Recording: Authentically Supporting Differences in the Workplace
Watch PowerToFly's recent conversation with our partner 15five facilitating impactful conversations about DEIB in the workplace.
PowerToFly Global DEIB Strategist & Trainer Zara Chaudary recently joined our partner 15five for an illuminating conversation on how to best authentically support differences in the workplace. Zara was joined by 15five's Senior Director of DEI Cara Pelletier as well as leaders from Pave and Raydiant.
Your company may strive for diversity, but are you truly being inclusive and equitable as well? To instill a culture of psychological safety and belonging, everyone including executives, HR, managers, and employees must practice supporting differences in the workplace. And it’s hard to get it “right” without aligning on what that means and how to recover when we inevitably make mistakes.
Whether it’s a difference in culture, identity, age, beliefs, or disability (and the list goes on) this webinar focuses on building a workplace community of allyship. Our differences are reflected in our appreciation, feedback, and communication styles, so watch our panelists from 15Five, Pave, PowerToFly, and Raydiant for a powerful conversation on how to navigate these authentically.
What you’ll learn:
- How to facilitate impactful conversations about DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging) between managers and employees
- How to navigate and encourage cultural differences in a hybrid workplace
- What initiatives can promote a culture of psychological safety and allyship
- How to build stronger work relationships in the face of DEIB mistakes
- Tools and resources to promote inclusion across employees
How Mindbody’s Kristin Carrico’s Leadership Style Is Based on Learning
Plus Her Top 7 Tips for Leaders
Kristin Carrico’s belief in continuing education might go as deep as her DNA.
With a CEO father and a teacher mother (and grandmother), Kristin says she learned one lesson early on: “Material things don’t matter, but no one can ever rob you of your education. It’s a life-long journey.”
That attitude towards learning and growth has been key to her fulfilling, decades-long career in leadership. It’s what keeps her reaching out to connect with new people, ask questions, seek out new skills, and share her own vulnerability and path to learning with her team.
And it’s gotten her to her current post as SVP of at wellness technology company Mindbody.
We sat down with Kristin to hear more of her story, including what lessons have inspired her personal brand of leadership.
A “natural-born leader”
Growing up with older brothers, Kristin had to learn to keep up, she says. “From a very early age, I knew I could be tough. I have always had a strong self-confidence.”
While she tried her hand at teaching in college, it was her leadership and logical planning skills that spiked on a career aptitude test. Kristin studied organizational leadership in college, and graduated with three job offers.
When it came time to choose which to accept, Kristin took her dad’s advice and went with the place she thought she’d get the best training. (That was GM.) In her early career, she learned enough on the job to keep taking on harder and harder projects and moving up the career ladder.
But there came a point where she knew she wanted to invest more.
“Early in my career, I struggled with finance. I knew that to run a company one day, that was going to be so important for me to master,” says Kristin, who enrolled herself in a financial valuation and strategy program at Harvard. “I put myself in a room of people where I was going to probably be the least competent, and it was amazing.”
She repeated that approach with other subject areas, including change management and leadership, and credits her focus on continuous learning with her ability to guide companies through change.
“What’s been my sweet spot in my career is helping companies reinvent and reimagine themselves to get to a much better, more mature discipline state,” she says. Kristin applies the same continuous improvement process to her clients and employers as she does to herself, adding, “I like to be able to grow, mature, and develop companies to be the best that they can be.”
Embracing the Mindbody mission
When Kristin knew she was ready for a career change, she wrote two lists.
One was a list of every company she admired or was a big customer of. A lot of them were tech companies, Kristin realized.
The second list was a collection of things Kristin loved. Some entries: “I love wellness. I love encouraging people to live their best life. I love making a difference in the world.”
Kristin then looked for companies that fit on both lists, which is how she found Mindbody, a SaaS company that provides business management software for the wellness services industry.
“Mindbody’s values are very aligned to my own, which is connecting the world to wellness,” says Kristin, who reached out to the company’s new CEO on LinkedIn and congratulated him on the appointment.
She didn’t expect anything to come of it, but he responded. And a few months later, when he was looking to fill an SVP of Customer Experience role, he reached out to Kristin and asked if she’d come in to interview.
She had a job offer a week later, and now Kristin is committed to building a culture of learning and growth at Mindbody.
“Being able to make some part of people’s day better because you’re offering them wellness—whether you’re a small, locally-owned business like the yoga studio down the street, or enterprise customers, like F45, Orange Theory or Dry Bar—that’s pretty special. And our technology connects people to that,” explains Kristin.
7 extra tips for leaders
Over the years, Kristin has learned—in the classroom, on the job, and from trusted mentors—what being a great leader looks like. And it’s not just embracing continuous education.
Here, she shares some of her top tips for those looking to follow in her footsteps:
- Don’t underestimate communication skills. “It's one thing to be able to create a vision and create a strategy. But if you're the only one that understands it, or you look back and no one's following, that's a challenge,” she says.
