Own Your Engineering Career (No One Else Will)

You need to be adaptable. You need to be resilient because the technology will outgrow you, the company will outgrow you, your colleagues will outgrow you. Your hard skills get you in the room, but what will actually make you thrive is how you collaborated with others. If individual contributors, people with really good technical depth, don't move up an organizational ladder, then mediocrity will move up. Growth doesn't have to be a

promotion necessarily. I had to learn how to ask for a feedback and you have to learn how to receive the feedback. It's on you how you will grow. You have the ownership of your own career, so don't outsource this to anyone else. Joining me today is Sanina Katira, talent expert with many years of experience in recruitment and she shares a few steps that are crucial for you to grow within your career.

So enjoy. I've talked to some people specifically in big tech about the promotion process and some of the frustration that is in there. And I've also been to a conference where someone was on stage and said if you want to go become a staff engineer, you have to do these things. And the things they described were for me borderline, like very counterproductive behaviour for business results and outcomes.

It's like communicating to everyone what you're doing, not just knowing what you're doing, sometimes not even doing the work, but being very much an advocate for it, networking with other teams and other managers so they know what you do. And I'm like, like, this is borderline toxic culture wise. What is your take on that? This is exactly what the soft

skills are. Of course you will have quantitative expectations set up in the beginning of the year or in the beginning of the semester or the quarter. Like I need you. If you're an engineer, I need you to deliver, I don't know, 400 lines of code or something. Eliminate bags by 30% or something. Depends on what your your job is, but this is what you do. So the hard skills is what you do, the soft skills is how you do it. What is the impact that you have? Like what is the value you

brought in the company? You need to showcase that. You need to make those outcomes visible and it's not only about the outcomes, it's about the impact actually. So in for an engineer on the job, but even before the job, during an interview or even before applying for a job, they need to think how their work impacts the company's profit, the company's success. So you need to create some stories that they can start from your CV. It's not that I know these languages and these frameworks,

but what did you actually do? Like I, I did documentation that have the ramp time of newcomers, for example, or I'm reduced risk by that percent in this job that I had. The same goes during an interview process and the same goes when you're actually an employee. And not only once a year in your performance review, but throughout the year. You need to search for the most impactful things and also create and develop your business acumen. We all work.

Not all of us, but most of us work in in profitable companies. There is we need to be successful. We need to sell the product, we need to sell the service. How does your job contribute to that ultimate goal? I truly wonder, and I might do a poll of this from the people listening, how many people actually know how their work

influences business results, whether it's cost cutting or it's contributing towards revenue growth or new growth streams. If people are actually aware of where kind of the puzzle piece that they're working on, how it solves a bigger puzzle that people are trying to solve. I feel like in bigger organizations, I've been part of a a big organization and an engineering team where the piece of the puzzle I'm working on is very small.

But I've also worked in smaller organizations, typically startups or scale UPS, where engineering has a lot of autonomy and a lot of authority. And they're sometimes A-Team can be end to end responsible for a whole business line, even though that is a risk. And in bigger organizations, you cannot afford to have risk. But it's a lot of fun operating in that. And then also kind of naturally you know what your outcomes are that you're working towards.

Yeah, the smaller the organization is, the better understanding you have of your impact. Yeah, if you are 50 people, you understand you launched something. But at the end of the day you also understand that when you launched something, you talk you, you are in the same office with 50 people and they can be from sales or marketing or customer success. So they can show you your impact immediately. But in larger organisations, sometimes you miss that.

If I do research and I've done this, especially early in career with regards to, OK, how do I make my resume stand out or how, how do I make myself stand out? This is typically what is there, but I didn't understand why, right? I have to add metrics. I did cost savings for 20% and I had it to add metrics to everything, but I didn't really

know my metrics. So then adding it to me felt like I'm, I'm kind of like an imposter, like I'm trying to make up some stuff that I don't actually know that I did. Like I'd know what I did on a technical level, but I didn't know my business results. And then I think as you grow more in an organization, as you mature more within your career, now I ask questions because I'm genuinely curious how my role or how what I do on a day-to-day impacts the business.

