Eyvonne Sharp

Transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Chris: Hello, and welcome to the imposter syndrome network podcast, where everyone belongs, especially those of you who think you don't. My name is Chris Grundman and I'm here with my co-host Zoe Rose. 

[00:00:20] Zoe: Hey! 

[00:00:20] Chris: This is the Eyvonne Sharp episode. And you're gonna love it. Eyvonne is a transformation technical lead at Google cloud, a blogger and a very insightful Twitterer. Hi, Eyvonne, would you like to introduce yourself to the imposter syndrome network? 

[00:00:38] Eyvonne: Sure. Um, I'm Eyvonne Sharp. I've worked in technology my entire career. So really, I don't know that I wanna do the math, but around 25 years, uh, started off in, uh, network engineering and architecture before that was doing general it stuff. Um, and over time moved from there to vendors to, um, now to Google cloud. So, you know, and, and had some interesting stuff along the way. So happy to be here. Thanks for the invite. 

[00:01:02] Chris: Awesome. 

[00:01:03] Chris: Yeah, let's get to it. What exactly is a technical transformation lead? Can you maybe describe what a typical day at work is like for us, or kinda walk us through what that looks like?

[00:01:15] Chris: I'm guessing for you. It starts by walking out to your, she shed. 

[00:01:18] Eyvonne: It does. It does. So for those who don't know, you can check out the blog at E sharp dot net, and I've got an entire post on building the shed. That's in my backyard, that, that we work out of that I work out of now. But yeah, so the day is walk out to the she shed and, and get settled.

[00:01:31] Eyvonne: Yeah, I've been at, uh, at Google cloud for about a year and a half, almost two years now, and really started off as an infrastructure modernization, uh, customer engineer. So really specialized on the infrastructure pieces. So think VMs, compute engines, some Anthos. Those kinds of technologies. And over time, we realized that there was a gap and created this transformation technical lead role.

[00:01:56] Eyvonne: And what we do is we work on highly complex engagements. It is a pre-sales role. And so we work with customers. Who want to adopt Google cloud technology and it's complex, right? They aren't just looking at one particular type of technology or they wanna undergo transformation. So there are lots of moving pieces.

[00:02:16] Eyvonne: So my job is to be kind of a technical liaison and to be sure I understand what the business is trying to accomplish, what technologies are going to help meet those goals, and then be sure that we bring in the right technology experts at the right time. To help our customers achieve their outcomes. So a lot of my, I, lots of meetings, uh, lots of communication, lots of just coordination in addition to, you know, all, all the technical bits that we know and love.

[00:02:47] Chris: Yeah. And it sounds like you were a part of, of creating this role at Google. Did I hear that right? And maybe you can talk us through kind of what that process looks like. I mean, obviously it sounds like it's not just a role for you. It says there's a whole team, but it's always interesting when you get the chance to be that involved.

[00:03:00] Eyvonne: Yeah. 

[00:03:00] Eyvonne: So I, I think once the role was created, like I, I was already doing the kind of work that the role was created for. And so ultimately what we had was a national team of deep subject matter experts. But what we realized is that on these complex engagements, we were spinning a lot of cycles because there was nobody in a more architectural role to be sure that we were bringing in the right people at the right time, because sometimes, you know, field sales teams.

[00:03:27] Eyvonne: They just don't always know what people to bring in when, and so we sort of created this. If you're thinking about it from an enterprise architecture standpoint, it's more that architect role; enterprise architect that kind of understands the business, understands enough about all the technologies to know what to apply when.

[00:03:45] Eyvonne: But what that also means is I've gotten further away from deep technical specialty, which has been a transition. 

[00:03:54] Chris: Yeah, definitely. And we've talked to some other folks who have made that transition. It's one that I've also made. Does that ever spur imposter syndrome for you? I mean, do you ever feel less than because you're further away from the deep technology or, or is that a transition that's been fairly smooth for you?

[00:04:11] Eyvonne: Well, I think it was harder for me earlier in my career than it is now. But I think the reason for that is because I'm in an environment now where there's like just the structures within Google. There's tons of positive reinforcement, you know when you're doing well, it's, it's a really healthy culture.

