Following A Spark and Owning Your Career with Google's Jenny Wood

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork Podcast. This is Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, and today I'm joined by Jenny Wood, who has a great story. Her on- the- job side hustle is the founder and leader of Google's Own Your Career program. I had to make sure I get that right.

Jenny Wood: You got it right.

Dane Groeneveld: Excellent. That's a good start. Jenny does a whole bunch of stuff. She's got a day job. She's a mom, a wife, a tap dancer, and a pilot I've heard as well. So Jenny, welcome to the show.

Jenny Wood: Thanks so much for having me, Dane. It's really a delight to be having this conversation.

Dane Groeneveld: So for the benefit of our listeners, maybe you could give them a little bit of a background on how you came to be finding this own your career program and how that played on some of your superpowers and strengths.

Jenny Wood: Yeah, absolutely. Interestingly, the program is so much about building confidence in others, confidence in increasing your impact and influence in your current role and/ or landing your next role. It came out of me needing to find my own confidence. This all started when I was riding the subway home from work one day in 2011, and I saw an attractive stranger, this attractive guy, standing about 30 feet away from me. I started thinking, " What's he up to? What's his deal?" I was really taken by him, and I am a straight up data person. I am a spreadsheets kind of gal. There was something that day, some force bigger than me that gave me the confidence, that boosted me out of my seat and had me make this split second decision to follow him off the subway in New York City when he got off the train. So I followed after him and I tapped him on the shoulder. I said, " Excuse me, sorry to bother you." He said, " That's okay. You seem nice." I said, " You were on my train and I thought you were cute. Any chance I could give you my business card?" I happened to be holding flowers because I was coming from a work event at Google. Actually, I was coming from an acapella rehearsal at Google, believe it or not, because I'm one of those few adults who did acapella outside of college. He thought I was trying to sell him flowers, initially, before I had my little intro and he said, " Hi, I'm John," and I said, " I'm Jenny." He called me the next day we went out, and now we're married with two kids.

Dane Groeneveld: That's so cool.

Jenny Wood: So I used that example to just show how, even though I had plenty of anxiety, plenty of insecurities, plenty of, " Oh, this has to be on a spreadsheet for it to make sense," so much cost- benefit analysis in everything I did in life. That day, I just had some force that pushed me out of my subway seat, that gave me the confidence to follow after him, that gave me the chutzpah, there's a Yiddish word, chutzpah to go after what I wanted. Then I adopted that new confidence, that new swagger, that new chutzpah, to do that at work and to ask for what I wanted at work, to ask for a raise, to ask for a promotion, to ask for a big project that was important to my senior leadership. Then, as I started doing it, I wanted to help others do it too. So I started writing down things that helped me be successful, and I started sharing that with others. It went viral, and now it's this big program that tens of thousands of people at Google use.

Dane Groeneveld: That's unreal. I love how it started with a romance story at the very beginning. It's interesting how that life can just show up, that can spark something that creates this purpose, this mission, this impact that you're now bringing to these tens of thousands of people.

Jenny Wood: It was total spark, and I share that against the backdrop of me not being a very spark believer, right? I'm not a huge believer in fate. I'm not a huge believer in the universe will put in front of you what is meant to be. I'm a believer now in going after what you want, but largely based on that story. I don't know if I explored the anxiety and the insecurities that I typically would have enough. But what I mean by that is I so often lay awake at night worrying about that typo in my email, or I used to keep my hands down in a town hall with my VP thinking, " Oh, I'm sure that what I have to ask is not that interesting, or maybe it's going to make me sound stupid." Now I just boldly raise my hand. I boldly send emails knowing that there might be a typo there, but nobody cares.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. And I think that's such a huge theme right now. Number of guests we've had on this show, a number of articles I've read, podcasts I've listened to, there is this sense that people aren't putting their hands up; people aren't being bold. We talk a lot about psychological safety, and really, that's what it seems like your program's really addressing. It's creating at least the first steps, the early steps that the individual can own in embracing that psychological safety and taking that first couple of courageous steps forward.

