, what's really important. It's important as a leader to understand that. We can't let our ego get, be honest, we can't be larger than life, as Ann talked about some of these figures and it's just, what are we here do and what are we trying to accomplish? And let's get people on that page, have that compelling vision. That's our great opportunity. If you're listening into this and this is January of 2022, your greatest opportunity as a leader today is to create a vision that people say, I want to be a part of that. It doesn't matter what it looks like. It doesn't matter how we get there and share the stories that at Amazon, before it was even Amazon, I mean, there were nothing. Google, before it was as famous as what it is, pivotal in our lives today, and yet these people had this vision to do something monumental and they've done that. They are giants in our world. Say whatever you want about Google, Amazon. It doesn't matter. They have created life-changing monumental organizations and it's because of the compelling vision that they had. I really kind of sit and as I wrap this up in my head and I think about the grit, the tenacity and the passion. As I shared, and as you saw, you heard when I kind of pointed to Ann because she just this magical aha go. If you haven't watched the YouTube video, make sure you go check out the YouTube video. You can check out the links at tylerdickerhoof.com to this podcast. You can also watch the YouTube video there and really see her face. And to me that's exciting because something just clicked for her. Hopefully we'll hear that what that is, and maybe share that in the round table, but it's, we all have grit, tenacity, and passion. We just need something to turn that key and unlock it. And you know what I think? I think it's a leader. I think it's a leader that I describe the story of someone just saying what I notice about you, man, you're phenomenal at this. Let's find a way for you to do more of that. Man, if we can do that as leaders, not only are we going to help those around us, that we lead build a healthier organization, be in a healthier place, lead in a healthier way, perform in a healthier way, we're going to find ourselves there too. Thanks for listening to this episode. Again, if you're not a subscriber, subscribe. Share this with someone. Hopefully they get value out of it too. And come back next week. I'll have another phenomenal episode and guest for you. Can't wait for you to hear that one and as well. Thanks for being here. Have a good one.