Beyond Your Comfort Zone: Mastering Imposter Syndrome in Tech Leadership with David Lush

Hello everyone, welcome back to Mastering Tech Grow. Today we have a special treat, Dave, and we'll be talking about the imposter syndrome which everybody feels when they start the new role. Hi Dave, welcome.

Hi Mike, good to see you again. It's been a little while since we last had a chat.

Yeah, we met in the CTO Craft Conference, isn't it? And we had a panel together and now the name escapes me. It was about people. It was Power to the People, something like that.

Yeah, something like that, about team development, hiring, looking after talent, retaining talent as well. And then I remember having a good chat about our brothers during lunch as well and the differences between our siblings.

There you go. Yeah, that was an interesting one. The brothers. Right. So, so It is a continuity effectively of our chat and we exchanged a couple of memos, Dave, and you were like, I started a new role now and I am surprised how well I'm doing in this, how quickly I was developing value and the fact that you didn't feel the imposter syndrome in this one. So that's the context and the premise of our show today. So let us know who Dave is and let's get into topic.

Yeah, sure. I won't do like a long career history bit because, you know, there's not a job interview and I'll be here for a long time. So I'm sort of 20 years into a tech career, started as an engineer. I have never really been able to keep my mouth shut, and therefore, I've ended up down the sort of management and leadership path instead of staying as an IC. I've worked through, like, a mixture of corporate and startup environments as well. I guess the bits that I really still continue to enjoy in the career are continuous delivery, and sort of measurement, and sort of enabling the machine and helping people move quicker. I like talent acquisition, retention, and culture building as well. Just creating somewhere where people enjoy working, basically.

That's a very sweet introduction. I love how you said, I couldn't keep my mouth shut, so I ended up in the management. So do you think that's a must? Do you think people need to love talking to do leadership roles?

Um, you know, I don't think it's a must, but I think it's quite a common trait, you know, as you bump into people, especially when you see those people that are maybe in the first tech lead role, they're just starting to take on some line management, it tends to be like the archetypal person who sees something that could be done better or is a challenge, and the mouth just opens and says, maybe we should do this. And they end up naturally sort of, I guess, slotting into those leadership roles in a team.

So it's almost, is there a bias leaning towards extraverted personality gravitating to these roles?

I don't see— actually, it would be interesting. I don't see myself as an extrovert. I think I'm really quite introverted. I find it exhausting to be around a lot of people for a long period of time. And like, I need to recharge my batteries. I was chatting to someone about it the other day, actually, that I think I'm probably quite in the middle. You know, I'm very happy in my own company, but I also like a bit of other people's company for a period of time. You seem quite— so having chatted before as well, you seem reasonably extroverted. Would you say that you are?

That's a good question, Dave. And I'm just like you. I do love company and people and exchanging ideas and then, you know, just bouncing ideas, learning from each other. But the moment comes where I am like, leave me alone. I need to be in my own space, you know, whatever that space is. Maybe I'll go for a walk or for a run. Maybe I'll just watch Netflix for like 4 hours, but I need to be alone. Like, there should be no other voice to recharge my batteries. So maybe I am in the middle, just like you, Dave.

Yeah, yeah. And I can still be productive when I've got that sort of social exhaustion, but it's definitely like I, I often want to wrap myself in a bubble and just do productive focus work for a little while.

Yeah, like a deep work. Yeah, I love that. I love that saying. I am definitely similar. I do need the time where, you know, there's no chats, If you're doing remote, there's no notifications, there's no emails, there's, you know, no phone calls. You're just in your zone yourself, just going through the to-do item list alone without chatting with us. All right. So can you give us a little bit about the role you started and why do you think you didn't feel any imposter syndrome in this one? Why now?

Yeah, because— and been clear as well, it's the first time in my career that I've sort of felt this coming into a new role. So I started a new role end of January. We're now sort of like back end of April, so I've been in nearly 3 months. And it took me a little while to even just even to recognize that I wasn't feeling imposter syndrome in here. Why am I not doing— I think I've done some difficult roles up until this point, like some really challenging roles. And And I guess I've gone through some small companies recently as well with, I'm trying to think of the right way of putting it, with like budgetary constraints is the best way of putting it actually as well, where you need to achieve a lot with not a lot of resources. And then I'm coming into a bigger role, bigger business, bigger budgets, where it feels like I'm not as constrained. So that's one element to it. But I also feel like in those challenging roles, I've needed to, I guess, face a number of different things. And you all, for the first time, I come into this thinking, I'm not sure that it's going to throw net new problems at me. You know, I feel like I've almost explored the skills framework. I don't think I'm necessarily brilliant at everything. I feel like I've tried most things once, so that there are less unknown unknowns, actually, is probably a better way of putting it. So therefore, I'm not feeling that, that fear of the complete unknown, it feels like.

I can, I can definitely see that. Effectively, the imposter syndrome, and let's, let's maybe define it a little bit. So how I understand is that you're coming in a role and you're actually not sure if you can get everything done. You're not sure if you can match people's expectations. Maybe there's some elements and responsibilities around the role which is fairly new to you. So you'll need to pick this up while you're in the role. And that just compounds into that general feeling that you're really not sure if you can pull that role off and, you know, pull the weight of that role. Is that a good assumption of imposter syndrome?

Yeah, I think so. And, you know, you made me think that actually every job change up until this point has always been like a step up, you know, step up a ladder, more responsibility, and definitely like really clearly, explicitly more responsibility and a broader set of responsibilities coming in. I think this is the first role that I've had where it's felt like actually, this is comparable. It's not got new sort of completely net new things that are going to change the direction for me. So I think, yeah, that step in— if I reflect back on my last role change, for example, it was first step into a CTO role. And it was terrifying. And I really, you know, it was really coming in, I, there were definitely feelings of, am I the right person for this role? And am I going to be able to succeed coming into it?

How did you overcome that?

So, in you asking that, I'm also thinking about what's repeatable. So, in overcoming it in the last role, what have I found myself repeating as I come into this one? Some of it's sort of quite normal 90-day stuff. Some of it's probably a little bit unusual. So definitely a case of getting out and meeting people in the company, doing the, you know, like the information firehose thing. Let me gather context, let me understand how your business works, build a mental model of it and the products that you sell, etc. Sorry, the products that you sell, etc. But then there's like a piece in there as well about working out what have I done in a previous role that is repeatable and I'm going to be able to carry forward into this one? And what do I need to separate? And is something that really just works in that environment and I'm not necessarily going to be able to carry forward?

So effectively, the question was, and what you mentioned about previous role where the imposter syndrome was there, The question was, how did you overcome it? So am I right to say that just going through the details, as you mentioned, you understand the product, how you make money, you know, getting the land— what's the saying— getting the map of the land, you know, knowing the people and all the processes is effectively how you put that imposter syndrome down?