- Being able to deal with ambiguity is vital not just during a pandemic, but in every leadership role. “It's the ability to keep moving forward, even if the path isn't clear. It’s something I worked a long time on, and now when things aren't crystal clear, I navigate those waters for myself and my team,” she says. “It’s the sense that whatever we face, we’re going to be okay.”
- Focus on your all-around wellness. Mindbody has defined seven dimensions of wellness, says Kristin: physical, emotional, intellectual, occupational, environmental, spiritual, and social. “It may not be that you can balance all of them, but at different times, I’ve had a really intentional focus on one of them. And the combination of all seven can help you feel really good in life.” Practically, she models that focus at work by starting team meetings with a meditation, to give her customer-facing team a way to easily inject wellness into their day.
- Consider a sabbatical. Kristin has taken two at different points in her career. During her time away from work, she has raced cars in Vegas, taken a helicopter to the Grand Canyon at sunset, jumped out of an airplane and off a bridge, and spent a month taking her mother around Italy. “Plan for it financially, and then do it with unbridled guilt. Go live your best life, because it will make you better,” she says.
- Remember it’s okay to be vulnerable. “Early in my career, I kept a guard up. I didn’t bring my whole self to work. As I grew and matured, I learned that being vulnerable does foster trust and deep relationships,” she says. “Bring your authentic self to work because you have unique gifts. As I tell the people on my team, ‘You have the power of your creative genius and we're so grateful you choose to use it with us.’”
- Center your customers, but also your team members. Kristin runs a global CX organization and she knows that her team is equally vital to Mindbody’s success as their customers are. “Our number one goal is to deliver a phenomenal customer and team member experience,” says Kristin. “I repeat that at the beginning of every meeting and it's set on every agenda.”
- Find—and be—a great mentor. “I’ve had the same one for 25 years,” she says. “He's one of my best friends. I trust him implicitly. He has probably given me the fiercest of advice and the fiercest of criticism,” she says. When it comes time to pay that forward, don’t be shy, adds Kristin. “You can always produce more by doing it together. Lift other people up. There’s enough room for all of us at the top.”
Inspired to join Kristin at Mindbody? Check out their open roles!
3 Key Skills for a Successful Career in Product Design
Insight from JW Player’s Monica Parra
Monica Parra knows she wouldn’t have had a successful career in art—and now in design and UX engineering—if she wasn’t comfortable with conflict.
“It’s actually quite required of us to disagree with each other, because we're after the best possible solution,” she says of the creative process. “Healthy debate is really important, and I crave it, to be honest.”
That’s been true at every stage of her career, from when she made a late switch to art school to when she worked her way into the digital side of traditional media magazines to when she got into digital product design.
Now, Monica is the Director of Design and UX Engineering at video software and data insights platform JW Player.
As a woman working in tech, she’s learned how to make sure her perspective is considered. “Men love to interrupt; women love to give people space,” she says. “You fight for your voice at the table.”
We sat down with Monica to hear more about how she fosters a spirit of healthy debate and collaboration, as well as the career path that brought her here and what advice she has for budding designers looking to find the path that’s right for them.
Raising her hand
Monica was studying international business in college when she realized she didn’t want to ever work in a cubicle farm. “I saw a future that looked like Dundler Mufflin, and I needed to pivot,” she says, smiling. “The only other talent or hobby that I had at the time was graphic design.”
She followed that interest, which had previously manifested itself in homemade flyers for family businesses and fun Photoshop projects, all the way into transferring into art school. By the time she graduated, she set out to work in publishing, so she could be a part of editorial storytelling.
Monica thought she’d be working on print magazines, but a recruiter pointed out that lots of publishers were hiring in their digital space. “I really wasn’t confident, and they were like, ‘Trust me; you have a portfolio. And you’ll make more money because there’s not so many people in the running for these roles,’” remembers Monica.
She ended up being part of the early design teams at magazines like Newsweek and Spin, and she credits those experiences with teaching her the importance of collaboration.
“We were working with editors, videographers, and photographers, and you got staffed and tried to do your work as fast as possible. That’s where I got my hustle,” she says. “It’s where I learned what a real design team was. It was supportive, with camaraderie and not competition. Truly just a bunch of design nerds, we traded our skills to help each other, we stayed late if someone was on a deadline. The team culture I have today is definitely rooted in that first design team.”
While Monica loved her experience in publishing, she felt the industry closing in around her, and once again, she raised her hand to try something new.
“I’d always thought product design was physical—like designing this ChapStick, essentially,” she says, gesturing towards an example. “But there was this whole new wave of digital product design, which was a domination of software design and UX, and I had the chance to again be at the forefront of something that was not fully saturated with too many designers,” she says.
Leaning into the differences between design and product design
When she moved into product, Monica had to learn not to run to a solutions space. “Instead of going straight into Photoshop and designing to your heart’s desire, you start with understanding user goals. What are the requirements of this? How do we know the solution we’ve chosen is the right solution?,” she asks.
