What's your "Why?" for becoming a leader? with Joel Lindstrom

Joel Lindstrom [00:00:00]:
If you're a manager of a project, you have a more defined universe for which you're overseeing. You're doing a lot of the same things, but ultimately, when you're managing a team of people, you have a breadth and a universe that's bigger than just one thing. You're managing that one product. You have initiatives. You have goals. You have profit and loss for that thing. Got 20 different projects my team is doing. And if they start going sideways to a certain point, I have to step in.

Joel Lindstrom [00:00:26]:
So I need to be aware of a a lot more things going on. I've got other people on my team that help me help me with that, but, ultimately, I need to be able to answer for that. And when there's things that get escalated to a higher level, I'm expected to know kind of what's going on as well as be kind of advising them on how to bring it back to green, if you will.

Neil Benson [00:00:46]:
Good day, and welcome to Practice Leading, a podcast for emerging and curious practice leaders of Microsoft partner businesses. If you're anything like me with an unquenchable thirst for improvement and zero tolerance for BS, you've come to the right place. Hi. I'm Neil Benson, and this is my personal invitation for you to join me on my own journey of discovery. Together, we'll learn from innovators and investors, executives and entrepreneurs, business leaders, and business coaches that have already left their stamp on the Microsoft community and those that are exploring new and smarter ways of building their businesses. Whether it's groundbreaking innovations, hiring high performing teams, or the sheer force of will to disrupt our industry, each episode is a masterclass from the trailblazers who have already achieved significant success. Find practice leading on YouTube or visit practice leading.com and learn from the mentors you wish you had earlier in your career. Today, I'm learning from Joel Lindstrom.

Neil Benson [00:01:46]:
Joel is a senior director at Hitachi Solutions America responsible for the power platform, low code, and automation. Joel sold office equipment before starting his career in the Microsoft channel as a solution architect with Customer Effective. That was acquired by Hitachi Solution 7 years later and he's been growing his career there for over 10 years. I've known Joel for the past 15 or 16 years through the Microsoft MVP program which he stepped away from a couple of years ago. And I have Joel to thank for giving me a break as a podcaster in 2017. If you enjoy my podcast, you've got Joel to thank as well. And if you don't enjoy my podcasts, I don't know what you're doing here. Our conversation today focuses on the transition from being an individual contributor to becoming a leader.

Neil Benson [00:02:33]:
It's not just your leadership and your managerial skills that Joel thinks you need. It's the why. Why do you want to be a leader? Joel also asks, can you manage yourself? Suggesting that you need to be able to oversee your time, your own health, and your mindset before you can lead others. Compared to your role as an individual contributor, leaders often have calendars filled with meetings and they often need to be available to deal with urgent issues. Joel shares his tips for managing your time, handling meetings, and team communications when you have customers and team members across multiple global time zones. And Joel and I have slightly different points of view on whether practice leaders need to keep their certifications up to date. Let me know whether you're keeping your certifications current in the comments in YouTube or on the practice leading page on LinkedIn. Here's Joel Lindstrom.

Neil Benson [00:03:22]:
Joel, welcome to practice leading. Thanks for joining us. You've got a a really amazing lesson that you wanted to share with us. I'd love you to touch on your topic and and introduce your leadership lesson to the practice leading audience.

Joel Lindstrom [00:03:34]:
Yeah. So a little bit a little bit of my background. Yeah. I've worked in almost every role in professional services in my role for the last about 4 years has been leading the rapid solution development team at Hitachi Solutions North America, which includes an awesome team of people, you have many MVPs as well as people who aren't recognized as MVPs, but are, you know, just the best with the Power Platform. And the biggest lesson learned because leading up to it, you know, I was kind of I don't wanna say thrown into this role, but, you know, we started a new practice, which was a Power Platform team. I came from our Dynamics team, which had really established structure. It became clear after their Power Platform work was just growing exponentially that we need a team of people dedicated to that. So as, you know, as someone who at the time was an MVP and had been kinda beating the drum about Power Platform, I was fortunate enough to be given the privilege to kind of launch a new practice.

