Leading With Confidence When You’re Not The Subject Matter Expert

6:00PM Aug 24, 2023

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Check one check two testing hey

yeah of course a while ago really well and never have been so busy. Oh yeah, I'll take off. Did you want to use your laptop or give you the hours

I could use my laptop. I did talk to the help desk because it's supposed to be theater cell signal. Oh, okay. So they said Someone was giving me features to swap it?

Yeah, that'll be the hotel. So I can't help with that one. Yeah, but I get tripped up on all this stuff.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, I snuck in and tried to HDMI cord Oh, have a Mac

the dongle by chance or did you need a dongle?

Never been simplistic actually had their PC ready to go. Oh, nice.

Yep, I went yesterday too. So like these are kind of like already stressed tested yesterday was kind of chaos but

about Wi Fi being an issue still an issue. Oh, okay. So I did download a PDF of the presentation just in case. But I should be able to use.

Yeah, you should. As far as I know, it was up earlier just because she was like bandwidth. So like, for some people, they're trying to stream something or they're trying to because we're streaming out to the internet too. And so that's been hectic for us. You don't know. heartline so yeah, it's been kind of it's been kind of wild. Yeah. Yeah, you should get paid on a regular one. That should be fine for downloading.

There's okay, I do not know that on a regular one.

password on the back of your badge.

Okay, it looks on the back of my badge and didn't see anything. I don't know what Oh, I see it now. Rep hub.

Yeah red hub at the money signs in there. Right yeah.

So I talked to the help desk because they have the wrong seating. In here. Because it's supposed to be

I think we're gonna present from down here.

So they're gonna be able to switch it or switch what the seating

they said. They were going they texted someone this was me last year. So hopefully, it will happen before the presentation.

I'm gonna run next door and see the smoke. I'll be back. Thanks. I'll be on the side. It'll be just these four rooms. Or somebody some happens. I'll be in the hallway or I'm in another room system. Come grab me. I mean, they should be okay. Okay,

thank you so much.

Before you start off get up, make sure it's okay. Thank you

helper

so here's some copies of the magazine article grab that if you see that seating people Okay.

All can do

this

Okay, everyone walked on. There's a slight chance they will. So my theory here. So I just wanted to warn you of a stack set up because seating is specific.

Yeah, so I have some copies of Mother Jones magazine. That I will promote as well as we're investigating Lisa profit net loss

take more than one if you want. I did some proofreading years ago it was my second time working there. So I joined right before the pandemic but I also early in my career work there. So yeah, there a lot of people return.

Yes. Seems like it's literally just responded to you.

Yes. So nice to meet you weren't worried. They may come and rearrange the seating to what they promised or not Oh, we don't know. I

don't know Oh, okay. So yeah, get some more chairs. Yeah, I think I think people will probably want more soon. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you appreciate

it I did a satisfying piece of

check one check two

Oh no. Check one check two Are you free Swag, swag recruitment I didn't do anything I just got handed a pile of this BS yesterday. From Kelly.

I read him here this morning.

Right

shut shutter.

I can't get on the Wi Fi. So let's

face it that not all of the Wi Fi issues are resolved. Especially if you need to livestream something that I believe should be okay for what we're doing. Today

I just wanted to say hi, meet you in person. Bobby's yeah

thanks for being here. You're welcome.

Really 10 more minutes

10 chairs left.

Instead they were going to bring in some chairs all around here. Yeah. Over here.

Volunteer to read and write your questions.

sighs on this side Damon from a single person

very. Yeah. It's easy to hit the like, especially people's first times or they're early in the career. They don't have a bunch of meetings and like they're dying to get somewhere. Yeah.

Welcome, everyone. We are going to start on time. We heard a rumor they might be bringing more chairs in here. But if you can't find a chair, feel free to bring a chair in here because there's plenty of room for it.

If there's an empty chair at your table maybe just like make it real obvious.

Also, I brought issues of Mother Jones were investigative news nonprofit and Northern California if you would like it issue is brand new issue. How to press please pick one up

anyone coming in. We were told we're going to bring more chairs in but if you don't find a chair, please feel free to bring one in here. That's totally fine.

Hi, everyone, welcome to the session. I one request I was wondering if someone would volunteer to be a timekeeper just to keep us on track. We just need someone to kind of flag when we're at 3053 10 think thank you probably once once we start a session but yeah, if you stop or signal at 3053 10 That should be perfect. Yeah, thank you know come on in. If there aren't enough seats, feel free to bring a seat in I think next door and still want

yeah, there's also a room like up here if people want to like chill on the floor or yeah

so sorry about the seating situation is out of our control. There's also plenty of space up here at Friant like a whole big area. Yeah, or if anyone wants to bring a chair from another session. Please feel free to do that.

She was like open that wall and steal all their shares. Just annex that room entirely.

Feel free to turn your chairs around. Yeah, it's not a workshop. This was supposed to be classroom style, but they did work. So

yeah, so you don't yet feel free to face us. We're not going to do anything with the tables. It's just unfortunate way the room is arranged

come on in there's plenty of room up front. Yeah, start on the floor. But it's been fair it is on the floor. Yeah, so

sorry about this

it's just gonna get real cozy and really inappropriately warm in here and no worries

Hey, welcome

come on in this room up front. If you find a chair from another session, if you want to bring a chair in from that session, feel free to do so. There's plenty of room

over on that side as the thing is so low the projector there's a chair

Great choice. Great choice.

