Hear from senior tech leaders about what leadership and equality means to them. Plus learn new insights on scaling a modern business using inclusive practices.
I’m Kirsty.
I’m Kiri. We are co-founders of Druthers Search. We help inclusive tech startups and scale up to hire more diverse leaders. And today we’re invited four of our key industry partners and friends to discuss their experience and insights as key leaders in the tech industry. Today we’re speaking to Yemi Awoyemi, Vera Metta, Anthony Bradley, and Jamal O’Brien. It’s a really important discussion. We hope you enjoy it.
What is the impact of having people around with similar backgrounds to yourself?
Anthony Bradley – Chief of Staff, Opteran
I think it’s something to unpack. Um, similar backgrounds to myself, seems troubling to me more than encouraging, um, talk. I think I would. I, and diversity is very important in the workplace for the same reason. The best products, the best companies are built by a lot of great minds, from that match the diversity of the world and your customer base. So I’m a little bit troubled by thinking that a management team or my, my leadership team is made up of people with similar backgrounds or interests or anything else to mine the diversity’s gonna build a better product and build better teams.
Jamalah Bryan – Co-founder and CTO, Peony
I think I agree. A hundred percent agree. It’s interesting. I have the same uncomfortableness with, sameness when it comes to groups of people trying to make decisions. I unfortunately hit it in terms of many different companies, is the industry that I work in. And it’s annoying trying to, especially when you’re not responsible for creating that diversity around you. If your, managers or your, you know, your leaders don’t necessarily see the same vision of a diverse team coming together and creating that unique product that represents your audience, it makes it very hard for you to get the support from many different lens. So one of it is like the voice. So I love working with, let’s say from a role perspective, I love working with designers and products managers and, program managers because we all see the same thing so different. The conversation is just so amazing, but honestly, we’re talking about the same thing and it forces me outta my comfort zone. So I can no longer use these technical jargons. I have to speak about the people and what they’re trying to do. And sometimes in my early career, I usually speak to speak about people as resource when I was just learning about project management. Yeah, it was a, it was a thing. And I remember I had a conversation with this very experienced program manager, and she was just explaining to me like the reason why she thinks it’s the word is limiting and the word actually forces you. It tells you how you interact with your team when you treat them as a resource. It’s like, you know, call their names. Like treat them as the people they are, and you basically unlock their superpowers because that’s right. The uniqueness in them is what you’re gonna identify. That’s just on the role level when it comes to speaking to, you know, different gender, different races. Like my current company, no one of us is from the same country or from the same background or from the same race or whatever. And it’s interesting because we didn’t set out to hire that way. We have one mission, right? It’s simple. It’s just to bring together a bunch of minds that can execute on a vision that basically changes the world. The world doesn’t look one way. The next time I work in a company where all my, my peers are the same, whether it’s race or gender, or same role, probably gonna leave. I’m probably won’t take that role because it just makes your life, at least my life for the last rows so hard because there’s no new thinking. There’s no, oh, by the way, where I come from, we don’t use, we don’t put the milk before the sugar. We actually put the hot water in and then we put some stuff and you try it and you’re like, oh my God. That’s what is missing. I think when you don’t have that way of having your peers be different.
Yemi Awoyemi – Vice president of Engineering
I’m challenged by that because unfortunately you won’t see many people like me at C level or even director level roles. I was at a very big company on a very big floor. I had maybe five people that looked like me in London. And for me it’s like, come on. And it comes to that. Yes, you want people that looks like you or have similar background to you, but is that really what we is? Do we really think about diversity at all? If we really think about diversity, I like what you said about that is in a way it’s not so much about the thing that you write down, it’s about your interviewing process, your hiring process. It’s much wider thing. But whether we like it or not, but I’ll use myself an example. I see myself as a role model in a way, because I do want other people to look at me and say, I can do that. So, that’s my angle on it. Do more of what I do so that others coming behind me or maybe even ahead of me can say, yes, I can do that.
Vera Mehta – Senior Director, ClearScore
I think, um, similar, similar to what you’ve said, it’s, it’s somewhat, challenging or troubling, to have everyone in your peer group be the same as you. And I think if I was in a leadership group, um, that was made up of many people, like, like me, I first of all maybe think it was novel. I think, you know, when you start to, work together and execute on things, you start to realise that actually what we are doing here is we are, we are building, and we build for the world that we see. And if we all see the same thing, then you know, the outcome’s gonna be very limiting. It’s gonna serve a small subset of customers. And I think there’s a lot of examples out there of organisations, that have built things, where they’ve got successful products but it’s taken time for those products to be successful because the initial team that created them were of one type. And I think there’s really good examples with, Apple, when Apple released Apple Health, essentially built by primarily men. And it didn’t include menstrual cycles. And I was like, well, I’m not gonna use that. You know, it excluded me straight away. Then, you know, more recently, the home office, when they developed their passport photos, that whole system there, they didn’t use enough, ethnic test data, and therefore people’s faces weren’t recognised. So there’s, lots of, um, even hand dryers, I think in the early days. Yeah. You know, the hand dryer one really surprised me. Like, if your skin tone is slightly different, they don’t work. It’s like they don’t recognise there’s a hand there. And it’s like, these are really, really simple that could serve everyone. So although they’re successful and popular now, it’s taken a long time for them to get there. So really, it’s about ensuring that the people around me are incredibly different so that we are, we’re building for the right world. We’re building for our customers regardless of their background. I think some really good successes are where dark mode was created for the neurodiverse for the dyslexic, and now that’s something that everybody can use. There’s a lot of really great examples out there as well.