Jenny Wood: For those listening who aren't familiar with psychological safety, it's basically how you feel safe in a group of people and feel like there's an environment created where you can be bold, where you can disagree with something that is said or be the one that says, " Well, what if we tried it a different way," or bring an idea to your manager that might be a little bit contrarian to the direction their boss wants to go. Then when that psychological safety is there, which is not always a given, but when there's a team environment that creates that psychological safety, it enables any individual at work, outside of work, in a family construct to be more confident, to speak up for what they want, to ask for something that might be seen as potentially controversial because they feel safe.

Dane Groeneveld: Which I think, I'll be honest, when I first started coming across some of your work, Jenny. I started thinking, " Oh, it seems a lot about making money and pleasing the boss."

Jenny Wood: Oh, interesting.

Dane Groeneveld: So I wasn't really thinking it has an impact on team fabric, but from a couple of podcasts I've listened to leading up to this conversation, and from what you've just described there, I think that by having a program like this that is understood and known across an organization like Google, maybe you are creating some frameworks for safety so that it is a bit of a team sport. People know you're going through as an individual, but it's a company- endorsed program.

Jenny Wood: Oh, a hundred percent... It's just a total passion project. At Google, in my day job. I'm a Google executive, who runs an operations team that sits between sales and engineering. But it is fully embraced by the company, despite the fact that I sit completely out of HR. But it's fascinating to me, and this highlights that maybe we've established some very quick psych safety, psychological safety here. It's fascinating to me. And I love that you shared this counter- perception around what you initially thought my content was about, which was perhaps making money, pleasing the boss. I so welcome that feedback, and it's so interesting to hear because I think at first glance, it could be. There's a lot in there about managing up. There's a lot in there about how do you tastefully self- promote, right? We don't want to shamelessly self- promote, but tastefully self- promote. How do you get the visibility you need, which can be a charged word. How do you get the visibility you need to move up into the right within your company? But as I have explored the work more, and this is something I'm actually talking about in the book, I'm writing about how to get what you want unapologetically. I have explored how it's not just about making money. It's not just about pleasing the boss. It's really about pleasing yourself. It's about coming into your full potential. It's about how to build relationships that matter through intentional conversation, because those relationships help you be successful at the same time that they help the customer, the partner, your boss, your direct report. But so much of this is about leaving it all on the field, giving it your all so that you can feel good, so that you can feel that you've come into your own potential, because nobody wants to lose sleep at night thinking, " I should have asked that question in my town hall with my leadership, and I made myself small. I kept myself quiet, even though I had very valuable, useful, meaningful things to share, add, or ask." It's really about coming into your full potential, while at the same time it can benefit your manager or your company.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Actually, I like that framing, and I like the way that you actually bought in vendors or customers in there too, into that team format. Because that is important. I think you are seeing more and more in today's world that having that confidence to have open conversation, open dialogue about where you're at and where that relationship's at can create a lot of positives. You can move through the unknowns, the missing conversations as one of our former guests talked about, which can be so dangerous.

Jenny Wood: Yeah, I love that concept. Missing conversations. It's probably similar to something I talk about, which is have the awkward conversation.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Actually, another guest, Erik Curiel that we work with, he's always like, " The conversation that makes you feel really tight in the chest about having is the one you really got to go and have."

Jenny Wood: Exactly. Because if we go down this path for just a moment here. I love this. Let's say there's an email that your coworker sends you that makes you feel uncomfortable, that gives you that tightness in the chest, and you read it and you think, " Oh, is this person mad at me? They seem frustrated. They're an important person for me to work with." You could then avoid the awkward conversation or maybe what this former guest would call the missing conversation because that creates even more tightness in the chest. But then you can spend five years worrying about what this person thinks about you. How you might feel insecure around them. It might limit what you do proactively with them or the confidence you have around them. There's this concept of temporal discounting, which means that people will take a long- term discomfort at the risk of a harder short- term discomfort. So that long- term discomfort is just, as I described, five years of a challenged relationship with this coworker. But there's this real short window of discomfort that could happen, alternatively, if you simply put on your big girl pants or your big boy pants, you have that awkward conversation or that missing conversation. You say, " Hey..." By the way, this happened to me. This happened with somebody who I work with very closely named Bethany. She is now one of my closest friends at Google. But back about 10 years ago, when I got this email from her, I felt so uncomfortable and I thought, " Okay, it's probably worth it to have this awkward conversation now." Even though I really didn't want to because of the tightness in my chest, because that could pave the way for such a great relationship moving forward. So that temporal discounting is you discount how hard that situation's going to be in the short term. Then, unfortunately, you adopt all this pain in the long term.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. It's the old short-term pain, long- term gain play, isn't it?

