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Daniel Wolfe (00:10):
Wow,
(00:11):
Everybody got really quiet all of a sudden. Don't worry, I'm supposed to be here. I'm not just coming up testing the microphone. I want to welcome everyone to Payments Forum and specifically to this morning where we feature the most influential women in payments honorees. It is a unique and exciting, fascinating look at a different aspect of our industry than you might see on the main conference stage because the honorees that we will feature here this morning are willing to and very open about sharing their experiences, not just in the industry but in their own careers and sharing advice and tips and predictions about how things are going and what you can do to follow their examples as well. So my name is Daniel Wolf. I am an editor with American Banker. I wanted to just kind of run down what this morning will be before we hit into the main conference.
(01:09):
We're going to have three sessions. The first moderated by my boss, Chana Schoenberger, the editor in chief of American Banker, about the hybrid work environment and how that affects the career led ladder. Then I'm coming back and I'm going to talk to three of the honorees about AI and how that's affecting the workplace and business and how people advance in their careers. And then my colleague, Kate Fitzgerald, who's going to talk to a few folks about advancing beyond that middle rung of the career ladder. So it's a really exciting set of sessions and after that you get to participate and I do encourage people to participate before then with questions and raise your hand, put us all on the spot. We're going to have a meet the honorees session where you will be able to sit at a table and talk to individual honorees. The ones that have agreed to do this are Katie Whalen from Fiserv, Elena Whistler from The Clearing House.
(02:09):
Katie is the head of North American Issuer Processing Advisor. Elena is the Chief Client Officer at the clearinghouse, Celeste Schwitters, SVP, and Head of Community Accounts at Visa. Amina Satter, senior Vice President and Group Lead for Institutional Payments at KeyBank and Judith McGuire, SVP of Global Products for Discover. So if you want to put any of those people on the spot and ask them your most burning questions, this will be your opportunity and then we will break into the lunch where you will actually, you might still be able to continue those conversations, but we'll feed you while you're doing it. So I want to thank everybody here and hand it off to my boss, the editor in chief of American Banker Chana Schoenberger.
Chana Schoenberger (02:57):
Hello, welcome.
(02:59):
Thank you for coming to Florida. I know it's really hard to come to Florida with this beautiful weather and especially if you're from New York like we are, it's a real hardship, so we appreciate you being strong for us. I want to welcome up two panelists who are both honorees. We have Michelle Young, who's the SVP and General Manager of Merchant Solutions for financial institutions at Worldpay. And Anna Greenwald, who's the chief operating officer of MoneyGram, please come up and we are going to talk about, we're going to talk about how hybrid work is rebuilding the career ladder. This is something that we all have experienced over the last four years, even after the pandemic is now over, it's really shaped how a lot of companies work, including ours. So thank you for joining me up here. Alright, so let's start with one of the big issues that we, well first of all, introduce yourselves. Tell us where you are physically, where you're based.
Anna Greenwald (04:03):
I'm based in Minneapolis.
Chana Schoenberger (04:04):
Okay.
Michelle Young (04:06):
I am based outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and Auburn, Alabama.
Chana Schoenberger (04:09):
Okay. And I'm based in New York, so very different corporate environments, certainly. So how do we ensure that people have the opportunities to develop their skills and networks in a remote world? Just an anecdote. From my experience, we've noticed that people who are adults really don't have a problem working from home. It's fine, they know how to do it. They come to conferences like this one, they meet industry peers. It's the younger ones, the more junior ones who are new to the industry who really need almost the apprenticeship model of what it is a journalist does in our case, by sitting next to and listening to people on the phone, being taken to interviews, walking around, looking at documents. And you can do some of that on Zoom, but it's more difficult. So we've had to think hard about how we do those things. What are you guys seeing?
Michelle Young (05:00):
You want to go first?