Joel Lindstrom [00:04:30]:
We call it the rapid solution development team focused on low code apps and automation. We started with 3 people and, you know, have grown to now a total of about 30 people between North America and and India. And so in that process, you know, I made a ton of mistakes. I never had any formal leadership or manager training and things like that. I've, I mean, I've read books and things like that, but I originally my original job was 10 years in sales, then I worked in delivery on our CRM team and doing Power Platform and then moved into leadership. So my kind of leadership training was looking at all the bosses I had had in the practice side. Looked in and said, what did I like? What did I not like? And if when I'm mentoring somebody now who wants to be move into a manager role or a practice lead role, you know, I make sure I touch on the good stuff or the the exciting stuff and the not so exciting stuff and really ask them, why do you want to be a manager? You wanna make more money. That's usually part of it.

Joel Lindstrom [00:05:30]:
You want to have a more impressive sounding job title to put on your LinkedIn profile. But really kind of why do you wanna do it? If you don't have an answer for that, you're not ready for it because it's not what you think. There's prestige sometimes that comes with it, but there's also extra responsibility. When you're an individual contributor, like a developer, like a consultant, like an architect, like even a project manager, you know, you're kind of responsible for you and your project. You know, if I'm doing my job, then I can go on vacation, then I can, you know, take off for the day. But when you're in charge of the team and the practice, you have a much heavier weight on your shoulders. I talk to people, like, what are you gonna do the first time you have to lay somebody off or or have a hard conversation on the annual review? You've got somebody who thinks they're the greatest developer ever, but they don't take feedback well. They're, you know, dropping the ball.

Joel Lindstrom [00:06:26]:
They're not updating their DevOps appropriately, etcetera. The hard thing for me is a lot of the people who came into the practice were friends of mine, people I've worked with, people that I've known from the community, etcetera. It's hard. It's not easy at all, especially, you know, some people have a, you know, really gung ho confrontational personality. That's not me. And having to have that hard conversation, especially, you know, if you have to let somebody go or or put somebody on a performance improvement plan or something like that. It's it's not a fun conversation to have.

Neil Benson [00:06:57]:
So I I love that question. You know, why do you wanna be a leader? And if you can't answer it, then you're not ready. There are some challenges. You you've mentioned a couple, like, having to give constructive feedback to people who, up until a few months ago, might have been your peers. Right? And, like you said, friends in in some cases. You've worked with them for a long time. I know there's a different dynamic in that relationship and then having to let somebody go. What are some of the joys that you find in leadership that you never had as an individual contributor, on the flip side?

Joel Lindstrom [00:07:21]:
I get more joy from seeing other people succeed than my own success, and that really is the case. I mean, it's like, first time you're awarded the MVP award, it kinda goes to your head and you start feeling you that does feel really, really good. But after you get the 4th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 15th time, it kind of, you know, kinda wears off a bit. And, you know, when I see people who came, especially they started, they were fairly junior and green in their capabilities, Or maybe they were a really good developer, but they couldn't they couldn't talk to a customer. They couldn't do business discovery, and now they're confidently leading that, having hard conversations with customers, confidently giving them recommendations. They're getting promoted. I've had people who were on my team as a manager who are who now have a higher level position than I do in my current organization. I love that because they've really blossomed and they've grown and kind of fulfilled their full potential.

Joel Lindstrom [00:08:18]:
I've seen people who were frankly struggling. And after working with them and coaching them through some, you know, hard projects, now they're they're leaders. Now they're leading leading customer decisions. Now they're being proactive. They're looking ahead and strong in the areas in which they frankly they frankly were. When I talk about learning lessons from other managers I've had other teams, you know, the self serving manager who was only worried about his or her bonus and wasn't really invested in the success of their team. They were the manager who would be, you know, would be offended when somebody got recognition on their team it wasn't them. I hated that when I had that experience myself.

Joel Lindstrom [00:09:00]:
And so even if somebody wants to leave my team and go work someplace else, I want to be able to still be cordial with them. And if that that leads to their greater success, I'm happy for them.

Neil Benson [00:09:13]:
You know, in an ideal world, a manager's or a leader's bonus would be tied to the success of their team. But sometimes those incentives aren't quite aligned, and you do get some some strange behaviors where, you know, kind of counter cultural behaviors.

Joel Lindstrom [00:09:26]:
I mean, I've got people that had twice as many people attend their Power Platform conference sessions than came to my sessions. And you know what? I'm perfectly happy for them. I'm I I wouldn't wanna speak in a room with a 1000 people myself. So, you know, better better them than me.