Jenny Wood: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. I've definitely been on the losing side of that equation where by not having the awkward conversation, I've probably lost the quality of a relationship or the opportunity to do something differently in a business or with a customer. So I can see that firsthand.

Jenny Wood: Definitely. It's very common. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So when you think about your work, a lot of your work, from what I understand, is short, snappy, pragmatic, real- world tips. Like you said, you built a lot of this off of your own mantras and approach. I listened in on one of your podcasts and one of your cool tips was about following growth. That caught my eye because following growth is something that I personally feel like has been a big part of my career, and it's why I'm talking about teams a lot because I think growth often is best achieved in a team. So I'd love to understand a little bit more in your program, how you help your students to identify the growth opportunities to follow and how that may tie into teams?

Jenny Wood: Sure. Well, I think the first thing to unpack here is, what does growth even mean? That's what I found myself wondering as I was walking out of a conversation with a mentor at Google who I deeply admire, and it was the very end of the conversation and she said, " Jenny, let me add one more thing, follow growth." Then we were both running to other calls, and so I took a step back after we pressed the red button on the video call, and I thought, " Follow growth, follow growth." I really got to wondering, " What are all the things that could mean? I wonder if it means follow revenue growth. I wonder if it means follow opportunities in a company where they're adding headcount versus reducing headcount. I wonder if that means follow growth personally and where we can learn the most, where we can develop the most from a skills perspective." Then, as I was wondering, "Okay, what did she mean by that?" As we quickly hung up on this call and ran to our next meeting. I realized, well, the one that's most poignant to me is that third one, follow growth in terms of your skills, your development, learning new things. That is something I very much guide my own mentees to do, which is, " Sure, we can follow money. We can follow fame. We can follow fortune. But when you follow an opportunity to learn something new, to gain a new skill, to try on something new for size, to build new relationships, that's when I personally find I'm most fulfilled." So let me give you a quick little vignette here. It also touches on how lateral moves can be so beautiful and meaningful. I was in a sales team at Google in New York City. I moved to a technical team in Boulder, lateral move, same level to same level. No more money, actually less money, because I was moving to a less expensive market in terms of salary. But what I learned in that lateral move, because I was following growth, personal growth was tremendous. So to paint the picture of this team in New York. It was loud and boisterous and extroverted, and a lot of pop, pop, pop on the floor, a lot of speaking to think. Then I moved to this team in Boulder, this technical team, and it was quieter and it was more introverted, and there was a lot more thinking before you spoke. It was just a completely different culture, and I was struggling. I was like a fish out of water because even though I'm from Colorado, my personality is much more that New Yorker salesy vibe of speaking over each other and interjecting, and lots of energy. So I was struggling on this new team, and someone said to me, someone I really trust, a peer of mine at the time said, " Jenny, can I give you some feedback?" I said, " Of course, I love feedback." In the kindest, warmest, most patient way, she said, " Jenny, you've been interrupting people," and I went, "Ah." She was right. It's not like I've never interrupted anybody from that day on, but I probably do it about 40% less of the time, and I grew so much as a result of that lateral move.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Jenny Wood: So when I was following growth, I gave myself an opportunity, not for more fame or fortune or prestige. I gave myself an opportunity to learn something that I deeply needed to learn as a leader. I gave myself an opportunity to profoundly grow in ways I didn't even know I needed to grow, and as a result, I am a more skilled leader because of that growth. So that's what follow growth means to me.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that a lot. There's a piece of research I was looking at on teaming, and I know Google, large organizations tend to do a lot more teaming around certain themes, projects and otherwise than, say, smaller businesses. But what caught my eye there, and it does tie back to psychological safety, and I think your example there is a good one. Is that when you start to work with the same team all of the time, you probably are not growing because you're not being challenged. Everyone works around whatever dynamics are in the group. But actually as you go into these new teams, whether you've made a lateral move, whether you got promoted into a new department, or whether you're just teaming around a project or a more immediate milestone, I think that is a hugely beneficial time to be testing yourself, testing your skills, growing, developing.