Yeah. And do you know, I think what I've landed on is What for me is like my repeatable set of steps as I come into a company that make me feel comfortable that I can add value in role is quite the important thing. And that comes from gathering context, knowing the direction that I'm coming in, and then also working out what I can reapply from previous roles that I've worked in. And then what am I offering that's new to the group? You know, where am I genuinely sort of going above and beyond the experience that you've got in the team already?

Um, so it's almost like a playbook, Dave, isn't it? It's like you have, you have your own, here's my 30 days or here's my first, you know, 90 days looks like, that's my playbook. Like I'm going to come in, I'll do this because that's what I learned in my previous role. And I'm just trying to reapply the same processes.

And, and you, you know, you must have similarly, sorry, I can't remember how long you've been with the current company for quite a while. So. You may have a similar playbook of coming in and meeting a new set of challenges. Sorry, I'm just thinking a little bit about the— I wonder how similar our playbooks would end up being, you know, and whether they're comparable across the two of us.

So the playbooks, right? I want to say I have a playbook, but it's not like a written playbook, right? It's not that I take notes and, you know, I have some type of retrospective of what I did in the first couple of days. But there's definitely a notion of I learned things in this role. So naturally I will bring, you know, the same things in this current or new role. But there's a gotcha as well where I'm trying to understand the context of new role better before I start playing things, because the contextual changes are quite important. You know, you might be having a much bigger headcount, you might be having, you know, different products, different people. And sometimes what you learn in one role, you coming out and applying a new one, not necessarily that's going to work. And, you know, a very good example is like you did Scrum and you come, you know, you coming in new environment and Kanban is maybe more applicable agile way of doing things. And then if you try to force Scrum on the people, it's just, it's probably not going to stick, right? So, so there's definitely a context of, of how you play your playbook, if that makes sense.

Yes. And that playbook changes through your career as well, right? You know, as you pick up new experiences, you pick up the new things that you've been reading, like new things that you might have tried out in a previous role, and you found it succeeded, you want to repeat. Definitely, like playbook as I've come into this role, actually, there's been one weird little thing that has added to my playbook from the last role as I've come into this one, centered around Slack. So we went through like a cleanup exercise in Slack in my last company. We deleted loads of archive channels, we renamed a bunch of things, and it might seem like an odd thing to do, But I guess when you're in like a primarily remote-first culture as well, it's like the cultural hub of your team is where most of the conversations happen. So coming into this role, we have, we've gone through and we've archived maybe sort of 50% of the channels. We've renamed the rest of them. We've made them more discoverable. But the, I guess there's like, there's some softer things that it's given me coming in as well. You know, it's given me the pulse of the conversation going on in the teams, because I've needed to be in all the Slack channels to see what's going on. And it sort of got my name known as well, because you're popping into channels and saying, hello, is this channel still valid? What do you use it for, et cetera? So it's given me the deeper context that sits alongside maybe the strategic bit that you get from conversations in an SLT or something like that.

I love that. It's almost like, here's your onboarding first couple of weeks. You're going to meet these people and you're going to say hi to these people. It's the same process, but it's, it's more for a remote culture where you have a lot of chats happening and you can pop in into this and go like, hello everyone, you know, I joined, this is what I'm doing, what you guys doing, putting your name out there. And you're right, reading what people are talking about in the, in the most recent way, I feel like it's a very good picture of what you're actually stepping into because there's an element of like this recency bias where If you look at the last 7 days and see what's cooking, you can get a very good sense of what people will be thinking about, what they're going to be talking about. And that, that is an opportunity to really look at these low-hanging fruits, get them done or get them improved and, you know, make your mark very, very quickly. Which leads me to your question, Dave. You mentioned that it took only a couple of weeks to get you on the feet and actually, you know, adding a real value, value to the business in this current new role. Can you talk to us about what that actually was?

Yeah, you mean in terms of like what the value was and what things started changing?

Yep.

So, I guess this ties into the, you know, the confidence and the imposter syndrome side of it as well. You made a comment earlier about the playbook and at what point do you start making plays and when are you information gathering and like the first 90 days bit almost feels clichéd now because I can't imagine taking 90 days to actually start taking action as I've moved into somewhere. So, doing the work around Slack was almost dead easy. It was lying through, it's like a, it's a low-threat way to get in and start getting involved around things. Alongside that, I'm quite a sort of systems-based thinker. So, even though you've got people and process and technical process delivering software, I sort of tend to think of that as a system across all the people and their motivations and all the complexity that we use to deliver software. So, I've started to map that out, basically. And you do it initially through conversations, and it's very opinions-based around, "You should speak to this person," or, "I see a challenge there." But then starting to map out the value stream of how software is actually delivered, as well. And key measurement points really around things like Jira, around pull requests and commits, etc. And in terms of actually then adding value quite quickly, you know, you can imagine you can combine those conversations with some measurement really quite quickly and can start getting in with some data-driven opinions to ask. I guess start with the stupid questions, but then ask gradually more challenging questions because you've got the data to back it up.

I love that map of the land. Okay, so what if— what I'm doing, if I'm, I'm new to this, like let's say if we go back a little bit in your own experience and when you started transitioning into these roles, you started getting more responsibilities, maybe you even made that, you know, from being an individual contributor coming to your first leadership roles, that's very scary.

Right.

That's a, that's a totally different room. You're coming from I'm coding all day to now I'm leading people. It's very natural. You're going to feel the imposter syndrome. It's like any tips you would give to people, to especially like young individuals feeling that, that feeling very strongly, like what can they do today to, to hopefully, you know, get it down?

Yeah, there's sort of two big stages I see there actually as well. And one might be interesting to come back to in a minute. One is for the transition from IC into manager. The second is almost like when you start to give up your technical skills as a manager, how do you then remain authentic and not become an impostor, feel like an impostor dealing with individual contributors and retaining your technical skills? So I guess in the first bit where you are stepping into a leadership role, the— it feels like a long time ago to think back as well now, because I'm probably going back God, 10 to 15 years. The first bit is that piece where you start to carry out one-to-ones with people, you're managing people for the first time, you're probably trying to emulate the good managers that you've seen, but feeling a little bit uncomfortable, you know, because you're talking about people's progression and, you know, all the pieces that you associate with being a good manager and supporting them and helping them work through challenges. And actually, sorry, I'm reminded of a comment that one of the other guys on the panel made in the CTO Craft Conference. He's thinking about genuine, like, what are some practical pieces of advice that you can give me? There's an excellent book by Camille Fournier called The Manager's Path. So, you know, if you are just stepping into— I can provide a link afterwards as well— if you're just stepping into that management and leadership role, lays out steps at different levels of seniority around practical bits of how do you run a good one-to-one, how do you support someone in their career path, etc. And in a long way, I think I'm saying is to start equipping yourself with the skills so that you feel comfort and start exercising the muscle of this new skill set as you move away from IC and into leadership. And management. Two other things that come to mind, one is to, I guess, start understanding the difference between management and leadership as well, because they're two completely different skills. You know, management is obviously the pastoral care, is the bit I'm describing, but then also leadership, as an IC, people have probably been practicing it already, you know, they've probably been helping to lead and drive the direction and repeat comms into teams and reset vision into teams before they even realized they were doing it. So I guess recognizing the skills that you've got already. I'm going to pause so I don't carry on going off down a big monologue.