[00:04:31] Eyvonne: And so honestly that has made me more comfortable. To move out of what was more of a safe space, which was a technology, because there's a, usually a discrete problem to solve. And, you know, when you solved it and you don't need a lot of external validation to know that you did the thing right. And so for me, it's really been a journey in discovering:

[00:04:54] Eyvonne: What is it that I uniquely can contribute? And how do I lean into that? And I think it's taken me my entire career to kind of get there, you know, and, and I don't, it's not that I've arrived, but I do think I'm probably professionally more comfortable in my own skin than I've ever been. 

[00:05:13] Zoe: I really like the way you, you worded that needing a bit more external validation within maybe what's considered potentially more, a soft skill or, uh, you know, it's not the hands on technical building a server. It's communicating and identifying the right technologies that somebody else is going to implement. And I think for me personally, I found what you've said is that needing a little bit more validation and a way to measure is so hard in that kind of space, because if you don't have the right people, you don't know.

[00:05:43] Eyvonne: Yeah, well, and, um, that was a huge shift I had to make when I went from being an individual contributor at a customer into more of a vendor presales, kind of a role. Because everything in presales, whether we like it or not, it's the world we operate in is measured by deals and wins. And the thing is like, you'll contribute and you'll be involved and you'll, you'll do some things.

[00:06:07] Eyvonne: But there's not always a direct line of sight between what things you did that resulted in a positive outcome. And so that was a real change that I had to make in how I thought about my work and what success was. And I think for me, the things that are most validating now, are when I know I've had positive influence on individuals. 

[00:06:35] Eyvonne: You know, I mean, you, you win some, you lose some, right. But to know that I said a thing that helped somebody or, you know, every now and then somebody will reach out on Twitter and be like, Hey, you said this thing a while back. And it made me think this way, and I did this thing and this great thing happened.

[00:06:50] Eyvonne: That at this stage in my career is way more meaningful to me than, um, oh, Hey, I learned how to do this new technical thing. There's nothing wrong with that. And there was a time in my career when that was really important to me. And I think doing some of those things laid the groundwork for where I am today, but now the things that are most meaningful are not, oh, I made this strange thing work. It's oh, I had this impact on these people.

[00:07:19] Eyvonne: And so it's the transition. I think that I've made. Which is what has made me more comfortable moving away from specific technologies, because that's not what matters as much to me now. 

[00:07:30] Zoe: Yeah, that's that I'm in that kind of space now is being as I get more senior and I get less hands on. It's dealing with that, almost like fear of missing. I don't know, missing the new technology, missing all the granular bits and it can be quite scary, but also kind of a okay, well I have to measure differently. So I like the way you placed it. 

[00:07:50] Zoe: What you touched on a bit about, you know, your career path and be going from being a lot more technical to, you know, now doing those, this area, if somebody were looking to kind of transition to a similar position, as you were looking to get to the place that you're at, obviously not overnight, but is there any advice you kind of would give them what they could think about different things that they could try?

[00:08:13] Eyvonne: Yeah. So first thing I would say is read a lot. And read outside of technology. Certainly read about leadership, read about business, read about psychology, read fiction, you know, just read, read, read, read. If there's something that interests you read about it. Because what I have found is that in my work, especially if I'm engaging with somebody, a CTO or a senior director or an executive somewhere. 

[00:08:39] Eyvonne: Having that broad just knowledge base to pull from can be incredibly valuable. And you're not gonna get that by reading, you know how to write Python. There's tons of value there, right? I'm not saying don't read that, but if you want to engage more deeply and more broadly and have an impact with people making business decisions, you gotta expand your scope of knowledge beyond the technical.

[00:09:09] Eyvonne: Because in some spheres they really don't care. Like the technical is a box they need to check. They need to know that it'll work. But what they really care about is how to achieve a certain business outcome and you gotta be able to speak credibly. And so the more broadly you read, just the more you have to pull from.

