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Thoughtful Edge, Episode 12: Tech Empathy: A Journey with Jossie Haines
24 Plays1 year ago
Join us for an insightful discussion with Jossie Haines, a leadership coach with extensive experience in the tech industry. Jossie shares her journey from a software engineering career at major tech companies to her transition into coaching and consultancy, particularly focusing on empowering women in tech. She delves into pivotal moments that shaped her mission, emphasizing the importance of inclusivity and empathetic leadership. Throughout the conversation, she discusses her empathetic management framework, the need for resilience amidst industry changes, and the value of embracing uncertainty. Join us for valuable insights on building inclusive teams, navigating change, and thriving in today's dynamic tech landscape.
Jossie's LinkedIn Proffile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jossiemann/
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Transcript
Introduction to Jaycee Haynes
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, hello. Welcome to the Thoughtful Edge Podcast and today I have an amazing guest. This is Jaycee Haynes, leadership and leadership coach for women in tech. And she spends a lot of years working in tech yourself and then transition to more of the consulting side of the business and she's helping
00:00:24
Speaker
other people in establishing their presence and their work and help them achieve their goals throughout their career and especially helping women in tech as well. And one other question, I had to Dracey. First of all, Dracey, could you please introduce yourself to the audience and tell us about yourself.
Jaycee's Career in Software Engineering
00:00:48
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here today and having this conversation with you. I've been in the tech industry as a software engineering leader for 23 years, working on a lot of large scale consumer technology. I think I added it up and I've worked on products used by billions of people across all of the products I've ended up working on.
00:01:11
Speaker
And I worked on, one of my teams built the Siri Music integration for the HomePod. So we added over 30 new Siri Music features for that. Also had another team working on Siri on Apple TV. And we actually got a technical Emmy for that integration. Prior to my days at Apple, I worked at Zynga and Alarm Facebook games back in the early 2010s. Saw the Bill games, the Farm Bill,
00:01:42
Speaker
Chefville, Cityville, all of those. And then I also worked at American Express. I'm at one of their credit cards. And then most recently, I worked at Tile.
Role at Tile and DEI Efforts
00:01:56
Speaker
I did both partner integration, so I integrated the Tile technology into
00:02:02
Speaker
lots of different partner products, including Google Home, Alexa, I worked with Intel to enable Intel based laptops to behave as piles without needing additional hardware, and then became VP of software engineering and actually helped scale the organization from 29 to 55 engineers and four and a half months in the middle of
00:02:28
Speaker
COVID while keeping our inclusive culture. And I also headed up the DEI efforts, the diversity of inclusion efforts as well.
00:02:37
Speaker
Um, I ended up leaving in July of 2022. I was going to say last year, but it's actually two years ago now, um, in July of 2022 and decided to take my passion around, you know, retaining women in tech and helping build inclusive and high performing teams and turn that into my full time career. And so.
00:03:06
Speaker
Now, I advise tech companies on helping them scale and build, you know, amazing engineering teams. And my primary focus, though, is coaching women leaders in tech to thrive and, you know, hit their dreams in this sometimes uncertain and chaotic tech industry.
00:03:28
Speaker
What's an amazing journey? Yeah, you've been through a lot. And this is why I'm so eager to hear more about your wisdom and journey and lessons that you've learned throughout your career and everything you went through. And you mentioned that your mission is to retain women in tech, which is like pretty inspiring. And I admire this for sure. And can you share some maybe
00:03:55
Speaker
pivotal moment or experience when you realize that this is something you want to do and pursue as something important for you?
Initiatives for Women in Tech at Apple
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, I've always been involved in some of the women in tech communities, but this really came up when I was at Apple. So in 2016, I joined Apple, you know, and I realized we had like a women in Apple community.
00:04:23
Speaker
But that was more kind of global across the company and there weren't really places for women to like sit down and have deep conversations and really get into like what are the challenges and so I started women at Siri and
00:04:38
Speaker
that actually, after I left Apple, I was a little worried it was going to end up dying, but it actually turned into one of the largest sub ERGs and was now like women in AI and ML. So I'm actually very proud of what we started there. And it was great because we created a safe space for us to really discuss like, what is top of mind? Like, how do we actually thrive in this industry?