Anna Greenwald (05:01):
I'll go first. So I agree with everything you said that the problem set is the same, but the tools were building those connections and ensuring that it might be a volume issue with me. It might be my mind. Let's try this. Alright, let's
Speaker 5 (05:20):
Go. But we'll work with that. So I
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Think the problems that is the same. Now, am I stop?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
No,
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Do you want to move it up further maybe? How's this?
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Yeah, how's this? Okay, perfect. Great. All,
Speaker 4 (05:43):
How about you start?
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Okay,
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Here we can do ai.
Michelle Young (05:48):
I agree with what Anna was saying. I think especially as you build your brand as a, I wouldn't say just younger, but newer-in-role person. Right, exactly. I think it's really important to have a diversity of experiences and I think one thing that I did, especially early in COVID, was encourage people to actually go out in their community. If you can't get to an office and things are totally shut down, I understand that early on there weren't even the opportunities to do as much networking, but I said, go sit in a coffee shop, go volunteer. There are groups in schools that are looking for mentors. Reach out and be as proactive as possible so that you can get yourself some sort of connectivity. And then I think to Anna's point, the tool set that you need as you build your brand earlier in your career and your tenure is very different than what you have when you are advanced in your mastery. And I think we are trying to give those people different support as we look at how we can enhance that and whether it's community or whether it's networking across industries even and within our own organizations. So I think it takes a little creativity and pushing and really digging into your local area also to see what was available. And that's what we really fostered a lot during the pandemic. Great.
Anna Greenwald (07:24):
Okay. How's this? Great. Perfect. Yes.
(07:27):
Okay. So I absolutely agree with everything there. I think there are two things in addition to that Michelle and I were talking about in one of our pre-sessions. The first is that there's something about leadership being an example with networking. And one thing that used to happen kind of organically in the office setting is that you would talk about your life and now you have to be more deliberately expository about that in a way that can feel weird, but is really important to being accessible and letting young people especially know who you are and what your values are and what your interests are. And so it sounds maybe strange to say that this is a building block of helping young people feel connected, but it certainly helped us at MoneyGram to have leaders be just more accessible in who they are personally.
Chana Schoenberger (08:17):
Yeah, I noticed, it's funny, I took a picture just now of the stage and I wanted to send it to my team. And as I was searching in Slack for the right channel, the channel I was looking for was AB top eds. And what I found was AB dog talk. I don't have a dog and I didn't realize that my colleagues with dogs have been talking about dogs all this time, which is wonderful.
Michelle Young (08:38):
Different ways to connect, right? It's different ways, whether it be culturally through what you're saying is exposing yourself and what you do and other ways for them to network with one another, especially in this challenging time
Anna Greenwald (08:53):
Outside of leadership, I think there's always been an obligation for the person who wants to be developed to have some sense for where they want to go and what they want to do. And I think in a remote environment, just having to be thoughtful and very deliberate about that, even if what you want to get out of networking or out of career development is something as simple as I want to learn more about finance or accounting or whatever your special thing is. Just being able to articulate this is the thing I want out of this networking experience and this development experience. And being able to share that, even if it's at the end of a call to say, Hey, if anybody on this call knows about X, Y, or Z at MoneyGram we have a chat channel called Ladies of MoneyGram in an inclusive way. And oftentimes on there people will post, I'm interested in career development for communication skills, or Hey, does anybody know anybody who could help me learn about this? And so providing those forums, whether it's about dogs or whatever it is in the remote environment can be very helpful.
Michelle Young (10:06):
We did also at Worldpay, we did a connected, it's called Be Connected and it's the shape of a little B. And what we did was similar to Chana, what you just said, which was are there other things? And trying to force people outside of their immediate kind of pod to expand, whether it's geographically or you could put in there, it was kind of an AI thing. You put in there all of the things that were your interests and things like that. So you could then say, oh, well Anna's a great runner and she's not in my community, but she's part of our organization and whether you talked about and its NGO type things that people were interested, all of those types of things. And it kind of gave you people to network with and it wasn't weird that you could just say, Hey, as part of Be Connected, I wanted to talk to you about your passion for food safety and food security or whatever. So it was kind of interesting that I think there were good things that came out of the pandemic. It forced us to look at networking and career development differently. Being your own champion, but how do you be your own champion, especially when you're newer in your role?