[00:09:28] Eyvonne: And I talked a lot about reading and there was some heat on Twitter. Some folks shared a, a few months ago about that, but I, you know, like this is the hill I'll die on. Like read, you could do audio books, but read, read books, read long form content and continue to grow. I think that's super important. 

[00:09:46] Zoe: Oh yeah, definitely agree with you on that.

[00:09:48] Zoe: I mean, my favorite books to pull from are psychology books. One of my favorite absolute favorite books is called The Brain by David Eagleman, I think is his surname. And he's a neuroscientist. The book literally talks about how the brain develops, you know, through babies, up to adults and how different areas of the brain and explains conscious subconscious brain.

[00:10:10] Zoe: And it, I find understanding that not that we understand the brain, to be honest, but understanding that concept. It helps me figure out people and how to relate to people. Cause I think that relationship didn't come naturally to me, interacting with people was very difficult. I find, but by kind of researching and understanding them and almost doing social engineering for the influence, you know, the positives it's definitely helped me in my career a hundred percent.

[00:10:39] Eyvonne: Yeah. I think I reached a point in my career. I was at a pretty difficult job and a pretty difficult org. The way I say it is they had the institutionalized blame culture. You know, they, they had systems where people were punished for outages and punished at the director level with their bonuses. I mean, it was, it was pretty bad.

[00:10:59] Eyvonne: And I think what I started to see in that org was that it didn't really matter from a technology standpoint, how well I did my job. So then that got me thinking what does matter. And what does matter is the ability to influence people. And so that really set me on a discovery of, of the kinds of topics we're talking about.

[00:11:18] Eyvonne: I mean, what you learn in neuroscience, the book, The Undoing Project, which is about Kahneman and Tversky in their work, um, had a profound impact on me. Adam Grant's book; Think Again. As technical people, we assume that folks are just rational and then they make rational decisions, but they don't, they never do.

[00:11:35] Eyvonne: We as individuals don't, even when we believe we do. And, and there's real power in understanding that. Now you can use that knowledge for good or for ill, you know, but how do you understand how people make decisions? How do you figure out what they care about? And then how do you influence them in positive ways?

[00:11:54] Eyvonne: I think that's sort of been the journey I've been on for the last several years. 

[00:11:58] Zoe: Yeah. That points about, uh, you made it earlier about measuring your own success. But you also touched on it with talking to your clients is what do they view as success? So how finding that solution that's gonna work for them. You also need to know what they think is successful.

[00:12:13] Zoe: So I really like that, cause it's not just the technology it's well, what are you actually wanting to achieve? 

[00:12:18] Eyvonne: Yep. I mean, it, it always boils down to that engineering question of what problem are we trying to solve? You know, I mean, at the end of the day, like you're, it's just a different sphere of problems.

[00:12:29] Zoe: Yeah. I, I find that all the, all the people that respect that are quite senior, that's all these, they come back to, what are you trying to solve? What's the goal of this. And I think when I get really overwhelmed with complexity and I get really overwhelmed with all the facts, my boss always reminds me, what are you actually trying to achieve?

[00:12:47] Zoe: And that that's when I'm okay. Actually, let's forget all of these things that I was so excited about and, uh, readjust my, uh, goal here.

[00:12:56] Eyvonne: There's another thing I wanted to circle back around to based on your question before I went on my book rant. So one of the things I tell, say in interviews, and even with, when I'm talking to new hires now at Google, is there is so much information. Like you just cannot know it all, and you can't be part of everything. 

[00:13:16] Eyvonne: Like there's absolutely always gonna be FOMO, especially here, especially where everybody's brilliant, especially where everybody's doing interesting and fun stuff. And so it is that to me is just something I've come to accept. When I see this thing, I'm like, oh, I wish I would've done that. Or I wish I would've done this. 

[00:13:33] Eyvonne: Then I go back. Well, why didn't I do it? Well, I didn't do it because I chose to do this other thing. And now maybe I need to choose differently next time. And I can do that. But at some point you just have to decide I'm going to make these choices and these things I'm gonna exclude for now.

