Having Some Career Zigzags with Yvette Edwards (2/2)

Welcome to episode 202 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two Pre-Sales Technical Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share part 2 of an interview with Yvette Edwards, discussing .

Original Recording Date: 11-28-2022

Yvette Edwards is a Vice President of Solution Engineering at VMware serving public sector customers. Catch part 1 of our discussion with Yvette in Episode 201.

Topics – Encouraged to Pursue Leadership, Finding the Leader, A Step Back, Manager of Managers, Staying in Touch as a Leader, Perspective on the Technical Career Path

3:06 – Encouraged to Pursue Leadership

  • Yvette had to be convinced by someone else to pursue leadership.
  • Around the time Symantec bought Veritas, Yvette had been a field facing SE and had made a change to be an inside SE (due to motherhood and not wanting to travel quite so much).
  • There was a large SE team for Veritas in Heathrow, Florida. Symantec having just bought Veritas had a large team in Beaverton, Oregon.
  • At some point, Yvette’s team got a new leader. There were two really large inside sales organizations, and this leader needed help and was asking for some team leads.
    • Yvette and one other person volunteered to help with this. Yvette also says she raises her hand all the time to help and that it’s something she has to work on.
    • To Yvette this was not a leadership position. It was just taking care of the team. Someone needed to raise their hand for this, and Yvette happened to do it.
    • About 6 months into the role, Yvette’s new leader opened a requisition for a manager. Yvette’s team lead counterpart decided to apply for the job, but she did not.
    • Yvette got a random calendar invite for the interview despite not having applied, and she didn’t quite understand why her leader had sent it to her.
    • Yvette mentioned to the team that she did not understand why she was selected for the interview. The team told her she was their leader, she took care of them, and did all sorts of things for them. They wanted her to be their leader.
    • There was another factor. They team didn’t feel Yvette’s team lead peer took as much care of the group.
    • "It was really my team telling me they wanted me to do it, that they would support me, that they needed me to do it, and that I was the only person who should do it. It was their encouragement." – Yvette Edwards
    • Yvette decided to go ahead with the interview and decided she was doing it for the team and that it would make the team better.
    • Once Yvette entered the process, she was in it to win it, and the process was intense. She wanted to do the team proud.
      • Yvette had prepared a presentation to share and sought out help from others she knew on how to prepare for the interview.
      • Yvette’s sister was in leadership and was someone who provided guidance.
      • "I definitely wanted to do the team proud, and I definitely was trying to win it for us as a team." – Yvette Edwards
  • John says people going for that first management position don’t necessarily understand how intense the interview process can be and how different it is than an individual contributor process can be.
    • One of the tips John has heard is have a 30-60-90 day plan.
    • Yvette had not heard of this years ago but certainly has one now.
    • The essence of this is you have to have a plan if you’re the new leader. This is a leadership role and isn’t a supervision role.
      • Building your plan into a 30-60-90 day plan is a great idea, and there are templates out there to get you started.
    • Start introspectively.
      • Yvette has been helping teach in VMware’s EMERGE program for future leaders, and if your company has this type of thing, look into it.
      • Would you miss the individual contributor work that you do today? You will likely have less of that depending on what the job is (i.e. less hands on with the technology, not able to meet with customers that often, etc.).
      • There are other things you will take on that you do not do today. You will now be in charge of strategy, caring for others, the HR component, etc.
      • Ask questions to those who are in the role already.
      • First decide if this is the shift you want to make. If you decide that is something you want to do, come up with your plan and visit of how you would be that leader. What would you do? It may be similar or different than what your leader does today. Be able to articulate differences.
      • Maybe you think about it from a start, stop, continue format to help build a 30-60-90 day plan. Thinking about a great leader you have may give you an idea of things you would want to continue. Think about what the gaps are in the team you would lead if you got the job.
        • Maybe a leader you’ve had was great with customers but not great at operational things.
        • Maybe you’re inheriting a high functioning team, and your goal is to retain that team. Find out what you can bring to that team.
      • You really should show up with some type of vision.
      • "And then understand a ‘why me?’ What is it that you’re going to bring to the table? Why should they pick you as a leader? What kind of unique sets of skills and criteria would you bring to that job?’ – Yvette Edwards

