Why Mentorship Matters with Lisa Utzschneider
Mentor-mentee relationships can be extremely beneficial. For a mentee, having someone more senior advocating on your behalf can accelerate your career forward. For a mentor, building a connection with someone junior can ensure your stamp on the company doesn’t retire when you do. While figuring out how to build this relationship can be tricky, Integral Ad Sciences CEO Lisa Utzschneider has become an expert in the craft.
Meet Lisa
Lisa Utzschneider has held high leadership positions across the tech industry, such as Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft. As an East Coaster at companies that were predominantly based in the West Coast, Lisa got used to not only being the only female voice, but also being the only person joining the meeting remotely. Through her experiences, she learned the importance of having someone with a seat at the table willing to advocate for you.
In this episode, host Gautam Mukunda speaks with Lisa about the value of mentor-mentee relationships, how to initiate building this bond and how to ensure everyone gets the most out of it.
Timestamps
[1:43] “The mentor-protege relationship is a unique and uniquely valuable one.”
[3:54] “I am very cognizant of the fact that there are extroverts and there are introverts.”
[8:26] “I really make an effort to check my ego at the door.”
[12:22] “I developed sort of tight bonds and lifelines with headquarters, with peers and bosses who were in that room.”
[14:45] “Lean in with some sort of recommendation or idea."
Transcript
Gautam (00:00):
If you want to be remembered as a leader, you have to train the leaders of tomorrow.
Lisa (00:04):
I can't emphasize enough how important it is to pull them on the sidelines, look them in the eye and say you have what it takes.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda, a leadership podcast for a changing world, an original podcast from Nasdaq.
Lisa (00:25):
I will never forget the moment when I hosted a conference for the account management team. We doubled the size of the org. The team was humming, built an incredible culture. I got off that stage and I'll never forget it. She sat me down, she looked me right in the eye and she said, "Lisa, you have what it takes. You have what it takes, and the sky is the limit for you."
Gautam (00:52):
When Lisa Utzschneider shared this moment with her mentor, Joanne Bradford, she had just taken over the account management team at Microsoft. Today, she's the CEO of Integral Ad Science where she strives to give the gift of that moment to her teams.
Lisa (01:07):
It's something that I coach my team today that when you have what I call high potential employees that really have what it takes when they're making an incredible impact on the company, on the business, on customers, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to pull them on the sidelines, look them in the eye and say, "You have what it takes. You have what it takes. I believe in you, and here's how I'm going to work with you to develop your skills."
Gautam (01:38):
In business, politics, sports, academia, or anywhere really, the mentor protege relationship is a unique and uniquely valuable one. Cultivating a relationship with someone senior to you can make or break your goals, while building a connection with someone junior can ensure that your stamp as a leader remains on the organization and its people long after you've left. But how do you find someone you can share that kind of a bond with? Where and how do you even take the first step?
Lisa (02:09):
There's got to be some give and take. And the other thing I used to, and I still do coach employees, I did a lot during Amazon and Yahoo, and this is something I learned early in my career, is even pre- pandemic, I mean, as a sales rep at Microsoft, did I get to interact a lot with C-level executives at Microsoft? Not really. But when I did get to interact with them even in an elevator, I wouldn't talk about things like, "Oh, did you watch the US Open last night?" I would share things like, "Hey, so-and-so. I'm Lisa Utzschneider, this is my role at the company. Here are the three things I've done to make an impact on the business."
(02:59):
Be prescriptive, introduce yourself. I know it sounds very basic. And even here at IS, I see employees, I had an intern over the summer in the elevator, introduced herself who she is, "Here's the project I'm working on. I'm a junior at this university. Thank you so much, Lisa, for the opportunity." So making the most of those interactions. It can't just fall on the shoulders of the leaders. There's got to be give and take that the employees also make the most of the interactions.
Gautam (03:31):
That's a very direct interaction, I think, for a lot of people to be really uncomfortable, especially in an elevator in that short span of time. How do you coach people to sort of take their destiny in their hands and do that? I got to say, it would not be natural for me to do that in that first interaction. My wife describes me as pathologically extroverted. So how do you get people to do that? How do you train them and teach them?