No, that was good. I love that. And how important do you think mentorship is in exactly that transition from— maybe not even this transition, but going from individual contributor to to a leadership role or management role, that's a, that's a big change, right? That's a literal what is called the lateral career change. You're basically going from one path to another path, right? So you're not going vertical, you're just changing path. That's a big change. And having a mentor during that change, I think it's, it's quite strong. But once you're in the path and then you go vertical, you just sort of developing new skills. You know, again, mentorship is is likely important. So, from your experience, did you have a mentor? Did you, you know, have experience, or was your direct managers your mentors? Just what's your general take on mentorship around—

yeah, I've never had like a formal mentor. I've never had a mentor that's been outside of my line management chain. But when I think about it, I recognize that I've had mentorship from a variety of different directions. Um, so Earlier in my career, it would definitely have come from line managers, and I think that's primarily been when I've still been in that technology line management chain, you know, so whether it's an engineering manager above me or going on up to a CTO above me, and where their skills have been directly applicable to the role that I'm fulfilling. I think as I've then started to move beyond that, I've needed to get it from elsewhere. So joining communities of CTOs and of engineering leaders so that you've got peer mentoring, you know, and you can bounce ideas and challenges off other people that have faced similar before and can sort of share patterns with you. And then I've only just ironically had my first sort of coaching sessions in the past year or so as well, which I appreciate is quite different from mentoring. Been— I've been surprised at how, how valuable that is when you get a really good coach, especially just to start unlocking the information that you didn't realize was already in there.

Yeah, it's, it's definitely undervalued piece of, um, what's the word I'm looking— it's anybody can have it, right? Like, you can find a coach and you can find a mentor in any space. It's just about actually going likely on LinkedIn and just doing a search But I feel like people underestimate how valuable that would be in just getting clarity, getting focus, and then, you know, having that, as you mentioned, knowledge unlocked, which already is in your head, just allowing you to put that picture much, much better.

Yeah. And with mentoring, I've definitely found that it's been a— you've faced this experience before and you've got some concrete advice to offer me. With coaching, I've found that it's helped me to clarify what are my goals and what's the direction I'm heading in. And what are some practical steps I'm going to take to get there? And then I still might come and ask someone externally for, have you needed to solve this step before? And, you know, what's the shortcut, basically, based on your experience?

Yeah, that's a subtle difference, isn't it? Like, coaching is more about allowing you to reach the decisions by asking more questions of you and trying to lead you towards something with those questions, where mentoring/advisor is like, Here's how I did it, you know, take it, you can, you know, replicate the same. So there is a subtle difference in that one. Often it's used interchangeably like coaching and mentoring, but how the sessions will look like will be different depending on that word. So you mentioned authenticity, Dave, which I would like to, you know, pick apart a little bit. So once you're moving from individual contributor to becoming a leader, you know, you're losing that old self which had all the skills, maybe it's a language, maybe it's, you know, cloud engineering, maybe you're DevOps or whatever, and you're developing that new personality which is now the leader, which will get shaped by the skills and, and the new knowledge you're getting. Once you made that transition yourself, how, like, how did you dealt with that letting go and embracing the new one?

So I'm not going to lie, I went through a bit of an identity crisis with this, and I think that's not uncommon with people as well. So in my role at Visa, I moved from, in one step, from a team of about 30 people to about 80 people. So it went from still having your hand in technically to just completely hands-off, no technical side, needing to care about a significant budget, effectively needing to learn to do a completely different role. So it was quite easy to let go. And I think actually, it was probably too easy. It was so easy to let go that I completely stepped away from anything, even architectural. There was barely a technical element to my role for a while. The bit that I then struggled with is when I moved on to pick up a new role, is feeling the authenticity of, I can still be technically opinionated, and I can still do the technical side of So I found myself needing to challenge myself and dive right back into— I went from 80 back down to like 2 people and was in a position where a team needed to build back up again. I guess knowing that I needed to get my hands on, hands on technically, get them dirty again, to prove to myself more importantly than anything that I can still sort of build those skills back up and found myself actually as a lazy manager for a little while. And, you know, asking someone in the team a question instead of stopping and going and doing a bit of research to understand how to use this new tool. So it was definitely a muscle that I needed to exercise for a little bit there. Um, that was, that was 10 years ago. Um, so since then, I think I've carried that confidence with me that I, I, it might be difficult, but I know that I can move between the two. Um, and have then made sure to not let that technical muscle atrophy so far that it's really hard to exercise it back again.

Interesting. So you went, you went one side, came back another side. Do you think this ping pong, um, has a positive or negative side to it? I'm just trying to think. If you would have spent all these years just doing leadership, maybe you would develop more of, uh, you know, of like management capabilities. But going in-betweens almost keeps you in that lane where you go like, I'm doing a little bit of management, I'm doing a little bit of coding. It's like, if you reflect back, you think that's a good call or it had its own drawbacks?

I'm totally biased, but I wouldn't do it differently now because I think it allows me to move cleanly between the two, you know, so I can get in and have a conversation with an engineer I can have conversations, and it allows you to be the bridge as well, actually. And it allows you to translate the technical conversation into the non-technical, or to go up into strategy, or down into, we've got a production incident, and get into detail. It's definitely stopped me from specializing, you know, like completely into the technical, or completely into the strategic, for example. And I recognize my bias, but I wouldn't do that differently if I was to go back and have the time again.

So you do love then both of these domains coming together and sitting in the middle and being able to participate in any of these?

Yeah, because in a way, I feel like I'm getting away with it. It feels like I'm allowed to have all the fun of I have a seat at the table in important discussions. I love the discussions that set the direction of the business, as well as I can get my hands dirty and I can get involved involved in something technical and play with the Lego for a little bit. Okay. Where do you, where do you find yourself sitting as well, Mark, out of interest?