10:12 – Finding the Leader

  • Nick points out that many managers we have spoken with did not come up with the idea of going into leadership on their own.
    • Sometimes we have aspirations that are innate. Yvette gives the example of former Symantec CEO Steve Bennett wanting to become a CEO before reaching the age of 30.
      • It turns out he had built a company and become CEO well before 30.
    • Yvette never had those kind of innate goals.
    • There are those who strive to do their best and always want do to more.
    • The ones tapped on the shoulder for leadership roles are usually those doing the job already.
      • "If you want that next step, you kind of need to do that next step." – Yvette Edwards
      • You can start to pick up some of the responsibilities either naturally or intentionally (ask your leader how you can help, have that person mentor you, be part of that leader’s succession plan, etc.).
      • Ask your leader if you can run the team while they are out of office as an option to practice / take on the right skills.
      • There are those leaders to depend on / consistently ask to run the team in their absence. These folks often times get asked to consider leadership because in many ways they are already doing it.
    • Nick thinks people can be doing the work of a team lead and maybe not realize they are already doing some of the work of a people leader.
      • It was comfortable for Yvette to be a team lead because no one was telling her she was going to be a manager. Someone jus said they needed help.
      • She’s not sure why leadership was not something she aspired to do. Going straight there without doing a team lead first may have caused more impostor syndrome.
      • Sometimes you look around and no one else is raising their hand. At this point you kind of realize you’re it. Listen to Yvette’s story about becoming president of her HOA.
      • "Sometimes those moments happen where somebody needs to take that leadership role. And it might be you." – Yvette Edwards
      • If it might be you, try to figure out why. If you feel confident that you can make a difference and could bring something to the table, you owe it to yourself and everybody else to try it.
    • John suggests there is another knife edge here. There is the fear of making a change from a technical career as an individual contributor and what one is giving up. And at the same time there is a mix of aspiration or a calling to help the team.
      • You can help in multiple ways. Pushing yourself forward as a technical resource can also help the team (profile, impact, visibility).
      • Maybe it’s mentoring or providing advice or building up of others without the manager title that also magnifies the impact of the team.
      • John said he had been thinking about it like having to make a decision rather than finding a calling and then people asking you to move forward in that calling (could be a move to manager but could be progression as an individual contributor up to senior, super senior, CTO, CTO Ambassador, etc.).
      • We need to remember that every role is important, and there are callings at different points in our careers.

15:18 – A Step Back

  • The good thing about moving forward and taking that bold step into management is that you can always take a step back if it’s not for you. It may be a sidestep.
  • "It’s ok to say I don’t want to be a manager any more, and that is exactly what happened to me." – Yvette Edwards
    • Yvette had taken on the role of manager and really enjoyed the team she managed (the team in Heathrow, Florida). But she wound up eventually getting the team in Beaverton too.
    • Then they acquired a company in Houston (Called Bindview), and Yvette was leading a very large team, needing to travel to Houston and Beaverton now and then.
    • Then they acquired a company called Altiris, and Yvette got the field mid-market SE team.
    • The next thing she knew she had a national team and was doing a lot of traveling.
    • Yvette has always tried to figure out work and life balance, and it was importance since at that time she had a very young child (3 kids total and 1 being very young).
    • "Being away from home a lot was just not what I had signed up for. I was fine having the inside SE team in Heathrow, Florida, and the next thing you know I had a national team." – Yvette Edwards
    • Yvette was probably to the point where the company needed to give her a manager underneath her to help with so many direct reports. This did not seem to be in the cards at the time.
    • Yvette was very close friends with another SE leader whom she collaborated with a lot. This person was looking for a field SE for Florida and Georgia. Yvette decided she could take that role and travel a lot less (just inside Florida and to Georgia).
    • Yvette really enjoyed being an individual contributor again and performed well that year.
  • After about 9 months Yvette was asked to be the manager of the team she worked on and became the southeast SE leader.
    • This all happened because she decided to take a step back to being an individual contributor again.
    • The good news about any career is that it doesn’t have to be linear. It can have some zigzags. You pick up different experiences along the way.
    • It’s important to consider what is going on in your life and your priorities outside work. For Yvette, national travel had been too much. She cared for her team and was not going to let them suffer.
    • Yvette feels she may have overextended herself because she was trying to take care of everyone. She had a moment of authenticity with herself and realized she was trying to do too much while trying to take care of a young family at home.
  • Was it hard to turn off some of the manager things Yvette used to do when moving back to individual contributor?
    • It wasn’t hard at all for Yvette to relinquish control and let her manager deal with leadership responsibilities.
    • But the manager Yvette worked for as an individual contributor had no problem leaving her in charge when he would be out of office.
    • Yvette says she would help out with things here and there and may have been more of a mentor to others than her peers.
  • One of the best things that happened after Symantec acquired Veritas was when Yvette got to work toward a CISSP and learn more about security (having come from the background of focusing on availability).
    • Yvette was able to go and take a class and "just do technical things again," which she greatly enjoyed.
    • Yvette remembers at one point before this sending her team to get CISSP training, but she couldn’t go (since managers were not allowed to go).
    • Yvette loved cybersecurity, and it was something new for her to learn.