Lisa (03:51):
Well, the other thing I do is I'm very cognizant of the fact there are extroverts and there are introverts. Very aware. And I talk about it openly. So for example, and I don't want to generalize, but often engineers or data scientists, they can tend to be more introverted. So I did a round table with our Paris team two weeks ago on Zoom, and they provided a list of questions. That's another way to do it, is you have them put together their questions in advance so you get the dialogue going. Or I've had round tables on Zoom where I say, "Hey, I realize it might make you uncomfortable to ask the question openly in Zoom. Feel free to throw it in the chat. Feel free to throw it in Slack. I will make no judgment. There's no judgment here." It's almost like developing a muscle, but as a leader, you've got to be very diligent about it and authentic about it and create that culture of being very transparent in answering the questions.
Gautam (05:01):
Has someone in your office had that sort of interaction with you recently?
Lisa (05:03):
So I've seen over the summer there were several very senior engineering leaders, introverts, incredible talent, incredible impact to the company, came into the office and I made sure to say hello, welcome them, thank them for coming in. And then I was working for the day. I'm not exaggerating. Three times they swung by my office to share something with me or to say goodbye at the end of the day. So again, just starting, initiating that connection and dialogue and being open to the employees and understanding the way I get to the finish line could be very different from the way employees get to the finish line.
Gautam (05:59):
Interactions that skip a level in an organization can be particularly powerful because the junior person often sees their superior as a vision of their own future if they stay. They look at their boss's boss essentially and say, "If I stay here, I will turn into that person. Do I want to?"
(06:17):
An article in the journal, Parameters, written by Everett Spain, Archie Bates, and me looked at thousands of army lieutenants and their battalion commanders and found that individual leaders had a powerful effect on whether their lieutenants chose to stay in the army, and that this effect was particularly important for high potential lieutenants. The battalion commanders didn't just have an effect when they were on duty either. Everything about how they conducted themselves influenced their juniors at work, in the field, and in life. Leaders, in other words, can shape their legacy at every moment, even when they're not thinking about it. It may seem small, but the potential ripple effects of a simple interaction in a hallway or a cafeteria or an elevator can be huge. It might be how you find your next mentor. But after you've found that person, what then? How can you be a good steward of the legacy you've built together and make sure your ideas survive into the next generation?
Lisa (07:16):
So with my senior leadership team, again, I'm such a believer in feedback is a gift, and that means with each other too. So as the senior leadership team, we have a weekly meeting together. We have offsites. We are working with an external coach. But if we want to walk the talk as leaders, we need to have the candid tough conversations with each other and develop that muscle of giving and receiving feedback, giving the tough feedback. If we're not aligned as a team, openly discussing it. Don't leave leadership meetings where the elephant is still sitting in the room and we haven't addressed it. But again, it's like working a muscle. And the more you do it, the better you get at it.
Gautam (08:07):
When was the last time someone gave that kind of tough feedback to you?
Lisa (08:09):
Our most recent... I can't remember the date, but in the last two months in a leadership meeting, they give me direct feedback. I'm very open to it, whether it's in front of the group or leaders will do it one- on-one.
Gautam (08:24):
So how did that make you feel?
Lisa (08:26):
I really make an effort to check my ego at the door. I'm very aware of the fact that one important way I'm going to grow as a CEO is receiving the tough feedback. I can only count a handful, probably more than a handful, of people who really can give me the tough, tough feedback, and I make every effort to be open to it and to course correct when needed and to thank them for the feedback.
Gautam (09:02):
I'll say I find this particularly fascinating because I hear leaders say this, that they want feedback and they often say that the culture that people grow up and the culture of [inaudible 00:09:12], it's such that even when I'm open to it, people don't provide it to me. And so how do you signal clearly incredibly to your people that, "I actually do want this"?
Lisa (09:22):
One thing I do and I've often done in the past is for example, if I have a big presentation, if I have a big meeting, if it's a global town hall and I have a difficult message to deliver, I'll pull aside one or two folks and say, "Hey, I'm working on X, Y, Z. Can you give me the feedback?" Sometimes I have them give me the feedback real time in Slack or text. Real time. And I course correct real time and there's no judgment. That part is really just so clear to me. The sooner you check your ego at the door, the better, the easier it gets.