What do you think the pitfalls are that people fall into when they are trying to grow and scale a team?
Jamalah Bryan – Co-founder and CTO, Peony
So I can tell you that one, because it’s quite, quite dear to me. I’ve seen so many layoffs during covid from these big companies, there’s so many reasons why it’s happened. One of the biggest one, I think is that everyone scales too fast. I’ve actually had this very specific question to a few leaders before, which is, can I half my team, please? We have too many people and we’re not delivering fast enough, or we’re not giving them an opportunity to think because we had so many people that a lot of the work was already done for them, and they end up not necessarily challenging themself because there’s so much space to hide behind. I would suggest that one of the big things that scaling too fast is going to be the biggest problem you have. Scaling before you have an environment that actually facilitates that scale is the number one problem I’ve seen, at least for the companies that I’ve scaled teams in. So my suggestion for companies looking to scale is don’t scale unless you really trust the actual environment that you’re gonna be expanding on. Because there’s two things, at least when I hire people that need to be additive, because I hire people to be different, they need to contribute to the environment growing and in most cases we learn. If you’re doing it too fast, it’s not going to be the way that you basically curate it and bring their superpower in.
Yemi Awoyemi – Vice president of Engineering
I’ve had two different experiences of scaling, one at Expedia, that didn’t happen overnight. That was first two years, was same size of team, getting them to a good place like you said, putting in systems and processes around, how do we do simple things? Like, okay, our documentation, what does that look like? Setting ourselves targets of, okay, if I’m bringing somebody new in, how can I get them to be productive within three months, depending on level? So having that environment, like you said, is really, really critical. So at the point when we were then scaling, all of that was in place, and you weren’t in the situation where you are winged in because that’s what happens when, if you have to go really too quickly. Luckily in a series, a startup a little bit different, needed to move quickly. So in that case is thinking through what the culture you want to keep, what the things that needs to change, and then over time, because you are flying the plane and building it at the same time. So finding ways to just do that at the same time. So I’ve, had two different approaches, but I think setting the right environment seems to be definitely one of the things to consider. I think pitfall definitely is the, what do they have to do? Is there anything for them to do? Have you thought that true? Do we really need these roles? Sometimes we don’t, you know, wait to ask that question. Okay, what does this role actually deliver? And just, I think it, it’s incumbent on people like ourselves to actually challenge our C levels and go, have you just got that number because you want this team to scale? Or is it, do we have a reality check here?
Anthony Bradley – Chief of Staff, Opteran
We touched on onboarding, but I, think that’s probably the lack of it is probably one of the biggest pitfalls. Especially if scaling means many, many, many more people and many, many more teams. I think it’s, it can be a pitfall and I think sometimes, you know, an excuse isn’t, there’s not time, but if there’s not time, you’re not ready to scale to scale. Right. I think the other key thing is to ensure that you really think about what you’re very good at and what your teams are very good at. And protecting that as you scale. If you lose that, if you hire the people successfully and a hundred percent of the people, and you don’t make, you don’t maintain what you, the teams and the company do well, and it’s part of culture, then you’ll lose.
Vera Mehta – Senior Director, ClearScore
I definitely agree with a lot of what you’ve all said. The onboarding part is critical. You can’t just, have people start hitting the ground running from the from the member, they join the team, but also actually reviewing your processes as a team. So if you’ve grown from a team that is five or six or seven to a team that’s now 15, those processes are not gonna be suitable for everyone. If you think about that in the reality of a standup or something as as simple as that a 10 minute standup will take you half an hour and those sorts of things for straight teams and that for me is really where some aspects of scaling don’t work. Also to your point, are we scaling for the right reasons? Yes. And I think for me, scaling becomes important. When you’re looking at some milestones, do we need to ramp up this team for a really short period of time with the right skills, with people that know the organisation already, to deliver this outcome or to deliver this, this thing that’s really important. and then reviewing that beyond, beyond those points. And often it doesn’t happen. You grow a team and the expectation is that the team will stay that size. It’s like you’ve got to think about need there as well.