She liked the change, saying, “as you get used to what the data can tell you, you start to crave more data.”
In trading in her design aesthetic for user perspectives and feedback, Monica found that a lot of the core skills were the same. “You have to be objective and take yourself out of it. You’re not designing for yourself, you’re designing for all the users and viewers of your product,” she says.
When Monica joined JW Player, it was because she was ready for a product design role where she could be more creative. She knew she’d have the chance to build a team, and was excited to do so at the intersection of design and tech for a company whose tech stack and product she really believed in.
“When I started at JW Player, I had friends ask me, ‘Why aren’t you applying for creative director jobs?’ But at the time, I wasn’t ready to let it go, to be hands-off,” she says. So her first year on the job was focused on digging into product and really creating the kind of design culture she came from and appreciated.
But then it was time to move into a directorship, and Monica knew she was ready. “It’s an uncomfortable feeling, but it’s a pretty great place to be, when you’re ready to be challenged,” she says.
3 key skills for being successful in design in tech
Monica has hired both designers and engineers to work on her product team, and here are some of the common markers of success she’s seen:
- An ability to communicate. “If you don’t know how to communicate your design philosophy or thoughts, communication from designer to engineer can break down pretty quickly,” she says.
- An interest in the other side. Monica looks for designers who are excited to “sit with an engineer and look at every pixel to make sure it’s perfect,” she says, and engineers who are excited to participate in the creative process.
- A belief in compromise. “We cannot be precious about what we built and we cannot insert ourselves as the user for what we're building,” says Monica. “This is a career that’s not for the faint of heart. You get a lot of hard feedback. I always say I’m very open to being convinced of being wrong, but you have to put in the work to convince me.”
Interested in joining the team at JW Player? Check out their open roles!
Are You a Data Analyst? Get These Top Tips on Effective Communication When Working Across Disciplines
💎 As a data analyst, you may already understand the importance of getting your message across when working with less technical disciplines. But do you know how you could improve your workflow to avoid mishaps? Don’t miss these tips on effective communication that will help your day-to-day work life!
📼 Play this video to get three top tips from data analyst Rosa Colom Teruel, Manager, Data Science and Analytics at Zynga, on effective communication when working with other disciplines.
📼 Tip #1: Focus On Potential. The first of these data analyst tips on effective communication is to focus on potential when pitching an idea. Before implementing a model, it's impossible to know how well it will perform or how much impact it will have on business KPIs. As scientists, it can be tempting to say, "We can't know," which is true. However, you often need to provide estimates to prioritize projects and decide which ones you believe in the most. In these cases, it's helpful to focus on potential. Instead of a definite number, you can provide a projection for the worst-case / best-case scenario, even if it requires some guesswork. Business units and product managers use estimates all the time, accepting that they could be proven inaccurate once implemented in the real world for multiple reasons. The important thing is to understand why and then take these learnings into the next project.
📼 Tip #2: Not All Technical Details Are Relevant. Next up for data analyst tips on effective communication: Science needs to be objective, detailed, and reproducible. Processes and results must be delivered in order, so peers can follow and review completed work. This fact is essential when sharing projects within your team. But if you are presenting to other disciplines, Rosa encourages you to focus on what's relevant for business decisions. For example, how will the project improve the business? What can we learn about players or customers? And what's the plan for the future? Everything else can go in a technical document or an appendix, optional to those interested in additional details.
Data Analyst Tips on Effective Communication - Last Tip!
Tip #3: Communicate Conclusions First. In school and university, you learned to present conclusions last, starting with a problem statement, showing methodology, discussing results, and finally drawing conclusions. Research shows that this is not the way that our brains consume information. It is more effective to present your findings first, followed by results and methodology last (or in an appendix, if not relevant to the audience). This approach may seem counterintuitive because it goes against the chronological order of the work. However, by starting with conclusions, you're going to grab the audience's attention, and they're more likely to remember the takeaways afterward. If you're communicating in writing, listing conclusions first will also help. Even if not everyone reads the whole document, they will still get those takeaways, and conversations will continue to move forward.
📨 Are you interested in joining Zynga? They have open positions! To learn more, click here.
Get To Know Rosa
Rosa is a Data Scientist with 8+ years of experience in the gaming/tech industry and 4+ years leading data science teams. Rosa has vast experience in defining a data science roadmap and analytics strategy that meet product needs.
More About Zynga
Zynga is a global leader in interactive entertainment with a mission to connect the world through games.
To date, more than one billion people have played Zynga’s franchises including, CSR Racing™, Empires & Puzzles™, Merge Dragons!™, Words With Friends™, and Zynga Poker™. Zynga’s games are available in more than 150 countries and are playable across social platforms and mobile devices worldwide.
Founded in 2007, Zynga is headquartered in San Francisco with studios in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, India, Turkey, and Finland.