00:05:03
Speaker
But I actually had a pretty challenging time during my days at Apple. And by the time I left Apple, I was actually feeling burned out. I thought I was going to leave tech. I was kind of tired of how women in tech were treated. And I was going to a lot of imposter syndrome. I actually thought I was an awful manager, despite the fact that people were telling me I was the best manager they ever had.
00:05:27
Speaker
Sounds familiar. And so I took six months off and had a number of realizations. One is, you know, technology impacts our daily lives so much more now than when I started doing this, right? I started my tech career in 1999, and I've been playing with computers since I was five years old, and I had my Commodore 64. And
00:05:52
Speaker
You know, I saw, like, even in the last, you know, 23 years, like, where I've been working on this, you know, tech impacts everything we do, right? They were like attached to our cell phones and everything else, but yet, tech is not really fulfilling the needs of women and other underrepresented minorities.
00:06:12
Speaker
And so I realized it wasn't that I had a lack of passion for technology. It's like I really wanted to be focusing on that side of things. Like how do we build more inclusive technology that really takes these needs into account?
00:06:29
Speaker
Which isn't just great for the end users and the consumers, because it's actually good for the companies as well. Because if you actually build more inclusive products that fulfill more users' needs, you will actually make more money and more revenue as well. And so after, in late 2018, I said, you know what, I'm going to come back to tech under my rules.
00:06:52
Speaker
when I wanted to work somewhere where, you know, inclusion wasn't just lip service. And so I spoke to the, at the time, new CEO of Tile, CJ, and I said to him, like, I want to come be your partner engineering director, but I also want to lead your DEI efforts. I want to start a mentoring program because I tried to start one at Apple as part of Women in Siri.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I had actually been told by the VP at the time that he didn't really believe in mentoring and I couldn't start it. And so I said, I want to start this mentoring program. I want to help lead your DEI efforts. And he surprised me. And he said, you know, I promised my wife and daughters I want to make child the best place for women to work in the valley.
00:07:36
Speaker
And so that really inspired me. And so I joined and we really delivered on that promise. And we built a really inclusive, unique culture. And it wasn't just me. Every time I talk about this, I talk about the fact that if you want to change a company's culture and really build inclusion,
00:07:57
Speaker
It takes a team effort across all levels of the organization to do so. But it's something that I'm super proud of. Even a few days ago, I had somebody who I was congratulating on LinkedIn for a new job that he had. And he comes back and says to me, Josie, I still want to thank you for the amazing role you had in creating such a unique and inclusive culture.
00:08:25
Speaker
a tile. And so, you know, I realized I had we have really created this, this unique, you know, community. And then
00:08:37
Speaker
during my career, I was actually able to during COVID, I saw a need for us to really scale the organization on the engineering side. And so I actually created a proposal to get myself promoted to VP of engineering, I would get my boss promoted to CTO, so that we could scale the organization and that
00:08:57
Speaker
And we were able to do that. And I afterwards, I had this, I was like, we've done it, like we've created this inclusive culture. And I don't want to just do this one company at a time. And so that's what really inspired me to start doing what I do.
00:09:16
Speaker
That's amazing. I like the part about the story of the tile because I'm user of the tile. All the keys we have in the house, they have the tile attached to it, not to use it. It's an amazing product and I'm glad to hear that it's an amazing product built by amazing people now.
00:09:39
Speaker
leveraging the amazing culture that you are probably a part of as well. So yeah, that's very interesting. And that's really inspiring to hear. And I'm glad that you decided to pursue this mission. And the next question I wanted to ask you is about your leadership journey, let's say. So you worked at the big companies at building a tile.
00:10:07
Speaker
And then at some point you decided to start your own consulting business. And I believe this is a significant shift for everyone, like going out from the company, like with a well-established paycheck and everything else covered, going to starting your own business might be kind of a bit risky, risky decision. So can you please tell us about that?