Yemi Awoyemi – Vice president of Engineering
I think one additional thing I wanted to bring up, is the communication rate. I think you, when you go from, as you mentioned, like five or six people, for example, in an engineering team to 2030, you really need to consider the communication strategy there. Everybody can no longer be in the same meeting like they used to be. And you communicate that like, it’s okay for you not to attend. Well, at the same time having formal, you know, I’m gonna be sorry if I’m not there. So, I would say really, really think about comms. How do you handle comms in this new world? How do you, even in 25,000 big companies, you still have to think about those things like your team that’s close knit originally that knows each other. You’re bringing new people in to disrupt all of the structures. So it is really crucial to think about the comms aspect as well.
Jamalah Bryan – Co-founder and CTO, Peony
I think essentially when going back to the part of the question about scaling is a lot of these come down to leadership decisions. And, like just a small example of a really common fit pitfall that still happens now is when somebody very senior above a team management level decides to put more senior engineers on the team to make them go faster. It still happens. We all know that doesn’t work. But coming back to your perspective when you’re looking at something that can have impact for your business, it’s being really, really crisp on the what and the why for that team. Yeah. Like, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Empowering them to go right, this is how we think we can deliver it. I also think that when you grow a team to do some of this you kind of framed it as a tiger team kind of work. There is a decision point to be made so you’re doing a lot of innovative work, some like prototyping, all these sorts of fast moving things which, you know, build that team’s, motivation and momentum. But then there’s also that decision about actually just because we’ve done this doesn’t mean that we should take it forward. It’s that validation piece. And often I find that when you’ve created a team or grown a team to try and deliver something, the belief is that, you’ll go down a hundred percent with it you know, that that plane is gonna take off from this runway. Whereas actually when you validate the work and the reason that you looked into it, you saw potential there, but it might not actually be that good for the business, in which case we won’t, we won’t take it forward. Yeah, but the expectations of that team whenever, they need to be clear essentially.
What does leadership mean to you and how does good leadership show up in your team’s performance?
Jamalah Bryan – Co-founder and CTO, Peony
I think for me, leadership is a lot about offering guidance and support for your team. And to me that means, enabling them to, lead, but being there when they have questions, um, helping to solve problems, un blocking things for a team. I think it really starts to show up when you see the confidence of a team, when you see them start to deliver more impact with slightly less support. A lot of that plays into the culture of a team as well. You know, when you really start to see some of that confidence bloom, the team starts to flourish as a whole, you see changes in interactions, much more transparent communication. I think by offering guidance, you’re also providing clarity on expectations on outcomes those sorts of things.
Jamalah Bryan – Co-founder and CTO, Peony
If I may add a bit to that, I, I do wonder though, if we’re looking at the different types of leadership, because some can be kind of disruptive for, for a team, right? Yeah. If you have so many leaders and who are the followers? Um, I think for me, there’s a basic element where leadership needs to stand for, as you said, right? Supporting each other given that sense of guidance when needed, but also being understanding like when you need to receive a little bit of guidance yourself. For my teams at least, I’ve seen elements where if I allow them to communicate better to each other, sometimes it means I don’t have to lead in a traditional sense. You create this kind of self-sufficient, I guess environment where people lead and decide what what leadership means for them. Main reason I say that is because leadership has this weird kind of like multi-tone to it. Everyone says that they’re a leader when they’re a manager. But that’s not always the case, right? we kind of use it interchangeably. And in my environments, when we use leading and management interchangeably, it means that teams always look for leadership in a traditional sense. Whereas I like my engineers, regardless of the, the role to support each other, support is a leadership function. Um, so it’s kind of like in the, as you said in the environment, what exactly does leadership mean for, for this team? Because that is probably the most important thing. And that could be individuals supporting each other, and that means, you know, the traditional sense of leadership management can sometimes just blend away. So not sure if from that perspective, if that resonate with any of you.
Yemi Awoyemi – Vice president of Engineering
I think I’ve talked about this quite a bit because it is, you are right. There’s, there’s a difference between leadership and management. And I think for a leader, it’s about creating a vision. I think that’s actually critical. And you want people to follow you and for people to follow you, you need to find a kind of communicate and create a sense of alignment. so others that drive to the team, I think being able to create that vision, being able to even like lead from the front, then helps others to align behind you. And when you have alignment, you find that your teams actually know what they’re doing, know how what they’re doing connects to either division or what the business is trying to do. And you then see that in the productivity of the team. At least that’s what I’ve found, uh, a lot of the time. There’s a way you can build that vision, bring people along with you. And a Ted talk I saw a while ago, a friend sent to me, also having the courage to be a follower as a leader as well. So be that first follower for your leader then brings people along with you as well. Anthony?
Anthony Bradley – Chief of Staff, Opteran
Yeah, I’d play on the, what you commented about guidance. I think as a leader, you have to be really invested in their path, including their growth. And that’s really important. And a big piece of that for me is, is feedback. So the time that you have with people is giving them the, the feedback that they need to, to guide their own path and, help help them guide their path toward goals that they want to achieve. And, and they feel that it adds to, it adds to their motivation and their, their happiness at work. and I think it’s really, really key that you are very vested in their path.