Well, I had the same identity crisis as you did, Dave, and it probably was about 2 years. It was very, very difficult to let go because of that imposter syndrome. I just didn't feel that I got enough knowledge or have enough knowledge even with reading all the books. And, you know, trying to exercise all that leadership stuff. Uh, I still feel like I'm not really good at it, you know, always having issues. Or maybe it's just being self-critical, but I definitely feel that imposter syndrome. And as a result, I would gravitate towards, you know, doing individual contributions. And I really enjoy doing cloud engineering or just architecting solutions in general. And I found myself stuck in that state for like a couple of years at least. Before I was like, okay, it's time to let go, you know, it's time to look at proper delegation, it's time to, you know, look how you actually, you know, build people around yourself and just become, you know, a leader for the teams. But I definitely was there for a couple of years at least. And then when I fully transitioned, I just took this notion of I still have a lot of knowledge and I can have the conversation, of course, Well, I'm not going to be investing my time to keep that knowledge and skill sharp. I will, I will just trust that I can hire good people which are much smarter than me in these domains, and I will continue building myself up as a, you know, as a leader, manager, which effectively takes me into very processy and strategic place where, you know, you think at the zoomed-out level of how things tick, how can we make them faster, how can we automate elements, you know. Then you look at people, of course, if you have good compositions of teams, um, and, you know, talent retention and hiring and all that. So that's, that, that's me. But, uh, yeah, I get what you're saying. Yep.

I'll be clear as well, by the way, I'm not talking about me writing production code or anything like that when I say about getting my hands dirty. The stretch is probably about as far as writing a Jupyter Notebook but to wrangle some data that's useful for me as a manager and a leader, or writing something that's going to enable a developer rather than actually sort of getting in and doing dev work or anything. There you go. But I think it's keeping your hands dirty just enough that you can still have a good conversation.

Yep. Yeah, I get that. And I do that, let's say, on the hobby time or my personal time. You know, it's like AI and ML and you want to play with things. And so you're you still naturally do things because it's just who you are, right? We are, we are in the tech industry, we are information technologies, and, and we love that stuff. That's, that's all we knew all our lives. So it's, uh, it's one of these huge parts of who you are which, uh, maybe you never fully let go, right? It's like you always come back to thinking with technologies. It's just as natural. So now, um I'm thinking about what actually helped me to let go of that imposter syndrome when I was doing this transition. Any skill development comes to mind for you when you think about why— maybe not why— when you think about these all the times when you felt that imposter syndrome, what actually helped you to, to say goodbye to it or feel it at the lower level, but as a skill, right? Like, like I went and I learned how to do one-to-ones, or I, you know, I learned this and this.

Yeah, and my— obviously I've walked my own path and everybody's path is going to be different, but there's probably like— I can think of probably maybe 5 key skills that have helped me as I've grown. And it's actually— it's always come into— it's always been because I've needed to work with a peer. And in order to work with a peer, I've— in a different area as well, I've needed to pick up the skills to be able to work with them well. And bearing in mind how far back in time I'm going as well, you know, so working with a head of QA back in Visa, and therefore needing to learn about automated testing so that you can have sort of good challenging conversations, and then stepping outwards into DevOps and continuous delivery and how do you get things into production well. And nowadays, they're just part of engineering. So, you know, they're not necessarily the skills that you pick up as quite a junior developer nowadays. But then, as you've moved on, the management skills that we mentioned and sort of been able to look after a team. And then as I've gone further up, I think being opinionated around products, I've been able to work with product leaders really well and caring about the product strategy and the direction the business is going in and being fluent around things like user research, foundational research for the user-centered design practices that you get. And been able to just have reasonable conversations. And again, I had massive imposter syndrome around all of that for years, and it's taken a while to sort of ease into it. And then most recently, um, been able to work well with sort of other leaders inside the business. So I've been able to have good commercial conversations and finance and the way that the business operates, and been not just, um, not just a customer of those other leaders in the business, but like a respected peer that I've got an opinion that's going to help you and building the confidence that I know enough that my opinion's valid almost.

Okay.

I'm not sure what the next bit is because there's an unknown unknown out there that's not been me yet. I don't know what the next one is.

That's actually quite fun, isn't it? Or would you like to know?

Well, I'd like to know if there's a gap that you something that you've encountered that I've not mentioned there in like your big steps.

Oh right, okay, I misunderstood that.

Sorry, oh sorry, that wasn't where I was leading as well, but now that you mentioned it, it'd be interesting to know, uh, from my perspective when it comes to gaps of skills which led me to have imposter syndrome. Like the, I guess the big, um, so if you think about the peers that you've worked with over the years where you had imposter syndrome and then you learned about a new discipline discipline, and it's made you more rounded, like a more comfortable but more rounded leader overall. So I guess if I'm going, you know, like some of the technical disciplines, management, products, like the way a business operates, is there other like layers to the onion that I've not described in those?

For me personally, it was more like tactical things, and I think what comes to mind very, very quickly is one-to-ones. I think when you step into that role, a big part is taking care of the team, which you mentioned. And how you do that, you know, it's going to be these one-to-ones to actually understand how to run these well, you know, how to take notes, how to action, and how to serve the team. That was a big one for me because I never did that before. I was part of one-to-ones where people did to me. My understanding was that that's almost like a like a progress report, right? Which was a wrong understanding. That's not a notion of 1-to-1s. So for me, that was understanding how to tactically do this well was a big change in just getting, okay, well, I can do this, you know, I can take care of the team. And the second one, which was, which came when we scaled very quickly and we needed to hire a lot of people, I stumbled on this process, or it's a book, it's called The Ideal Team Player. And it's written by the same guy who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I forgot his name now. So he, he has this book which is very, very tactical about how you recognize, you know, a good team player, how you do interviews, how you even can re-interview people if you inherit the teams. And he gave this very tactical approach of, of how you actually can do, you know, hiring and, and sort of understand what teams you have. So that was a big one as well. Again, it's very tactical tactical, right? So, so for me, these two come out, which, you know, makes me realize that, uh, I need something tactical to move forward. Like, conceptually speaking, I feel like you can find that answer, you can find it online, a mentor can give it to you. But what pulls away the imposter syndrome for me is actually knowing what you can do today and being a lot more tactical about that domain. So that, uh, that was Yeah, that was me.

Yeah, I guess if you think of those all as tools in your toolkit, recognizing that you've got a more and more complete toolkit and you might not have the best of every tool, but you've definitely got something that you can apply to each situation. I think that's definitely something I've recognized in the past year or two. And then the challenge is still continuing to grow, continuing to learn and going, I've not got all the answers, you know, and therefore where are like the gaps and the things that I should be, um, I remain really open to the ideas that people got in the room.

100%. Yeah, if you close down, I mean, if you have, here's my way, here's my playbook, that's how I do it, um, um, it's just not gonna work out. You know, the world moves, technology moves, you know, people find better ways, and you always want to listen to other opinions. And we came here, come back to your point about communities and, and, and having network and peers to talk about things. It's, uh, in my view, that's, that's essential when you reach a certain level where the scope changes for you. You, you know, you go from like, I'm a startup CTO of 6 people to something like, I'm a leader of leaders, and, you know, indirectly have hundreds of people. That's a totally different context, and totally different tools and processes will apply. So you want to have people to be able to source opinions because it's going to so many different challenges, and, and there's going to be a lot more challenges than you can deal with, and they will come from all the angles, as you mentioned, you know, product and engineering processes and finance and all of that. You want to have a network to be able to go in and talk about this and just ask the question. So maybe coming back to your previous question, Dave, maybe that's what I would add, is, is having people around yourself or building that network of support where you can go and source information and have chats with.