And then I know even though it's very hard to still have tangible metrics, I now have a better idea of how to explain how I fit within this puzzle piece. So it's quite fascinating that the reason why is really to also understand how you help a business from your standpoint. Yes, you need to showcase your soft skills and you need to develop them.

They're not innate skills. You don't you, you are not born with them. You can develop them by practice, by training. So your communication style, your communication skills better not not your style, your collaboration, your negotiation, how you influence others, how you influence outcomes. Problem solving. Problem solving is a competency that is a bundle of a lot of hard skills, but a lot of soft skills at the same time. You need to know how to use a specific database so you can

extract the data. You that's a hard skill if you would like, but actually understanding the data, converting them into a report, influencing others based on the insights that you found. This is a soft skill and the whole competency is called problem solving. So if you come to me, either I'm a recruiter if you're looking for a new job or if you are a manager during your performance review and you say this is what I did and this is how I did it.

Because yes, I have this knowledge on language and frameworks, but I also have developed my soft skills and I implemented them there. So the how is what is usually missing. It's the you need to be a good storyteller. Yeah, Yeah, that really helps.

Like very early on in my career, especially at this company, I worked with a colleague and I will always remember his name is Taya. And Taya is one of the most hardcore engineers that I've ever worked with to a point where he says soft skills and the communication, all of that is BS. From his perspective, speed is everything that matters and results matter. If you can show results, then people will buy into that.

And I always really admired that because it was something that is so kind of polar opposite to my operating where I'm more of a person that bridges and wants to take people with them. And I have a lot of patience and I had zero kind of, but he did execute. And within a team, if I have someone like that, I can leverage that and I can bridge the gap and I can have buy in and I can kind of resolve things from a more commutative soft skills perspective.

But when it comes to execution, when you have a solo engineer like that, that's very effective. Oh yes, don't get me wrong, I didn't say that this is not important. In my view, this is what gets

you in the room. Your hard skills. If you deliver fast, if you deliver with the less risk or the less bugs, yes that gets you in the room. But what will actually make you thrive once you are in the room is your How you collaborated with others, how you reduced metrics, how you made improvements, how you iterate it. How much? Because I feel like if you're incredibly good at your hard skills, people will know that, right?

Even though you might be a difficult person to work with and therefore you might not be hired through certain companies because people just don't want to work with you, people still recognise that you're effective. But on the opposite side, if you're a great communicator, if you're a great storyteller, but your hard skills are lacking, where will you see that? Because some people with less technical depth, they might just be like, yeah, he has the hard skills, but he might not

actually have the hard skills. And this is something that we have seen and that happens. So you have the imposters, the ones that they don't actually have the skills, but they talk about them as if they had them and doors open for them. And then you have the others that they go by the book. They, as you say, they deliver fast. They do their job, whatever you ask them to do, they deliver, but then they don't grow. I I would say the truth is in the middle. Gotcha.

When it comes to people that really have hard skills but are not having any value yet from their soft skills, so they need to learn and grow from that aspect, where do you usually see the ceiling for those people specifically? I don't see a ceiling. OK, I don't see a ceiling. I think if you are willing to improve a certain skill, any skill, you can ask for help, you can ask for mentorship, you can ask for training. And if you are determined that you want to develop a skill, you can grow.

Now in traditional organisations we we see a problem in the growth in in the career growth in the paths that companies are they have designed in advance for their people. And if we discuss more about specifically an engineer, if you're a senior engineer or if you joined as a junior engineer, you grew, you became better your technical skills, now you're a

senior engineer. Some companies, they only give you the option to become a people manager after that to become an engineering manager. That's not necessarily a path that works for everyone. People, they don't have the

skills to be a people's manager. They don't want to or even they're not good at it. So companies, they should understand that they have to offer multiple options, either an IC track, an individual contributor track, where you can become more senior and you can contributed in a different way.