Hi, Mike. We have a mic we would need someone to help with a q&a. Can you say eautiful thank you so much.

More chairs. Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. Thank you.

For the chair Hunger Games. 10 chairs are coming which Hunger Games? Welcome. We're so glad you're all here. Yeah.

Thank you for being here. We're going to start in a few minutes. If you have a chair you want to bring in from another session please do. There's a room or 10 chairs may be arriving. We are not going to use the tables. So if you want to turn your chairs around and face us you can absolutely do that

Peter sounds like it's gonna blow up my computer so the band is I just need to I have a brand new one at home. I just haven't had like an hour to take it out of the box and set it up. Yeah.

That's true. So welcome. Well, we started a few minutes. There's plenty of room upfront on the ground. Unfortunately if you want to bring a chair from another session, you can bring a chair

outstanding chairs are on their way. So

let the chairs in

start right on we're gonna have to.

Evening there's some room up front of people don't mind sitting. Yeah, there's a lot of room up front. There's a lot more room up front there's not as much a little bit here.

Hey

there's a backup of word says why

we should take a picture of the screen

welcome, please come in. There's room on the floor. Up front. If you're looking for floor seating

I don't think people were doing their own thing. Like I want people to

come out there. So like I'm in front of people a lot of sit on the ground. Back There's cool too.

Yeah, I think we're gonna get started.

What he's bringing in just let's see if we can close the door

All right. All right. Hello. We are so glad all of you are here. This session is called how to lead when you are not yet a subject matter expert. My name is John Berry. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at Mother Jones and I flew in from California so good to be here. And I am so passionate about this topic because as a CEO and throughout my career even when I was a reporter and an editor, this was an issue that just kept coming up. I would want to do something but it was outside of my comfort zone. And over time I began to think about this not as something that just happens, but as a skill that we want to develop. And I actually wrote a story about this for Harvard Business Review, and we're going to link that in our tips at the end of the session and so we'll be sharing about more about that in a minute. This is also a topic that comes up a lot for the folks here at OMA many of you work at the intersection of news content, our revenue audience and many of us whether we're in large or small organizations are often working in areas that are outside our comfort zone. And that can look a lot of different ways. Maybe you're a reporter who just suggests that you're interested in the area and all of a sudden you're leading coverage on it. Maybe you are a senior leader and you've never dealt with any advertising jargon, you don't know what a CPM is and now you have to make an advertising product or it could come up and lots and lots of different sessions and situations. So if you work in a big organization, small organization, this is rich, rich territory for us to delve into. So I want to give a quick overview about how the session is going to go. In a minute. Emma and Tony are going to introduce themselves and we're going to have a fireside chat style conversation. So we're going to ask each other questions, and we're going to leave plenty of room at the end for you all to ask us questions as well. We also have a tip sheet, and that will be linked at the end of the presentation. It has a QR code. And the awesome thing about this tip sheet is that it is a document that can be edited so we know a lot of you may have your own tips your own insights, we really encourage you to add that to the document when we go to that section of the conversation. So let's go ahead and get started. First I want to talk about these two brilliant panelists next to me. So when I pitched this panel, I had to dream panelist and they are Emma and Tony. And the reason why is that they are really really brilliant leaders, but also I've witnessed them navigate this territory over and over again and their careers and I know that they have some really, really important insights about this. And one of the ways Emma is brilliant is Emma also encouraged us to write our own expertise of and to add it to the slides. And so with that, I'm going to pass it on to Emma. Emma, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, Hi, I'm Emma Craig robot. I'm the director of careers and culture at the Marshall Project. I'm based in Brooklyn, and my expertise areas range from leadership and user management to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. I've held product thinking roles, I've held leadership roles. And generally just want I'm just like make journalism a better place for people to work, work and live and exist so I'm super excited about this topic.

Hi, you can see like I'm Tony Elkins, see most of Emma's and I match like, even way down the bottom but founders of news product Alliance. Likewise, I'm focused on leadership and coaching at Poynter Institute. The EB D IB the BS for belonging that was a new one for me. So like the letters keep growing. My background is more in design thinking. I started in the media or newsrooms almost 30 years ago as a designer. So later in my career, I got into design thinking and innovation and I've spent most of the last 10 years doing innovation work, and now I get to teach. I'm really happy about that.

And I already introduced myself, I'll just add that my areas of expertise right now are executive leadership and strategic planning, but I started my career as a reporter and editor, you'll see that there and most recently, I'm very interested and building skills around executive coaching. So those are areas of our expertise. So I'll go ahead and kick it off with the first question. For you, Emma and Tony, so many of us grew up thinking that experts should lead things that's the way things should go so I'm so curious, why you are passionate about people learning how to lead even when they are not subject matter experts.

