The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 322: Julie Zhuo - What To Do When Everyone Looks To You

Episode Date: August 4, 2019

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk #322 with Julie Zhuo Julie Zhuo is the VP of Product Design for Facebook.  She was the first-ever intern for the company.  She leads the team responsible for the Facebook App.  Julie is known as one of Silicon Valley's top product design executives, she leads the teams behind some of the most popular web and mobile services used by billions of people around the world. Julie writes about technology, great user experiences, and leadership on her popular blog "The Year of the Looking Glass" as well as publications like the New York Times and Fast Company.  She is the best-selling author of, The Making Of A Manager.

The biggest difference between a great manager and an average manager is the output of their teams and whether or not that can be sustained over time. And so, again, you've got to look at management is contextual, right? Leadership is contextual. You know, you're getting a group of people together and you want them to do some work together, you know, whether it's produced great design work or help educate a generation of students and to be prepared for the world or to create a great business. And so a great manager is going to come.

consistently get better outcomes from that group of people working together than an average manager or a bad manager. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show, brought to you by Brixie and Meyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to receive mindful Mondays. It's what I've been reading, watching, and thinking about, as well as exclusive giveaways to only those who are part of these mindful Monday notes, including some new details on my upcoming book.

Text learners to 4422. Now, on a night's feature leader to the great Julie Zhu. She's the vice president of product design at Facebook. In fact, she was the first ever intern hired at Facebook over 13 years ago. Also, the author of a great book titled The Making of a Manager, What to Do When Everyone Looks to You? A few of the topics we got into. Keys to running better meetings. Tips on how to hire more effectively than how to earn respect when you're just starting out in a new management role.

And then she described the difference between a good manager and a great manager. Ladies and gentlemen, this one's so good with Julie Zhu. All right, Julie Zhu. So good to have you here on The Learning Leader Show. Thank you, Ryan. I'm really excited to be here. I want to get us going right away. You know, I like to study those who sustain excellence, specifically leaders, and you embody this, and you have surrounding yourself with others who have as well. I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities of those who sustain excellence?

I think the most important thing that I've learned and that I see from those that I work with, is basically having a mindset of growth. And it's assuming that you don't know everything. And frankly, you're probably getting by on certain skills and that you want to grow and learn better. And that's what a lot of the focus of my book was, is these lessons that I learned that I made many, many mistakes on,

but that I worked with a lot of supportive colleagues that I tried to kind of get through the process of learning. So much of our jobs is things, that you can't be expected to predict or there are things that land. And, you know, it's honestly the first time you've ever encountered a problem or a situation like this. And it's about how do you go and how do you take that and how do you manage your own psyche and how do you emerge through it being wiser and having taken lessons from that experience? You, I think that's so true, we find that we're constantly, as I mentioned you before, working to kind of stretch our zone

of competency and get on the edges of that and broaden it and make it bigger. One of the ways that I found to be really helpful in addition to having conversations for my show here is writing. And I sense that you do this as well because even before that your book now was out in the making of a manager, you've been writing on Medium for a while and publishing and developed it quite a following. How has the process of writing helped you learn? That's a great question because I started the blog quite honestly for myself. It was a very kind of selfish practice where the thing that I wanted to get better at was structuring my thoughts into something organized and getting comfortable putting it in front of people.

So they could tell me whether they agreed, they disagreed, and hopefully finding a little bit of connection. And I treated writing my whole life as basically the practice of thinking, thinking in a more structured manner. I'm a very introspective person, probably more introverted than extroverted. And writing has been one way to kind of make sense of the jumble of thoughts in my head after every week where I'm exposed to all of these new problems and I'm trying to figure out, like, what do I want to learn from this? And what's the letter that I would write myself to kind of internalize this and to remind myself to do better in the future. And that's, quite frankly, how my blog started. And I was very pleasantly surprised to discover over the years that

it resonated with other people, you know, tens of thousands of people, then hundreds of thousands of people who connected with me because they were going through the same things. And they thought we were sharing in those experiences and learning together. What about the fact that you are developing a name for yourself, quite a following. And this is almost as a side project, I would assume, and you can share your day job and what goes on with that as much as you like to get into. But how did your employer think about the fact that you are becoming like internet famous when it comes to sharing your thoughts?

