Wonderful. What a great talk from Emily, motivational. We can change the world and now we're gonna switch over to Helen Alschuler. She's amazing.She has spent several years leading different projects at JP Morgan Chase and now as a Googler, uh so I'm sure she's gonna show us today on how we can leave others a little bit better. So we're really excited to have you, Helen and just can't wait to hear from you if you're in the chat, stay active, share where you're from and make sure you're using the hashtag hashtag WTGC 2020 share it on social. I'll put that in the chat. It's over to you, Helen.

All right. Thank you. Thanks so much for that kind intro. Um Hi. Uh Welcome uh to the, to the talk and Hello, Women Tech Network. I'm pleased to be here today and share lessons on technical leadership with the goal of leaving you all a little better. Uh And uh it all starts with uh my, my childhood memory and um some of you may recognize the book. Uh This is a book by Dale Carnegie. How to Win Friends and influence people, which originally came out in 1936 and has been uh over the years updated by Dale Carnegie Institute, including more recently in 2020 10 with examples of its relevance in a digital age. Perhaps some of you even read it. Uh I remember from my childhood, my dad reading me stories on leadership, empathy, uh and wisdom from this book. Uh Time was lessons like take interest in interest of others reign with names. Uh Remember who people are, engage with empathy and bury your boomerangs. Um And I haven't thought about it until recently, but very much uh much of my own leadership style was likely formed somewhat subconsciously from listening to these essentially bedtime stories. Um As I was growing up more recently, my son uh pointed out uh this book which is an updated version um in 20 in 2010. And uh specifically, he recommended that I read the book, citing certain parenting mistakes that have been made.

And with the hope of sharing with me what he learned from this book and with the goal of leaving me a little better as a parent. And uh these are some of the points that uh particularly um apply uh to parenting, leadership in general. But parenting as well, don't criticize condemn or complain, affirm what's good, listen longer and never say you're wrong. Anyone can relate. Uh Have your parents made some of those mistakes? Are you making similar ones as a parent yourself? And what uh really uh stuck with me.

Uh And uh as I reread the book more recently on my son's advice, I realized how much relevance it had to my own technical leadership journey, filled with success stories and pitfalls somewhat sometimes because of specific action that I did because I've forgotten about these timeless tips and sometimes because I may have fallen into the trap where uh things don't work the same way in every situation.

And for every person, uh these four essential uh points stand out for me. And I would like to share more examples um of how relevant they may be in your technical leadership career. And so starting with the first one, I use my original photography in this presentation. And so the Golden Gate Bridge uh gives it the multi meaning uh to the advice from Dale Carnegie, uh ask questions instead of giving direct orders. If you work in a highly structured environment, leaders often lead by authority uh when you say and what you say as a manager carries much weight, even if you're wrong, even if you're leading blind through the fog. And what helped me make a successful transition from a director at a bank uh to a CTO at a start up. And ultimately, as an engineering uh manager at Google is appreciation or rather an instinct that as a leader, your role is in uh getting best ideas from your team and giving a team autonomy in making your those decisions and then supporting those decisions and being their advocate.

Uh Google's engineering culture has this principle at its core. Uh It's a secret sauce that uh helps engineers be productive and happy. Uh And that includes a significant investment in innovation and developer tools uh which have been continuously developed over the years. And now, Google is open sourcing many of those tools for the community to benefit from. In fact, it's the first time in my career that I heard leadership measuring developer happiness based on quality of the pro uh productivity tools that they use and continuously investing in those tools and making sure that uh the time spent not doing the work that developers enjoy and pass that which is code design, uh making sure that that time is accounted for and better uh tools um and processes are implemented to help when planning okrs uh which are objective and team results.

As an engineering manager, I first solicit ideas from the team. Uh Then I um align it with the broader business goals. And as a team, we uh decide uh together with our business partners, what are the right initiatives that benefit the business and contribute to the growth of individuals and the team as a whole? Uh And if not for this approach, there wouldn't be gmail. Uh And there wouldn't be open source projects that everyone uh uses and loves and that are essential for every software engineer projects like Uberti Tensorflow and basil um which are all started by engineers being very passionate at having the autonomy uh and leadership support to pursue those passions.