Yeah, so I think the most important thing to remember is that leadership and management are totally different tasks, disciplines and roles. And so in journalism, and I think this happens in a lot of industries, to be honest, people get put into leadership and management roles because they were good at the last thing they did. Right but so being a really good peanut butter and jelly sandwich maker does not necessarily make you a great team leader. Because those are different skill sets. And so I think that is something that like really resonates with me is the the folks who constantly are learning and pushing themselves outside their boundaries, and how good that can be for a leadership practice.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up leadership because one of the things in journalism we don't teach is leadership. So leadership and management we do not teach it I mean, people what we do at pointer but not everyone can come to a point or not everyone can go to API and you know, it is a privilege to do that. So we've got to find ways to democratize that and get those skills into the newsrooms, where you can become an expert at and the thing about like being a good leader, is all the knowledge you have should trickle down to your teams like you should be sharing. So every person we train in leadership, or every person we empower to be an expert goes off and becomes another expert and they empower another person and on down the line. So it's this continually. To me that's like the best change management you can do, or the best way to change an organization is like one person going out to everyone. So, as leaders, all of us are part of the global majority here at this table, but people from our backgrounds are often underrepresented in formal and informal leadership roles. So what layer does add when you must lead but you're not a subject matter expert?

Sure. So I come at this with a little bit of reporters skepticism. And it's to me it's important to understand why you're being given an opportunity or why you're being placed in a role. And I think for folks who are from historically marginalized backgrounds, you may be a pawn in somebody else's game, for lack of a better term. And so it's always asking questions like, am I being set up to succeed? Do I have the resources available to me that I, you know, would like to have in order to make this this idea come to life and, and there's always this little bit of a feeling in the back of your head that you represent all the people of color who might come after you or all of the queer people who might come after you. And if you mess it up, like you're somehow dropping the ball on their behalf and what's to come for them? So I think balancing those two things are the challenges that I see.

Yeah, if I can add to that, I think that when you are navigating a workplace as someone who is different so for me as a black queer woman when I think about and thinking about the different levels of culture that you have to navigate, so there is just the culture of the workplace, all of the old stories, you know, how everyone got there. And then there's also the culture of the dominant group of folks who work there. And then there is, you know, the culture of teams. And I think one of the things that comes up for me is that, you know, often I get my safety in the past in my career from performing perfectly and so and that's where your job safety comes from. That's where your psychological safety comes from. And so that makes it a completely different dynamic. And one of the ways that I actually navigate that is that throughout my career, you want to think about a strategic plan for you to navigate those different levels of reality. If you are a person who is not in the majority. So I'll give a quick example. I spent nine years of my career in Arizona, and so there were lots of differences there. Before that I grew up in Detroit, and then I also was in the Bay Area. Phoenix is wonderful is neither of those two places. And so I had these wonderful folks in the newsroom. One editor who had spent his whole life in Arizona and went to Arizona State University. And so he was constantly translating to me, what was happening in the newsroom when I was doing a project and I didn't understand the backstory, and I had people who were rich in their knowledge in particular teams and I think if you are operating from a place of difference, that's part of the strategy you have to build around any kind of project to make sure that you can get done what you hope you can get done.

Yeah, just wanted to add when you're when you are from a marginalized community also and if you're a manager or leader, if you're looking for experts on that, don't assume because they're a part of a community that they are an expert. It's just something to watch out for. So obviously, as a citizen of the Comanche Nation, and at my previous role, I was the authority on all things native, except I don't know everything we there are more than 500 individual tribes. And there's no way you can know everything about it. But I had to, I was asked constantly to read through stories and do things on the back end, and I was not a subject matter, just because I'm from that community. So it's just something to make a note of.

So what are some tools that we all can use to navigate these unfamiliar spaces?

Okay, so one of the things that I think about when I'm managing a project or leading something formally or informally, I'm thinking about managing myself, and then also managing the project. So, you know, for me if I want to, I'm going to start with just navigating myself. So it's so common to have anxiety or feel a little shaky in these situations. And so for me over time, I have a journaling practice. And so I use actually some journaling prompts to help me when I'm in those situations. And one of the things I found that's really helpful is for me to think back to a time when I actually navigated something successfully that I didn't know about and it could be as simple as learning to drive a car or moving to a new state. But if you go through and think about what happened, what are the obstacles you overcame? How did you feel as you were overcoming those obstacles? It actually helps give your brain evidence that you can do that again. And I think that that's often been a really good tool for me to kind of quell those anxieties even today. What about you?

So kinda looks inward, I look outward. For me, it's researching like actual online tools. Use whatever system is best for you, but the first thing I do is ask someone I go fine. I do the research. And there's a reporter meme or tick tock video going around where young woman just spreading spreading fretting about like having to make a phone call. And then she makes the phone call and then switches into reporter mode. So we all still have that fear, like even in my position, instead of the fear of just cold calling people or trying to introduce myself to people. But this community we're part of the journalism community is tends to be so open. And so the first thing I do is just find out who I need to talk to, and then research the hell out of it. At the same time, I'm putting that all into like airtable or whatever tool you want to use. So I'm just making sure to document everything along the way. So for me, it's just diving in. I don't want to become an expert. Don't overdo it. Like you can go too far down the rabbit hole, but using the resources I can to just learn as much as I can. And part of that comes from my design thinking background, which is always look and try to find and do research like interview people as much as possible and get their point of view.