I work at Facebook. I lead the product design team here, the VP overseeing the design and user experience of our Facebook services. Facebook has always been extremely supportive of employees and their hobbies. I basically believe that as people, right, work is a part of ourselves, but it's not the only part. And there's family, there's hobbies, there's our interests, there's the ways that we contribute to our communities or, you know, how we want to be responsible citizens or the causes that we stand for. And as a manager, that's something I really want to support in my own people. and that's something I've been very lucky to feel supported by.

And given that, I started this as a way to, again, help myself, help my thinking, develop, help myself get more comfortable finding my own voice. I felt extremely supported by my colleagues and my manager in that process. And obviously, my day job is the most important job that I have. Everything else is kind of a hobby. It's what I do on my nights and weekends. and I make sure that it isn't taking away from my ability to, you know, give my all in the mission and the work that I set out to do when I show up at work every day. I found, too, that when you're forced to, I shouldn't say force, let's say you volunteer to teach in any manner.

So you're a guest lecture at a university. You're giving a keynote address. I recently just finished my first online course where I taught it live over the course of six weeks. and through the course of preparing for that class that I was teaching, there was so much preparation done to make sure it was useful for the students that I learned as much in that six weeks of preparation as perhaps any other time in my life because, well, one, I wanted it to be really good. But you have to, so I was constantly documenting my thoughts, iterating, changing, tweaking, asking for help. I'm curious, I would imagine that your process of writing has probably made you a much better, both designer and leader. What do you think about that? I'm so glad you brought that up because that was entirely part of my motivation for starting this own process.

And it's been one of the most rewarding parts of writing this book about management. There's one side of me that's sort of saying the voice in my head, whoa, Julie, if you're going to go and put yourself out there and write this book about management, and people are going to think that you're an expert, you'd better show up and be a good manager to your people. So there's a little bit of that pressure. But yes, absolutely. Every time, even through the year, the year and a half that I was sitting down and writing about management, you know, writing and doing research about what makes for a great one-on-one, why are one-on-one's important, or what makes for a great meeting, you know, and how do we distinguish great meetings from mediocre meetings, from really bad meetings. It made me so cognizant of putting those things into practice in my own day to day. And I'm really proud of the fact that I think I grew a ton as a manager through the

process of doing this book. Yeah, I think it's maybe a little sideways avenue to get here. But for those people who, let's say, are interviewing for another job, whether it's a promotion at your company or they're looking externally. And at that moment, then they have to prepare for that and get ready for it. It's kind of like that in a way because you're like, wait a second, wait, what do I think? They're going to ask me this question. What do I think? So that's why I think it's really healthy to regularly put yourself in positions to teach.

And that's what your book is. You're teaching. And it's incredibly well written, by the way, which is not surprising you've written a lot. It's really well done. But putting yourself in positions to teach regardless of your job title, but if you desire to lead, to serve, to help other people, I think that's something that you should look to do on a regular basis. And there's so many opportunities, too. I don't think you need a formal manager title. A lot of times it can be as simple as going out and, you know, asking, hey, my colleagues think I'm pretty good at this thing.

And if this person is hoping to do that, you know, why don't I make myself available as a mentor? as a coach to kind of help. And I was, in fact, talking with one of my reports just last week where we were talking about how he was really, really great at if there was a big problem, he kind of had this way of knowing exactly what you need to do to get past that roadblock, you know, who you need to talk to, what processes you need to put in place. And I suggested him, I think you're so good at this. And frankly, so many other people want to get better at that.

And I think there's an opportunity for you to go and mentor those people and, you know, make a difference in helping them achieve their goals. And it was funny because what he said to me was, you're right, I do this and it's so instinctive, but it's really hard for me to explain how I do it. And the more that he went down the path of mentoring, the more he was forced to reflect on, wait a second, like, what is the stuff that goes in my mind when I'm approaching a problem? And how might I actually write that down or structure in a way that can be useful to someone else? And I think he's gotten a lot of it allow out of it by by going through that exercise. I love it.

So let's, if you're cool, I want to do two things here. One is kind of get to a little bit of your origin story when it comes to becoming a manager as well as then I'll dive into specific parts of the books where I took notes. Is that cool? Yeah. Okay. So I vividly remember Julie when I got that first promotion. I was in sales.

