Authority Issues

Authority Issues

By Rachel Perkins and Kendall MillerBusinessCareersManagement
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Authority Issues episodes

  • Episode 20: Kristina Kemmer (InVision)

    In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Kristina talk about:

    • A rare actual degree in the field of Information Systems/IT!
    • The value of informational interviews
    • How product management works at a huge aerospace company
    • Going from a giant corporation to a much smaller company
    • Culture-first as an approach to running a business
    • How great it is when the people who build the product have good context from customers
    • Being the glue when there are a lot of managers in the mix
    • When Agile doesn't really scale anymore
    • What changes when you go from managing ICs to managing managers
    • The dynamics of tenured vs newer leadership with external experience
    • Signs of seniority and experience in engineering leaders
    • Shiny, shiny context!
    • Reasons people in leadership tend to like solitary activities
    • Kendall's uplifting sense of irony

      • You can find Kristina on the internet on LinkedIn and on Twitter as @kemmeroo

      Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

      44 min
    • Episode 19: Sarah Zelechoski (ReactiveOps)

      In this episode, rachel, Kendall, and Sarah talk about:

      • Choosing all the available options
      • The value of being able to anticipate the ways in which something will go wrong
      • Using silence as leverage
      • A callback to having to make the choice of scaling your management style vs customizing it
      • Sarah's background in astrophysics and how the funding dance is terrible
      • Falling in love with being helpful
      • A tall step up to VP
      • Mild anxiety around maybe having reinvented the wheel in coming to one's own conclusions
      • How Sarah and rachel are origin story twinsies!
      • Kendall having to interrupt us from staring into each others' eyes
      • Structure in compensation and leveling as a way to offer needed leverage to under-represented groups
      • Having values that make it more comfortable to have authority
      • Turning the tables on rachel vis-a-vis the introversion vs extroversion question
      • The importance of modeling healthy work-life balance
      • Coaching and teaching as an embodiment of 'helping' on an ongoing basis

        • You can find Sarah on twitter as @szelechoski and on the Hangops Slack.

        Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

        47 min
      • Episode 18: Emily Nakashima (Honeycomb.io)

        In this episode, Kendall, rachel, and Emily talk about:

        • Reaffirming that people have a circuitous path to management
        • The pros and cons of becoming a technologist for romantic reasons
        • Just how far the biological life analogy can be taken to describe the early internet industry
        • The point at which you learn that not all problems your team has need fixing
        • Leveraging the focus of your colleagues when you need help prioritizing All The Things
        • The highs and lows of iterating on hiring process
        • Pitfalls for new managers
        • Just how much of an MCU nerd rachel is
        • How isolating leadership can be at the top of the org
        • Kendall's requirement to include downtime/self-care time in his calendar, typically involving mountains
        • How much fun disaster preparedness planning can be
        • Why it's ok to have a personal Trello, but perhaps a personal JIRA is a bit too much

          • You can find Emily on twitter at @eanakashima

          Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

          40 min
        • Episode 17: Dusty Pearce (Slack)

          In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Dusty talk about:

          • The "inconsequential" details of Dusty's life
          • The value of moving back and forth between being an individual contributor and a leader over one's career
          • What "devops transformation" means and why it's hard
          • Maturing as a leader and how this trends away from dictatorial tendencies
          • How different management styles scale or don't
          • Is it necessary to 'have a take' in terms of domain expertise in every leadership role?
          • Coming to leadership from a place of being a control freak
          • Balancing accepting your style vs broadening its appeal
          • The effect of the leadership power differential on potential feedback about your management style
          • The definition of the power differential
          • What "expensive to manage" means
          • How much of leadership is modeling good relationships with your peers
          • Observations on sports coaching tactics during timeouts
          • Leadership as it applies to parenting

            • Find Dusty on Twitter at @dustyp

            Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

            46 min
          • Episode 16: Authority Issues Holiday Edition

            In this special year-end episode, Kendall and rachel talk about:

            • Holiday plans and Christmas miracles
            • Kendall's deep thoughts on facial hair fashion
            • Why we make this podcast
            • Oooh, shiny!
            • Choose your own path to Impostor Syndrome supercut!
            • A team-building tip for the new year
            • Kendall's experience of forced Kon-Mari-by-proxy
            • Our goals for 2019, and meta topics around goal-setting