Do you have any other things that you want to add or Yeah, I

would add I think like clear communication with your manager or whoever is kind of your key stakeholder and helping to have clarity about what you need to do what they're expecting from you and and when and where and all the kinds of details about that I think is really important.

Yeah, there's one thing I really wanted to dig into, which I think is a really important tip, which is to get clarity on your role and from the higher ups. And then I'm curious, Emma, Tony, what are the tools that you've used to get clarity? How do you tackle that?

For me, it's just talking to the stakeholders, defining the mission and the goal. So many times you start a project or you're asked to do something, or you're trying to create something, and either you don't have the buy in or the mission is not clear and that leads almost all the time to failure. So the first step I do in that regard is find out who my stakeholder is, and then try to develop a plan based off what their needs are.

And add to that, having clear definitions of what success looks like, what iteration looks like in the future. And what done looks like is there going to be a mission accomplished moment where you wave your flag and the fireworks go off. You know, or are you battling systemic racism where there's just probably not going to be that one moment in time where you've won? I think that's really important that you understand and you're the people who are expecting things to be you understand kind of like what is going to happen and what the backup plans are. If something goes wrong, what the budget looks like, what happens if you go over the budget or you take too long, like are there consequences for you who can say but I think that that's like a really important before you start any work is really understanding what you're being asked to do and where you can shine and where you need help.

That was a really hard thing for me to transition to when I went from like being in a newsroom where it's in the past it was we all have knew what the deadline was. It was when we put the paper out that night. And then we transitioned away from that to like news as always happening. But then we moved out of news into product. It's like, oh, I'm building this thing that lives now that's supposed to live a long time. So it was hard to like make that transition. So we talked about like, finding who your stakeholders are and developing teams. So building trust and relationship with any experts you're working with on a project is important. So what are some ways that you do that? How do you build trusting relationships with people?

Well, one of the things that I find to be an incredibly useful tool is to do a listening tour. And for some people, they'll say I'm starting to project and they just go and talk to folks but you really want to be structured as strategic about how you do the listening tour and we have some of these questions in our tip sheet that we'll share at the end. But one of the things that I like to ask for example, how did you end up working here or at this project? What is your team's role? What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? What's harder than it needs to be? The most valuable question that I've actually asked him? A lot of listening tours is how do we end up doing X, Y, Z, this way in the first place? A lot of times asking that question will actually unveil the whole reason maybe that you're even been tasked to to solve the problem, and I found that to be super, super helpful. Another good question is you know, what, are you afraid I might get wrong.

I would add, you know, the really relying on your journalism instincts and the skills that brought you into news in the first place, like treat people like real people and be kind and empathetic toward them when you're learning about their areas of expertise and their story to tell. You know, bring food bring candy. Almost everybody eats something. And so like a way to create common ground is to start by like, Hey, I like Starburst. Do you like Starburst? Like maybe we can share a pack of Starbursts and you can help me understand how the internet works better or something like that. Yeah.

Oh, one other thing that I forgot to mention is the reason I really like listening tours is because it does a couple things simultaneously. One it builds rapport. So if you are dealing with people who are already experts in something that person who's already a marketing executive, the person who has been doing that beat for forever, but is no longer doing it. You know, everyone likes to talk about what they're good at. And so building rapport with the listening tour is super helpful. It's also an opportunity for you to kind of humbly say, you know, hey, I'm not really good at this yet. I love to hear what you're up to, because then it shows that sincerity that is really, really important for it. And then on the back end, obviously, you end up with tons of really, really good notes that will help you as you feel pushed forward on the project. And so those are some of the reasons I really like listening tours. One question I had, so we've all worked at Big and small organizations, and a lot of times it comes up at oh Na, you know, how do I apply this to the big place? How do I apply this in a small place? If you're looking at solving problems like this, how do these solutions look different and big and small organizations?

So I just went through this transition. This is when John asked me to do this. I was like, yes, because I'm experiencing this right now. So I came from good at which is very, very large. worked in the corporate side and it took so long to find the right people. And now with pointer. We're a small team and I'm being asked to be an expert on things I had no idea about, because the point of pointer with it being small, it's collaboration. We may not be the expert at it, but we're expected to know each other's work and teach others work. So I'll be very open and transparent with you right now. I am learning how to teach ethics from Kelly McBride who is like one of the best people and when it comes to ethics, and the country so I'm presenting her ethics deck and that a scary shit to be in a room having Kelly watch you while you're teaching the stuff that she's learned over her entire career, but she's taken the time to meet with me. She's allowed me to ask questions. She's watched me demo it. And it's been this continual learning process from each other, and collaborative. So which for me, personally, the big organizations it's hard to find support and small organizations. If you have the right leaders, you have so much more support and empathy with each other.