Transition to Consulting Business
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah. Um, as I said, I had a real passion for it. Right. And, um, I, and you know, I had kind of, I got, she was set up pretty well for success at the beginning. Uh, tile ended up being acquired by life 360. And so I actually ended up having kind of six months of buffer, uh, to help me kind of set up for, for leaving and, uh, um, and starting my business and,
00:11:05
Speaker
I think the biggest thing was realizing that starting a business is so much about the mindset. People had told me that this was going to be a huge personal development journey to be an entrepreneur. I assumed it was, but until you go through the journey, you have no idea
00:11:28
Speaker
how much of this is so much more about like mindset and taking the right actions versus hustling. And that was a big thing for me was
00:11:40
Speaker
you know, I wanted to create a business that I could do in like 30 hours or less a week and not be hustling at it. And so part of my success has really been working with a business coach who's all about like, Hey, how do we use our energy and really lean into, you know, manifesting things and really lean into the,
00:12:06
Speaker
of the not just thinking about, you know, she says, strategy is easy at the end of the day, but it's around having the right mindset, the frames knowing that you're taking the right actions and not just trying to do everything. And, and so it's, it's been an amazing journey. And yes, it's scary sometimes along the way, especially with, you know, changes in the tech industry. But
00:12:36
Speaker
I really realized I can make such a huge impact in people's lives. As I said earlier, the products that I worked on were used by billions of people. And yet the work I've done in the last two years has been such more emotionally rewarding in so many ways
00:12:59
Speaker
than the work that I had done previously. And it's not that I'm not proud of the work that I did. I definitely am. But there's something about having somebody, you know, call me up and say,
00:13:11
Speaker
You know, here's one example. I had like a one off coaching call with somebody who was feeling burned out in her role. And she asked me to share my journey and about starting my business and things like that. And she was really afraid. She was afraid that, you know, she'd worked at a very large tech company with a very successful paycheck for
00:13:34
Speaker
for for many many years and but she just didn't feel satisfied and it's so much of this is about taking the time to really ask like what is it that we want you know we've been doing this for a while so what is it that we want and so I told her my journey I told her when I my story about when I left Apple and you know took six months off and then I told her my story about leaving Kyle and starting my own business and then
00:14:00
Speaker
I didn't hear from her for six months and she comes back and says, hey, Josie, I really want to chat with you. And she's like, I have a story I want to tell you. And I was like, okay, cool. Sure. So I got on a call with her and she's like, Josie, I just need to thank you because because of our conversation, I've started my own startup. I am
00:14:21
Speaker
where I am the happiest I've ever been. And not only did you end up inspiring me to do this, because without the conversation we had, I would have never done this. Her daughter had been kind of against it, because her daughter was afraid of, hey, you're leaving this special job. Are you going to be able to get back into tech if you want to in the future?
00:14:43
Speaker
And when she shared my story with her daughter, it also changed her daughter's mind as well. And so stories like that are so emotionally rewarding to me. And now she's going off and creating an amazing product that is helping other people. And so it's not just the effect on that one person, it's the ripple effect that I can then have on the entire tech industry. That's incredible.
00:15:13
Speaker
That's incredible. And this is the stories that we like to hear all the time, right? Someone is sharing their knowledge, sharing their stories. And what I've recently learned as well that someone told me that our knowledge and our experiences and some lessons we learned, they don't belong to ourselves only. They are meant to be shared with everybody else for them to be able to use it and leverage and maybe use it to their own.
00:15:42
Speaker
benefits and maybe it's with the benefits of other people too. And this is how we create this ripple effect that as you mentioned, you share something with somebody and then it goes on and goes on just accumulating that effect for other people as well. Yeah, that's like very inspiring story. Thank you for sharing. And you also have been very active public speaking. And as an active speaker,
00:16:11
Speaker
Can you share something about the core messages that you're trying to convey while you talk and how the speaking experience influenced your approach to leadership and coaching, maybe some lessons you learned from that?
