Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Client Spotlight: From Individual Contributor to Director at Microsoft!

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

The classic chicken & egg...Most will never break free from that:"You never proved yourself in leadership so why would we give you a chance".Neelay was committed and wanted to change.He knew he wanted the impact and believed he could be a good leader - but needed the proven formula to make it happen and fast-track the journey. In this episode Ilana chats with Neelay to find out how he was able to not only land a dream role but jump from Individual contributor to Director in Microsoft. Wow! Neelay also shares how he applied the same techniques he learned at Leap Academy to help him be successful in his first 90 days.  Watch This Episode on YouTube - https://youtu.be/eU5QzNGCUj8 About Ilana Golan & Leap Academy:Website - https://www.leapacademy.com/Follow Ilana on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilanagolan/YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@ilanagolan-leap-academy

It's a no-brainer, right, in terms of the investment and the ROI on that investment in working with Leap. You have to look forward to what you want in your career and your life and where you want to be and just go get it, right? And personally for me, Leap has been absolutely instrumental, right, in helping me achieve this. Neelay, oh my God, this is such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful story. I'm so glad to see you here. An amazing story of a amazing person leader that moved from an individual contributor. I mean, again, you've been in amazing companies. You'll talk about it. Cisco, VMware, right. Amazon,

but you moved from an individual contributor to a director in Microsoft. Incredible role, doing big things. Super excited to have you on the Leap Show, Nile. Excited to be here, Ilana. Amazing, amazing. So again, a lot of people, when they've been a long time, and again, you leaped again and again, engineering products, et cetera, but a lot of people, when they've been a long time and is, you know, and again, you leaped again and again, engineering products, et cetera. But a lot of people, when they've been individual contributor for a long time, they lose hope.

Like, maybe I don't have what it takes. Right. So what tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you make it? And not only made it, you made it in a big, prestigious company. Right. So how did that happen? Yeah. So as you said, right, I had been in an individual contributor role for almost all of my career. And it's tough, right? Like year after year, you are one of the top performers in the team as an individual contributor, right? And you're always thinking about, okay, how can I make an even bigger impact, right? And to me, like the answer

was very clear, like I could have made a bigger impact by first moving to an executive role and leading a team, right? Where a high performing team where I could really drive a bigger impact for the business. Right, right, right. And amazing. But again, a lot of people want that. They want the impact. They want the leadership and they have no clue what to do, right?

Like how, what made that happen? And I love seeing your journey and it's just so beautiful to see. But share a little bit with the people here because again, when you joined Leap, you know, it was just like, you know, but share a little bit with the people here, because again, when you joined Leap, you know, it was just like, you know, I want to figure this out. So tell us a little more. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, how did I do it? I did it with Leap, right? That's the bottom line. I knew where I wanted to get, go, right? But I did not know how to get there, right? And the beauty of Leap is that I've seen

a lot of my fellow participants in Leap, right, who don't even know what they want. And Leap helps them figure that out as well. In my case, I had a clear objective of moving to an executive level role in a cloud-first company, but I did not know how to get there, right? So Leap really helped me all the way from taking that problem statement and bringing it to fruition by actually moving to the role and beyond that, right? Now, after moving to the role, you still have to prove yourself and we have to be successful in that role. So all the hard and soft elements of soft skills in my opinion, right? Which is mindset management of, and having this confidence of, yes, I can do it, right?

And I can be successful at it. And I love what you just said. So first of all, you know, I think for years, I didn't even know that mindset was important. You know, I just thought that I can persevere through everything, right? And I think some people, when we catch them, you know, they just bang on the same wall again, again, again, one of the biggest blind spot is the, you know, that they, you know, they're just not seeing themselves high enough and big enough. And they

don't have the confidence to take them there. But what I love about you, and I know that this is why you can lead teams in an incredible way, is because you've been always leaning forward. You've been always showing up. You've been always giving to everyone else. Like you are that type of person. And again, leap works when you lean in and you draw that line in the sand and you really decide beyond anything else that I'm going to figure this out no matter what.

And you showed up and, you know, and you continue to show up in exactly that way. And that's why you're successful, right? Because guess what? Some people leap and they're not successful, but you're just like, you're there and you're making it happen and you're creating big things

and you're taking products to multi-million. Like that's what you do. Right. Absolutely. Right. And I would also like to give a shout out to all of my fellow lead members. Right. Because as you rightly pointed out, a big element of it is also the community aspect. Right. And personally, for me, I've seen like I'm best engaged when I have a community of people, right, who are going through the same journey to share their insights and to support each other. So I feel like the LEAP network has also been a big support in my journey. And I think there's something about people that don't want to settle. Some people like to sleepwalk through life and being surrounded with people who don't want to settle is something energizing at a whole different level.

And again, you were one of those people that just lean in, do big things, continue showing up, right? And I know this is what you bring also to every company you're with. For people who are individual contributors and just don't know, what if I don't know how to be a leader? I don't even know how to start. Like, what would be some of the things that you would tell them? The first thing is to realize, right, that you want to get into an executive role, right?

That's number one. Right. Once you have that objective, then it just becomes a matter of setting intermediate goals towards your ultimate objective of becoming an executive. Exactly. And how does it feel? So when you actually made it and you got this offer, what came to mind okay now I have this offer not to be successful in this role that was the first thing that came to mind still is yeah but it definitely feels fulfilling in the moment right and you also want to do the best you can for the company that has hired you in this role and deliver business results for them so even even though, you know, you landed this role, you still show up, you still come in, right? So what do you feel that gave you? And why do you continue showing up, right? You're coming to our live retreat. So what made you decide to stay? Yeah, so excited to be coming to the retreat, looking forward to that.

And what made me stay, there are two things, right? As I said, it's about continuing to improve yourself, to keep delivering on your roles, right? That's number one goal for me. Number two is continuing to explore what else is out there, right? And what are the other opportunities in which I could be learning and improving. Right. And number three is being there for the LEAP network as well, right? And now that I've made this LEAP in my career, I would love to

be there for the network and help them to the best of my ability. Now that you have this incredible role, how many more people can you impact, right? Within a director, right? You can advise some companies, you can mentor some startup accelerators, you can take some board seats, like you can do so much as a director at Microsoft. So not only you become a better leader, but you inspire generations, which is beautiful. So I just love that you're generations, which is beautiful. So I just love that you're still, you know, with us and you continue to grow because again, some people just, you know, tick the box and that's it. The people that will make it and change the entire

second part of their life are the people that will always lean in and grow and continue. And it's just a beautiful muscle to build. So last famous words, Neelay, what would you say to somebody that doesn't know us? You know, they're scared. They're wondering, like, is this going to work for me? Can anybody help me? Is this the right solution? What would you say? One of the people I really look up to is my grandfather, right?

He used to always advise, right? Like, always keep investing in yourself, right? Invest in your health, invest in your education, and always invest in self-improvement. Leap is just personifies learning and self-improvement and achieving, setting and achieving your objectives, right? I think your goal, Ilana, is to impact as many people as possible to make leads in their life, right? That is your mission.

That is why you created Leap. So it's absolutely spot on. And I think it does really make an impact on people's life.