Yes, definitely. So as we're chatting this back and forth as well, I feel like a bit of imposter syndrome is good, you know. So the fact that I don't have any imposter syndrome coming into this role is probably a sign that I've not challenged myself enough with the role that I've moved into, you know, and therefore there's not there's not the stretch. And, you know, that you think about growth mindset, there's not the, um, there's not the intrinsic growth that exists in the definition of the role that I've accepted. And therefore you think, okay, I've got the tools to pick this up. And I'm definitely finding opportunities to grow once I've hit the ground, and I'm enjoying it. But I think that's— it's almost like a transparent challenge that you want to have in accepting an extra early go, okay, this scares me a little bit, basically.

So effectively what we're saying is that going outside of your comfort zone, it's always gonna have that imposter syndrome attached to it because it's an unknown territory, which basically will lead to having that feeling, can I go, you know, can I conquer that territory, can I do well in this new thing, which is— yeah, yeah, definitely good shout, Dave, definitely good shout. So effectively we're saying maybe don't, don't step so much out of your territory that, you know, you feel overwhelmed and you get stuck by, by the sheer fear of, I don't know what's going on, I don't know how to deal with all of this. But having a little bit of this is, you know, you're stretching your boundaries, which is, which is effectively you're growing.

Yeah. And if I think back through past few roles, I definitely, I noticed the the cycle shortened, you know, so the time to becoming comfortable of your own value in each role became quicker. And I just assumed that this role, it was like a natural conclusion that at some point you just feel valuable at a point when you join. Whereas really, as we chat in this room, I'm thinking— sorry, this is becoming a coaching and a therapy session for me as well, by the way— that at some point you— I assumed it was a natural conclusion, but at some point the it sort of disappears. But actually, I'm thinking that as I move into the next role, I should be actively seeking out a little bit, you know, as to what is going to make me a little bit uncomfortable. And I think recognizing why that next role makes me feel uncomfortable as well, and whether the growth around that feeling of discomfort is a thing that I'm after pursuing.

That's a very good shout. That's a very systematic and strategic look at it. Like you mentioned that you love systems. So that's I feel like that's coming from you and how you would approach that, but that's very well put. So I have, um, I have this one colliding question slash challenge which I personally felt as well. So as a leader, you know, you want to employ humility and empathy in many situations because you really want to understand where people are coming from with their own challenges. And sometimes, you know, making quick decisions is, it's a bad call. So you really want to trying to understand them. But on the other hand, you want to showcase some, some confidence and some, you know, assertiveness with things you're doing to get that imposter syndrome away. So, you know, you position yourself like, I know what I'm doing, you know, I, I got this. How do you balance those two?

Yeah, because you've been trying to, trying to balance out being a good human, you know, and been easy to work with with, I think, also, like, I guess, leveraging the experience that you bring into a conversation. So I think that definitely starts with asking questions, you know, so, like, lead with a question instead of leading with an opinion. Oh, God, there was something— I remember having a conversation with our Chief Behavioural Science Officer in the last role and so, yeah, and basically talking about turning up to any conversation with an opinion, but don't start with the opinion, start with asking questions and asking what somebody else's point of view is, folding that into your mental model and then responding. Because then, even though you've turned up with an opinion, it might completely change off the back of what that person said to you. And even actually, if that opinion you've turned up with is the right way to go. By folding the two things together, you create like a more compelling argument. You show you've actively listened, basically. Um, so that's one part. That actually, that sounds like I'm answering your question with, this is how you win, rather than like, this is actually how you remain, uh, keep the humility and, um, and working well with people. I guess the other, like, another thing that's wrapped up in there as well is recognition that I'm getting older, you know, I'm 44, the world's moving on, the next generation that are coming through are working so differently to how I did earlier in my career. So the things that I think are right based on my experience are not necessarily the best way to do things anymore. I think recognizing that things genuinely do change. So, you know, I'm thinking ChatGPT, Copilot, the way that people stitch together software nowadays, and people's educational background as well, actually. Mm-hmm.

That's a very good shout. I love that the first part about just active listening is the, you know, hashtag active listening, or the keyword active listening, but how you actually go about being tactical with active listening. It's very well put, Dave, and it does serve well of just asking the questions, getting all the details, and trying to reframe that in your mind and see if you actually understand what the person is saying before you make any judgment calls.

I didn't know it was called active listening as well, by the way, until having that conversation with Chief Royal Science Officer. So I sort of stumbled on it accidentally over 10 years of— so I don't know what I was doing for the first 10 years when I wasn't actively listening, but then suddenly I guess having an epiphany and recognizing how much of a difference it makes.

Yep.

Sorry, you're gonna say—

yeah, because it's very, uh, normal and very human for, for fresh and young leaders to actually come out and, and, and take the situation which, which we just discussed and, and go like, this is what you're doing, you know, like instead of asking these open questions and trying to source that information, aka active listen, you know, they feel that, that now as a leader, their job is to basically, you know, tell what people what to do and they try to fill the gaps, often quite poorly, often not exactly what's being said, you know, and make actions, which is not what you should be doing. And that's one of my learnings out of one-to-ones. It's like, it's not a status report. It's not you telling someone what to do. It's really that active listening piece of where you're just asking questions, you're trying to source that information and, and do some pattern matching across the whole you know, teams and trying to pick these big things, you know, big high initiatives where you can change or do better and affect as much people as you can or as much business part as you can. So, um, let's say, you know, I'm listening to what we discussing, I'm reading books as well, you know, I'm doing all that I can and wherever I am, maybe I'm a fresh leader, maybe I'm seasoned leader, but I still feel that imposter syndrome. I still have these self-doubt talks in my head. How do you, you know, what do you do? How do you battle this? Any tips of how people could approach that?

Yeah, that's an interesting one and a challenging one. Do you mind if I flip it around to you to start with so that it buys me a bit of thinking time as well whilst we're chatting about it?

How would I go about this, right? So for me, maybe I like system thinking as well as you, you know, again, hashtag system thinking. I think there's a, there's a book or Thinking in Systems or something like that where you just, where you try to take things apart and you get that focus, you get that clarity of what you can actually do right now with the information you have, with the context you have. Because the really the stress and the imposter syndrome comes from unable to action things. Once you start actioning things, you get in motion, and the motion doesn't, you know, it doesn't give you that feeling. Actually staying still what causes that feeling, you know, overthinking or over-stressing about the situation. So how I would approach, even, you know, if I have these self-doubts, I I would effectively ask like, what is expected out of me and what is the outcome I'm trying to achieve with this project or with that task, which is, you know, I'm feeling imposter syndrome about. I would try to take it apart, see what is the next step I need to take, get some clarity, and then just start executing whatever that small step is, getting in motion of getting things done. And that, for me at least, it tends to remove that element of I don't know what I'm doing.