Uh Google is known as the bottoms of engineering culture. And of course, it's very hard to maintain on a scale of 100,000 plus organization. So those processes are continuously uh evaluated. Surrender the credit another powerful uh chapter in Dale Carnegie's book and a very useful advice.

This one is very interesting and even controversial because there is much contrast in its use particularly on based on your gender. In his book, Dale Carnegie gives examples, highlighting leaders and writers who share the credit for their work in order to gain alliances and influence.

And also he gives examples of uh how fighting for your credit can hurt the relationship in the long run. However, research suggests that women are more likely to be interrupted in uh in meetings and their ideas are taken by their colleagues a time article, how not to be mansplained in meetings, cites research and uh on these topics and conclusions from Sheryl Sandberg uh points such as uh as a result of being interrupted.

Women hold back. We relinquish credit altogether. Our ideas are co opted or they simply fizzle out. We shut down, become less creative, less engaged. We even revert into ourselves wondering if it's actually our fault. Enter the spiral of self doubt. MNT recently uh who is an engineering manager asked me this question, what can she do in a case where her colleague was taken credit for the work that she and her team did, did she wrote a 20 page design document which took her several weeks to do and to communicate. And uh and he wrote a one pager to the manager, directly outlining the approach. She since reached out to both the colleague and the manager and trying to explain uh that it was her team's idea. Uh But in the end, she felt that relationships on both sides were impacted. Sometimes it's not possible to fix a situation, but you can sure learn a to things like communicating su ideas early is key. Increasing the list of people you communicate your ideas to can help others see them and give you credit when the credit is due and most important, getting more allies of all genders. I found that most empowering in my personal career uh and when allies speak on your behalf in meetings, uh where you're not present and give the best uh uh credit to you when uh they, when perhaps you will be less inclined to do so this approach can help you get recognition even if you surrender the credit and ultimately lead to better, to a better relationship.

Uh But it's very important to hold your leaders accountable for being your allies, supporting your career goals, giving you the credit and opportunities. And if they're not your champion, then help them see why it's important. Leave them a little better with that advice and ultimately decide what's best for you, your career growth, you're in the driver's seat, uh, and how you can influence the change for yourself. And also for others that follow you connect with core desires. This particular advice, uh, is something I'm still working on and has certainly been one of the reasons behind some of the failures in my, in my own career. Uh, anyone's sort of concept of cookie licking, there's a jar of cookies and you can eat what you can and everything else you will lick so nobody can have it. And so that's the cookie licking concept. I find it most frustrating and often catch myself in a defensive mode trying to explain why I would take a cookie. Uh, that was led by somebody else. In other words, why my team is the right team for the project instead of the team that has claimed it, uh, in the past that resulted in several difficult situations where relationships were impacted, uh, a different approach to this, uh, is to do more research on why others are signing up for this work, ask questions.

Uh, that show that you're trying to understand the problem and where they're coming from, move the conversation from two teams against each other to two teams against a problem working to find a solution. I've recently tried this in on a new initiative and it created a more powerful alliance that helped us partner on future work. Even if I didn't get the uh specific project in in a short time. Another way I'm working on this is through untraditional methods such as improv workshops. And I didn't sign up for it because I'm looking to change into the uh setup comedy career or, or as a supplemental income. But because it helps build listening skills and communicate ideas based on building on ideas of others. The famous yes and approach and what really underlines uh all of my lessons uh and led to my personal introspection and why I decided to share this with you all is this very, very important um point around leading others a little better. Uh And so after reading the book, I really wanted to share that with, with you. Uh and it has completely changed my personal approach uh to email. Uh And I'm working on applying it more real time communication.

Now, of course, applying it on real time communication is much harder because you uh don't all, don't get to pause and collect your thoughts and ask yourself questions. Um This is even more important in our current work from home situation where generally there's a lot of uncertainty, emotions are high and you cannot connect the same way you used to with your uh people. And our engineering culture relies heavily on collaboration, influence around your ideas and solutions when I disagree uh in the past, I used to simply state that and essentially in written communication that can create a negative tone uh where the other party feels offensive and that stops the productive conversation right there.