I worked as a sales rep to then become the manager of the team I was previously part of. And so there's a lot there. But I'd like to hear it from you. What was your kind of beginnings at Facebook and then how it went from when you became, you went from being an individual contributor and you made that first leap to manager? So I joined Facebook right out of college. I was in fact Facebook's first intern. I was an engineering intern.

Really? What year was this? 2006. Wow. So that, I mean, I remember that is like, so you're super early Facebook. Yeah, so the company at the time, it was a startup. It was a college site. It had just opened up to high schoolers. You know, my mom is calling me asking, which company do you want to join? Are you sure that's a good idea for your career? I had been using Facebook in college. I loved it. All of my friends were using it. I really believed in the product.

So I signed on as their first intern. I decided to stay even through my last year of school and just kind of work full time. and be a part-time student in the evenings. And I was very lucky to join when, again, it was everybody fit into the size of a backyard party, but things were going well. Our service was taking off, and so we were growing. We were scaling rapidly. And within three years, my manager took me aside and asked, hey, you know, we're expanding our design team.

By this point, I had transitioned from engineering to doing a combination of engineering and design. My manager took me aside and said, we're growing our team. We're expected to double next year. We need more management support. You get along well with everyone. What do you think? Will you be the manager? And I remember very similar to you, vividly the feeling of like, oh my gosh, I won the lottery. This is so exciting. This is the next step in my career, you know. And I'm like, I'm Harry Potter being asked to go to Hogwarts. But also similarly, being. terrified because I felt like I didn't really know what being a manager entailed and I knew there was more to it than just getting along with everyone. And frankly, I felt a lot of that imposter syndrome in the beginning of just people would ask me questions and I'd have a one-on-one and someone would say, hey, I have this idea, you know, and I want to do this. Can I do that? And I would think to myself, oh gosh, like, I have to make this decision. Like, how do I make it? I don't want to,

I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want my manager to think that she misplaced her faith in me. And a lot of those early months, years, was just about being in those, you know, situations for the first time. The first time I had to give hard news to someone and tell them that they weren't going to get the promotion that they expected. The first time I had to let someone go, you know, the first time I had to take like a much bigger initiative and sort through it across multiple teams and multiple senior stakeholders. And really the feeling, you know, was a lot of this, like, am I cut out for this job? Do I have what it takes? And I've learned that, you know, through connecting with many other first-time managers and many other people across the way that this is extremely common.

And we don't need to be ashamed of it. And it doesn't mean that we're not cut out for the job. It just means that we have to develop tools for ourselves to be able to approach new situations, situations and have the confidence that we will be able to work through them. So one of the things that I think as new managers that especially we've been tabbed and now, even though being a leader, it doesn't matter what your title is you can lead from any positions, but when you get that first kind of jump, one of the things that we want to do is earn the respect of the team that we're leading. And so I'm curious what, and you've written a little bit about this, but what are some of the key ways we're getting tactical for a second

for the person right now who has a management role. I just spoke with one of these earlier as I'm going to speak at their national sales meeting. And he was saying, I love it when you do this. So I'm going to do it right now for him. He knows he's talking. But getting tactical. So like, okay, I'm the new manager. I want to figure this out.

I have some imposter syndrome, but I don't want to show too much of that. You know, I want to know like I'm here. I'm good. What are some ways you can earn respect quickly from your team? Yes. I'll tell you first what not to do. Okay. And what not to do is to pretend.

like you know everything that's going on. Because I think people can sniff that out right away. And if they feel like you're putting up a front where you're trying to be this authoritative boss, they're going to put up a front too and be like, well, I'm that employee that has everything under control. And it's going to be very, very hard to connect, truly connect on what are the problems that our team is facing. Like how can we sit down and help each other? So that's the first, you know, don't do that. Now, in terms of what to do, I think the first thing is to actually understand.