Jenny Wood: Absolutely. Because every time you are teaming again for the first time or in a new environment, you can almost rediscover yourself or reinvent yourself or try new things on for size, right? Maybe if you're listening and you're an introvert and it's scary for you to raise your hand or to share something with your manager in that group setting, maybe in this new environment, you send them a chat instead, or you send them an email or maybe you self- disclose at the beginning of this forming stage of forming, storming, norming, the classic framework of team building. Maybe if you're in the forming stage, when you're with a new team, self- disclose that you're an introvert and you share proactively what works best for you, what mediums, whether it's verbal versus chat versus email versus a phone call versus a video call, what mediums work best for you or how you have to just take things in before you can really respond thoughtfully. That doesn't mean you're not engaged. It just simply means that it's the way your brain processes. So on an old team that might have felt scary on a new team, you might be at a point in your career where you try new things on for size, you simply try on new tools.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that. That word that you used there, reinvent. That one strikes a chord with me. I moved around a lot as a kid. So every time I moved town or school, I got a chance to reinvent myself, and sometimes I got it right; sometimes I got it wrong. But it was a safe time to make a change because no one knew you when you walked in.

Jenny Wood: Yes. I invite you, all of you listening, to take advantage of that opportunity. I look back on times where I've missed that opportunity, where I was so stuck in a bad brand I had, or something foolish I did, or a mistake I made. I'll just share a really public mistake. We had a big reorg at Google, oh, I don't know, maybe circa 2008, 2010, and this big reorg, I was taken from a New York team. I was put on a Chicago team, but I was going to work remotely in New York. I raised my hand in a really public setting and I said, " What was the data that went into how these decisions were made?" That was not a good look for me. Apparently, the way I said it. I was nervous, but I came across angry. I was-

Dane Groeneveld: Passive aggressive.

Jenny Wood: Right. I was truly, genuinely curious. But I think someone said, I used air quotes for data, also not a good look. So huge mistake, huge gas. Wish I could rewind time and not have done that. But I did it and it was not great for my brand. Then when I moved to a new team, I had this opportunity to reinvent, and I didn't. I was so holding onto my story of a negative brand or a negative perception I thought people had of me when I wish, like a kid who moved around a lot for various reasons, like maybe you did. Let's say I moved from Missouri to San Francisco, I wish I could have just shed my Missouri life and left it in Missouri and started my new reinvention in San Francisco. But I carried that feeling, that perception, my own story, that there was this negative brand against me. I carried that negative story with me to the proverbial San Francisco, to my new team. I wish I hadn't. So again, for those of you listening, I invite you to shed any mistake or negative situation or negative brand you perceive having against you, and this could be big things, these could be small things, let it go, start afresh, change teams. If you're working with a new client-

Dane Groeneveld: Or just own it.

Jenny Wood: Or own it, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Just say, "Hey, that was this, and now I'm-"

Jenny Wood: Yeah. "That was then. This is now." Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I love that. Also, another tip for listeners from me personally is that I've never mastered the use of air quotes. So I just don't think any of us should use them anymore.

Jenny Wood: Wait, side note, side note, because I have two kids. My son is seven, my daughter is five, and my son has just discovered air quotes. But like you Dane, are self- disclosing that you've never mastered the use. He really hasn't mastered the use, and he thinks that when you use air quotes, people listening aren't going to see this. " I'm air quoting every single word in the sentence." So literally when you use air quotes, every word in this sentence goes in air quotes. So for those of you listening, it's like I have a little bunny hopping with my fingers every single word of this sentence. So you and my son should hang out and discuss air quotes.

Dane Groeneveld: We should, I think we're kindred spirits. That's funny. So some other parts of your work that really capture my eye. You talk a lot about stepping into an opportunity to set an agenda with a manager, particularly a manager's manager. You talk a lot about spending time twice a year with the manager's manager and setting an agenda. You talk about being visible in the right ways, but doing that through the way that you communicate using bullets setting three key points, talking about your superpowers. I'd love to explore that a little bit more because that is, I think a way, particularly for those of us who are more introverted, it's a way to step into this space without putting yourself into too much discomfort.