Yes, and so I have historically done my best work and smaller organizations. I don't particularly enjoy working with stranger after stranger after stranger. I've worked in some big organizations and it just didn't like sit well with me. And so I think to do this kind of work in a big organization, you can hunt and hunt and hunt and hunt for your allies and build your coalition. That way. The flip side is in a smaller organization, the person you're looking for might not be there. And you might just kind of have who you've got and make you gotta make do with those friends and see what you can make magic happen together. So I think it's you know, it's still about relationship building. It's about being strategic and understanding the landscape that you're walking into, you know, have these people all gone to college together, and now they all work at the same news organization together or, you know, did they all meet at NAB J together and now they all work here together and they have that background. How do you kind of infiltrate those existing networks with collaboration in mind? So what is our best tip for people who have handled a project like this, where they were not an expert initially, and so what is your tip people who want to do even better than next time they tackle something like this? And

my best tip is to do more retrospectives. If any of you are familiar with that term, that's after the project's over, gather everyone a while and find out what could have been done better and what you could do next time and, in the best case scenario, actually document the meeting so you have notes for the next time you do something similar. I think that you know, is a best practice. And you can learn so much from it, but it's something that a lot of people forget to do. Especially because you're just so relieved the project is over. But there's a there's a lot to gain from that.

I'm gonna say rely on your network of peers. Reach out to the people that you know, and you'd be surprised that like, who is an expert at what when you just start having conversations

let's see. I think this is maybe our final question or Jackie paid on time. I know. Okay, so what is the one piece of advice, word of wisdom that you want people to take away with them?

leave a paper trail of your excellence behind that is a really important thing, especially folks from marginalized backgrounds, where you may not always be assumed to be as awesome as you have secretly are. Get that secret out there, right like that is not a secret to hold on to that you are an awesome, high powered like strategic individual. Like tell that story. That's really important.

Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is to go in with a really a good mindset. Think about this as like an adventure. You are out there to learn something as opposed to something where you're trying to prove yourself if you're outside of your comfort zone, everybody already knows you don't know the subject matter. So in some ways, it kind of is a relief because it takes that off the table. And so I would aim not to impress everyone with your newfound expertise but just learn enough to be able to do the project. I think that taking that load off of not having to compete with your co workers about who's an expert in that particular area is really, really helpful.

Yeah, I think I would not do that. I think Emma said something that was just super powerful earlier. Define your goal, like know what you're trying to do. Don't fumble around in the dark. Don't try to overextend yourself. So just yet, define the goal and try to accomplish it.

All right, I think we're gonna move on to our q&a, while the volunteer come to help us with the mic. I don't know if she's Oh, thank you. You guys could just give a round of applause to our panelists.

And I'm gonna flip to the tip sheet, so you guys can get that QR code to this is the HBR article that I wrote.

And that's your quote. Hi, my question for you is about how your colleagues can help you with this endeavor. I've led a lot of teams and been on teams where someone else is a leader and I'm the subject expert. How can you help put the leader in a place of authority even if they're not the subject matter? Like what helps with that? And if they know what that is? How should they communicate that to the team

Wow, that's one that's really incredibly generous that you're thinking about how you can put someone else at ease. I think that making yourself a safe place for even really minor questions will is huge. Anytime someone says oh, even if you can't even understand how the closest window please reach out to me. You know, I love those people because that means they will be open and vulnerable with you. That will really speed the project along.

I think it's especially important when you have like something that could go disastrously wrong, and your subject matter expertise, that you make the risks very clear to folks, you know, whether it's like generative AI or its community listening or its investigative journalism, like there are a lot of risks in the work that we do. And if you're not the subject matter area expert like that can be a little bit of a black box. So I would say like, help your colleagues understand the risks that they may not fully be engaged with.

That's really good to

say one of the things we don't do well in this industry is talk to people even though we're in the communications business, but we're terrible communicators. So I think the first step there is to understand what everyone's drinks are, and that we can better match people up and put them in positions to succeed.

Is this on? Can you guys hear me? Yeah, hi, I'm Shannon. I just have a question about you know, we work in an industry full of skeptics and how you have overcome maybe joining a new team being cold to a new project, a new organization and overcoming some skepticism that you might face and from certain team members.

Lots of whiskey, no, lots of empathy. Honestly. I ran into that, especially with newsrooms when I was a man. So when I began my journey into design thinking most of the people in our newsroom had never heard of that. And we were using it to transform how we did investigative journalism and roomful of investigative journalists. We had two Pulitzer winners sitting there like they thought it was bullshit. But we kept at it. I answered every single question they had and then I just demonstrated it. And I had the backing of my executive editor who brought me into that world, Bill church who's now in Raleigh. He introduced me to the idea he empowered me to bring it to them. And I purchased it very slow and it took years to transform how we ran our newsroom. So patients,

I would also lean on, you know us that that listening to a rubric because you know, people who are skeptical, can't wait to tell you about all the reasons that they're skeptical and to tell talk about their own expertise. So you may want to use that as a way to build rapport with those folks. I also find that sometimes when people are skeptical or defensive about things, it's often because they feel like no one cares about their area. So they have to defend it, you know, either they have to defend the reputation of the organization or they have to defend the coverage over particular communities. So even by showing that empathy with them and connecting with them can sometimes push you a little bit long, further along in the relationship.

