Authority Issues

Authority Issues

By Rachel Perkins and Kendall MillerBusinessCareersManagement
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Authority Issues episodes

  • Episode 10: Mitchell Hashimoto (Hashicorp)

    In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Mitchell discuss:

    • Mitchell's first real job working at an Apple retail store, where the employee customer service training made a big impact
    • How the empathy training from that experience has translated well to most of his subsequent experience in the working world
    • Digging into why customers are angry, and finding a place to be genuinely empathetic
    • How this translates to the employee-employer relationship
    • How we can't not talk about Mitchell's job at a smoothie place
    • Learning to interact with clients as a software consultant and as a leader via building things in the open source community
    • Mitchell's origins as a self-taught programmer while his parents limited his time on the computer
    • Working around that by PRINTING OUT SOURCE CODE TO STUDY IT, WTF?!
    • Having to level up at management fast after founding HashiCorp via reading a lot of books, hiring experienced, "professional" managers
    • How hard it is to scale management process beyond 300 or so people, can't personally address every issue
    • That people are much more complex than computers--computers are much easier to understand
    • The value of emphasizing shared culture when your company is fully distributed
    • Wondering why Mitchell is cagey about his answer to whether he'd prefer to fight a crowd of duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck...perhaps this is related to his level of introversion? :)
    • How leading and understanding extroverted people is harder than you might think, especially when it comes to personnel reviews
    • The nature of video calls and introversion and how working from home allows you to recharge in between calls
    • Learning to be responsible with people when you are in an authority position--for example, do not message people on Friday saying you want to talk with them on Monday without any details (when you just need to talk to them about nothing)
    • How this totally works the other way for Kendall--freaking out about an employee wanting to talk
    • That someone having authority over you can be comforting if you trust them
    • The benefits of viewing titles as job descriptions and not "who you're the boss of"
    • Using (and getting caught using) management techniques with your partner

      • You can find Mitchell by name on GitHub and Twitter, and you can email him and he'll do his best to respond :)

      Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

      45 min
    • Episode 9: Get to know your Host—Rachel Perkins (piebob)
      • Path to leadership: Going from a $3.75/ hour tutoring position to her current job at Honeycomb.io 
      • rachel talks about designing her own job from the ground up
      • Building community teams versus community programs 
      • rachel discusses how to become such a value to a company they fight to make you stay
      • How she moved on to become an editorial board member at 5calls.org 
      • Learn how to become more approachable and how to not be afraid of showing weakness 
      • How being open with your team will produce better results in communication 
      • rachel talks about her side gig of being a DJ while still using the rest of her free time to participate in MUD gaming 

        • You can find rachel on twitter at @djpiebob

        Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

        51 min
      • Episode 8: Tora Rocha (City of Oakland)

        In this episode Kendall, Rachel, and Tora Rocha discuss:

        • Tora’s path from elephant training (for real) to leadership. Shoveling shit.
        • New means to get respect in the field in the 1980s as a leader and a young woman
        • The creation of her volunteer project at the rose gardens
        • More on elephant training as a metaphor for leadership
        • How introverts vs extroverts process things differently and how to utilize the skills of both to the best of their ability
        • Fishbowl work and what you can learn from it
        • You cannot lead by fear, it’s better to lead by example, especially if you are passionate about what you are leading
        • Empathy is what is most missing in leadership – if you’re struggling watch Simon Sinek’s videos about leadership. https://www.youtube.com/user/SimonSinek
        • It’s hard to do your job if there is no passion or expectations coming down from your leadership. If you don’t know what they are, ask
        • Care about your people, utilize them to the best of their abilities
        • Lessons from Naomi Kline’s The Shock Doctrine
        • Staying connected to the reality of the day to day, and not just focusing on you, as a leader – the importance of avoiding the seduction of power
        • The Pollinator Posse and changing the way people look at landscapes

        Find Tora at: www.pollinatorposse.org

        Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

        45 min
      • Episode 7: Kathy Keating (Apostrophe)

        In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Kathy Keating discuss:

        • Kathy’s path to leadership/management as a result of her willingness to be willing to do something that nobody else knew how to do and try and solve the problems nobody else was willing to try and tackle
        • That Kathy’s company, Apostrophe, is going to solve healthcare, whoah!
        • Just how meta Kendall can get :)
        • The happenstance of making connections--rachel always looks at peoples' shoes too!
        • How learning to stand your ground, especially as a woman in tech leadership, to say what you believe and recognize your own value was Kathy's hardest lesson to learn
        • The biggest challenges of tackling the health care industry: working with archaic infrastructure and processes, the amount of data that must be secure, working within the existing ecosystem of the industry as it has evolved over the years, having to be willing to accommodate technologists who don't know what an API is
        • FTP servers, they still exist!
        • The importance of making sure the folks you recruit, both employees and investors, believe in your company’s mission and values when the problem is as hard and widespread as affordable healthcare
        • Kendall's jaded worldview about why people work for Google :)
        • The importance of keeping the audacious goals and values at the top of everyone’s mind
        • Kathy’s view of having authority is that leadership is a support role, that it's proven out by the folks who come to work for her at multiple companies
        • How working for a CEO who just told her to do what he told her and didn't want to hear her thoughts led her toward a more collaborative approach, and founding her own company
        • The fact that no one was more shocked than she was to learn she's 100% introverted per Meyers-Briggs, and how she figured out that if she works on something meaningful, she has meaningful conversations, which bypasses the introversion issues
        • How senior leadership means moving beyond just protecting and serving your own team to seeing a bigger picture within an organization
        • That Kathy sometimes trains her teams to adapt to change by changing lots of things all the time, and it's important to make it not scary--experimentation vs fear of failure
        • The rules of cat ownership

          • Find Kathy on Twitter @kathkeating

          Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

          41 min
        • Episode 6: Matt Newkirk (Etsy)

          In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Matt Newkirk discuss:

          • What's it like being the Babel Fish of Etsy?
          • Matt's humble beginnings as a programmer in Mordor (working on a text-based Lord of the Rings game :))
          • How are projects managed in a multi-user dungeon (MUD)?
          • Understanding your job as a manager is not just creating a checklist of "No's"
          • Matt's circuitous route through various roles that ultimately brought him to management
          • Finding cross-team synergies and ways to leverage common data and goals
          • Making it a mission to be visible at cross-functional meetings and casual get-togethers
          • Being loud as a way to connect various teams and information across the company
          • Debriefing your partner as post-work therapy
          • What it's like to manage a team when you don't share their technical skills
          • How, shockingly, no one likes being ordered to use processes they didn't get to help develop
          • The value of networking and connecting with others within your company, making sure you're not building the same wheel as another department
          • A senior manager is thinking about how to improve the output and happiness of their team as well as how their team's productivity impacts the company overall.
          • Paths through failure as an accelerator to leadership skill
          • How leadership and delegation experience helped with being a good partner when his wife was giving birth ;)
          • "Just Talk To People"(tm)

            • Find Matt at www.matthewnewkirk.com

            Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

            44 min
          • Episode 5: Anca Mosoiu (Tech Liminal)

            In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Anca Mosoiu discuss:

            • Anca founded TechLiminal, a technology salon, on a fairly sketchy block in downtown Oakland, CA 10 years ago.
            • Anca's been working in tech since the late 1900's (!), the dark ages of tech.
            • Techliminal was designed as "a place where regular people can walk in off the street and learn to use tools."
            • Her work inspired some folks to volunteer to help with TechLiminal, and it became a kind of event hub.
            • Anca didn't have management experience before she started up TechLiminal, she learned most of what she knows about managing volunteers from other local organizers.
            • Volunteers are great, but they need to be motivated by intrinsic means. It's important to make sure they feel important and needed, that their work is valued.
            • Leadership skills are much more important when your people are volunteers--it's almost 100% your inspiration that motivates them.
            • The team composition matters much more, watch for disruptive volunteers.
            • "Volunteering by Obligation" (people who are volunteering to fulfilling an obligation) can make things more challenging.
            • Your own ego has to take a back seat when leading a team.
            • Volunteers often require a lot more checking in and confirmation of the desired output.
            • What? Anca has an anti-authoritarian streak? SAY IT ISN'T SO!
            • What level of transparency is appropriate with your employees? Determining the balance of keeping them on track vs being open with them is very difficult.
            • You have to be more extroverted than you might be comfortable with to make sure you ask the questions you need to ask of your team.
            • Anca recommends the "Ask A Manager" column. https://www.askamanager.org/
            • A senior leader has better judgement about what matters when delivering a project, how much to take on, what to focus on. Junior leaders often try to take on too much at once.
            • Being a leader in her professional life has helped her become more humble, less bossy.
            • Being a good leader means you can speed up the process of picking the place for lunch!