your lovers as a manager, and there's basically three of them. The first one is people. Do you have the right talent? Do you have people with the right skills? Are you coaching them well? Are you high in the right people? The second is process, which is, okay, great, you might have the right people, but do they know how to work together effectively, such that you're getting the strengths of the

individuals becoming the strength of the team versus the weaknesses? And then the third thing is purpose, which is, does everyone have the same view? of success. Because, you know, we're smart, we're talented, we're going about our work in the right way, but like I think we're headed to point A and you think we should be headed to point B, we're going to get into conflicts. And so my advice to new managers is always, these are all very important, all three of them. But if you're new to management, start with people, start with mastering kind of the basics of, you know, building a trusting relationship with someone. And I think it's not that different than how you go about building a trusting relationship with anybody,

you know, whether it's a friend, a significant other, etc. Right. I think the first thing is you got to sit down and you have to understand what does the other person want. What do they care about? What are their values? What helps them do their best work? What are they afraid of? And I think one of the easiest ways to build trust is to establish that, you know, set up the one-on-one. You know, I always tell people do at least a 30-minute one-on-one every week. You can do longer, especially in those early weeks when you're still getting to know each other. But then use those first couple of one-on-ones, not to just try and get into the nitty-gritty of the work and the day-to-day tasks, but use it to really understand the other person. Like ask a ton of questions about who they are, what they love,

why are they in this job, what motivates them? What do they think success looks like? Where do they want to be in their career in three or five years? You know, what are they afraid of? And some of those things people might not tell you right away, right? Especially things like, what are hopes and dreams and fears. And so you got to give a little too. You got to give into the relationship same as the other person. And that means you have to be up front with, you know, who you are and what you care about and share some of your own vulnerabilities. What are you afraid of? You're maybe in this new management situation. Maybe you are feeling a little imposter syndrome, but, but you build trust when other people feel like they can be open with you because you have

been open with them. You model that behavior. You lead the way for them and then let it to let them know that this is a place where that's how that's kind of the culture that we're working to develop. And I think I think of one of my best bosses. Her name's Dustin Kim, super smart, great strategy. This is one of her like superpowers was so good at leading with vulnerability. And then I would just tell her everything. I mean, and I think, I think, and I didn't even realize I was doing it until after the fact. I said, this is because of the way she led the conversation, then followed up with great curiosity.

and before you know, like, everything is on the table. And I think that built an environment where all of her direct reports loved working for her. And she was also very helpful, but you could tell that she cared too. I think that's really impactful. A great way to earn respect. Okay. One of the first of the three levers is people. Jim Collins would say what she did on the show.

It's your who, the people that you decide to bring into the business. My dad's taught me this for years, that this will make or break. your life as a manager is, is that decision of who you decide to bring on your team. And you wrote a great story about this in the book, about Tom. And I love it. So I don't want to tell the whole story because it's your story. But can you talk a little bit at like high level on hiring some of the things that you look for?

And then maybe if you want to get to the Tom story second, you can do that as well. But I'm curious, like what, when you're looking to add people to your team, and I know there's specifics when it comes to, well, they have to be able to do some of the the job task. But I mean just just from a quality or characteristic perspective, what do you look for in people? Yeah. And that is a wonderful question because I actually think that the thing you want to do is take a step back and think about what is your dream team? You know, if you look out a year, a year, two years out, right? What is the group of people where you're going to come into work every day and you're going to be so stoked to work with that group of people, you know, because they have

these types of values because they have this type these types of skills because they have this type of diversity of perspectives you know and i i think it's important to visualize that dream team before you go about hiring for any individual role because that gives you the north star to be working towards and that helps you evaluate each person in the context of are they bringing you closer to to that picture that you have in your head i always do this extra at the start of every year, you know, where I do that. I go and try and envision, okay, by the end of this year, what do I hope that my team can look like? And that takes into account how many roles do I have to hire for or, you know,

if I do some estimates based on attrition or so far, you know, it gives me a handle. You know, maybe I'll be able to hire four or five of these roles or 10 of them, right? And my team will be this size. And then I'll look at, you know, okay, well, so here's my team today. And what are its strengths? What are its weaknesses? the things I'm quite proud of in terms of how the team works together. And what are the things that I wish we could do things better? You know, maybe I wish that the team had a greater sense of community,

or maybe I wish that the team, you know, had someone who was extremely strong at maybe visual design so that that person can serve as a mentor and help up-level the bar for everyone else. But it starts with having a very clear picture of what that team is. Then, you know, when you go and actually interview each person, you have a lens by which to evaluate. Is this person's strengths complementary? And does that fit my model of how I want my team to get stronger? Is this person's growth area, something that we can handle? Because, you know, maybe we have that strength in another part of our team.