Chana Schoenberger (11:24):
Yeah. The company I work for now is medium sized. Previously I worked for a large company and they had a very well established mentorship program. So as a middle manager, I was both a mentor and a mentee. They did it by job title, which was a fascinating experience because I had this mentee who was a young woman just getting started and she had all the issues that you have in your early twenties in your first job. She was going to grad school at night trying to advance in her career. And then the guy they gave me as a mentor was someone at the level above mine and he had interesting things. Mostly I was asking him questions about the structure of the organization and he had a lot of insight on that that I didn't have. So it's useful. We've actually just started an mentorship program at Horizon, which we're going to be starting in the next couple months and it'll be something like that. It should be good. Okay. So in terms of career paths, do you want to give some examples of how your companies are helping people along a career path? Because one problem that I think everyone has is you get very good at your job and then you start to look out. Unless you have an obvious place to move like your boss leaves or they create a new position, you've got to do something else. How do you get people to advance in their careers?
Anna Greenwald (12:44):
This is a great topic and it is a challenge I think across the board. And it's especially a challenge if you work in a relatively flat or relatively small organization. I think the topic that I touched on before about I think knowing what you want, knowing what you want as a individual contributor or a leader, knowing what that next level looks like for you. It doesn't even have to be a title, but it can be something as simple as I want to continue to grow my sphere of control, or I want to continue to learn about new areas of the company. And so outside of
(13:22):
Before this session, Michelle and I were chatting and we're like, we hope it's not handheld. We saw the lavaliers and we were so relieved now we're getting paid back. So anyway about career paths. If you work in a relatively thought organization, a formal career path, of course you can move up the layers, but I think more and more career paths look like Lattice. I know that mine does. I know Michelle's does. And so knowing what you want generally I think is more valuable than knowing that you can move from a software engineer two to a software engineer three and limiting yourself to that. And I think as leaders, what I think is really important is to just always be on the lookout for talent. Always, always, always, always look for humble, hungry and smart and every single meeting you're in, and I like to do skip level meetings for one thing. They're super energizing for me, but for another thing, it helps me always identify within the organization, well who is interested in X? If that opportunity presents itself. So skip levels as a leader, they're just enchanting and also very useful. I can't even see where about,
Chana Schoenberger (14:44):
I think it's on.
Michelle Young (14:45):
Okay, sorry. So I guess as we look -- The one thing that resonates with me most is you have to be the captain of your own ship in your career, so you're in charge of your career development, but I think this new age that we're working in has made it more challenging. So to Anna's point, I agree totally. You've got to look at things that help you get to where you want to be. And I think we have a really established mentorship program also, and I have multiple mentees and I intentionally will make sure that they are in different areas of the organization many times globally so that I understand global talent. But I think they're coming to that with a very chartered course. And as we look, we always want more for our children in the future state than what our parents did. But there's a pressure there for them because I think they need to understand sometimes it's assignments, rounding yourself out, preparing if you've got that curiosity to learn and to grow, I think that's phenomenal.
(15:58):
But I think we also need to set fair expectations that it isn't always your boss leaves and there's the traditional path. I think we need to really get them ingrained that there are multiple paths forward and it doesn't always need to be linear. And we really want to encourage people to be thoughtful and creative as they grow. And I love the concept of constant curiosity. And my favorite place to shop for talent is our circle of excellence in our company because you've got so many hungry top performers. I spend my time networking and I'm like, okay, it's events like that where you really want to network.
Chana Schoenberger (16:44):
What is that?
Michelle Young (16:45):
Our circle of excellence is our top performers throughout the organization that it's probably the eighties concept that it's a trip and it's a destination and it's with all of the senior leaders. And so to me, it's a great time to network and talk about the opportunities that are out there for growth with those very hungry people that are very driven and very successful and sometimes get them to think differently about what the next step of progression is. Because like I said, it's been very linear and there's so much diversity and opportunities in all organizations and we just have to get people to think a little differently, I think of what success is.