Hi, um, I have a question. It's kind of along the same lines, but going a bit deeper. If you have any tips for dealing with experts, people who are genuinely experts in their in their field, but they are actually being hostile and counterproductive and making it harder to move forward. Despite those efforts, what are the tips that you have for those of us who might be dealing with folks who are actively being bad collaborator, collaborators? Oh, wow.

I'm from Minnesota. So I have a really strong passive aggressive streak that I can add to it at any time. So there's that but I would say, you know, lean on documentation, lean on things like a racy or a daisy model to say, who is going to be responsible for this work, who will be held accountable who is going to be informed at the end, and making it super clear like this is what we need from you, sir, or ma'am or anyone in the middle to participate and be successful in our endeavor? And then you know, making sure your stakeholders are aware of that, like, we're blocked because of XYZ. And if XYZ is like this person, then like, that's okay. And I think just being really, really good at what you do and and letting them kind of be really, really bad at what they do. can sometimes just tell us tell on themselves. It's great.

There may be a point you just have to move on past that person. So are they the only expert in the entire world on that subject matter? If not, leave them

I have a question about a lot of these like how do we specify this for like fully remote teams or like fully remote projects?

You can still do a listening to our playground I joined by the march project in November and we're fully remote and I went and talked to literally every person in the whole company. Just send them over zoom set them up give you know put a little calendar link up. And it's it's exhausting because you're like on Zoom for like five hours a day and be like Hello, let me tell you my life story. Tell me your life story and it's, you're like on you know, but it helps so much and how they may help navigate the company and what I was walking into so I would say the listening tour holds up whether you're in person or remote.

Yeah, and I definitely think that some of the tips that Emma gave about she talked about racy, which is you know, one of the acronyms you can use to define who's doing what on a team, having a meeting where everyone's kind of level set on that and passing around the document, identifying who's doing those things, as are also things that you can do remotely and we've made it part of our practice for major projects. To do that, which has been also really helpful. Other questions? Yeah,

I don't know if this is related to a previous question here. How do you deal with a difficult challenges? Like when you need to let go someone who's not a good fit or toxic and you need to regain the trust of your team because maybe they don't know the whole story. And the second one is, how do you do I mean, which is kind of when you're the head of an organization and you don't have someone to talk to you you're not to bring your challengers to, how do you what advice do you have for that? You know, like when you're not, you're just the head of the organization. Thank you.

So I heard two questions. So one was someone left a team and you have to regain the trust of the team.

Like they do a better set of results because at least 70 for the for the winners.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a that's a tough one because you know, when people transition in and out of organizations, often people who work there, don't get to find out why because it's a personnel matter. And, you know, usually in the past, you know, what I've done is leaned on team building, because anytime anyone leaves, whether it's voluntarily or involuntarily because of a leak or something like that, there's like some healing and reconnection that needs to happen. As someone in the C suite, I definitely understand what you're talking about in terms of not necessarily having someone you know who's above you. I think that it's really important to have a really good strong internal sounding board of other senior leaders. I know not everyone is set up that way. But that's one of the reasons why it's really important to kind of have a larger executive team. But I also think that I always tap into my network of other senior leaders in our industry. So Mother Jones is a nonprofit news organization, we reach you know, 7 million people per month but they're even there other organizations larger and smaller. We're we're always talking to them as resources, and there's a big communal network of leaders in the industry, as well. So lean on them for support.

And I would say look for mentors, like I'm very fortunate to have hijabi like ahead of my whole career, basically. And so every time I've wondered, like, wondering, I wonder if I could do that, like Jonna has always been there doing that thing. Awesomely, and so like finding good mentors and people to admire, like other people that are just amazing that you want to do what they do, ask them how they got there. And they have probably solved the same problem that you're trying to solve. And they will have empathy for you because they're not terrible people.

Yeah. And sometimes businesses outside the industry actually are really good to have connections with because they don't have the same. I'll just call it baggage around doing the same type of work in a different area. And so they are really good to tap for expertise.

Hi, hear me. Yeah. Hi. This is really great. So thank you for everything you've already shared. I'm trying to think of the best way to word my questions. I might just explain it a little bit. If you work in a place where it's sort of like expected that you do have expertise to be granted like leadership on something but you really want to when you have the reasons why. What advice would you give to someone to get buy in from leadership that doesn't necessarily view you as like the natural fit to lead something?

Yeah, I think that one of it so is it about leadership? steps towards leadership or steps towards being recognized as an expert?

Good question. I'm not sure that um, I'll just speak a little bit more specifically, I'm interested in leading a project, but I'm not a manager. And I've kind of written out why I feel like I'm the best for this, but I'm not sure that the people who are in charge view me that way. So um, when you guys were talking about getting buy in and getting collaborators, I'm just sort of wondering about what advice you would give for people who have not like proven themselves before to do that and they want to step up to the plate for the first time.

So leadership is not management. You mentioned that those are two distinct things. And you did the first step you wrote out why it's so self being an advocate for yourself is literally the first step. If you're not supported in that, go find another manager at a different place. Honestly, yeah. Your managers should be supporting you. You should be looking for if you're a manager, look for this type of person. Like that's how you're going to grow your organization and your team. So you did advocate for yourself, you did step one, and it's up to your managers or whoever runs your organization to give you the opportunity to take that next step.