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

              31 min
            • Episode 15: Sarah Kampman (Square Root)

              In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Sarah talk about:

              • How technical communication often draws people toward product management
              • Using cognitive science to improve product research
              • People watching as a data mining exercise
              • Using inspiration rather than direction, rather than having to tell people what to do
              • Kendall's ongoing naysaying :)
              • The various benefits of having engineering-, marketing-, or product-driven organizations
              • The subversive nature of being a control freak
              • Cocktail party chatter and how to leverage it if you're an introvert
              • Where authority really comes from
              • Cultivating obliviousness to avoid having to assert authority
              • The imbalance in social and cultural expectations when a woman is in a leadership role

                • Find Sarah on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-kampman-0195451/

                Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                40 min
              • Episode 14: Ian Colle (AWS)

                In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Ian talk about:

                • Hipster bicycles
                • Ian's backstory in the military
                • Deciding you like startups, and then ending up at Amazon
                • Developing motivation toward the goal vs using discipline to lead your team
                • Learning from bad managers
                • Management at scale, high-volume hiring
                • Pushing for shared experience for remote vs on-premises team members
                • Realizing that everyone is not like you (gasp!)
                • Having autonomy as a child means it's harder to handle micromanagement as an adult
                • Walking the fine line of projecting confidence vs being vulnerable to your team
                • Kendall learns about the concept of humility (again :))

                  • You can find Ian at @ircolle most places on the internet.

                  Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                  41 min
                • Episode 13: Michael Honey (Icelab)

                  In this episode Kendall, rachel, and Michael talk about:

                  • Starting from a place of youth and arrogance :)
                  • Advertising agency life from the time when people smoked in the office (Mad Men, anyone?)
                  • Coming to terms with the fact that you're selling your soul
                  • The founding of Icelab as an indirect consequence of philosophical differences
                  • Being a leader when you don't want to be a "boss"
                  • Kendall's understanding of logic when it comes to opinions
                  • Ownership of what happened when someone leaves your org
                  • Michael's political work with the Australian Green Party
                  • The feeling of freedom when someone knowledgeable tells /you/ what to do for a change
                  • Assuming everyone is like you: it's a trap!
                  • Various philosophical approaches to dishwashing

                    • You can find Michael at @michaelhoney most places on the internets.

                    Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                    46 min
                  • Episode 12: Jessica Popp (Sendgrid)

                    In this episode Kendall, Rachel and Jessica Popp discuss:

                    • How Jessica gravitated toward roles that emphasized communication
                    • Trials by fire through startup dynamics
                    • The curse of the innate editor
                    • Jessica's definition of a great leader
                    • Being told to "step off" and what happened next
                    • Pivoting to leading a less-experienced team
                    • Kendall gets some mentorship about his career path
                    • The responsibility as a successful woman in tech to the women coming up
                    • A dichotomy of intro/extroversion driven by context
                    • Our respective scorn at people who ask dumb questions at parties
                    • Authority as scope of responsibility
                    • The urge to always feel productive

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

                      43 min
                    • Episode 11: Laurel Ruma (O'Reilly Media)

                      In this episode Kendall, Rachel, and Laurel Ruma discuss:

                      • Learning how to talk to strangers by working on a farm
                      • Accepting that there is stuff that is out of your control and moving on from it instead of getting hung up on it
                      • The real value of forcing yourself out of your comfort zone and encountering people who are different from you
                      • Things that Kendall finds creepy
                      • Getting involved in Twitter wars is a terrible idea
                      • Being "the voice of reason" among her peer group
                      • Coaching employees about what's appropriate to discuss on social media
                      • Getting Bill O'Reilly's hate mail (!)
                      • The power of sideways leadership in communicating major changes from management
                      • How leadership applies to working with your customers as well as your employees
                      • Having to dial back her extroversion to not freak out your introverted customers :)
                      • Acknowledging imperfection in oneself
                      • Laurel's interests: BABES – Boston Area Beer Enthusiasts Society, Scandinavian Noir literature, and She Geeks Out
                      • Kendall's poor taste in beer :)
                      • Laurel's plan for when she wins the lottery :)

                        • Find Laurel on social media as "laurel@oreilly"

                        Special thanks to Mel Stanley for our theme music <3

                        51 min

                      About Authority Issues

                      From the publisher's feed

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