And if someone enjoys managing others, then yes, if the opportunity is there and if you have the skills which you need to prove that you have the skills to become a people manager, yes, please go ahead and get the position. Yeah. I had a recent conversation actually with my CEO also on this podcast. And he's of the opinion that people that have really good technical depth, if they are in an organization, they should move upwards in some type of hierarchy.

So if that is more on an IC track where you become staff engineer, senior staff engineer, etcetera, or whether it's on a technical leadership role, people should move. Because if individual contributors, people with really good technical depth don't move up an organizational ladder, then mediocrity will move up. And that kind of might kill your organizational culture. People that get valued then cascades into also more mediocrity.

And I thought that was an interesting perspective, but like, organizations need to be set up for success to be able to do so. Yes. And usually organizations, they make that mistake. You hire a senior engineer. The senior engineer, at some point he outgrows his role, but the role stays static. And then the engineer lefts, leaves, and then the company says, oh, the market is so competitive. Someone else got that wonderful engineer from us.

That's not the truth. If you had created a path for this person, if you didn't stick on the jobs titles, years of experience so that they can see growth for themselves. And you see, I'm not talking about promotion, I'm talking about growth. Growth doesn't have to be a promotion necessarily. So if companies they don't do that, they will lose their people eventually.

Yeah. I want to zoom into kind of the current day job market out there and specifically I want to get your opinion on what sets people up for success. You already mentioned soft skills and figuring out from the business side what you're working on and how that contributes to results. That's a great way and you being able to communicate that really helps. Hard skills you mentioned is a way to get the foot in the door. What contributes even more with regards to people making

themselves stand out? I think there are two specific

soft skills that you need to have, adaptability and resilience. Our world shifts so fast nowadays with with AI and you need to be adaptable, you need to be resilient. You cannot afford not be 1 because the technology where will outgrow you, the company will outgrow you, your your colleagues will outgrow you. And then there are two options. Either the company doesn't need you anymore or you get bored or you cannot contribute anymore. You are disengaged, you are disconnected.

So you need to be up to date. When it comes to adaptability and resilience, for me, sometimes they might be kind of opaque concepts. How do you make them tangible or how do I show resilience or adaptability as an IC? By being proactive, identifying the problem before the problem shows and also suggest the solution while others are trying still to identify what the problem is.

You already go there with a solution, with options, not one solution, but you go there and you test something, you pilot something, you experiment with something. So you're you are showing also another soft skill that you're willing to learn, you are willing to grow and you're investing time in this. Either it is a successful or not solution. You you had them the drive to do it. Yeah, I like that a lot.

I recently spoke to AVP of engineering as well and he said that our our most senior engineers are the people that we can just give an opaque problem to a very abstract thing. And they indeed they own solutions end to end. They have the responsibilities. He called it Adri, some people didn't get the context. So it's a directly responsible individual, yes. Yeah, I've heard that term before, but only in very specific organizations that use it. My organization doesn't have it.

Yeah, we, we have it in in my company actually it's one of our ways of working. So every project follows the RASI method like who is the DRI, who is the accountable, who is the interested? Like you're not actually contributed, but we need to inform you like a. Stakeholder. Yes, that's the RASI method. The RASI, Yes. OK, RACI. I'm going to put some stuff in the description for the the acronyms stuff, yeah. It's a, it's a framework.

I mean, you, you can find it with other acronyms, but at the end of the day is who makes a decision? Gotcha. Yeah. You need to know who is making the decision because collaboration is wonderful. But unless someone takes responsibility, unless you have one person to give you the green light or to say no, this is not possible to be done. You have you end up having a bunch of contributors that

nobody's taking the lead. Yeah, I feel like most often, and especially I'm reflecting now early in career, like I was very happy doing my thing and kind of letting those responsibilities of the right decision making fall onto other people's shoulders. And I had a lot of faith in that. And then when I got burned and I got burned a few times, then I started asking questions because some stuff that I would build would would not make sense.