Chana Schoenberger (17:33):
It's funny because, so we were talking last night at dinner about Proctor and Gamble, which is one of the biggest CPG companies. They're known for marketing. I'm a Crest user and tied user myself. What they're known for is when you join the company, they give you a battery of tests and then they basically tell you what your career trajectory is going to be. So they say, we think you're CEO material or you're going to be an assistant manager, and as long as you work there, you will sort of do this or you're going to do that. But that's what their many, many years of experience tells them where you're going to go and you can either take it or leave it. Basically almost no companies work that way, right? As you said, it's not linear. You end up where you end up because of luck, because of circumstance, because of how hard you work, because of where you are in the right place at the right time. And I think especially for more junior employees, it's just starting out. It can be hard for them to look up and see a direct path or indirect path to get to where they think they want to go. What they don't realize, of course, is your goals may change over time. You may think you want to be in one area of the company, but actually what you're interested in is innovation or FinTech or something. It's totally different. How do you help people understand what they really want and how to get there?
Anna Greenwald (18:56):
I'm not sure I know what I really want, but I think that's a good place to start. It's a good place to start with young people to say, at no point in my career did I ever think what I'd really like to do is be COO. Instead. What I thought what I'd really like to do is learn is make a difference. And those were sort of vague things, but I saw opportunities that where I felt like the outputs were equal to my inputs where I had good leaders to learn from. And so if I sort of talk about my own career journey, sometimes it helps them to see, oh, what I really enjoy doing is being close to leadership. Maybe I want a seat at a different table. If I wanted a seat at that table, what skills would I need to have? If I wanted to make a difference, what would that look like for me?
(19:47):
And so really just thinking through a series of questions about what motivates you? Is it potential? Is it purpose? Is it the opportunity for advancement? And then if you back into, okay, well, in my case, I was a technical writer and I felt like the answers to those questions about what motivates me where I can make a difference, they led me to think, well, maybe I can't make my biggest difference as a technical writer. And so just articulating that journey for someone who might not otherwise connect the dots of how you create a lattice rather than a ladder. I like those conversations. They're additive to me, and I think they're additive to kind of the Socratic method of drawing out of a person what they might really be interested in. And I think
Michelle Young (20:40):
The only thing I would add to that is those are all things that we try and embody. And I love the path of making sure you're sharing your journey and where you came from. Because I think growing up in New Hampshire, I don't think that I would've ever thought I would've had a career trajectory that I had. And so I think it's about what do you have a passion for? And then it's what are the skill sets that you think you need to make the transition to where you want to go. Exactly. And I think that's what we as leaders need to make sure. And I just did my year end reviews a little while ago with my team, and that's one of the fundamental things that I always ask. I'm like, where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What do you love? What are you passionate about? And how can I help you get there? And I think sometimes they don't stop to ask themselves those questions and be thoughtful about their journey. I think they're just in the journey and I need to get to the next role. I need to be the manager and I need to do, I'm like, what do you love? What are you passionate about? What's going to make you get up and smile every day and go, okay, I am onto the next challenge. And I think pulling those threads out of people and making sure that you understand, oh, I can understand that there's certain things that, and I've taken several of those at different companies of what inherently you are strong assets for your attributes that make you probably predisposed to go in a certain area. But I would also say that sometimes you overcompensate so that you can deliver in those that might not have been your strengths. And I think we need to figure out with people, what are you passionate about? What do you want to do? And then honing in on those things that we need to help them enhance. And sometimes early in your journey, to your point, in a smaller mid-tier organization, you might not have had as much exposure to something that you might've really wanted to do and you were passionate about. So I think it's understanding all those elements that drive the person.