I will also encourage folks in that situation to have an open and frank conversation with your manager whoever the deciders are, they may highlight skills that you need to learn in order to get there. You know, a lot of people you know, may not recognize that, you know, maybe they need to be better at office diplomacy with certain folks or maybe their project organizational skills, you know, even though you feel that you're pretty solid. Maybe they don't know that much about that part of the work that you do. So I think digging a little bit deeper to find out those reasons and taking those to heart even though you have to read it through a filter, right? Like if an organization is not for you, it's not for you, but there may be some nuggets in there that you can act on as well.

And I would just add the paper trail again, like one of the times when I was trying to move out of editorial into product I just like, hammered my boss with like articles you should read about why he should have this job and I would like to highlight key up key passages knowing he wouldn't read them to him that I did my own salary surveys where I just like brought him that you know, like I just like kept reading all this evidence and finally was like, I'd really like you to have a conversation with me about all of the things that I've just given you. And that was successful, but another time I had to have other people go on my behalf. When I was trying to move into product, I had our head of design, go to our CEO, I had our head of engineering, go to our CEO, and had several of our other engineers go to our CEO and like lobby on my behalf. And that is ultimately what convinced them to move me over. So finding allies at your peer level, who are not necessarily other managers or other leaders but who are like well thought of citizens of the company can can help turn the tide in your

favor for sure. Oh, thank you.

Hey, um,

I know you guys talked about how important is to know what your mission is and all that and get like a clearer picture of what your role is. I do not have that. How do you navigate having some mixed messages from from people in your chain of command and people outside of your chain of command but you know, your goal is the same but nobody agrees on on what to do to get there. And also there's some us versus them going on.

And you're in the middle Yeah, I would. I would get clarity on those different positions that Emma talked about, like who is the actual decider because that can get get some clarity as well. And then also to in that situation, because I've managed products and that situation to actually bring to light the differences of opinion about causality or direction and to treat it kind of more of a menu for a decider but you also want to come with your own recommendation, because your own instincts as a leader are also really important and you want to get in the habit of bringing recommendations to leaders. If you are in senior leadership, you don't want someone to send you 10 pages of our spreadsheet and say, Hey, what do you think, you know, so you want to always have a recommendation and so so I would definitely do that.

Yeah, plus one, two, that the whole like idea of saying, This is what I need to be successful, and this is what I would like to do with my success. And having that reflected back from the folks who are given the assignments and the rolls out is really, really important that you're aligned there. So get it in writing, share it around, like, does everyone understand that these are the priorities for the project like now's the time to speak up and and you know, not pit them against each other. That's not fair. But you know, letting them know like you're creating the conflict and we want to work through it.

The we talked about other industries, like the business side does this better than journalism with KPIs or key performance indicators. So you have your goal, but you have a lot of goals underneath that to meet are a lot of areas to address and really defining those like intermediate moments can really help make the picture clear.

Hello, hi. Hi.

So one thing I found difficult in my career so far is sometimes being able to communicate that the things that you're really good at are the soft skills and the think the being the connector and connecting the dots. So you were mentioning the paper trail and really documenting things that you've done, but sometimes that can be hard for the soft skill part of it or the connector part of it. What are some tips would you have or maybe situations you've been in? That would be a good way to kind of promote yourself in that way and show that you can lead this because you are good at those connector pieces and maybe not that specific lane.

I would try to model that the behavior you see from your leaders who are successful. So like one thing that I will do a lot is like I tried to shine a spotlight on like the staff were below me. And like I think that that is showing like good citizenship inside the organization and good like leadership potential Right? Or whether it's like raising your hand for stuff to do like I will order the birthday cake for somebody's birthday party or I will throw five baby showers this year for every pregnant person in our organization. Not saying that happened to me or anything but, you know, it does happen to people and you do struggle to quantify that work, right? Like someone took down the Pentagon last week in my organization and someone did five birthday showers like what you know, like how do you quantify that work? And you just have to either find joy in it or just recognize that you will be compensated for it. But it's it's all kind of building that like puzzle together of your leadership toolkit is like are you willing to do the hard work? Are you willing to step up? Are you willing to, you know, shield another like hold the ship umbrella for somebody else? Are you willing to shine a light on somebody who needs that light shone on them very desperately. And so I think the more you're modeling good leadership, whether you have that title or not can help.

I'm glad you said you use a word or phrase that we're thinking a lot about it pointed right now, which is soft skills. Because that just how those are named. It's almost like they're secondary. So we're throwing around new words like are they durable skills, are they because there's so much value and that's where you create your network. That's where you find your allies. Is that type of work? And we look down on it in journalism, because it's like, you know, that's not the stuff that's changing laws and bringing down the Pentagon and that type of stuff. So it's really a conversation that we haven't had in this industry and we need to start having more of it to like answer that.