Public Speaking and Advocacy
00:16:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I started public speaking in, seriously, I think back in 2018.
00:16:36
Speaker
I started with a couple of talks, Grace Hopper, around my story, and my passion for retaining women in tech. So most of my talks are, I do I when I was a title, actually, I did a number of tech talks on building a tile infrastructure. But mostly what I speak about is retaining women in tech, building inclusive and high performing teams,
00:17:02
Speaker
leading with empathy. And then I also do a number of workshops on this topic called positive intelligence. So that's a framework by Dr. Shahzad. He's from Stanford, actually. And it's all about how we have saboteurs in our brain that can hold us back and how to instead shift to what he calls the sage mindset and really overcome those and thrive.
00:17:31
Speaker
from a more positive perspective. And I think my biggest lesson when I got into public speaking, which has really, I think helped me in just even like running my own business is that not everybody is going to love you. So the my first talk that I gave my first big talk that I gave the one that I mentioned, a great software afterwards, I got feedback.
00:17:56
Speaker
from it like a few months afterwards. And I had some people that loved me, and I had some people that absolutely like did not love me. And the first time I ended up reading this feedback, I was like, I was like, I was almost in tears. I was like, I had people who hated me. I can't believe this. And I was working with a public speaking coach at the time.
00:18:18
Speaker
And he gave me this advice that I think applies to so many things. He says, if you were to walk into a room with 100 people,
00:18:27
Speaker
and just talk to all of them. You would not expect that all 100 people would resonate with what you're saying. And when you're giving a speech or doing anything, creating a product, selling your services, it's the same thing. And what it means, though, if you have, because of the law of polarity, you have to have both opposites. So if you have haters, that also means you have people who love you.
00:18:56
Speaker
And you want to be speaking to those people. And yes, it's not about saying that you're going to completely shut down all feedback and not listen to constructive feedback. But there are going to be people who just don't resonate with you. And if you spend all your time focusing on worrying about them, you're not truly serving.
00:19:19
Speaker
the people that are going to follow you are going to love your message and really resonate and want to work with you or want to learn from you. And so that has been the biggest learning along the way, I think, from public speaking that has really helped with, you know, all like being a leader, being a coach and growing my business.
00:19:44
Speaker
That resonates a lot with me personally. I just recently was thinking about that as well. So as more you expose yourself either on social network or going out and making a public speaking, talking on the conferences or at any other events. It works like this. The people like you, there would be a match between you and them.
00:20:09
Speaker
and the people that would like you, you would have maybe similar values with them, maybe you would have similar views on different topics.
00:20:19
Speaker
then it would be some kind of a match happen between you and them. And that will help you to establish more close relationship with them and maybe doing business going forward would be more smoother because like they already know you somehow from like, from different perspectives, they've seen you talking, they've seen you like doing stuff and they know what you're capable of. So it would make your collaboration much more easier. So this is just admirable how
00:20:48
Speaker
how the world works and how the world connects people with similar values and views at the same time. Yeah, it's very inspiring too. And you're also talking about tech and empathy. And I believe it should be some kind of special skill of balancing technical expertise.
00:21:08
Speaker
with empathetic leadership, which is probably crucial part for modern kind of leadership realm and for everyone involved in this kind of managerial or leadership roles.
Empathetic Leadership Framework
00:21:24
Speaker
Can you talk about that a bit? Yeah, so, you know, I truly believe that to be effective leaders,
00:21:32
Speaker
we need to apply empathy in our, especially as our world becomes more polarized and there's more challenges going on and even to be able to understand the diverse perspectives of our world so that we can be building better products. And so, you know, my favorite definition of empathy comes from Renee Brown. She's a vulnerability researcher
00:22:00
Speaker
And she talks about the fact that empathy has four components. The first is perspective taking. And that's really about being able to see the world as others see it and put yourself in their shoes.