Yep. Yeah. So my family might disagree with this, but I'm quite a low emotional responder. So therefore, if I— I guess part of it for me is like recognizing an emotional response at work. And it tends to be the negative emotional responses that you recognize, which is like, you know, anger, frustration, the sort of— is it cortisol, the stress hormone? It's like the cortisol type responses. And then becoming good at introspecting and being able to, I guess, isolate the fact that this emotion's occurred and then isolating what drove that emotion. And then from there, like, especially if it's been an interaction with another person, is unpicking what led collectively between— again, thinking about things as systems, really. Is what led between the two of us to drive into that situation. You know, is it the culture of the organization? Is it my background that's led me to this place? Is it your background? And the— I do associate imposter syndrome largely with negative emotions. I guess it's then catching those where they've occurred and sort of isolating it for yourself just try to think if I've had any, if I've had any, like, recent examples that I've needed to work through things like that. And I think definitely, like, coming into the role that I'm in now, trying to, trying to, like, like I said, near the beginning of the conversation, trying to unpick which, which of the things that I hold true, and I should be sort of carrying through in this. And it's quite a consultancy-heavy environment as well. There's not a lot of permanent employees. So they're needing to go, actually, I think I'm going to need to sort of win this one through influence instead of like the power bit that you mentioned. Sorry, and again, not commanding— hashtag not command and control. But there's definitely like, there's an unspoken level of influence when you're a permanent line manager people as well. So I'm going off on a bit of a ramble there.

No, but you stumbled in a very good area, which is the influence, which— let's come back to the influence. And when you were talking about the negative emotions or association of negative emotions with imposter syndrome, what popped to my head is psychological safety, which we know is the number one of getting, you know, teams to gel and getting the environment where teams can actually perform is that everybody feels safe to share their opinions and say what they think. So if I'm, if I'm feeling imposter syndrome, could that be as well a reflection on your peers that there's no psychological safety around?

Yeah, 100%. And actually thinking about some of the challenges in this current role, it's been— I've previous role was good psychologically safe environment, so like a good generative culture. And I guess to put like a definition around generative as well for listeners that have not come across it, so high psychological safety, high cooperation, and bridging across teams encouraged, etc. And I've bumped into a couple of examples in this current role where I've assumed psychological safety, you know, and I've acted as if I'm in a psychologically safe environment, and it's driven a, like, a negative response from people around me, and it's because they're just not feeling that same psychological safety that I am. And then the challenge is, as you're alluding to, is like, how do I create that psychological safety? Which is doubly important if you're in a leadership role as well. I— some of my methods around that might be a little bit unorthodox, so I'll act the fool a little bit and joke and mess around, so be clear that that, you know, not all work is dead serious all the time. Definitely try to, and this is challenging, I try to act in a peer-to-peer relationship with everyone, whether I'm working up or down or sideways or whatever. But people can get distracted by your job title as well, obviously. So actually, so thinking about that, Piers, do you find yourself running afoul of that that same challenge of, I'm trying to act as peers and work well together and create psychological safety. But people assume sometimes that the thing that you say is an edict rather than just an opinion.

Yes, definitely. People are difficult.

I was just, yeah, how do you almost like make the permission really explicit and clear that, you know, this It's not the highest-paid person's opinion. It's just like we're all equals in this decision-making.

Well, I mean, how I think about the process of psychological safety within the teams is effectively, it's an outcome of creating a trustworthy environment. And trust is often, or at least again, from my experience and my views, is based on being authentic as a person. It's very hard. To get people trusting you are almost impossible if they think you're wearing a mask. Like, you know, you bring someone else to the job, you bring someone else when you're in meetings, and you bring someone else when you're having conversations. And then there's another one of you in your personal life, right? So I really just start being myself. And as you rightfully put it, you do some jokes. I do the same thing. With time, people go like, oh, that's who you are, right? And then when you have that, they know what to expect from you. They start to develop, you know, that trust that how you communicate, what you're saying, you know, that the fact that you don't hide information, you're quite open, you're quite transparent, that sort of leads towards that trust. And once you have that, then I feel like people are safe or they feel safe and, you know, that they trust you. They have they can have conversations with you, which effectively eventually leads towards that psychological safety. That's how I unpack that. When it comes to more tactical things, again, I would just go into that element of authenticity. It's like, are you actually being yourself at work? Do you, do you want to say a joke but you hold yourself off because you think people will take it wrongly? You're putting on a mask, right? You're not showing yourself. Do you want to do something but you're not doing I mean, there's a politics around this, what you can actually do in office and what you shouldn't be doing because you're going to get into trouble with HR. But there's an element of, this is who I am. Once people start trusting you, I feel like that by default leads towards that safe environment for them to deal with you.

Sorry, current role, I continued as if I'd been in the last role, you know, you carry on cracking jokes, you're messing around a little bit with your leadership. Leadership team, and it's been met sort of slightly deadpan because it's a bit more of a serious environment. But I've just taken that as a personal challenge, but I'm going to keep going and I'm going to make you all giggle in meetings a little bit. I'm getting there as well, gradually.

I mean, you're absolutely right by saying that people take work too seriously. And I mean, at the end of the day, it's a business where they're winning, which business is growing or we're losing. And if we're talking about big business, there's going to be important notion, or the general environment, it will be quite important, right? So you need to sort of pick and choose when you do things, because at the end of the day, we might be talking about big things and decisions being made which affect hundreds of people's lives. So it's not like, you know, you're talking about big deals and you crack some you know, wrongly placed jokes.

Yeah, yeah.

But outside of that, as well, yeah, the work— we spend 8 hours a day, which is, uh, the— a lot of waking time as a people, as individuals, we spend at work. If you, if you, if you're gonna not be yourself at work, it's just gonna— as a leader, I think it's gonna be quite, quite difficult, right? You, you're not going to feel yourself. It's going to be two of you, you know, one at home, one at work. I tend to, from experience, think that authenticity and who you are leads to trust, and that leads to psychological safety within the teams.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really good point, actually. And it's something that I just, um, took for granted without even thinking about it. You know, it's like a key assumption that you just, you act yourself with people.

So, um, we talked a little bit about how feeling imposter syndrome is actually good because you know that you're going to be on a path of growth. And I just wanted to almost like re-emphasize this. It's if you're not really feeling it at all, it's probably because you're quite comfortable where you are right now in a role, you know, what you're doing. And if you really think about growth, this has to be some element of, of like, okay, this is scary. I'm not sure what I'm doing over there. So that's, you know, because we've been attacking this from all the angles as a bad thing, but it actually is an outcome of a quite good thing, which is the growth-oriented mindset, isn't it?