Chana Schoenberger (22:54):
So one of the things that we spoke about when we talked before this session is the idea of executive presence. Now, obviously you both have it seriously, but it's very different in person than it is on Zoom. And so much of our work life now is spent on Zoom. I don't know about you, but when I'm in the office and I'm always in the office two days a week, frequently my in-person meetings include a video component because there'll be a colleague or someone we're talking to who is not there. And so even when I'm in person, I'm still on camera. How do we teach people to have the executive presence that they need on camera, on a screen?
Anna Greenwald (23:35):
Well, we did talk about it as just the three of us in our prep session. Executive presence is a tricky, tricky concept because it really means what does that person perceiving you expect an executive to look and sound like? And each of us have to decide for ourselves what we're willing to do to have executive presence.
Chana Schoenberger (23:58):
Anything,
Anna Greenwald (23:58):
Anything. Anything. Okay. So I think there are three dos on Zoom for executive presence or just credibility in general. I would make sure. So first, find a friend you really trust, get on camera with that person and ask them what they notice about what they can see in your room. Sometimes just lighting is a big problem. A lot of our communication is our expression, our nonverbals. Make sure people can see you. You can get a ring light on Amazon for $25. You're going to feel pretty, which also helps. And
Chana Schoenberger (24:38):
Don't worry that it makes you look like a teen influencer. No one's going to see the lights. They're just going to see how nice your
Anna Greenwald (24:45):
Exactly. A lot of times I see laundry in the background and I can tell you do too. I just really want to go to those people's house and help them with that laundry. And that's all I can think about. And it detracts sometimes from the points that they're making that I just want to help them with their laundry. So keep an eye out for that. And then my third and final thing is if you are picking, so just be aware of what's in your background. And if you're a big Star Wars fan, I'm totally with you, but it might not reinforce your credibility if you have Star Wars or your passion topic in your background, just be careful with that. Those are my three do's.
Chana Schoenberger (25:33):
Yeah, and it's funny because that one cuts both ways. We do have a number of team members who are passionate about various things, and they will frequently bring them onto internal calls. I'm guessing they don't do that on external calls, but it does provide a conversation starter, especially when you're warming someone up, getting to know them. They can talk about the puppets that you have or whatever, and that it could be very positive. It can also hit people the wrong way depending on what it is you're passionate about. Pets are pretty neutral. I think everybody likes to see a fuzzy pet. Children depends on how well behaved the child is. We have a number of children who are essentially team members at this point, and they're great.
Anna Greenwald (26:15):
I love to see kids on calls, you guys. I love it. So I hope you also work someplace where your children are welcome. The person who loves you most should be allowed to come and visit you once in a while. Yes.
Michelle Young (26:26):
Mine brings me lunch frequently, so I always accept that one. I think the one thing I felt during Covid that was really important, I had a lot of employees with a sales team across the US. New York City when you're young and early in your career, and I've lived there, and I would tell you the stage was bigger than my apartment, by the way.
Chana Schoenberger (26:48):
We've all lived in that apartment. Yes.
Michelle Young (26:51):
But I think when you have two people and you have a roommate and you were both trying to work, I think it was really critical. I'm a huge fan of, we have our brand backgrounds because I think what was happening is early in the pandemic when we were a hundred percent on Zoom, there were some definite, not just laundry in the background, there were other things that I think from a professional aspect where really important to make sure you had that executive presence when you were talking to clients, not just internally, but externally. And I think the backgrounds provided a lot of that. Now you lose that connectivity. I saw the Star War fan over here. So I think you lose that maybe topic of what's in your background for a conversation starter and an icebreaker. But I think if you are aware and you're coaching people to be aware of what's in their background, I love the ring light. So my daughter has a ring light because she loves
Chana Schoenberger (27:51):
TikTok.
Michelle Young (27:52):
Okay, so I used it recently and I had to do a headshot and she was like, look. And I'm like, I really like that.