And if someone would not be able to explain the context for me, that kind of is a hit in the trust that I have into someone. Because if they are not able to explain it to me, then how well do they understand it themselves? Or have they actually asked these questions to the people that actually make the decisions? And if not, why not? Because otherwise what are we

doing in the 1st place? Like those thoughts more and more stuck with me to a point where even as an IC, as a software engineer, I got so interested that I even moved into product for like a year and a half. Now I'm back software engineering and my next assignment's also going to be product because I actually care about business metrics and moving the needle a little bit more than just tweaking software and being in the nitty gritty of

that. I enjoy that, but I enjoy that even more when I know it's working towards a certain outcome. I feel like the people that are aware of that and even though it might not be their Forte or their their preference in the 1st place, but they are able to communicate that will definitely distinguish them from others that cannot. Yeah. What else have you seen people really leverage? So you mentioned resilience, adaptability, and how to show that in proactivity. How do people stand out?

Yeah, I think that's enough, isn't it? Yeah. Then going into hard skills and soft skills. For me, this was always interesting because I really love the hard skills part of it. I started in operations that I moved into software engineering and then I read, had joy into figuring things out, tweaking things and then making things work. Getting a green light on a pipeline and then having a pull request go through is what I really found joy in.

So when people ask me, OK, how do I balance developing a hard skills and soft skills, I don't necessarily know if you need to focus on one versus the other. In the end, you need both. Oh yes, you need both at the same time. You don't have to choose one over the other, but if you are aware that you are lacking 1 certain skill, you can invest a little bit more time in developing that skill.

That doesn't mean that you will leave the rest for three months or a year and say, oh, I'm very good at this, so I will only focus on this skill. But if this is the only skill that you're missing in order for you to grow, then you need to invest a little bit more time. And how do you know that's? That's the next question. You need to have set up expectations. You need to have a very clear direction on what is expected from you and.

Your manager should be able to give you that or who should.

Yes, yes, your manager and your manager's manager. And of course they have. Ideally, they have consulted a human resources professional or a people specialist about that because everything is connected at the end of the day. It's not only your manager's desire that you have specific skills, it has to come from the top. Yeah. If I ask my manager what do I need to do, or from your perspective, what am I not doing that I should be doing to get to a next level and they don't have

a good answer, what do I do? Because they should have the answer, at least from my perspective, but sometimes they do not. What is that next level that you're talking about? So my manager's manager or my growth level? Your growth level, so is do you have any other colleagues that they are in this level, you go ask them. OK, but they might just say, well, it's, it's luck of the draw and some people get promoted and other people's don't.

And it's like time based. I, I hate the idea of time based promotion. I want to see promotion based on skills, based on merit and based on outcomes, but not all organizations have that. So then it's also tenure, which plays a big part. And not all organizations have to have that. Imagine that a company starts with 100 employees and in three years time all these employees, they grow, right? All senior. All senior? Do you need all senior people?

No, you don't. You need to have a good balance. So you need to be very careful on your workforce planning. You cannot say, oh, I need 100 senior people, Congrats, get them. Let's say that your recruiting team, they're so awesome and they get you 100 senior people. What do you do with them in two years time? In three years time, is there any space for them? Maybe there is, but most companies, they don't plan ahead. They they want to cover their

current needs. Yeah. So if I'm an employee in an organization already in certain organizations that I've been in, if I don't see a growth path for myself, I'm not going to be happy because I'm like what? What is the next level? Either I only see people managers or I say I see people like me, but I don't see them moving upwards with regards to a hierarchy or with regards to more responsibilities. I don't necessarily have a lot

of value in titles. My organization's a little bit strange because my title has been the same for six years and that's what all the consultants have. They're consultant on paper and that might be a problem with new regulations coming in, but that's. Why? Yeah, you're right. But that's why I don't really value a lot in a title. But I do want growth. Yes, so. And you shouldn't value a title because a title is a title and a title can mean different things in different companies.

But you should value scope, scope of your work. And again, I'm not talking about more workload. I'm not saying that you're so busy that you stay over time. I'm not talking about more workload.