[00:13:49] Eyvonne: Because I'm focusing in a particular area and you can always like make a different choice. But at some point you just have to go, yeah, this is what I chose, and this is why, and maybe I need to choose differently next time. And that has also helped me with that constant, you know, overanalyzing and, oh, well, I should have done this and I should have, you know, and all of that stuff that we kind of do to ourselves when we feel like we're either missing the mark or we missed out. 

[00:14:15] Eyvonne: And it's either you did a great thing or you learned from it um, and sometimes both. Right. And you just make a different choice next time. It's not the end of the world. I think that kind of perspective really helps. 

[00:14:28] Chris: That really resonates with me, for sure. And I struggled with it for a long time. I think, you know, I was the kind of kid who I read in the newspaper somewhere that some kid had gotten into Harvard at 14 and I was 15 and I was just devastated that I wasn't that smart.

[00:14:41] Chris: Right. So for a long time, I, I wanted to do everything, uh, which I think is fairly common for a lot of folks, especially folks who gravitate towards technology and doing this kind of work. And it was a big revelation for me to think about, okay, well, I, I can do anything, but I can't do everything. That idea of, of focusing stuff.

[00:14:56] Chris: And so now that's actually one of the biggest pieces of advice I give out, which is this idea that strategy is actually mostly about what to say no to. 

[00:15:03] Chris: I think another side of, of reading obviously is, is writing. We mentioned your blog a little bit earlier. Has your blog been just an outlet for you personally? Or is that something that you think has helped your career or what was it intentional to write alongside your career? Or has there been any kind of interplay there or is this just something that, that you do for fun? 

[00:15:23] Eyvonne: Well, first of all, the volume of writing that I've done has been shameful and frankly, it's something I'm trying to figure out again.

[00:15:31] Eyvonne: What rhythm and where to put things in what to do with all these ideas that I have that aren't so explicitly technical, that's still a struggle for me. I think I started early on, um, probably, you know, 2012, 2013, got on Twitter. And if you look back then, like I had some really specific articles, like one of, one of my most red ones was how to push VLANs down to a Cisco AP to make it work properly with the wireless controller and maybe ICE was involved. Right. I, I can't remember. But you know, that kind of technical stuff. And then between Twitter and blogging, I got connected with the tech field day community, which was huge. Being part of, of networking field day really kinda opened my eyes to the industry.

[00:16:16] Eyvonne: All that was in there helped me see it, another layer of what goes on, you know, to get products to market and you know, all the stuff that vendors have to do that maybe as an individual contributor that you don't see. And so my blog really, um, facilitated that. I think where I am from writing like I know it's something I need to do.

[00:16:39] Eyvonne: I have struggled in this current climate of, you know, where do I put those ideas? And I don't like, I just don't wanna be sucked into the outrage machine. And so that frankly has made me more tentative. I don't think that's a good thing, but I'm really struggling now with. Because the things I care about aren't black and white, they aren't, oh, this is how you make this particular technology work in this way.

[00:17:08] Eyvonne: It's this is how to be a decent human at work. And I don't think a lot of it's controversial, but I do worry about like, what's the outrage machine, right? Like, I, I just, I have no interest in being sucked into that. And so it's, it's made me more tentative. So I'm still trying to figure out. How to navigate that and what to do with all the stuff that's floating around in my head, that would probably be good for the world if I put it out there.

[00:17:34] Eyvonne: But if you're asking, like, what are my current struggles? It's that. It's, you know, I I'm very comfortable. One on one. I'm very comfortable in these kinds of settings, but when it comes with like taking words and putting on a page and sending him out there for the entire world, it's, it's actually gotten harder for me than it used to be.

[00:17:52] Zoe: I'm in the same boat there. What I do is I write a lot of blogs and then I leave them in drafts. I've got like a hundred drafted blogs, and then I, uh, go through and write like five that I'm happy with. My routine is I finish it and I leave it for 24 hours before I reread it. And if I'm happy with that reread, I'll schedule it to be published.

[00:18:11] Zoe: If I'm not, I'll edit it, leave it for 24 hours again, you know, I do that because I find that that allows me to feel more confident. But I also have to schedule it because if I click publish, I just sit there on the button for like hours and I'm like, oh, what about this? Or what about that? I'm a hundred percent in that boat where it's just, it's massive.