Uh So now when I respond, um I ask myself, how can I provide feedback, even critical feedback and leave the other person a little better help them discover something, share value, start with honest appreciation uh for the situation or their particular background and ask questions.

As engineers, we often see this in code reviews, comments like this will not work or you can't do it that way. Uh And in those cases, I often go back to the person that wrote those reviews and ask them to consider giving the other person more value by giving them the rationale. Why will this not work? Work? Here are the resources that you might want to consider uh point out uh some additional resources that they can use to improve their work and leave them a little better. And I'm optimistic that there will be more innovation in our developer tools that will help us drive a more positive culture. And I'll close with this really amazing quote uh from the book. Uh And uh that essentially is the reason why I wanted to take a step back at my own career, reassess how I've done my success as my pitfalls, uh my supporters, uh people that perhaps haven't supported me as much. And how do I interact with them uh beyond uh this particular point. Um And I'll leave you with this really powerful quote. What all come to understand is that there is no such thing as a neutral exchange. You leave someone either a little better or a little worse.

The best among us, leave others a little better with every nod, every inflection, every interface, the swat idea and body daily has significant results. And with that, I'm hap I, I would like to thank you for joining and I'm happy to take your questions. I would like to make this as interactive as our conference uh will allow us and share your story. I would love to hear from you and how you are making the decisions in your careers. All right, we've got five minutes for questions, which is what I was looking for. So let's see how to best address that. All right, Nicole, are there any questions that uh I could address?

Yes. Hey, Helen, I put in the chat to get some more questions for you. I mean, I put one in on how you deal with failure. You have a lot of wisdom that you gave us in your presentation. So how do you deal with failure? What are your tips there?

Uh Sure. Thank thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the question. Uh Yeah, internalizing failure is uh is very common and something um Arguably women do a lot uh of as well. Uh And uh it, it's not something I personally enjoy as well. And uh when I approach uh dealing with failure from the learning perspective, it does, it does help. Um But also I try to look at uh I feel like I successfully handled the failure if you can say that when I've had a similar situation afterwards, and I have learned my lesson and I have turned things around and so accepting the failure is really important uh combined with accepting uh some of the uh particular lessons that you want to apply and focusing on using that as a practice, uh focusing uh on uh using all of the things that you just um realize that you've not done as well as you should have as a to do list for the next interaction.

And it helps shift the focus from blaming yourself to thinking about how you're gonna handle that in the future.

Great Helen, we had another question around feedback. Why is it so hard for people to take feedback?

Yes, this is, this is very, very interesting, interesting point. Uh So I think feedback, we tend to internalize feedback, critical uh especially if uh you make very pointed things that this is wrong. Um But if you accompany that with this is wrong or may maybe even this is an approach that will lead to these issues, then it changes the um negative energy from saying you are the problem, you are wrong. This but to this approach is wrong. Let's rethink about that. And here some of the points uh I think in general there are cultures that have a very direct uh dynamic uh and people enjoy um giving critical feedback and uh having points like that, I found that in corporate world it is uh less uh it is less common. And um I personally come from a very direct culture. So I've done some personal adjustment as well on my part that actually uh I need to work on how to give feedback in a way that it lands because it's not about the feedback. Uh Like you can say you're wrong, you can say this is, this is not the right idea. But has, have you changed the other person's perspective? Have you shut them down so that they just ignored what you said right afterwards?

Or have you made them realize or learn something and left them a little better? So it's really more about not so much why people don't take the critical feedback. But how do you make sure that when given critical feedback, you actually get the person to accept it and by providing that more information on the particular topic will be useful?

Great. Well, thank you again, Helen, a great speech who knew that um improv and would help listening. So we all learned that there and it helps in sessions like this where I know it's a challenge presenting so great job. And I love the tip around sharing credit. So we're gonna go ahead and pivot over to our next speaker and uh thank you again and um have a wonderful day everybody and make sure again you connect with Helen. I believe I dropped her uh Twitter in there. We could build up each other through this event by uh following on Twitter. So give her a follow and connect with her there if you have any other questions to take this offline. Thanks again.