Gautam (10:05):
I want to probe on this a little bit because I would always tell a CEO to do that when I work with them. When I've been in a leadership role, I've tried to do that. But what I say is it's much easier for me to say to do it than to do it. When you think about how you... And we all... You know what I mean. Nobody wants to hear they've made a mistake. Nobody wants to hear, especially not in public. What's the specific approach you have to being like, "Okay. As Ray Dahlia would say, I'm going to get through the defensive reaction."
Lisa (10:28):
I look at it as an athlete's mentality, right?
Gautam (10:32):
Were you an athlete?
Lisa (10:33):
I was an athlete. And I still work out. I mean, exercise is really important for me and it's a gift. If I have employees direct reports, I see it as a gift that if I have employees who have the courage to come to the CEO and say, "Hey, here's some feedback. Are you open to it? Here it is." And then more importantly, what I do is when I really make the effort to course correct and change the behavior, I circle back with that employee and I say, "Hey, did you see improvement here?" The other thing too is being open with my board. It's not just employees. We're a public company. I report into a public board. And again, approaching the board, the engagement with the board that they feel like they can give me the direct candid feedback too, because again, athlete's mindset, it will only make me stronger, fitter, more competitive as the CEO and be able to perform at my best, again, for the shareholders and employees.
Gautam (11:47):
That's unique for me. The following up on feedback thing is something I haven't heard before. What gave you that idea?
Lisa (11:53):
You know what gave me the idea is, so I mentioned it before, but in my 20 years, Microsoft, Amazon, then Yahoo, I always was based in New York. I was always remote. This was pre Zoom, I'm going to date myself. This was good old-fashioned conference calls. So my boss, headquarters, all of the supporting teams, everyone was on the West Coast. I was also typically often the only female dialing into these calls. So it was really important early in my career that I developed sort of tight bombs and lifelines with headquarters, with peers, and bosses who were in that room, I wasn't physically in the room, they were, and being very explicit with them, "Here are the things I'm working on. Can you give me the feedback right after the call if you see me improving here?" And the other thing is showing reciprocity, so then I would share, then I'd have peers come to me, "Hey Lisa, I'm working on this. Can you give me the feedback?"
(13:04):
"Absolutely, I'd be happy to."
Gautam (13:08):
Mentorship is at its heart about leaving a legacy, making sure the ideas and philosophies you've worked so hard to put into practice don't retire when you do. With that in mind, what are the leaders of tomorrow looking for in a mentor and how can today's leaders provide it?
Lisa (13:27):
My guidance when it comes to mentorship is that it needs to be led by the individual. And my concern is when I see these generations coming out of college, many of them, they're waiting for it to happen. They're waiting. And it doesn't work that way.
(13:47):
My guidance for anyone coming out of college or even earlier, if you are working in a company and you see a leader that you would love to be mentored by, don't send the email saying, "Hey, Lisa, this is who I am. I'd love for you to mentor me." Write a one-pager. Write a one-pager saying, "Hey, Lisa, here are three ideas I have that could help the company. Here's a product idea. Here's an idea on how to improve our culture." Guess what? Any employee that reaches out to me with specific ideas about the business, I'm going to set up time with you. And then guess what will happen? The mentoring will start. It doesn't have to be this formal, "This is what we're going to coach you on." And I've just found that a very powerful tool with executives is lean in with some sort of recommendation or idea that can help customers and help the business.
Gautam (14:58):
What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see. At least that's according to Lin- Manuel Miranda's character in Hamilton. And that's true for much of a leader's legacy, because many decisions you make have effects that don't appear for years or even decades. Mentorship though is one place where you can see your legacy, or at least its beginnings right away. Every person who flourishes because you took the time to mentor them, every time someone speaks up and makes your organization's decisions just a little bit better, that's a legacy that flowers right before your eyes.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
World Reimagined with Gautam Mukunda, a leadership podcast for a changing world, an original podcast from Nasdaq.