[00:18:31] Zoe: You know, I'm worried that I'm gonna say something that's gonna be misunderstood or my confidence when it comes to, you know, if I'm writing something that's not as technical or it's written, cuz I like writing for non-technical people or people starting because I find that for me is more effective. I always worry that people are gonna take it and be like, oh, that's not right.

[00:18:51] Zoe: And it's like, well, you know, giving advice about MFA, you know, I'm not gonna say don't ever use SMS because for non-technical people, that might be the only thing that they're comfortable with, you know, but I always am worried about, well, who's gonna read that and then attack me over it. 

[00:19:07] Eyvonne: Well, and the, the other thing for me, like the stuff that I'm doing now, and that I care about is more deeply personal than, you know, how to get a VLAN on an AP.

[00:19:17] Eyvonne: And so it's a lot harder to put that stuff out there. So, yeah, I'm still working through that. And the, the internet was a kinder place, frankly, in 2012, 2013, 2014, when I started blogging. It was a kinder place. It's not anymore. 

[00:19:32] Chris: That's fair. Now I, I've heard you talk about this idea of deep community and deep communities.

[00:19:37] Chris: And I wonder if that plays into this at all. I mean, is there a way to leverage the communities you're in to feel more comfortable putting yourself out there in that very personal way that maybe opinionated maybe offends somebody. I kind of feel the opposite of Zoe. I think if someone tells you you're wrong, you're, you're doing something right.

[00:19:54] Chris: Because at least they've read it. But I know that when you get to personal stories and you're talking about philosophy and being a better person and, and kind of, you know, those kind of things, it's a little bit more harrowing. Does community have a balancing force there perhaps? Or? I don't know. I'm just kind of investigating that idea I guess. 

[00:20:08] Eyvonne: Yeah. I mean, so I'm on the periphery of several communities. I don't know that I'm, I'm deep in any one of them. I have a few like one on one deeply personal relationships in the community with people I share a lot with. Um, and we talk about everything from parenting to health, to things we're learning and books we're reading, and those one on one relationships have become incredibly meaningful.

[00:20:35] Eyvonne: You know, I, I think, I don't know that I've found a place in a community right now where I feel like, you know, at home. Uh, not to say anything negative about any of the ones I'm part of. I've just found like that for me, that level of depth and I mean, intimacy is difficult to find in a big community. 

[00:20:59] Eyvonne: And so I, I think I've found that one on one with a few, few key folks, um, at different stages in their career who do different things, who don't always agree with me, but we have wonderful, meaningful, sometimes challenging, um, interactions. And so that's kind of how I've solved that problem for now. It's not to say that I don't want it to be different. It's just hard right now to be real on the internet. 

[00:21:30] Zoe: I think that partly, partly might have something to do a bit with culture as well, because what I've noticed is, and I'm speaking very general here, obviously it's not applicable to everybody.

[00:21:44] Zoe: But what I've noticed is in North America, I find people are a lot more, yes or no, you know, black or white it's this is the answer that is not the answer. Whereas in Europe I find, and again, this is not everybody, but I do find more often that there's kinda levels of gray that work a little bit more. So if I say this is my answer, and somebody disagrees with me, but we can align on certain things they're happy. 

[00:22:10] Zoe: Whereas in North America, I find culturally, it's a little bit more difficult, I suppose. Obviously I'm generalizing quite heavily there, but I do find that it does feel that way. So if I, you know, publish something and it gets, I don't know, quite a negative response, I'll check. Okay. Where's the person coming from.

[00:22:32] Zoe: So maybe it's a cultural thing versus I dunno. 

[00:22:37] Eyvonne: And people have different tolerances and different personalities. 

[00:22:40] Zoe: That's true. 

[00:22:41] Eyvonne: My husband and I have a, have a really good friend who loves the debate and loves to get in there and loves the back and forth. I don't love it. I love reasoned thoughtful conversation, not a fan of shit posting and frankly, somebody's shit posts too much I like mute them because I don't want to see it. Right. I don't, it's not good for me. 