              • Find Anca at https://techliminal.com/

              Twitter: @anca

              Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

              42 min
            • Episode 4: Anne Hjortshoj (Cisco)

              In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Anne Hjortshoj discuss:

              • Let's get this out of the way: how does one spell and pronounce Anne's last name? :)
              • What's it like getting acquired by a Very Large Company? How does communication change?
                • Do you change how you communicate with your team when you get acquired? How do you provide the necessary context of the larger company?
                • Just how Old are the hosts of this show? :)
                • Strategy can be expensive, slow, costly, and not directly connected to getting a product out the door, so it is often perceived by leadership as an expensive luxury. How do you work around this perception and get useful things done?
                • When a company is largely built from acquisitions, there are many cultures in place across the organization. How do you collaborate effectively?
                  • Don’t demand too much of other people until you understand what their goals are.
                  • Sometimes falling on your face is useful when you can show you're a good human in your acknowledgement of it.
                  • Is it possible to transition from introvert to extrovert, or the reverse?
                  • The Joy of Canceling Meetings :)
                  • Becoming a leader/manager means letting go of direct control, it can make you feel pretty messed up.
                  • How to mentor or manage people who are expert in a field or practice you're not really familiar with?
                  • When you're in a large org, you have more options to work with leadership above you.
                  • Executives are not just angry gods (most of the time). It's not productive to think of them simply as evil overlords.
                  • What sets 'senior' leaders apart from 'junior' ones?
                  • When you don't have time for social niceties...
                  • The skill of "when do I not get involved" is learned, not innate.

                    • Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                    45 min
                  • Episode 3: Eric Jorgensen (The Wirecutter)

                    In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Eric Jorgensen discuss:

                    • Is it weird that Kendall goes to https://thewirecutter.com/ before buying any product, sometimes even ones that are not reviewed there?
                    • Impostor syndrome affects everyone: Eric is a successful self-taught engineer, rachel comes from an astrophysics and English literature background, Kendall has 2 masters degrees in religion...but sometimes (always?) we feel inadequate to the challenge and expect to be found out at any moment.
                    • When does it makes sense to delegate vs. doing it yourself? Delegate more than you feel comfortable with.
                    • As a manager, you don't get the instant gratification of turning in a project like you do as a team member, how do you prevent yourself from feeling you have accomplished nothing?
                    • Leadership feels different when you're working at an agency and responsible for billable hours.
                    • Eric thinks there's strong correlation between companies with a lack of management and high turnover rate--what do you think?
                    • Being a leader has helped Eric become more patient? Are you sure? :)

                      • Eric can be found as ericmjorgensen on all the cool (and not so cool) social media platforms.

                      Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                      37 min
                    • Episode 2: Ann Carrier (Engage)

                      In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Ann Carrier discuss:

                      • Her epic path to leadership
                      • How working in the banking industry was not a great fit because she didn't wear Louboutins (kinda like Toms but different ;))
                      • Avoiding "Golluming" and doing everything youself because that doesn't help your team learn new skills
                      • Encouraging the people finding solutions to also experience or understand the problems clearly, see both sides of the coin
                      • The value in getting to know your co-workers, even if you're not on the same team
                      • The fact that INTENTION ISN'T MAGIC

                        • You can find Ann in these places:

                        http://www.pixeldiva.co.uk/
                        Twitter: @pixeldiva
                        Instagram: @pixeldiva

                        Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                        34 min
                      • Episode 1: Caleb Huitt

                        In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Caleb Huitt discuss:

                        • what the heck is precision agriculture? (YES, WE'RE NERDS. WE KNOW.)
                        • The challenges of implementing ideas when actual humans are involved (computers are SO much easier!)
                        • Learning about yourself so you can work with others more effectively (introspection. like observability for your behavior)
                        • Applying leadership skills in your everyday life (your PTA meetings will never be the same!)

                          • Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                          41 min

                        About Authority Issues

                        From the publisher's feed

                        Welcome to Authority Issues, a podcast about leadership, management, and competitive prescription writing.