00:22:15
Speaker
The second one is staying out of judgment. And it's about really reframing from judging somebody's situation or feelings and really having that accepting and open mindset where you can really listen. This is really like active listening comes in. The third is recognizing the emotions in others, right? It's about understanding and acknowledging
00:22:44
Speaker
their emotions and really validating them. And finally, the last step is being able to communicate that understanding of that person's feelings back to them. And so I think applying these four principles is crucial from a leadership perspective.
00:23:01
Speaker
And I think, so one of the things I've designed is the Empathetic Management Framework, which is like three different aspects of building empathy as a leader within an organization, right? And so given my passion for gaming, it has a little bit of a gaming flair to it. And so the first aspect is Player One. And this is really about
00:23:30
Speaker
being an inclusive leader yourself and really realizing that it starts with you. It starts with yourself defining like, how do I become more empathetic? How do I become more inclusive? And really taking ownership and committing to the fact that it's a journey and not a destination.
00:23:53
Speaker
And so really thinking about, hey, we're going to even slow down my thinking where I'm biases might occur. You know, where can I be more inclusive in meetings, for example, you know, where, how, how do I ensure that everybody's voices on the team are being heard? How do I ensure that we're really taking into account all the customer's perspectives?
00:24:17
Speaker
Then, now that we've gone from ourselves, now we need to look outside. The next step is really what I call multiplayer mode activated because this is around now taking those practices and things you've built in yourself and really applying them to your organization.
00:24:35
Speaker
And so how do you create values and a culture that are aligned with this inclusive and empathetic mindset? And, you know, I think so many companies create values that get put up on a wall, right? And then they only get reviewed every six months.
00:24:56
Speaker
maybe once a year, or maybe once a year, performance review time, right? And but instead, I say, create and define values that are tied to these inclusive and empathetic principles, and then define your ways of working in your company
00:25:16
Speaker
So that you are using these on a daily basis, right? So for example, this is something that we did really well at tile. We actually had our six core values and each one of them had an emoji that we had created with it. And so for example, in Slack, when we saw somebody using one of our core values, well, we post the emoji, right? And so then we recognize people for that.
00:25:41
Speaker
one, you know, we would have quarterly awards based on the core values in which who was actually amplifying them during our all hands every other week, each slide actually tied back to one of the core values, right? We defined like our inclusive meaning practices to ensure that we have ways of working, right? So it's, it's about how you're embodying this on a day to day practice.
00:26:08
Speaker
And then the third phase, and this is really where I see a lot of companies stopping here, but it's really where things really take off is what I call is theory craft and full effect. And that's really where
00:26:21
Speaker
we are tying inclusion and empathy to our goals and our higher level initiatives because you know what doesn't get if we're not measuring this if we're not holding our leaders accountable to these things these changes are never going to happen and so looking at things like pay equity for example across the organization or
00:26:47
Speaker
promotions by, you know, from different diversity lenses, like, these are all things that we can tie to goals, and actually make sure that we're measuring and executing on them. So that's, that's how I think that we can really apply empathy to the tech side of things. And like I said, if we really take empathy and look at it from the customer perspective, not just our team's perspective,
00:27:14
Speaker
we will build better products because we'll be really taking their needs into account. And customers will enjoy more using those products knowing that they are built for them with the empathy in mind and with their needs in mind and their emotions in mind too. Because as you mentioned, like validating their emotions is very important part of that.
00:27:38
Speaker
I'm totally a fan of empathy and thank you for describing that framework. That's really amazing and impressive how you are tidying this all together in the whole workflow of the organization, how you connect all the dots. Because often people talk about some empathy or empathetic lettership, just using them as words, but they probably never going so far.
00:28:05
Speaker
just to include it in their day-to-day kind of work style, in their day-to-day way of communicating, working with other people and conveying these messages constantly. It's very impressive. Yeah, very admirable. Thank you for sharing. And as we are moving towards the end of our conversation, I have probably the last question to you, and it's about adapting to change.