(28:04):
It was wonderful. So there are certain things there that I would highly encourage. It's either backgrounds. And she actually said something really funny. One day I had a very big call and I was dressed head to toe with matching shoes. And she goes, mom, I said, honey, you never know what happens around here. We have tornadoes and everything else. If I have to leave, at least I am totally professionally, I don't have my fuzzy slippers on. So not that I wouldn't on an internal call, but I felt like there was a mindset of getting ready to present in a large critical conversation. And I wanted to make sure I was prepped if I was in their office. And so to me, that made a difference of my mental aspect more than anything.
Chana Schoenberger (28:53):
Definitely. Yeah. A thing we did is we also, we have someone on staff who has experience in media coaching for executives. And so we've offered people, if you're going to be on stage on behalf of the company, this person would be happy to work with you. And really, there's nobody who doesn't need media coaching. Even if you've been moderating panels for many years. It's always helpful.
Anna Greenwald (29:14):
I totally agree. If you're ever offered media training, take it. Because even if you don't ever talk on a stage or to a reporter, just gives you confidence about your ability to handle things.
Chana Schoenberger (29:27):
So in terms of the workplace, five years from now, obviously five years ago, no one would've expected in 2019 that this would be the workplace that would be prevalent across the knowledge industries or in financial services. If you told bankers or traders, they'd be working from home, they would've laughed in your face. So what do you see five years from now and what's the difference between what the workers want and what the executives want?
Michelle Young (29:57):
Interesting, because I think it's not just what do the workers want, what does the industry want? What do the results drive? And I think we're really a community of what are the results and the outcomes. So whether that be Wall Street or you're, if you're a private investment, I think it's going to be, especially the industry that I am in, we saw such transformation. Our industry flipped in innovation within six months, went five years into the future with payment processing and things of trends that I have an 80-year-old mother, and if I ever thought she was doing remote check deposit, I would've. There's no way. So I think not only the trends in the marketplace, but the trends I think that we will see with people. How does AI, I'm very interested in the next one. How does AI impact our workplace with employees and leaders, and how does that drive us to better productivity, different productivity? I think those are all things, I think it's going to look transformatively different because we've embraced things in the past couple of years during the pandemic that I don't think we thought would come as fast as they did
Chana Schoenberger (31:26):
DocuSign. They did DocuSign in two weeks in March, 2020 because they had to,
(31:34):
I mean, the acceleration of pickup, grocery, buy online, pickup in the parking lot, all of those types of trends, those same thing. I mean, we pushed what was maybe 15, 20% to like 80%. It was crazy. So I think you're going to see the same types of trends, I believe with employees and leaders, and I think you will see definite innovation with how we work differently and how we show up for our consumers differently too.
(32:10):
Yeah,
(32:13):
I thought a lot about the question of five years because, so in five years I'll be 52, so I'll be kind of maybe toward the end of things, which is a weird thought, not death, you guys hopefully. But
(32:29):
Everybody works until they're 75 now,
Anna Greenwald (32:32):
And I'm so excited about the leaders I see coming up now. They fill me with such hope. And what I'm really curious about, I think during the pandemic, what happened for some of us is that we realized which of the things we were doing, we were doing because we liked to do them and which of the things were performative. And for the folks who are early in their career, they really grew up in that four years where we kind of stopped doing the performative things. And I feel like that group of leaders, the ones who are coming, they're very authentic. They really value bringing their complete selves to work. They really value work flexibility. And so I think I would be a bit hubris for me to say what will happen in five years, but I do think I can be sure that the workplace in five years will be full of people who still crave flexibility and are willing to give up a lot of other things for flexibility and the ability to bring their whole selves to work.
Chana Schoenberger (33:38):
Yeah. The interesting thing about flexibility too is that there's now this complete and total dropping of the veil that people used to have over their personal lives. It's gone. So frequently, we will have people say, I'm going to write this story and then I'm going to go for a run in the park and I'll come back and I'll pick up your edit. And so as a person who's been working for decades, at first I recoiled from that and I said, well, I want to think of you sitting at your desk while you're waiting for me to edit it. And then I thought, why does it matter to me what this person is doing? They did their job, now it's my job, and then I have to give it back to them. While I'm doing my job, what does it matter what they do? And it's almost more honest to know that they're going to be dealing with elder care or childcare or pet care or yoga classes or literally anything. As long as the work gets done and it's done well.