[00:23:06] Eyvonne: And, but in a world where that's almost the currency, like, I, I struggle with that. How do you have a meaningful voice where the currency is outrage? Cause I, I just, it's not what I want. It's not the person I wanna be.

[00:23:20] Eyvonne: Right. So. 

[00:23:21] Zoe: That does bring me to, when I first started with Twitter, I thought it was absolute rubbish. Hated it. And I was like, this is not gonna be popular. Obviously that was quite a while ago. And I loved Twitter now, but I think what the difference was is I, when I started didn't know who to follow didn't know the communities didn't know who to connect with and.

[00:23:42] Zoe: Now I've kind of, I mean, to a point, obviously I'm not going to just follow people that agree with me, but it gives me a little bit, an easier time building my network, but also building my timeline and the data that's coming into me. So I read a lot about psychology, cuz I like to understand it. I completely am on your side where it's, if somebody's quite abusive or quite hateful to me, even if they're not meaning to be, I will mute them because for my mental health, I just, I can't deal with.

[00:24:11] Zoe: But it took me a long time to realize that. And it also took me a long time to realize what little triggers I have that I never would've thought of before I, I did come from quite, um, a very difficult childhood and very difficult, uh, young adulthood. So there are things that maybe trigger me much easier than somebody else.

[00:24:31] Zoe: And I think I just have to recognize that acknowledge it. Know it's not gonna change. And deal with it. 

[00:24:39] Eyvonne: yeah. Well, and that, you know, like, I, I don't know. I had a, I have this epiphany every now and then I, you keep seeing something come across your feed and you're like, and you find that you have some sort of a visceral response to it.

[00:24:49] Eyvonne: And then all of a sudden I have this revelation, like, oh, I'm in control. Like I don't have to see that. You know what I mean? And sometimes I have to re remind myself of that and I've got friends who've been like, you know what? I'm out. Just not for me, not good for me. It's making me think and do things that are not who I wanna be.

[00:25:08] Eyvonne: And that's a perfectly valid decision for me, you know, so far careful curation is working. I try not to block people unless it's just egregious. You know, I do use mute and I do like the, why am I seeing this? You know? And there are some people who I love the technical content that they share. Note to you, younger people out there.

[00:25:29] Eyvonne: There are some of us out there who really want to encourage you in your careers and want to see what you're doing, but some of the stuff you're liking and retweeting, we just don't wanna see in our feeds. Right. And so I try to curate that down as much as I can, but if it gets to be too much, I'm like, yeah, I'm just not following anymore.

[00:25:46] Eyvonne: Cause I don't wanna see it. 

[00:25:48] Zoe: Yeah. Well, it, it goes to the comment of your personal brand. You know, my personal brand on Twitter is I limit. Things that I tweet, like I don't retweet things that have swear words in it. Not because I think there's anything wrong with swearing. I swear. But, um, I think if I was looking from a vendor or for some company, and I'm looking at the first tweet, I see, I don't want it to be a swear word, but you know, I, I consciously made that decision. 

[00:26:16] Zoe: If I were to want to retweet more risque things I maybe would create a different account. Not saying that's the perfect plan for everybody. And some people are very happy with having that on their professional profile, which again, it's totally acceptable. But I think it, that does go to, you know, choosing what your personal brand is essentially. And if that is it, that's fine, but that's not, uh, the way I do it. 

[00:26:42] Zoe: The one thing I really liked was before the talk, he wrote out some points that we might wanna touch on. And one thing he wrote was being a force for action. And I like that. I don't know what it was referring to, but I really like it because that's one thing I struggled with.

[00:26:57] Eyvonne: Yeah. That was some feedback I got from an account team. I was, I was working with, I got engaged in something that they were trying to do and they're like, okay, well here's, what's going on: we've got this meeting coming up in a few weeks. Here are the customer's concerns. And so, you know, I just went, I'm like, okay.