Yeah. And like, it's almost hard to hear you work through those sentences. It makes me think, damn, I'm not challenging myself enough in current role, and therefore I need to be challenging myself more in the months to come. Okay. So yes, completely agree. Which is not the outcome I expected from having this conversation, but it's a good one.

So what are you thinking? How will you challenge yourself in the next couple of months?

So I'm definitely like, I'm learning things and I am sort of progressing in this current role. I'm doing challenging things, but it's not scary. But it's an interim role as well, so it's got a finite lifespan. You know what, this is gonna turn into career counseling for me. I think what I need to do after this is probably go back into a permanent role with skin in the game and with like a product challenge that I'm excited about and that terrifies me slightly as well, and that I'm gonna invest like multiple years of my life back into. I can tell that's just where my heart is, basically.

It's good to have a plan. I mean, it all starts by You know, here's what I'm thinking. Let me try to unpack this, get some focus, see what I need, and, you know, go after your goals. But you're absolutely right, Dave. I mean, committing to a business and a product you will help someone to build out, it's, uh, we take it for granted. We just call it a job.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm going to do this. But at some point, and maybe that's where that maturity comes in play, which you mentioned earlier, is that you start looking at things differently. You start looking at this as a, you know, big decisions. I'm gonna commit like 3 to 5 years. I know the challenges which will be coming, you know, maybe they will be new to some extent, but there will be a lot that I'm bringing as my toolbox. I know what I'll do. And you, you see at these roles in, in the different colors than what I want to say young individuals do, because for them it's just like new company, a new buzzwords, and just, just a role. But with maturity, you look at roles quite differently. And interestingly, you mentioned interim role and the fine line between, you know, growth and, and how you look at it. Would you say that then interim roles are, you know, they expect you to sort of come in and just, uh, and just go get with things? And there's, there's by nature it's like, you know, not lack but less of challenging situations which leads to more growth compared to like a permanent roles?

Yeah, it's hard for me to draw conclusions because this is my first interim role, so in 20 years, never contracted before this. In coming into this role though, there was definitely an expectation of, we're bringing in somebody here who can deliver a step change for us, you know, and is bringing experience to the table that we don't have in the team. And I think actually that expectation being there before I joined is probably part of what's made it feel more comfortable in terms of like feeling less imposter syndrome.

Yeah, that's what I would assume as well. Like if I'm bringing an interim or contracting, I would want them to get in and just get things done like day one, right? Because that's, that's the whole premise of like not having a permanent role, which is a lot about career building, you know, a lot about teaching and things. Interims are you often like, here's your gig, get on with it. Which makes sense.

So I guess the one bit in there as well that I have recognized a little bit is that I guess as an interim, it feels like you need to make friends less. You know, you still need to build good relationships and be able to work well with people, but there's not— I'm not expecting that longevity of, you know, everyone needs to like me because I'm going to be around in this business for years to come. It's much feel— it feels much more about the impact that you can have in a short space of time, which doesn't mean everybody liking you all the time.

That goes back to that influence piece, which, which we mentioned quite, you know, a couple of sentences back, which I feel like it's good to come back to. Do you have any tips of how you actually go around the office, you know, and being influential? And maybe for the context of listeners, it's very, very important to be able to convince people about things. And especially in big organizations where you're going to have overarching initiatives where it's just not your call and you need to have more buy-ins from different areas of business, being able to influence people is, is what actually gets things done. Do you have a go-to of how you do that?

So it helps to have experience to draw on, you know, so that you can talk about previous scenarios. You don't want to be the person that's constantly saying, "But when this happened in X or when this happened in Y," because you're no longer in that role, you know, you're now in this one. It helps to have theory and names to be able to put to the theory as well, so that you can stitch together those experiences with, "This is why it works," and the theory that sits behind it. It also helps to have data in current role. So that, you know, because you're typically working with a bunch of bright, intelligent people, and even if sometimes without the theory and the past experiences, if I lay the information out for you, you will arrive at the same conclusion I'm arriving at. Um, it helps to be— have a bit of a— be able to do a bit of a sales pitch as well. Something I've not talked about, actually. I used to do door-to-door sales when I was like 16, 17 years old. And some of the concepts in there still stick with me now at 44, just in terms of how you sort of drive interest in people and recognize buying signals and stuff like that. And finally, there's a book called Technology Strategy Patterns. It's one of the, you know, the ones that have got the animals on the front, they're like monitor and color and white, oh, Riley Books, I think it is. There's a template in there for what's called an ask deck. Which basically talks about how you tell a story in a presentation when you're trying to really win people over and get the decision that you're looking for. And it's all about sort of imperiling the hero, laying the data out, saving the hero, and then putting your ask in at the end. And I found that works really well as a structure when you piece all the other bits together of the softer influence of bringing people on the journey combined with then the firmer I need to get signed off from a budget holder or a decision maker.

I love that. That's a very good book. We'll add that in a resource for whoever is listening. From my perspective, Dave, I'm about shaking hands, talking with people, and saying everybody's doing a good job. That's my go-to to influence people, just on a human level, just just basically recognizing people and, you know, building that relationship or connection first and then, you know, moving to more tactical things, which you, which you mentioned.

So, um, sorry, it's interesting how we're both flipping between— we're taking it in terms of the tactical and the soft one, um, just depending on the topic that we're talking about. Sorry, just whilst we're around that as well, I assume you've come across transformational leadership before?

You mean personally it came up? Because that book or that title was not in my head.

So, it's something that's in the Accelerate book. It's meant to be correlated with high-performance software delivery organizations. It made me think about it because the piece that you're describing around giving people individual consideration, spending time with each person is like a subset of— So, transformational leadership covers individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, having a clear vision, and then role modeling the behaviors you want to see. And it's like, you know, you live in one part of it there, and I imagine that you do the other bits as well.

So where I took this from, it's a book called, um, Making Friends and Influencing People. It's a very old— when I say very old, I mean I'm probably just over-exaggerating. I think it's like '70s book. Book, and it basically just goes through the fact that there's about like 9 points of how you make friends and influence people. But one of the biggest is the fact that everybody likes to be recognized, and giving recognition, you know, goes a long way to actually building relationship from which you can then start influencing people. So it's not really about like job influence, it's just in general, but it was written by a HR person. I think. And yeah, that's where I took this from. And I can definitely say that in an office surrounding, maybe in the remote culture there's subtle differences, but in the office culture, just wandering around the office saying hi to people, remembering their names, shaking hands, and just randomly going, you know, I read this email, I saw this, you know, this is great, you know, Eugene a great job, it really goes a long way to open the doors to then actually have the chats about more strategic things and more, more tactical things, which you mentioned, uh, you know, these frameworks. So, um, so we've been— I want to say we've been touching on this, um, uh, almost like a mental health topic to some extent. You know, we're not like professionals or not, we're just discussing as how we perceive and how we you know, dealt with imposter syndrome. But to finish the show with this question, Dave, do you think in the engineering or technological industry there's not enough attention to, to the mental health in general, like burnouts, what people are dealing with, you know, imposter syndrome as well, as an example?