Neil Benson [00:09:42]:
Yeah. Sometimes we we see external recognition, like an MVP award. Right? It could be granted to a member of your team. What do you do in your role to recognize people, internally? Do do you have a similar kind of awards? You know, there's not a we can't just hand out promotion like like candy, but what other ways do you go about recognizing people who have done a great job or or achieved a significant milestone in their career and your team?

Joel Lindstrom [00:10:07]:
So I think I think there's there's a couple of things. You know, our company does have an annual internal awards. And that that means a lot, especially when it's your your peers are nominating you for that. But when we have a customer that gives positive feedback, I send that out to the team. And one of the things I do every every Monday, you know, we used to you know, we we have team meetings, but I found with a dispersed team, it's hard to get everybody in a meeting. Everybody will have different time zones and will have conflicts for that meeting. So I try to send a a Monday morning message. You record a short video or send a send an update on Teams and call out those people that have gotten kudos from customers or just done something really, really good.

Joel Lindstrom [00:10:51]:
And there's a there's a book I recommend called punished by rewards. I don't rec I don't remember the person who wrote it, but it illustrates how reward systems and bonus plans and things like that can actually be counterproductive, especially when there's a monetary monetary. Now I'm a firm believer in you should reward people for work that they do. But a sincere kudos well placed, you know, goes a long way to recognizing people for what they are doing. And, you know, to me, I think, you know, the boss saying that is good, but I find it's more meaningful when one of my peers says it about me because, you know, I'm kind of the I have to say nice things about the team when your colleague says it. That also, to me, has the benefit of creating a atmosphere within our team of people helping each other, people looking out for each other, people noticing each other, not just everybody being in a self serving mode.

Neil Benson [00:11:42]:
Yeah. I I love that idea. In fact, a friend of mine who works for a big mining company here in Australia, They got tens of thousands of employees, and they've got a like an internal I don't know what like, it's like a freaking flyer points system. So everybody gets a bundle of points, and and your job is to give those away to people who've done a great job. So you're recognizing your your coworkers. And so he's, you know, he's bought a new coffee machine with the thank you points he's accumulated. And and he loves it. Like, it's a it's a real pride, of place on his kitchen countertop is is the coffee machine.

Neil Benson [00:12:13]:
Like, he could have bought 1, but having earned enough thank you points from his coworkers to to buy 1, meant meant so much more to him. So do do you have a do you have a thank you points scheme inside Hitachi?

Joel Lindstrom [00:12:24]:
I don't, but maybe maybe we should. I've worked for other companies that that have done that done that in the past. You know, I think, people like me might misuse that and just make a pact with our colleagues to, like, hey, give me a bunch of thank you points so I can get some stuff here.

Neil Benson [00:12:40]:
I really need a new coffee machine. I read a a survey recently. Well, it was an experiment where individual contributors in an organization were given a chance at a leadership role. It was a I think it was a 3 month rotation, and you could take on a management role. They give you a little bit of training, like a day's training, not not too much, but they thrust you into this this job for a few months. And at the end of it, you have the option of stepping back into an individual contributor role or continuing on getting some further training, and furthering your career as a manager. And 3 quarters of the people, after a 3 month management role, said, nope. Not for me.

Neil Benson [00:13:14]:
I'm gonna step back into an IC role.

Joel Lindstrom [00:13:16]:
I I can I can believe that? Yeah. Because one of the things as well is not just the parts I've talked about before, but if a fire breaks out with one of your team's projects or something like that, it's on you, ultimately. Things roll up to the the practice lead, and you have to step in. Even if your day is already full, if you have a day full of meetings, you have to make time to to make that a priority. And I think that's the kind of thing that it's just different than if you're an individual contributor. If you're working in one project focused on one customer, you'll have stress. But the plate spinning, you you know the guy at the circus keeping all the plates spinning is is really kind of what it feels like because there's unpredictability to it, and you schedule your days. But I don't know how often my day I plan it to be this, and it turns into spending on time on that.

Joel Lindstrom [00:14:03]:
And then the thing that I was going to do, such as write a contract for somebody or review something, I still have to do that. It's just squeezing that out of that out of that. So I think that's I think that's a good idea. And I'm a I'm a big fan of try it before you buy it. In other words, you know, before I recommend somebody to be promoted to the next step up, I want to give them the chance to be able to do those things beforehand because how do you know you're good at it?