[00:27:11] Eyvonne: And, and we use, of course Google's productivity suite for everything we use workspace. And so, you know, I created a slide stack and here are a few, you know, here are a few slides that I think talk to this and just like, okay. So in every conversation, it's: What's the next thing we need to do to move the ball forward?

[00:27:28] Eyvonne: And is that something I can do? And if it's something I can do and I can do very quickly, like let's just do it and get it moving. Or who needs to do it, right? Um, I think lately, like, if I could use one word to summarize, like my shining star is clarity, clarity, clarity, clarity, like in two or three sentences, what are we trying to accomplish?

[00:27:50] Eyvonne: And in a sentence or two, preferably a bullet, like, what do we need to do next? And like always focusing on those things. And then when things go off to the side, like, well, like we said, this is what we're trying to accomplish. Is that still what we're trying to accomplish? Yes. Okay. Or no, that's not still, you know, or things have changed, but to just be really super clear and crisp and then you know, what is the next action we need to take? 

[00:28:19] Chris: Yeah, that resonates with me, for sure. For me, it's like this feeling when I'm working with people who have the, I think the values or, um, I think, I guess it's values that, that you're espousing here, right? This idea of kind of a, a tendency towards action or like we're defaulting to action, but then also paying attention to clarity and understanding between the folks that are working together.

[00:28:37] Chris: Teams just seem to work better when, when most folks are kind of aligned on, on those couple of things, that idea of clarity and that idea of action seem to be super important. I think. 

[00:28:46] Chris: Unfortunately, that's about all the time we have for today. Uh, Eyvonne thank you so much for sharing your story with the imposter syndrome network and thank you to all of our listeners out there for your attention and your support.

[00:28:58] Chris: We have a LinkedIn group for the imposter syndrome network that we'd love for you to join and get or give career advice, mentorship, uh, or just general community support. But before we close out, Eyvonne, uh, I am curious, what's the most valuable lesson you've learned in your career so far? 

[00:29:16] Eyvonne: Gosh, just, just one.

[00:29:18] Eyvonne: Um, Yeah, I think it is really important to be clear and transparent. I think the biggest mistakes I've made in my career have been where I was over my head, but didn't know how to say it, or when I felt like I needed help or I knew that something wasn't going well, but felt like I just had to handle it on my own.

[00:29:40] Eyvonne: I think that's how I've gotten myself in the most trouble and to have enough confidence. To say, Hey, I'm seeing a problem and we collectively need to solve it. You know, I, I have a, have a good friend now at work and what she will literally ask leaders of fortune 500 fortune 50 companies. Is there anything about this that makes you feel icky?

[00:30:06] Eyvonne: Like that's the question and it is to listen to that, like when something feels icky, To ask why. Why is it that I don't feel comfortable? Why is it that I don't feel like this thing is going well and what do I need to do to figure out what that is and solve it? Because if the longer you wait, the worse it gets.

[00:30:30] Eyvonne: And I think so for me, like trusting that, and then trying to, to clarify it has been important. And one of the caveats that I have is that you have to be in a somewhat healthy organization to be able to do that. And if you're in a place where you don't feel like you can do that, then it might be time to look for other opportunities. 

[00:30:52] Eyvonne: Because ultimately like things will fail if people don't have the freedom to ask themselves, like, why does this not feel right to talk about that? At least with their manager or them and their peers. And to resolve that sense, that things aren't going well. So I think for me, that's, that's probably the biggest, 

[00:31:14] Chris: I love that. That's awesome. Thank you.

[00:31:15] Chris: I think that's very helpful for a lot of folks and a good reminder for all of us. 

[00:31:19] Chris: I know that you're on Twitter and have a blog. Where's the best place for folks to find you? And, um, do you have any other projects that you'd like the network to know about? 

[00:31:28] Eyvonne: Uh, yeah, so right now, probably the best place to find me is on Twitter at sharp network.

[00:31:32] Eyvonne: I'm also on LinkedIn. You can find me at E sharp, um, at Eyvonne Sharp, the blog is E sharp.net. It's probably been a year since I've posted anything up there, but yeah. Happy to interact and answer questions and get to know folks. 

[00:31:45] Chris: Wonderful. We'll be back next week.