Jenny Wood: Yeah. A little bit of discomfort is good, right? That's where growth happens. It's on the edge of discomfort. The way you present it, Dane, is exactly how I try to break it down for people. It can feel really scary to set up time with your boss's boss. By the way, let's take a step back and recognize that that's not the norm in all cultures. There are no a number of old school companies or even new school companies where it's simply not the culture to go above your boss on any topic. So, to be clear, the intention here is not to go above your boss's head, to complain about your boss, or to go around them. You always want to keep your boss included. But in many, many corporate environments these days, it actually is natural, expected, accepted to have a relationship with your manager's manager. But let's look at the data. I was wondering, " Am I the kook, the only person who got really nervous for the first 10 years in my career to set up time with my manager's manager? Am I the only one who felt imposter syndrome that I'd be wasting their time? Am I the weirdo who had this desire to do it in my heart, but I'd always put up blockers in front of me that would make me deprioritize it and procrastinate sending the email?" Well, the data suggests no, I was not the only person who had a fear of meeting with my manager's manager. The reason I say that and anchor it in data is because I do a lot of thought leadership on LinkedIn. I did a poll very recently that had about 2, 300 respondents. So statistical like a high end count, and 37% of people had never emailed their manager's manager asking for time or never contacted them asking for 15, 20 minutes. So a lot of people have this fear, and what I offer to folks who are desiring to do this because they know it's good to build that relationship. It can be good for promotion. It can be good for your perception, good for your personal brand, good just to get to know them and know what's on their mind. When people feel stuck, when people feel like there's a blocker they're putting up in front of themself, break it down into something small. My newsletter that people can subscribe to, it's called Big Small Things. So it can feel like a really big thing to build a relationship with your senior leadership. Like, " What does that mean? How do I go about it?" But it feels very small and manageable to write three bullets to them talking about the things that you're working on, or to ask them for 15 minutes, not an hour to highlight some of the things that you feel like are your strengths, or to simply put three questions in an email to them that say, " I'd love to know, one, what's keeping you up at night? Two, what are your goals for this year, and three, what are the industry headwinds you see?" Leaders generally love to know what's happening on the ground, and so for people who are earlier in their careers, you might feel like there's nothing you could possibly say that's of value to your senior leadership. But the reality is, you are so close to what's happening with the customer, with the clients, with your partners, that leadership is eager to hear what's happening on the ground because you have information they simply don't have access to. So it's flipping the perception that there's nothing you could possibly bring to them that's worth their time to a new perception of, " Oh, my gosh, there's a lot they don't know that I know that I could share with them, and, oh, by the way, then they get a chance to know me. They get a chance to know my work, and we build a relationship." So again, it's a big small thing to send an email to your boss's boss asking them for 15 minutes. It's small because it seems manageable. It's big because it can have colossal impact on your career.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I must admit I was just looking for the book in here somewhere, but there's a book that my dad gave me, old school book. Elliot Jacques, Organizational Development, and it talks about manager once removed, manager's manager. The reason it frames that as so important in large organizations is that often to your point, the manager is busy running a department dealing with today's problems. The manager's manager is looking at two- year, three- year, four- year outlook, bigger problems, different things, keep them up at night. So they can start to see developing talent. They can start to give you different insights that your manager, who's very focused on the now, might not be able to give you. So it's a very constructive relationship.

Jenny Wood: Absolutely, it is.

Dane Groeneveld: I think what was interesting about that book, given it was probably written in the '60s or'70s, is that in their construct, they encourage the managers to lead the framework where you're more leading the individual to ask. So do you see, for other businesses out there that don't have own your career program like Google does, that leaders should be trying to institute make this safe for their teams below them?

Jenny Wood: Yes, yes and yes, because a lot of people are still going to get stuck in that fear of, " I don't feel right doing this. What would I say? Let me kick the can down the road. I'm going to procrastinate it because I'm scared." So when the leader can be the one who initiates the conversation, the invitation, or put office hours on their calendar that are public for anybody to sign up for or to send a note once a quarter that says, " Hey, I'm always available. I'm just a ping away, and I mean it." My manager right now, we were going through a challenging situation and she said, " Hey, Jenny, just want to remind you, I'm just a ping away. I mean it." She sent that to me over chat.

Dane Groeneveld: That's powerful.