And does this person's values, does the way that they show up? Is that something that feels in line with, you know, that ideal of the team? So for me, I've always looked very closely at, does this person have self-awareness and do they have a learning and growth mindset? Because I think that's very, very important to, you know, getting to a point where the team is able to grow and learn and be able to tackle whatever else is going to come to a pass. The second thing I want to look at is, does this person's values and what they want to get out of this job? does that jive with what our team is set up to do? Because even if this person is superbly talented, but yet their dream is something that isn't going to be aligned with what our team, our organization wants to do, it doesn't help to add them on, you know, again, no matter how good

they are, because it's just going to make them not feel fulfilled or satisfied, and it's going to manifest in lots of tensions along the way. And I think the third thing I want to make sure, you know, this person has, the quality that they have, is that they can be a team player. Because, you know, this is very different than if you're hiring the first person at your startup, you know, and you want a jack of all trades and you want someone who can be extremely independent. You know, if we're talking about a team or we're talking about trying to have the team as a whole be able to tackle hard problems and be strong, then how well is this person going to work with a variety of the other folks that they're going to call their coworkers should they join?

How do you, you've written and has some funny, cool illustrations of the book about the difference between a great manager and an average manager. What are those differences? The biggest difference between a great manager and an average manager is the output of their team and whether or not that can be sustained over time. And so, again, you got to look, management is contextual, right? Leadership is contextual. You know, you're getting a group of people together and you want them to do some work together, you know, whether it's produced great design work or help educate a generation of students and to be prepared for the world or to create a great business. And so a great manager is going to consistently get better outcomes from that group of people working together than an average manager or a bad manager. I know your follower of some Andy Grove stuff with high output management, one of the best management books of all.

time. What's your process to lead yourself in that way, to make sure that you're taking care of you and your own development as you're working to help develop others? A lot of it is reflecting on those same questions that I ask my own, my reports to better understand them. I think it's very hard to be a great manager if you don't really understand yourself. And what I mean by that is knowing your strengths, knowing your growth areas, knowing how your colleagues and your reports perceive you, knowing what they believe your blind spots are, knowing what environment enables you to do your best work, and what environment or qualities or triggers bring you down or get to you in a way that prevents you from being your

best. And so a lot of, I think, you know, learning to manage is just frankly getting to that level of brutal honesty with yourself and having that level of self-awareness. And I think the easiest way to develop that is to constantly ask for feedback from others. You know, sit down and answer all those questions, but then make sure that they're calibrated with all the other people that you work with. And asking for feedback is hard. It's you, you know, exposing yourself it's you saying, hey, I'm going to be vulnerable and I really want to hear what you say in order for me to get better. And I don't want you to just keep praise on me. I want to hear what do you think I could learn and grow and get better at?

Or what is it do you think I'm not seeing that is preventing me from being as effective as I can be? And constantly, you know, making sure that the picture that you have of yourself matches how other people see you so that you can work on those things and grow. Okay, tactically, meetings. We've all sat through horrible, horrible meetings. What is something that a current manager who, most managers, they get promoted and they just copy what their manager did. And then these meeting agendas get copied from manager to the manager and they're, and they just kind of say, well, this is just kind of how meetings are. They're just not there, you know, we just kind of have to do it because I'm supposed to.

what are some practical tips right now that someone who is in that space who just is literally copying, pacing the agenda kind of outlined that their previous manager used when they were an individual contributor? And they don't know necessarily how to do this effectively. What are some tips you would give to them? Yeah. The first is, imagine that this meeting was wildly successful. What does that look like?

What does that feel like? and what would each of the attendees tell you about that meeting if it were wildly successful? I think it's extremely important to think about what is the outcome of each of the meetings that you're holding. The outcome, wild success might be, hey, look, we've made a decision and we've made it efficiently. It might be, this is a chance for us to bond and connect, so we're all deepening our relationships. It might be, you know, everyone leaves with better information to do their jobs and they feel inspired and motivated. but you have to be very clear about what your intention is for the meeting. And it's not about just having a purpose.

You know, purpose, we all have the best of intentions. We think we want to do that. It's about actually understanding that outcome and then evaluating against that outcome. So that's the first thing. A second thing is get feedback about your meeting because now that you've defined, here's what wild success looks like for your meeting, you got to go and ask each of the attendees, hey, this is what I was looking for and this is what I'm aspiring for with this meeting.