19:33 – Manager of Managers

  • Since Yvette has served in a director role and above, are the skills to manage a team of front line managers similar to those a front line manager needs to be successful?
    • It’s a different set of skills on the whole.
    • Yvette tells SEs who want to be managers that they are no longer here to be the smartest person in the room. "Your job now is very different. Your job is to make sure your SEs are empowered and to remove obstacles." – Yvette Edwards
    • Some new SE leaders may have trouble letting their people shine (i.e. let them answer the questions in customer meetings, etc.).
    • It is the same kind of thing as a second line manager. You have to enable your leaders to be leaders. Give them the information, help them work through challenges, teach them how to hire and let them hire people, etc.
      • There are all these things that you used to do that you are enabling your team to do.
      • You should also be hands off and not tell one of your reports who to hire, for example. You can help teach them how to hire correctly.
        • This is a bit nuanced in that the person a front line manager of yours hires becomes part of your organization.
  • Yvette’s shift to second line leadership was more complicated. She had never been a second line leader, but they were spinning out a new company at the same time (almost like a startup).
    • Yvette had to build the Americas channel SE organization from scratch.
      • This included hiring leaders in Latin America, for example, and building a strategy for covering the 50 countries in Latin America.
      • This was organization design and something Yvette had never previously done (not something you do in front line management).
      • Getting a budget, doing an organization design, and taking constraints into consideration was very interesting for Yvette.
      • Yvette’s manager at the time is the one who assured her she was ready to take the next step and move up to director of the channel SE organization. This manager had Yvette in mind for the job.
      • Running a channel organization is very different than running the direct SE organization. You are in this case enabling partner SEs to understand and be certified in the technology.
      • This role for Yvette was not just about learning how to be a manager of managers. Strategy and organization design were also new skill sets for her.
      • Moving into a director position does not necessarily mean you will have to build an entire organization (might just float into one).
      • And there was an international aspect to this too that was a challenge with needing to cover Latin America. Things like international law and knowledge of tariffs were important to learn and consider.
      • Yvette says maybe she should not have let herself be recommended for this one, but it was a great learning experience. And it allowed Yvette to raise her impact inside the company from national in the past to international.

24:33 – Staying in Touch as a Leader

  • Yvette believes in the importance of having skip-level meetings (i.e. meetings with 1 level down from your direct reports). As a new VP in the public sector at VMware Yvette has been having a lot of these lately down to the individual contributor level.
    • It’s great talking to leaders under her, but individual contributors are closest to the customers and products. It is always great to get their perspective.
    • Sometimes at high levels you start to hear everything is great. Leaders cannot really help if everything is great. It’s sort of like that knife edge we mentioned earlier. Do you ask a skip-level leader for help?
    • Yvette says if someone asks for help she is always appreciative of this and will try her best to help them.
    • This is a little nuanced because as things go up the line (or management chain), things can be made to sound better and better.
    • It’s possible your leadership may not know something is a struggle. People assume other people know there is a problem going on somewhere. Or maybe you would not want a VP to know there is a problem because there is a fear the leader will think you aren’t doing your job great or something else.
    • Yvette feels it is important as an executive or a leader to have those skip levels.
      • Make sure people know they have that open door.
      • Yvette’s reason for being in leadership is to make an impact and to help others. If she is in a position where knowing something would enable her to help, it’s on her for not knowing. And the best way to know is through these skip level interactions.
  • John says part of the job of Yvette’s reports is to filter and not bring every single detail to her because it would probably be overwhelming. But having direct reports of a leader be comfortable with that leader having skip leve1 meetings seems like a balancing act.
    • This has a lot to do with trust.
    • Yvette has tried to teach her teams in the past to never bring up a problem without a possible solution (even if in the end the solution suggested is not the one chosen).
    • In matrixed organizations leaders usually know about the big issues (operations issues, specialization issues, product quality, etc.). It’s the more nuanced challenges that an individual contributor may have.
    • Yvette also does skip skip levels (so 2 levels below her level).
    • You do have to have trust with your team that it’s ok to have their people have a skip-level meeting with you.
      • If someone doesn’t feel comfortable with you having a skip-level, that could be a sign of a problem. Yvette has never had a problem with somoene having a skip-level with somoene reporting to her.
      • If you have a skip-level with someone and they don’t want to answer casual questions or share any information, it is a sign that you may have a leadership issue. This is not the reason for the skip-level meetings, but sometimes this comes out in them.
    • John says it might be hard to know what to say or to share when speaking to a skip-level leader.
      • Yvette shares some examples of ways leaders can discover a problem without someone having to tell them directly. She might casually ask someone about their career aspirations and have them say no one has asked this before.
      • Yvette has seen her previous leaders put randomized skip-level meetings on their calendar just to get to know people, and she is now doing the same since she is new to the public sector organization.
      • Yvette let people know on her all hands call to reach out if they wanted to have a call with her. Also, if she hears there is top talent that is discouraged or disengaged she might check in on them by having a 1-1.
      • Yvette really tried to go out of her way to check-in on others during the pandemic since many were discouraged and downtrodden. There was no agenda, and it was jus to say hello.
    • Nick says the individual contributor 2-3 levels down does not always know how to talk to a senior leader or even what to say. It seems like the leader will need to be the more talkative to set the person at ease.
      • Right now with Yvette still being pretty new to her current organization she can ask to hear about a person’s customers, what is resonating, trends the person is seeing in the industry, etc. These are things Yvette wants to know but that can serve as good ice breaker type questions.
      • This way the person Yvette is meeting with does not need to prepare anything.
      • Yvette also likes to let her leaders know when she is going to have a skip-level and to let the person know not to panic.
      • Yvette likes to let the organization know in an all hands call. Usually Yvette lets people come to her, and then the word gets out that she is not so hard to talk to on a call.
      • Yvette likes to share a little bit about herself with her organization as well. "I think it’s on both sides. You have to make sure that you’re being vulnerable, you’re sharing something about yourself if you expect others to share with you." – Yvette Edwards