Jenny Wood: It was so powerful. She always has an open- door policy anyway, but I still needed that reminder, that extra push. This is just my manager, not even my manager's manager. So it just shows you how that power dynamic, that difference in looking up to somebody thinking, " There's some master with all the answers, and so busy and so important, and has all these three letter fancy acronyms after the name like VP or PhD or whatever it is or CEO," that those can really keep us small and limit our boldness in asking for their time. So yes, when the leader can graciously offer up that time and remind people that they're there and that they want to hear, or even go as far as to remind their team that, " Hey, I'm not some wizard behind a curtain with all the answers. I needed the input from the team. I need to know what's going on on the ground to make better leadership decisions." That is just the icing on the cake. If your leader doesn't do that, you could always take the initiative on your own.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I like that you give the individual a chance to take the initiative if their organization leader isn't already driving it. But I think it's very healthy. I think there's an added benefit for me personally, running small businesses. Yes, you can learn more about the customer, but it's a way for you to cascade your story through the organization. Because if you look at network analysis and organizations, it's not always the people with the VP or director title that others in the team look towards. So if you are telling your story about what is a big audacious goal that you're chasing or what's a risk out there in the market and those people have connectivity, they're going to go and share it with their peers and maybe they'll spot something and bring it up or act on something that is actually in keeping with that strategy or that risk.

Jenny Wood: Tell me again the name. What did you call it? Network.

Dane Groeneveld: Network analysis.

Jenny Wood: Network analysis. So I'm assuming this is insights or data or research that suggests that yes, there are going to be people in your network who might not be your direct line of leadership. Maybe it's your boss's peer or maybe it's some other person in another department that has a tremendous amount of influence. Tell me if I'm getting this wrong.

Dane Groeneveld: No, you're absolutely spot on.

Jenny Wood: That you have to know a number of people throughout your network because you never know who's going to have that influence, and that there are all these interconnected pieces at play where that could always be influencing each other. Is that the gist of it?

Dane Groeneveld: Absolutely.

Jenny Wood: I love that, because I often say to folks. A mentee was in my office the other day and she said, " Jenny, I'm following your guidance. I'm managing up. I asked my manager's manager for time. I also, am interested in getting promoted and what else should I be doing?" I said, " Are you managing diagonally?" She said-

Dane Groeneveld: I love that.

Jenny Wood: ... "What does that mean?" I said, " Well, think of an org chart and you have your boss above you and your boss's boss above them, but then what about your boss's peers? They are diagonal to you on an org chart. Do you have any relationships with them? Because in some organizations, big decisions around who gets the key project and who's going to get promoted, those can be decisions by committee. Sometimes your manager's peers and your relationship with them can have an influence on what those ultimate outcomes are on project assignment, promotion, et cetera." Again, I mentioned, already tasteful self- promotion. The contrast of that is shameless self- promotion. A less constructive way to go about this is to set up meetings with every single one of your managers, seven peers, and say, " I'd like to get promoted in two weeks, so I'm setting up time with you." But a constructive way to go about it, to tastefully self- promote, not shamelessly self- promote, is to ask them for feedback on a project that is going to be meaningful and useful for their team, or to bring your key learnings from a customer meeting and ask how they are similar or different to what they're hearing from their customers, or to say, " I'm working on this blue widgets work stream. I know you have some people on your team who've also done things that are sort of similar to this blue widgets work stream. Are we duplicating efforts? Should we combine forces? Should we not all be working on it?" So you're bringing things to them that are useful to them. You're providing things that are of value to them, not just simply going in and having them see through the fact that you just want to get promoted. You want to always offer value to the person you're meeting with.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think that's a great concept, and managing diagonal is a much more obvious way to think about it. The network analysis too.

Jenny Wood: Yeah. But I learned something new, which I'm so excited about because, as we talked about earlier, it's all about growth.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think if I go back to my early career, I've grew up as a sales guy. I also managed diagonally sort of down and across in the business. You've got finance and invoicing, and as a salesperson you're out there going, " I've got the greatest deal ever," and the terms are terrible. So you're constantly requiring your teammates in the back office to dig you out of the hole and create value out of the contract that you just won. And I think the more you go out and work with those individuals, they can be reporting up to the CFO or the COO or some other key leader thinking about boss's peers, that, " Hey, that guy Dane over there, he's really thoughtful. He shows gratitude for what we do. He's trying to learn how our function works. He's trying to help me drive more value into the business." That helps with your growth, too.