I'm talking about more scope and more impactful projects. Now I I cannot give you an advice on how what to do. In your specific no no. No, not my situation, but yeah, people, they should be very certain about what they want. Let's say you find out what you want. I need to become XI, need to grow into a product manager. I need to grow into an engineering manager. You need to have a career goal. And then you communicate that with your manager and you say, is that possible here?

If yes, because I know if the position opens, if someone leaves, if the business need comes, but I want to be prepared when this time comes, what do I need to do so I can be the best candidate when the opportunity arises? And they should have an answer for that. They should or. Someone should they need. To found someone, someone should have an answer to this. But the fun thing is I like impact for work. And somehow I feel like I always wiggle my way through and then

get to impact for work. But what you say really hits home with me for other people that I've seen where they're super busy, but then the work that they might be doing might not be as impactful as they want it to be. And they either have the awareness or they don't have the awareness. And typically when they have the awareness, they're like, yeah, but the impact for work is finite. And it doesn't just go to me because I'm part of a team. So it kind of goes to everyone.

Or some people jump on it and then I don't want to step on their toes. Like, there's a lot of reasoning there. But in the end, if everyone wants to do impactful work, I think that's really good for an organization. Yet people are working like on busy work. Sometimes that is not as effective. There is always that business as usual, as we call them, call it the BAU, but you will always have those tasks in any profession you have. But you will always work on some projects at the same time.

Either you're an engineer or you're an account manager or you're a recruiter or you're a marketing manager. You should have your business as usual, but at the same time, you should work on more outside of the box, more experimentation, more R&D if you would like. So what's next for us as a

company? And this is where we connect the impact because let's take that for granted that you love the company that you work at, you support them, you're a big fan of the product, you are a big fan of their mission and vision, and you see yourself as part of it. If you see yourself as part of it. And of course, some companies, they assist you thinking like that by giving you shares of the company, like you are an actual shareholder. You also want to do more about

the company. That's why I said before you need to come with ideas. And not only an idea, a plan. And not only a plan, perhaps something that you have tested, a pilot, something that you have tried before or you want to implement it differently in a different project. It's interesting because if someone were to came to me and negotiated with me or I, I feel like that's kind of negotiating and says, OK, I don't feel like the work that I'm doing is impactful. I don't have any impact for

initiatives. I typically have business as usual, but here is an idea, something that I've done an experiment with and these are the options and this is really what I want to do. Why not from my perspective, have someone work on that? Because first of all, they took initiative. Second of all, they seem super excited about this thing. They want to grow and work on

impactful thing and they feel like they have this thing. Yeah. So organisations, they should enable the growth of their employees. They should offer, let's say frameworks, processes, how you grow, but it's on you how you will grow. You have the ownership of your own career. So don't outsource this to anyone else.

Do you feel like, because I feel like I've asked this question in a poll, I don't remember the results, but I was like, OK, how much control do you actually have over your own career? It's a feeling. Let's say on a scale of 1 to 10, it was not a 10. Definitely not. People feel like there are many other influences about their own career, whereas I do feel like you should be able to own your

career. I'm never going to say it's going to be a 10, but to a certain degree you should feel ownership over your career path because it is yours, even though external influences are there and they will influence. Yeah. And we have seen the past few years now that external factors like in the market, geopolitical, health and others there are out of our control. So you cannot really control having a pandemic and you're losing your job. Yes, nobody's going to blame

you. For that Black Swan events. Yes, yes. We're not talking about the external factors. We are talking about within let's say safe environment which you are in, in an organization that you are and how you want to grow. And again, if you see that there is no more space for you there, you can start looking for something else. It's OK. Yes, yeah. Yes, if people are listening and they are maybe not at that level where they feel like, OK, I have control over my career, but

there's no Black Swan events. Let's just assume that what would be for, for them the next step to get a better feeling of getting control over their career? Is that talking to someone? Is that setting up career goals? What would what would your advice be? Start with your mentors and also do some, I don't know, meditation. Like write down what what do you want to do? What's your ideal Tuesday at work? Which task do you enjoy the most? Do you enjoy talking to people?