Is that happening? Is this meeting a good use of your time? And really listening, and if you're hearing, hey, this isn't a good use of your time, it probably means you should cancel the meeting and find another form, or you should rework it in a pretty substantial way to see if you can get that successful outcome you're looking for. You've written about the fact that when you get elevated to this role, sometimes Julie can become kind of a big deal, in quotes. You probably remember writing this article.

I reread it this morning. And the reason I bring this up at this point in the conversation is because when you ask for feedback sometimes, you'll get the head nods. And then there's side conversations outside of the meeting room because they fear you in a bit. Even if you view yourself as being very approachable, which I know you do. And yet because you have an elevated status of you want from a designer to a manager to now a kind of a big time view. at Facebook. How do you manage that as a leader where all of a sudden now people, I don't know if they fear you, but they do have a little timid when it comes to giving you that honest feedback that you crave. Yeah. And this goes back to, you know, can you develop that trusting relationship with

people? And it becomes harder and harder, the larger and larger of a team that you have. Because, you know, if you're managing dozens of people, hundreds of people, you may not be able to have that one-on-one relationship where you've talked to them even in that personal setting. And so, you know, yes, absolutely, when you go and ask someone, hey, what did you think? Can you give me some feedback? Their inclination is, well, I don't know if you're going to be offended if I tell you, you know, something critical. So I might as well just say a nice thing, right? And so I think it goes back to, you know, again, how do you establish trust? How do you make it safe for the other person to give you feedback? And I think this goes to, you know, some tactical things you can do are to just

invite that conversation, you know, to sometimes say, hey, I wanted to understand of that meeting was a good use of time. You know, one thing I was worried about is, was that particular topic relevant enough to you? But if you ask more pointed questions, you know, where you're acknowledging that, hey, there might be an issue here, it's easier for the person to confirm. confirm that or deny that than if you just say, I want some feedback. Tell me what you think. So I think the way that you ask and the more specific you can be and the more that you can even, again, put some, put a little bit of yourself out there, put some of your fears and worries, you know, expose a little bit of your vulnerability. You're way more likely to get, again, an honest and truthful answer.

And I think it's critical. They're going to be watching closely for how you respond. Yes. And if you respond and you're immediately defensive and you're like, what? No, that's not true. All of a sudden, they're in their head, they go, never giving her feedback again, right? Never gave me him feedback again because I know how he responds. So even if you do happen to disagree with the feedback, you should question yourself as to why instead of think about how you respond in that very moment where someone is doing something that you're asking for. If you respond poorly to that, it will, you you're risking having it ever happen again. Yeah. So true, Ryan. I think the first thing instinctively that I always ask people to practice is always say, thank you for the feedback. Again, doesn't mean you have to agree with it.

You need to acknowledge that giving feedback is a gift. It's hard. The other person didn't have to do it. You know, they're going out of your way, hopefully to help you and because you ask for it. So always acknowledge that. Always be gracious. Always thank them for that feedback. and, you know, say you're going to think about it. Say you're going to take it seriously and

really internalize it, right? And, you know, listen. And yes, you may not agree with everything that you hear and that's okay too. You know, we're not trying to manage through consensus or do it in a way where everyone, you know, and their opinions are always right. But I think listening and acknowledging is important. And then I think in those cases in which you do feel the feedback is fair and accurate, finding a way to reward it, you know, to say in front of the team, I got this feedback about X. I really agree with it. So here's what I'm going to do as a next step. I think that shows people that, again, you do care, you do value it. And if they give you great feedback, they're not going to be punished. They're going to be rewarded. And you're going to appreciate that and create that culture

where this type of feedback is good and is acceptable and is encouraged. One of the unique things about you, and this is shared by your team with your publisher, is there aren't a lot of books written on this topic by women who are currently in the marketplace as well as minority women. And I wanted to bring it up because I have listeners in that space, obviously. And sometimes I get emails from them saying, I wish your show was more diverse. And I take that feedback very seriously. it's one of the reasons I reached out to you, honestly. And that's because I love some of your writing. And I thought you could add extreme value regardless of you are male, female, minority, or not.

Can you talk about that a little bit as well as advice to others who are potentially like you yet in their early 20s? And they're trying to do what you've done and build a career, regardless if it's at a place like Facebook or somewhere else. But there are a lot of those out there who are looking to someone like you and you inspire them. So what advice do you give to them? The best advice I have is go and find your support group. Go and find your people. Go and find that network that, you know, you feel understands you, accepts you and will encourage you and help you with your goals. I think it's so important.

