On The Journey Podcast
Welcome to On The Journey: Stories for Leaders and Aspiring Leaders. I am very excited about bringing you OTJ. Behind the podcast there is a very simple idea. And it is to give you an honest, inside view into the experiences of leaders who are in the trenches, that are executing and deploying high levels of leadership today. Just like you and me. On The Journey is a platform for them to share, and for you to learn how they are traversing their journey. And I want to do this by exploring specifically the transition points. Whether they were an account executive or an individual contributor, and they moved into a leadership role for the first time, or as they progress into higher levels of leadership, in their careers. Through honest, no holds barred conversations - I will explore their motivations, their preparation, their mindset, who their mentors were, frameworks, their mistakes, thoughts and advice so you can put them into action on your own journey. If you are a leader or an aspiring leader, you’ll, have a first row seat to my guests’ experience, almost like if you can join me and together we pick their brains. Are you ready? Welcome to On The Journey - enjoy it
Listen on:
Episodes
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Welcome to On The Journey, Season One, Episode One. This is the first episode of the podcast and I couldn't have thought about a better first guest than James Dwyer. James is the Regional Vice President - Strategic Accounts Team South at Alteryx. And that's where James and I met and ever since then we develop our relationship and kept in touch with each other. James is not only a great person, but also a fantastic leader that has a very interesting leadership development journey, and he shares it all during the podcast. He talks about how he started performing the role of a leader even before getting the title and how important that is to start deploying leadership even before you get the title before you "become" and get a team. He also talks about his personal 12 month development plan into leadership that he put together very intentionally with his multidisciplinary set of mentors and how that helped him in his journey into leadership, I think is one of the most interesting parts of the episode. He talks about the traits of the people that he hires and how he interviews for those traits. And finally, one of the last kind of hints that I'll leave you today, is his Leadership Progression framework and how he thinks about leadership progression from Me, to Us to Letting Go and Transferring. And he talks about each one of those stages. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed interviewing James and you take a couple of things that you can go and implement today. Welcome to On The Journey.
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Welcome to Season One, Episode Two of On The Journey This is a special one I got to talk to a good friend of mine that I haven't connected in a while Britnee Weza. We met at Alteryx and she has a long leadership career working for companies like Johnson and Johnson, Tableau, and Alteryx. Today, Britnee is the Sales Director for the Digital Natives segment at Databricks. It was a fantastic conversation, I enjoyed it a lot. She's one of the first leaders I talked to that said "leadership is hard". And it's true. It's a hard profession. It's tough, we don't typically talk about it among leaders, or recognize it. And it's hard. And that's part of the vulnerability that characterizes Britnee. She also talks about vulnerability and how she got advice throughout her career: to show her chinks in the armor and how that impacted her career positively. She talked to me about differences between a mentor and a sponsor and how they made contributions to her development and shares one of the best advice she got, which was ...Find problems and take a stab at solving them... Britnee talks about giving feedback and why it should be ongoing and not just at the end of the quarter on some particular times. She touches on something very important that I think most of us leaders struggle with, which is leaning in on people's positives and their style to make them successful and not just trying to imprint the things that made you successful as individual contributor. It was a wide ranging, fantastic conversation with Britnee. Thanks to her for being part of the podcast. All these and much more in this episode of On The Journey.
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Sunday Apr 16, 2023
Welcome to Season One, Episode Three of On The Journey In this third episode, I had the very special pleasure of talking to Tifenn Dano Kwan. Tifenn, or better known as TDK is a great, great friend of mine, I love her to death, we work together at Collibra. But she has a very long career as CMO, she transitioned to the C level suite at SAP Ariba, then became CMO of Dropbox, then Collibra, where we met and work together. Today she's the CMO of Amplitude. TDK, is a very special person, she is an immigrant like me into the US from France, she pursued that goal in her life. And she really opens up in this conversation, she talks about leadership being a career in service of something that is bigger than yourself, and opens up about her very personal journey into leadership. Tifenn talks about how she prepared for the interview of her first CMO role in an overnight flight from Australia, and how she thought hard about strategy and how she wanted to tackle the role. She also talks about how hard it was that first role in the first few months until she made the mental switch and the decision to lead, she had to make a very conscious decision. And she goes deep into what it means to make that decision consciously and then to communicate it to her team. You will get to hear how a high level executive thinks about the big rocks or the big buckets of her role. She talks about Budget, Team, TAM, Product, product market fit as things that she constantly is keeping her eye on in her roles. I hope you learn as much as I did in this episode. All of this and much more in this fascinating conversation of On The Journey. Welcome and enjoy.
Tuesday Jun 13, 2023
Tuesday Jun 13, 2023
Welcome to Season One, Episode Four, this time with a person that I absolutely adore: Julie Cecilio.
Julie is an amazing Enablement Leader, a total dynamo, and a lot of fun to work with.
In this episode of OTJ, Julie talks about:
Don't solve all problems with your own solutions.
Ask your team...and LISTEN to the answers!
How as a Leader you need to show up differently for different people.
3 things she focuses on consistently:
Stakeholder requirements
Strategic direction of the organization
Understanding roles and responsibilities.
All of this and much more in this fascinating conversation of On The Journey.
Welcome and enjoy.
Wednesday Jul 05, 2023
Wednesday Jul 05, 2023
Ryan Pageau is an amazing got-to-market leader who pursued leadership early in his career in a very intentional way, overcoming obstacles due to age and experience to clinch his first role. He embodies the traits of successful leaders through his passion for winning and practicing and teaching high performance behaviors.
In this episode of OTJ, Ryan shares...
- Obstacles he overcame to get his first leadership role.
-His passion for building successful teams.
-Sport coaches that made an impact on his mindset as a Leader.
-How being a high performance player informed his Leadership style.
For those that see Leadership as their next steps, be-like-Ryan.
Enjoy this deep and insightful conversation in this new episode of On The Journey.
Sunday Aug 06, 2023
Sunday Aug 06, 2023
Welcome to Season One, Episode Six of On The Journey
Momentous moment as this episode marks the half way mark to my 12 episode goal, and the episode that triggers launching OTJ to the public. You have been listening for a while, but know I recorded this just before launching the first episode with James Dwyer.
Most importantly, I get to record this one with one of my top 3 favourite GTM leaders: Stacey Moser to whom I reported to at GE and is currently CRO at Universal Robots.
Stacey talks about:
How she defines herself as a Competitive Engineer and what that is.
Her own transition into leadership and how she evolved, the rough first experiences.
How to manage strong opposition from your reports.
Amplify your people's skills.
Beware of your accidental diminishers.
How to communicate excellence in role and leadership values.
All of this and much more in this fascinating conversation of On The Journey. Welcome and enjoy.
Monday Oct 02, 2023
Monday Oct 02, 2023
Welcome to Season One, Episode Seven, this time with an absolute rock-star Solutions Engineering and Customer Success leader: Greg Peters.
I met and worked closely with Greg during Alteryx. He made an incredible impact as a deeply humane, empathetic, and servant leader. Greg provided so much content that I had to take several months, weekends and holidays to edit this one.
In this episode of OTJ, Greg talks about:
The side with the best leaders win
How a mentor of him gave "Permission To Be Human"
Everybody is fighting a battle you know nothing about
How withholding feedback impacts the team performance and culture.
All of this and much more in this fascinating conversation of On The Journey.
Welcome and enjoy.