Do you get fulfilment when I don't know you see revenue doubling. Try to understand what triggers you, what motivates you and try to talk to people either internally in the company. If you cannot find them, just go outside. It feels like it's a lot of self reflection to get a better understanding of what makes you take what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy. Someone out usually has to trigger me for that. Like I I am very bad at just sitting down and doing self

reflection. That's why I like having conversations like this, because it makes me reflect. You need to have your eyes open. You need to know what happens in the market. I was talking to a friend the other day who's a software engineer and he's in between jobs right now. And I suggested I shared with him an article podcast. I don't remember. And within this podcast there was the name of a company and he was like, oh, I didn't know this company. I'm like, this company exists for years now.

How come you didn't know? So you need to open your eyes. You need to understand what is out there. I'm not talking about salary security like your your benefits, your compensation package. Yes, this is this is wonderful. But if you care about your job, because again, not everybody there are I, I know a lot of people that they just want to go 9 to 5, do their job, get their paycheck and then go home. That's fine.

That's fine. But if you have something in you that doesn't keep you, keeps you awake at night, and you want to do more for XY reasons, you need to open your eyes, go there and

learn from others. Try to research. And I mean, these days we do have AI people and it's the excuses of not knowing they're not a lot anymore. No, I get that. I think it's, I mean, I love people with ambition. Like I feel like if you are passionate about something, it just fuels energy in in other people. So especially those people, if they reach out to me, I'm open to help.

And I've seen other people make use of that when they are either laid off or they're looking for their next assignment, they want to grow faster. They typically reach out to people within those organizations with just a genuine question. I'm interested in these things or this thing I researched and I don't really, and I'm thinking you can help or can you with a genuine question. Typically, people are actually very willing to help. I think it is the best platform to reach out to people.

I do it all the time and it works wonders. Yeah. So even though you might be listening and you think, OK, I don't really have a network or anything, I feel like there's enough tools out there nowadays to familiarize yourself with kind of the type of companies. Do I want to work in enterprise, big, medium, small? Do I want to work in consultancy versus agency versus product, let's say? And then what type of role, what do I want to do on the day-to-day?

Requires maybe a bit of reflection, but you can also just ask a question. And again, the professions, they evolve a lot. The job that I have today didn't exist 10 years ago or 20 years ago. When I was growing up, I didn't even know that I won't do this job. So try to be open minded. Maybe there is something out there, especially with the AI technology nowadays, that you, you or none of us have imagined that it will exist in the next couple of years.

Zooming into you then specifically, do you have career goals for the next few years or what is that timeline horizon that you're thinking of typically? There are periods that I have a very clear path and there are others that I'm more exploring. OK, but visualizing it helps. Many years ago and I will thank one of my ex managers who made me visualize it. I was still a recruiter at that point and they were like OK what do you want to do?

So I created a nice middle board and I said I want to become a senior recruiter. Then I will do something else something else. And in the end I want to buy an island. OK, not bad. I like that a lot. Yeah, why not? Like having, of course that's not the actual goal, that's not career ambition if you would like, but that it gives you. It gives you the self reflection that I am ambitious.

Let's just put it like that people, they are ambitious, but sometimes they don't even know that they're ambitious. So creating and visualizing your your career and if something is missing and some, if some steps are missing, that's fine. Maybe you can add instead your impact. There are people that they want to have impact in society. Maybe you don't know how and where and what, what's the name of the company that could offer you this, but it could actually

be that. Just just write what what do you want to get out of it in specific phases of your career. Sometimes you are a little bit more motivated for for the money, others it's the fulfilment of the job. Some others it's the impact, some others is stability. So depending on which phase you are, you can you can adjust. Did you get help with visualizing this or was it really just yours? No framework, just write down

whatever comes to mind. I started as whatever comes in mind, but then because my, my company had very specific rubrics, competency matrixes for each level. So I could also connect it with my, with the organization. Like these are the skills that I have now. These are the ones that I am doing very well. These are the ones that I can still develop. And these are the, the ones from the next level that I want to

grow. So I was working with my managers and I, I was saying I want to be involved in projects so that I can showcase to you these skills, either hard or soft skills, and your manager can assist you with this.