And I think especially for underrepresented minorities, you know, whether you're a woman in tech like I am, or whether you're just underrepresented in your race, in your background, and your, you know, whatever it may be, and even your perspective of thinking. And I think for people who feel like a lot of times are the only one in the room,

it can feel extremely isolating. It can feel, you know, like you're more likely to doubt yourself because, you know, everyone else thinks differently. Everyone else is doing X or Y, and that doesn't come naturally to me. am I the one that's off? And this is why for me it has been so valuable to go and find a support network of other women, other women in tech, other female managers, other design managers, right? Because

sometimes design as a very different perspective than a room full of engineers in the meetings that we are. But to find these different support networks where I feel like, oh, these are the people who, you know, have a very similar perspective to me because, again, they're in the same profession, They're the same field. They're the same quality or race or ethnicity or whatever it is as me. And I receive tremendous support because sometimes you do need to hear people say, you've got this. You can do this.

Yeah, you might be the only one, but we're here. We're going to help you. And I think that's one of the most powerful things, you know, that we can all do for ourselves is find those support groups. I would imagine that you get bombarded with requests, with questions. Because, one, you publish your writing, and I know part of your, writing is based on answering questions of fans. But even within your workspace, people, whether they formally ask you to mentor them, but you're probably getting that a lot. How do you manage

helping others, like one-on-one mentor situations versus your day job of doing that as well as now writing a book? How do you balance all of that out? I mean, you've hit on one of the reasons why I have been so inspired to continue blogging and to put this book out there, I want other young managers to be able to see themselves in me and to believe that maybe things are possible or that, you know, these things can be done, you know, because they have examples to look at. And I think that's hugely motivating. It's hugely inspiring to me. And that's also why, frankly, I want to talk a lot about my struggles or the mistakes I've made because I haven't, I'm not perfect. And this hasn't always always, you know, come easily. And, and that's okay. That's just, that's how it is. And I want people to feel

a sense of maybe reassurance in that, right? That if they're struggling, it doesn't mean they don't belong. It doesn't mean they're not cut out for the job. It just means, you know, like, hey, I'm someone who sees you, who feels that, and you're going to get through it. And I believe in you. But I think in terms of, you know, mentorship and other, and other aspects, I think it's, it is important for us to understand our values and also understand kind of our boundaries. and to make sure that we're allocating our time intentionally to the things that we care about. A lot of times, you know, when people do ask me for advice, for mentorship, I do oftentimes say no. I always try and say, well, maybe I can't do it, but someone else can.

You know, and this is where, again, the network of support comes in because I do know a lot of wonderful leaders, wonderful women, you know, and other folks who do want to be able to do more mentorship or to, as we talked about before, to maybe coach and teach in a bit more as a practice that they want to include in their lives. And I'm always very happy to help make those connections so that people can get the mentorship or the advice or whatever does they need. But then other people are able to give back. And that is a gift as well. Let's say this is a person that is someone that you are mentoring. They're sitting in your office right now. and they asked you a really big, broad question.

So I probably should have tipped you off on this or given you more time to think, but I didn't. So here we go. And they're sitting there and you finished up a great 45-minute session with them. And they go, you know, Julie, this has been really helpful. I really appreciate it. But overall, what is some advice you could give me on building a great career and building a great life at the same time? Mike, that big, broad question. Are there some staples, some regular, I guess, just a philosophy on living and a building that you share that say, well, just remember these few things.

What are those? That's a great question. It is extremely broad. I don't know that I have the perfect answer. I think, you know, like many other people, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm trying to figure out how to have the best balance, how to, you know, live the life that I want. But I think the practice that it's been so valuable for me and that I would probably say to the person who asked that question is, have you taken stock of what having a great life means? You know, have you sat down and really articulated it?

Because I think we go through life a lot of times with these notions, you know, maybe because of our family or influences or, you know, we see these leaders and we maybe admire them or we admire certain aspects about them. But I actually find it, I personally would find it hard, and I think other people would. Just on the spot, you were asked to answer, what do you think is a great life? What is the metric of success by which you value your own life or that which you understand whether or not you're doing well or not, you know, compared to your own rubric? Like, what is that rubric? And it's actually a hard question. I don't think we all often sit down and really go deep and think about that.