Jenny Wood: What I hear you also describing is humility, quite frankly, because it sounds like you went to those other people within your organization to ask for help, even though your ego might have been saying, " I got this sales deal, I crushed it. It's a huge deal." But if the terms aren't favorable to the company, then all right, that's not as good of a deal as it maybe seems at first glance. So by asking for help from others who have expertise that you don't, legal expertise, finance expertise, operational expertise, you are showing vulnerability, you're showing humility, you're showing that you don't have all the answers, and that is a key to building relationships and building psych safety within your company.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. That's a good ad.

Jenny Wood: It was very hard for me to ask for help early on in my career, very hard. I wanted to have all the answers. I wanted to show that I could do it all. As I've become a more experienced leader, I've asked for help much more often. In fact, I think two of the most powerful things a leader can say are, " I don't know," and, " I was wrong." Now, as a leader, you don't want to be wrong all the time. You don't want to never have the answers your team asks you. But it can be pretty meaningful for your team to see you needing to go back to them later after gathering more information, or to acknowledge that you simply do not have all the information you need to give them an answer in that moment, in that meeting. So, " I don't know," and, " I was wrong," are two relatively profound things a leader can say.

Dane Groeneveld: I agree. A teammate on the, "I don't know." I think that's huge too.

Jenny Wood: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think that they're really powerful statements. I guess, thinking towards a final question about your program and working at Google. I've never worked at an organization as large or as powerful as Google is ton of smart people over there. So I would imagine the, I don't know thing is super scary. But when you look at your business environment, and the program that you're running, technology's forming both a greater foundation for teams, but it's part of the team now in certainly some of the ways that you guys work at Google in terms of what you can access for information at different times and how you use the technology. So where do you see technology being part of the team, helping someone sort of elevate their career?

Jenny Wood: Technology is incredibly useful in helping people elevate their career mostly from an access standpoint. So I'm going to use a relatively simple example of technology right now. This, what we're doing right now with a recording software and us being in this virtual environment and us being able to produce a podcast episode that can scale simultaneously to... It could be millions of people if the scale were that large. So to think that, and this is all about connection, this is about us having a conversation that all of you listening have the benefit of listening into, and this is a broad example of it, but it's about building relationships. It's about building human connection. It's about growing together as people through shared ideas and conversation and discourse. If you rewind 20 years ago when this technology did not exist, you and I literally could not have built this connection as two humans. We could not have been able to offer a growth opportunity to all of you listening because this technology of the virtual conference, of the recording, of the advent of podcasts simply didn't exist. So that's a global example. But even on a very local level, if you had a teammate who's in India and you're in New York City, in the past, it would be harder to build that connection because you'd literally have to rely on either phone calls or get on a plane and in a very costly manner, go to India to build that relationship, build that connection, build that psych safety. Now because of very simple technology, we're not talking AI here, we're talking no every day use used technology that psych safety can be built so much more quickly with so much more opportunity for helping, healing, creating.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I really like that answer, Jenny. I was expecting something a little bit more internal on Google, but you've just created something that is powerful for anyone no matter what size of business, whether they're an individual or a team. You're right, it is about relationships; it's about human connection. So that's a cool note to end on. I mean, this has been a super fun conversation. I think I've learned a lot more about your work, and I love the genesis story about having that spark to step up and follow John and tap him on the shoulder. What a great story and what a great product of that bold action to you.

Jenny Wood: Thank you. Thank you so much. It's just been a pleasure to have this conversation and the work you're putting out there in the world is fantastic. Thank you to all of you listening, you could be doing anything with your time right now, you chose to spend it right here with us. So thank you for giving us an opportunity to contribute to your goals.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Jenny, and for those looking to connect with more of your work, I know LinkedIn's where you put a lot out there, so that's the easiest way to connect.

Jenny Wood: Yeah. I also have a newsletter if you go to, itsjennywood. com. I- T- S- J- E- N- N- Y- W- O-O- D. com. I mentioned my newsletter, Big Small Things. You can sign up for it, right there.

Dane Groeneveld: That's great. I'll be signing up directly.

Jenny Wood: Okay. Fantastic.

Dane Groeneveld: Thanks, Jenny.

Jenny Wood: Thank you.