Yeah, that's so— I'm conscious that you said it as we wrap up the show, and I'm trying to think how not to give a 20-minute answer to the last question.

It's okay, go, go, go. I'll take our time, 20 minutes, boom.

So, and there's a lot wrapped up in there as well, because, you know, if I think about the behaviors that I exhibited earlier in my career, I'd be working silly hours, heavy, constant crunch mode. You'd be, you know, you'd be working long hours in order to hit a deadline. And I'd like to think that we create a better environment for the engineers that we work with now, it's very much dependent on the company that I'm in at that point in time and whether, like, the macro environment of the company helps support that as well, or whether you then need to take a company on that journey over a period of time to get it in a healthier place. Sorry, I'm going to touch the tactical and I'll get back to the mental health element of it as well. If you very much think about, like, the iron triangle, you know, and you've got the cost, therefore people, people, time, scope, quality— quality being the middle bit. Nice emojis popping up as well from, from last FM there. The challenge is always to say, well, the people and the time are relatively fixed if you've given us a fixed deadline, therefore we need to slip scope in and out. And I think that's a key element in helping protect people's mental health, because it sets up healthier delivery methods that where the day it might be fixed, but we're not actually asking people to work 80-hour weeks in order to squeeze everything into that day or to slip quality, which destroys that intrinsic motivator of, "I'm doing a good job in my role." I don't think we always do a brilliant job of creating that environment as well. I know I've not done a perfect job of creating that environment of say, the past 10 years of leadership roles. Coming back to the mental health angle as well, so I'm thinking there a little bit about the environment that we create around it and trying to create a better environment. I do think there's a healthier environment nowadays in for people to be able to speak up and say, "I'm not happy with this," and for them to be able to reflect around what's driving that unhappiness. And to be able to have an open conversation about doing something around it. But again, I think that comes from the management chain that you exist within and hiring good managers and leaders that create that environment for them.

It goes back to that psychological safety, isn't it? If people don't trust you, or in general, the whole, you know, level of their peers, they're probably not going to talk about it. Like, they're not going to come out and go like, hey guys, you know, I'm feeling this, can we have a chat? Or, you know, even one-to-one, right? Even one-to-one is a lot more intimate forum because it's you, which, you know, with your manager or leader. And if there's a safety in that, like, you will be able, or you will feel open to actually go like, hey, you know, I'm like, I'm burned out, or I feel anxiety, I feel like I have this imposter syndrome in this a particular situation. And, you know, then the, the role of the leader will be to actually help you to deal with that in, in a healthy way, right?

Sorry, it ties in with the authenticity that you were touching on before as well, and, and the role modeling from transformational leadership. So therefore, you, you need to be able to role model as a leader and go, I'm a bit down today, I'm feeling burned out and run down because I've been burning the candle at both ends, and to be able to share that in a group the people in your teams, which then sort of makes it okay for them to be able to make the same statements back to you as well.

Yep, exactly. Someone needs to get the step one. So this is as well where I feel like leadership has to role model that behavior, because when you make that first step, you actually give a green light. You almost like give a freedom to someone else to come out and say the same thing. And it's very evident when you go to like, you know, big events, like conferences, and someone goes like, do you have questions? And everybody feels uncomfortable to ask the question, but then there's one person who goes like, yeah, I have a question. He or she asks the question, and then the whole, you know, another 10 questions come. So that first person indirectly gave permission for everybody else to ask. That's just like how people think. So as a leader, if you go out and you open up first, you're effectively giving permission for others to do the same. And it's very likely that people will follow. Just, just a sort of like a, like a side note. And which leads me, I promise, to the last question. Is there a correlation between imposter syndrome and burnout?

You mean, so people feeling inadequate, working too hard, burning themselves out?

Yeah, like effectively you should be aware of this. Like if you're feeling imposter syndrome, it's great. You're probably growing. Not probably, you know, you are in the environment which will challenge you. That's why you feel it. So you will grow, but be cautious that overreaching might lead you to the burnout.

Yeah. Do you know what? So I think maybe between some of the sort of emotional and psychological drivers for imposter syndrome and burnout might be common. But some of that as well could just be— like, I used to describe it as having a chip on my shoulder about the background that I came from, and like, I'm going to achieve this, I'm going to achieve that. Um, and I think the same piece is then driving you in terms of— or can be driving you in for some people in some scenarios, in order to make you want to put yourself in that position that makes you feel uncomfortable. And to push too hard, you know, to burn the candle at both ends. I think historically as well, that's just been a natural part of people's careers, you know, like a stage in your career that you revel in pushing yourself too hard and in sort of driving yourself out to those achievements. I I think it probably still exists now as well, because you see people— I think you still see some people doing it now. I definitely see like a Gen Z shift in not doing that blindly, making sure there's a really clear quid pro quo in that I get something back transactionally for putting myself out there for this. I think that's actually really healthy.

Yeah, I do agree. I absolutely 100% agree that glorifying hard work or grinding in general, you know, leads to burnouts and anxiety and all sorts of issues, physically and mentally. And there's a shift, generationally speaking, where people understand that work is actually a transaction. I'm giving you my lifetime and you're going to pay, you know, for this. It's not like I have to, you know, commit all my life to your company because at any point in time I can lose the job. Here's another company. So it is, it is a transactional rather than anything more. So, but how you take it as a, as a role, it's, it's, it's personal, right? So everybody has different opinions, and culturally speaking, those opinions seems to be shifting. So yeah, I would definitely agree with that, that younger people now, they look at job in a more healthier way. Than, for example, I do. I, you know, I, I, I'm battling burnouts all the time, man. Maybe because I'm workaholic, I don't know. I love what I do, but I tend to push myself way too much to the point where I go like, okay, I need to stop for a couple of months now, and then I'm off again. Yeah, it's a very big thing in, in the past few years.

I, um, I've readjusted, I've adjusted my relationship with work. I'm trying to emulate Gen Z a little bit more.

Uh, I should be doing it. That's why what my wife is telling me as well. I'm not though. I should become better at this. Well, that was lovely, Dave. Uh, thank you for coming to the show. Um, I feel like we touched on very, um, good topics. You know, there's some tactical advice as we gave to the listeners as well. I really enjoyed that. Hopefully you did as well.

Yep, thank you, Mark. It's been fantastic. Really enjoyed it. Cheers. Cheers, babe.