Yeah, specifically for skills and growth in those skills, it's, it's very easy and it's always been easier for me to go towards certain skills that I feel like I already have a knack for and to really deepen them out and excel at those rather than looking at skills that I'm not as good at. Because I feel like I can either delegate or I can accommodate in a different way by being good at other skills.

But I do feel like you need to have at least the minimum capability on a certain level for a lot of skills, especially as software engineer. So we talked about soft skills and hard skills, but hard skills have a big slew when it comes to

technology. And then soft skills, just by virtue of you interacting with so many people, the bigger your impact is, likely the more interaction you will have with more people or different people with different agendas, different political stances, and different sizes of organizations. So it's, it's a lot. And having a minimum set with regards to a lot of things I

think helps. And then figuring out what you're really good at and what you're not as good at, you can accommodate for and thrive in the things you are good at. And if you don't know, you can always ask for feedback. Can you just ask for feedback just like that?

Yes, I want to get better. I am trying to learn a new skill or I'm trying to reflect. I mean, we are heading towards the end of the year. So there are many resolutions happening. You can go to your colleagues, you can go to your direct reports to your managers or to your stakeholders or or to the customers. Actually, if you have a good relationship with them and say I'm looking for feedback, could you provide me with some

constructive feedback? And within this constructive feedback, maybe you can, you might have an A moment or maybe not. That's also nice. Yes, but but you will definitely learn something, yeah. What withholds people typically from asking feedback in that you've seen? Fear. Really, I've it's it's the fear of the fear of what they already know that they're not good at. Yeah, yeah, that's sad. But also asking for feedback is a skill itself.

OK, so I also had to learn that I didn't know I was brought up in a society where questions are not asked. OK, so we will tell you what to do and you will execute. OK, yeah, command and control. Yes, command and control. So many years ago, I went to an organization and I was not growing. And then before I left that organization, I had some open conversations with a couple of my very senior stakeholders and with my manager. And I said, yeah, I know that things didn't work out.

How can I do better? And they were like, why are you coming to us now? Oh, OK, yeah. I'm like, I didn't know I was allowed to. I didn't get any direction from my manager at the time. No one tells you. No, nobody told me. Of course I was an external collaborator. I was not inside the company. There were different more admin things, let's say that were not enabled me for for this, but they were like, wow, I we wish we could change our minds. You should have come earlier to us.

I had to learn how to ask for feedback, and you have to learn how to receive the feedback. Once you ask for it, you need to learn how to receive it. I, I never even have had this perspective because I feel like in Dutch culture and the culture that I grew up with, people are very good into giving feedback, sometimes even not ask, but also then taking feedback like it's a very Dutch thing. So feedback kind of came

naturally. I have learned that advice is very different from feedback, and people love giving advice. But I want feedback. I don't just want to know what you would advise me to do. I want to know what I did, what you observed and how it made you feel or how you saw it had impact on others. And I can learn from that. Those are like observations. Not necessarily what I should do, but what I have done and what you thought about it.

Yeah. So you need to go with specific questions to these people, not an open-ended question like as as you said. What did I do? How did I make you feel? Did I facilitate you or did I create a blockage for you by me doing XYZ? Yeah, The funny thing is within organizations, and I'm now just reflecting on this, people like ask for feedback, but they never

tell you how. And then you you go Google or you have a standard template and it's always what did I do Well, what what did I not do well and what should I do? I like one of the one of those and maybe even a rating system star one out of five, whatever that means. So yeah, I feel like consciously being, asking your feedback can actually be incredibly valuable. And I don't think a lot of people make use out of that. And it's a very kind of low, yeah, low gap to bridge, basically.

Yeah. Yeah, thanks so much for coming on and sharing, Zenina. I had a lot of fun. Yes, me too. Me too, Patrick. Awesome. We'll round it off here. If you're still with us. If you're still listening, let me know in the comments section what you thought of this episode and we'll see you on the next one.