Advice for Staying Relevant in Tech
00:28:33
Speaker
The tech industry is constantly evolving and the world is evolving as well. And it looks like we're moving towards a lot of uncertainty, a lot of instability, not only in the world situation, all those conflicts arising around the world, but in the tech industry as well, which is already disrupted by all that AI innovations and
00:29:01
Speaker
on your technologists that are appearing out there. So what is your advice of staying on top of that and maybe stay relevant and effective in this uncertain time and the time of change? Yeah, I think first is building resilience, right? We are going to have a lot of change in tech. I truly believe that what a software engineer does in five years is going to look pretty different potentially
00:29:31
Speaker
from what a software engineer does today. But I think there's a lot of fear, especially because from around, I don't know, 2010 on or 2009 on, we've kind of seen that up until this last year or so, we've kind of seen tech just go kind of this constant upward trajectory.
00:29:50
Speaker
And now all of a sudden we're having things like layoffs and all these things. And there's just a lot of fear going up. But if we look back to the tech industry, right? This is not the first time things like this has happened. I remember in the early 2000s, I was working at Sun Microsystems and we had layoffs every six months, right? Same thing when I was working at NetApp. It was kind of part and parcel of the industry. And I think
00:30:17
Speaker
We've had such a long period of growth, growth, growth that there's a whole generation of folks who've never seen the ebbs and flows of tech. First, I think it's realizing that this doesn't mean the tech industry is going to fall off a cliff and they're all going to get fired. It's looking back and realizing
00:30:39
Speaker
And I mean, think about it even going even further back, right? I mean, people, engineers used to write programs on punch cards, right? Like nobody's doing anything on a punch card.
00:30:52
Speaker
That's a huge change. Yeah. Some of the first code that I wrote when I first got into being an engineer was writing like cell phone software, which was like two lines of text on a black and white phone screen, right? And so how did those of us thrive and have thrived to have continued being successful? It's through learning and realizing that
00:31:21
Speaker
things are going to evolve. So keep up with the learning, you know, and also be resilient and be curious and realize that, yes, things are going to change, but we are all adaptable human beings, right? And I mean, sometimes we get scared because our brain doesn't like change.
00:31:41
Speaker
Right. And we're going through a ton of changes you mentioned, not just in the industry, but in the world. And our brain is built to keep things constant. And so it's about really learning how to calm yourself down. And that's where, you know, earlier I talked a lot around like mindset and how that was so crucial in building my business.
00:32:03
Speaker
And I think one of the biggest things with adapting to change is also tuning in to yourself, you know, whether it's meditating, you know, creating a journaling practice, right? Some way where you're really able to like tune in and get yourself
00:32:23
Speaker
and ground yourself. And I think that is crucial for success. So I think mindset and learning and resilience are kind of my three cores on this adapting to change.
00:32:37
Speaker
makes a perfect sense makes a perfect sense especially uh the changes uh are gonna be here with us all the way so we need to just embrace that and live with that and try try to find the ways to uh get over so anyway embracing uncertainty right i think so as engineers we love to we like
00:33:04
Speaker
we love predictable things, right? I love control, right? But the big thing I've had to learn is to let go of control and embrace uncertainty and trust that like, in our own self power and in the universe that we've got this like we, we will be able to succeed and thrive and we have to just like let go of trying
00:33:28
Speaker
Exactly. We're here just to mitigate of something bad happening, but we cannot avoid it at all because it's how the world works.
Closing and Invitation to Connect
00:33:38
Speaker
Jesse Haynes, a leadership coach for Women in Tech and also advising companies on scaling their businesses, scaling teams. Thank you so much for joining me today, for having this amazing conversation and for everyone listening us. If you would be interested to talk to Jesse, don't hesitate to reach out. I will post a link in the profile in the comments.
00:34:03
Speaker
Any questions about scaling the companies reach out to JC or to myself as well. So I'm here can be a big help as well. Thank you so much, JC. And looking forward to seeing you again on any other like conferences or during some of the other public speaking opportunities. Yes, thank you. And thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Bye.