I think another thing you might want to think about when you're I did a workshop once about how to tell your career story. And I think you also want to think about what was enabled by your work, right? So instead of saying I helped connect the sales department to editorial department, you could say, you know, I helped manage a project that lead to X amount of hits or X amount in sales. And so, you know, people care about the determinative end of something, even though you were part of a larger process, you don't want to over below what your role is, but I think getting in the habit of knowing what is enabled by your work is a very powerful thing to know. And so I would encourage everyone here to start thinking about their work and that way, because that's how senior leaders think about work as well. And so I definitely, you know, sometimes that means making a friend of the marketing department making a friend in the audience team as a asking some folks on the dev team, you know, what was enabled by my work, so that you can go ahead and tell that story on your own behalf?

Yeah, thank you all. Hi, I'm right here. I wanted to thank you for sharing by beginning with those lists of what your own expertise is, are and I wanted to ask about the creation of those lists. What did it feel like and what did you think about when you were putting those together? And what does having a list like that allow you to do?

A good question. For me it's reflection. I was on the fast track to becoming like the asshole editor. We all know. I was the newsroom. I was in like, we were doing really, really good work. We were doing high quality work. That was like winning a lot of awards. were being taught it was I was the managing editor for the Sarasota Herald. Tribune. And we expected to like be Pulitzer finalist every year and we were trying to do that work. And now when I look back, I'm embarrassed at that, because I quickly did not so when I got into like, innovation work. I learned that I had to interview people and talk to people and learn about other people and like I stopped putting myself first and so for that, it's like telling my story in reverse and going, Oh, I've changed. The industry can change. So that's how it's personal reflection for me.

I find it very difficult because my skill set is more of a generalist skill set. I like very much do myself as a Swiss army knife. I've had a lot of weird jobs. And so to kind of figure out what that all adds up to. I thought my list was very short at first, and then I just kind of broke a couple of things apart and I was like, Well, that could be two things the two bullets so it's very uncomfortable for me because I don't think of myself as being an expert on a lot of things other than like logistics, which is itself a great expertise to have because it comes in handy. But yeah, I think that it allows you to say no to things when you have carved out what you want out of the industry and what you want to give and what you don't want to give and think especially when you talk about like being people of color other historical backgrounds, like you are that are like 20 cents put on the spot to give something you might not even have. It's still expected of you. And so I think you know how to say no is equally as important as how to claim your expertise.

Yeah, I think that's really good advice. For me, I was really reflective and doing that because there's still a part of me that feels like you know, unless you're in Wikipedia for it, then can you call yourself an expert, but I think that over the years, I've gotten a lot more comfortable with saying that I have expertise in things or to say I'm growing my expertise in something which is also something that you can do. I have also gotten a lot more comfortable by thinking that there's no there there. Like even if you're an amazing software developer, even if you're a really great executive leader, you should always be developing anyway. So if you think about it as learning with no endpoint and these are areas where you have a chunk of study then then it's a little bit easier for me to do the list. Yeah. I think we have to, we done well, they want it to finance at the end. Oh, one final question. So I think we have one more question. Thank you. has asked us to give all of you a final question for you guys to discuss amongst yourselves for the last 10 minutes. So maybe we'll do that after your question.

Quickly, just looking around this room makes me want to know how you've seen gender dynamics play into this area of leading in an area where you're new to becoming an expert

when you say gender dynamics you mean

there? Well, if you look at this room, it looks like a lot of more people present as female than male. And I know there, at least in my personal experience that there's I've run into way more overconfident men than women.

There's actually research Yes, yes. Now we're talking. We're there's actually research that shows that men will apply for jobs if they only qualify for like six tenths of the overall qualifications and requirements are sorry men will apply for anything that they can see in front of them and women will only apply if they hit like 10 out of 10 checkmark boxes down the list. And I think that is that's proven exactly what you just said. Yeah.

Yeah. I will also say that's a little bit complicated by other identities folks may have So like for example, you know, I've worked with people who are either from immigrant families or first generation third generation, sometimes many generations later, and they may still downplay their own expertise. So it's complicated, but I think in general, I've seen what Emma said, yeah. Do you have anything to add?

Nope. I'll just support what you all said. Okay.

All right. So we have one final question. We have some information on how to reach us. But the final question we wanted to leave with all of you was Yep, well, we'll turn back in a second. As you exit, ask your neighbor, what was the most memorable takeaway from the presentation? And with that, I will go back to the other slide. Thank you

Oh, awesome. So nice to see you. Thank you so much. Oh, congratulations. I just wanted to say thank you here, but like a generalist is like like that says, oh, yeah, also,

what do you do at the time?

I am definitely head of opinion on I vertical. I've worked with her I think. Yeah, yeah, anyways, I find being a generalist and audio very scary. Bringing

generals at the times is very difficult anyway, because everyone's an expert in something there and they're all assholes about it.

I mean, at least in my opinion, I find you are asking and

I used to work in the opinion like a long time ago, and it was full of assholes. But it was like several iterations of the page ago.

I find it I find them with the leadership they have now. It's a much more collaborative and ego free culture. That's great. That's great. And you're a nerd and it's nice to be connected.

That's a great checklist. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, my God, are you okay? Are you okay?

I'm on the board

video with you. I got to see how you, like, had to, because like, last year, I didn't show anything today and I got so fried fish here. I was like half an hour today is the lucky day. It's like how are you? Good to see you. Hi. It's great to meet you.