32:30 – Perspective on the Technical Career Path

  • Has Yvette’s perspective on the technical career path changed now that she is in leadership compared to her perspective on it when she was an individual contributor? She’s now an executive within an organization and responsible for promoting people who pursue this technical career path.

    • Yvette sees this as not so different than having an IDP (individual development plan) conversation with someone.
    • Yvette remembers her time as a front line manager and having a SE freak out about an IDP conversation stating "I just want to be a SE."
      • When Yvette asked about his career, this engineer thought for sure she was telling him he had to be a manager or that he needed to have some type of IDP filled out.
      • This engineer was very good at his job and wasn’t really interested in titles. The pause Yvette gave him made him very uncomfortable.
      • Yvette let him know that this was very individualized. If he wanted to be a SE for the rest of his life he could do that. And he was so far ahead of everyone else in deciding on something he enjoys.
      • At first this engineer may have had a fear of being judged.
      • This person had been a SE for a long time and was out of Atlanta, Georgia (still at Veritas). He still keeps in touch with Yvette and says she is the best manager he has ever had because she asked what he wanted to do with his career.
      • This kind of thing is specific to the individual.
        • Does what you are doing today engage you, and does it excite you?
        • What Yvette wants as an executive is engaged and happy employees. "A content employee is phenomenal. An excited employee, a passionate employee…that’s what I want." – Yvette Edwards
        • It’s great that we have all these levels so that people can keep pushing themselves and keep growing.
        • Yvette is a big fan of the growth mindset. Something may terrify her, but she is going to try it and do it.
        • Some people really like what they do and don’t want to do anything else. Some people don’t like change / aren’t great with change.
        • Others may want different customers or new segments in which to operate, as examples of those who would want a change.
        • Every role is important. It is great that we have diversity of roles and diversity of levels. All of that works great in conjunction. We can’t all be leaders and can’t all be individual contributors.
        • We have to make sure everyone is in the best role for them individually at the time. You may want to go for a big role or a gated role like principal. It depends on what is happening in your life because the timing needs to be right. Look at these decisions holistically.
  • If you want to get in touch with Yvette, find her on LinkedIn here – Yvette Edwards. Reach out and say hello. She would love to chat with anyone.

  • Mentioned in the outro

    • Don’t miss the best John White rant to date in Episode 9 on how to dress for an interview.
    • Yvette had the triple whammy of moving up to a director level, needing to build an entire channel organization, and the added nuances of an international scope.
    • When we speak to senior leaders we should have questions ready. Those people have a unique perspective due to their position inside an organization that we cannot have but that will make us better.
    • You are involved in a sales cycle up the chain of command inside your organization whether or not you know it. You are trying to sell them on your projects, what you think is important, what your organization and team think is important, that you are having an impact, etc. All of these things need to move up the chain.
      • This may provide insight into the fact that what you are doing is not valued by the organization. If this happens, maybe that’s a time to move jobs within / outside the organization or start doing things that are considered important by leadership.
    • Remember what Yvette said about the timing of an opportunity needing to be right for what is happening in your life. The right opportunity at the wrong time is the wrong opportunity, and it takes discipline to say no to these! Hopefully we know what our needs are in a role before it is offered to us.
      • Think back to some of the discussions with Andrew Miller and some of the discussions about being in a hypergrowth startup and not spending as much time with his kids as he would like in Episode 167.
        • The other episodes with Andrew Miller were Episode 165 and Episode 166 if you would like to hear more of his story.
      • It wasn’t the right time for Stephanie Wong to take the first job offer she got from Google because it was not what she wanted. See Episode 177 for more on that and the rest of her story in Episode 178.

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