But that's, you have to answer that in order to know, are you living that life? You know, you have to understand what does a great life mean to you? And that means going deep on, well, okay, great, what are those values that are the root of why you answered it a particular way? And are these values? Like, you know, are they the right values? Are they the values that you clearly thought through and that you want to be intentional about and, you know, living your life in that way? And I think that's the first step, you know. That doesn't mean you then figure out exactly how to do it, but you have to start there.

You know, the best mentors in my life, Julie, are the ones who don't give me the answers or the ones who ask me the best questions. And that's like exactly what you just did there, right? They don't necessarily are going to say, look, here, do this, do this, do this, do this. They're going to say, well, how do you take stock of this? What does that mean for you? They force you to think deeper to then go and document, which has been kind of a theme of this conversation. today is I think everybody should have some sort of a daily journal or a practice of documenting their belief system. But the best mentors, the best leaders are the ones who make you think. They ask great, great questions instead of just saying, well, I've got all the answers. Here you go.

Yeah. And that was the same experience I had when, you know, I started working with a coach for the first time. In our very, very first meeting, I'm there. I'm telling her about all my problems. I'm saying, oh, I have to solve this team thing. And that's, you know, high. hiring thing and I have this conflict with this coworker. Can you help me? And she goes, okay, we'll get to that. But let's take a step back. Julie, I really want to understand when you're 80 years old and you're looking back on your life, like, what will you have wished do you want it to look like? And that just stopped me in my tracks. I was like, oh my gosh, I've never thought about this. Wow. You know, what a like big and deep and broad question. But again, that's where it starts, right? you've got to really try and get to that understanding of yourself, get to that brutal honesty.

And you do that so that you can start to peel away at the layers of the onion. And then, you know, you can really figure out how to make progress on these more tactical questions. What do you think about leaders working with coaches? I think it is great, you know, for folks who have a particular thing that they want to work through at a given time. You know, it's for the same reasons that you just described, I think coaches, A lot of times they're not the ones telling you what to do or saying, you know, do this, don't do this. They're just there to help you work through these big questions that you have for yourself. And they're helping you arrive at those answers and to see things from a different perspective when you do.

Yeah. I love it. Julie, this was so great. I could talk to you for hours. I'd love to do it again if you're up for it at some point here in the future. I know you're on probably crazy book tour type activities. but I really learned a lot and certainly want to continue this dialogue as we both progress. Thank you. I love this conversation, too, and I feel like I could keep talking to you for hours.

Oh, good. I appreciate that. Hey, where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? So my website, Julie Zoo, my last name's hard to spell, Z-H-U-O-JulyZoo.com. It has a collection of my writings, podcast. It has information about my book. It has, you know, where you might contact me for various events. And, you know, my book, The Making of the Manager, is out next Tuesday, March 19th. And I'm really excited to get it out there and to start getting feedback from folks. Absolutely. And Julie, I've a friend of my name, Neil Pasricha, created the end of the podcast club when he was a guest about a year ago. And so I've kept it going. And I love the response. And basically what the end of the podcast club is.

There's those of you who are here with us at the end. We love you. And we'd like to hear from you a takeaway or two. And you can share that and spread the message on Twitter. I'm at Ryan Hawk 1-2. And, Julie, you are? At J-O-U-L-E. Okay.

At J-O-U-L-E. End of the podcast club. Hit us up. Let us know something that you learned. and then we could continue to spread the message beyond us because that's what we're looking to do. Julie, thanks again for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ryan.

This was a real pleasure. Oh, thank you. Wow, that was quite a conversation. I really enjoyed learning directly from Julie. Super smart. Understanding your levers, people, process, purpose, you know, defining your dream team, being interesting. perspective, documenting your thoughts in order to learn, how to create a culture where feedback is welcome.

It's a gift. Man, there's so much there. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, I would love it if you would spread the message. Word of mouth. Tell a friend or two, perhaps one that has never listened to the Learning Leaders Show. It's the best way for this to continue to grow, which gives me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, which is to have.

have these in-depth, wide-ranging conversations with super smart people like Julie Zhu. Thank you so much for continuing to give me that opportunity. I will talk with you next week. Can't wait.