Anna Greenwald (34:34):
I think it goes back to the point Michelle made about looking at people's outcomes. Let's look at our outcomes and if you're super highly productive and also go get your hair done at 10 and have a run at four, but you're finding a way to be more productive than anyone, I mean, who am I to judge? Go.
Michelle Young (34:52):
And I think as we have, and I wish as I sit here and go, okay, retirement's probably I'd like it to be five or six years away. So it depends on the market. But I would say as I reflect, sometimes it's hard not to recoil because we were brought up
Chana Schoenberger (35:12):
Generational.
Michelle Young (35:13):
Exactly. And so as you look at Gen Z's, gen Y, I mean, I think millennial, I think we need to, as we attract new talent, as we keep new talent, as we grow new talent, I think it's super important to make sure that we are sensitive to that. Because if you're not, you could be alienating a whole group of people, and that's great talent that you want. And I think my first inclination was exactly what yours was, which was like, what do you mean? But I'm sitting there going, you know what? If you're productive or you want to pick up and your best yoga class is from two to three, and then you're going to pick up at six or seven and finish. I don't care. I just want good product, good outcome.
Chana Schoenberger (35:58):
Right. As long as it's done on time. Okay. We have time for maybe one question from the audience. Sorry, we got carried away. Actually talking up here. Does anyone have a question for these VIPs? Yes, I see one over here.
Speaker 7 (36:18):
Okay. I'll just speak loudly. Hold on.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
You have mic. Oh, sorry. Get my step.
Speaker 6 (36:27):
All right, where are we?
Speaker 8 (36:32):
Yes. So I liked your comment about looking for folks that are humble, hungry, and smart, and I'm a first line supervisor. And so I'm just curious, what are your recommendations for really bringing out in a remote environment, maybe someone that is a little bit quieter or you definitely see potential in them, but you're just looking to bring that out a little bit more?
Anna Greenwald (37:02):
Okay. Good question. I love this question, but first I have to say hungry, humble, smart. It's not original. It's from a book called The Ideal Team Player. So it's a really good book. It's super short.
(37:18):
I really like your question because I am someone whose natural state is sort of quiet. And I think what's the good news and the bad news about Zoom is that if your natural state is quiet, it's really easy, especially in big meetings, to stay off camera and to not speak. And so the first thing I would say is encourage people to be on camera. The second thing I would say is that Zoom is super democratizing for quiet people because you don't have to be the loudest voice in the room. You can turn up your volume. You can also raise your tiny yellow animated hand. And so I try to tell people, look, I can tell your natural state, like mine is quiet, but make a goal for yourself that you raise your tiny yellow hand once or somehow insert yourself. Because unfortunately, there's a lot of data to show that the people who talk the most are the people who are seen as leaders. Even if maybe their contributions don't add a lot of value, they're still seen as leaders. So that's a conversation. It's not only women whose natural state is a bit quieter, but it tends to be mostly women. So I encourage you to talk with those people and say, let's make a very tactical goal that you'll contribute at least once during meetings and let's see how that goes. So I take a very direct and very tactical approach, and I can absolutely relate to those people.
Chana Schoenberger (38:45):
That's great.
Michelle Young (38:47):
Yeah, I agree. And I am not the quiet person, but what I would say is I have one of my favorite employees is what I will call understated. And I think the more you can encourage, if it's somebody that you're mentoring or works for you, find your voice. Because I think that's the one thing I try and balance my team with because I think somebody that is more understated has thought their processing is so interesting to me, and they come out with more meaningful things many times because they're holding them back in, they're contemplating, they're being more reflective. And so I would say find your voice, as Anna said, with your little yellow hand raise or whatever, but your reflectivity and pondering things to me many times is so meaningful and more meaningful.
Chana Schoenberger (39:44):
Definitely. Well, thank you so much. This has been really interesting. Thank you.