Neil Benson [00:14:30]:
You

Joel Lindstrom [00:14:30]:
know, I had been promoted to roles that I hated, and it's not a good it's not a good fit for for the company. It's not a good fit for you either. Puts a lot of stress on you and you're like, thought I would like this, but I really don't. So what that looks like is, you know, as a somebody who's not in a leadership or management role, leading an leading an initiative and taking ownership, showing you can do that, giving them the power to delegate to others and see an initiative through to the end. And while it's not that role, it gives them a chance to kinda try it on and say, do you like that? And you're right. Afterwards, somebody might say, you know what? I think I'll just stay as an individual contributor. I can rule my domain here and be happy doing this. I know I could do that if I wanted to maybe down the road, and that was part part with with my I had some personal challenges, you know, with my spouse's health around 2012 that, you know, again, at that time, I was thinking, hey.

Joel Lindstrom [00:15:24]:
I should make a career change, but I thought, you know what? With all this going on, I really can't do it right now. So I put that off for about 3, 4 years, and then I was able to more fully, you know, fill that role. And it would have been a terrible thing, a terrible fit at the time if I had originally followed that. But, you know, you've you see your your colleagues or that guy that got hired at the same time you do. You see them getting promoted and advancing. You feel like, what's wrong with me? I should be doing that. And that's where taking a longer view is is good. Yeah.

Joel Lindstrom [00:15:55]:
You don't wanna stagnate in your current role, but you have to be realistic with, okay, you got a lot of young kids you have to take them to school every morning and and things like that. Is this really do you need this additional stress at this point? Or could you put it off or work work towards that? Or maybe find another way or another career path to advance and then and then be able to still achieve that goal because you can still you can still find success. You can still be fulfilling and advance in your career.

Neil Benson [00:16:22]:
One of the things that struck me there, you were talking about managing an initiative. Is there a difference, do you think, between a manager of things, of projects, of marketing campaigns, of methodologies, and a leader who's got a people management responsibility. Do do you make a distinction between those two styles or two types of management?

Joel Lindstrom [00:16:42]:
In my world, there is. Because if you're a manager of a project, even a large project, you have a more defined universe for which you're overseeing. You're doing a lot of the same things, but ultimately, when you're managing a team of people, say you're managing a team of 20, 25 people, you have a a breadth and a universe that's bigger than just one thing. You're a project manager or product manager, you're managing that one product. You have initiatives, you have goals, you have profit and loss for that thing, but it doesn't have the unpredictability of got 20 different projects my team is doing, and if if they start going sideways to a certain point, I have to step in. So I need to be aware of a lot more things going on. I've got other people on my team that help me help me with that. But, ultimately, I need to be able to answer for that.

Joel Lindstrom [00:17:31]:
And when there's things that get escalated to a higher level, I'm expected to know kind of what's going on as well as be kind of advising them on how to bring it back to green, if you will. And so I think there's but I think if you looked at those, there'd be unique stresses to either one. I think it's just the unpredictable factor is higher with something like the practice lead.

Neil Benson [00:17:53]:
Yeah. I also find that they, managing a project is a lot more in my control. There's tasks and there's, you know, things that need to get done. There's reports that need to get generated. And, of course, there's a few meetings. But when you're leading people, that's when the really difficult conversations come up. I find that those aspects a lot more challenging than just, leading a

Joel Lindstrom [00:18:13]:
thing, running a thing. The temptation for a practice lead is, you know, whatever is the the hottest fire gets all your attention. You know, that one project that is, you know, that is having the most problems, like but when then there's these other things that were imagine things on fire. The smoke is starting to rise over here, but you don't see that because you're so for focused on the inferno happening over here. But then that becomes a problem. So it's it's kinda be able to handle that. Another thing I would say when I talk to people who want to move to management is, like, how are you at managing yourself? Because you can't be a good manager of people if you can't manage yourself. How are your personal habits? Are you getting enough sleep at night? Are you can you keep track of tasks that you need to do? Are you seeing things through to the end? Are you taking feedback? Because if you somebody and I've seen this.

Joel Lindstrom [00:19:01]:
Somebody who is has terrible personal habits, never gets any exercise, never gets any sleep, and I'm talking to someone who hasn't always done the best in those categories, but I've had to learn that if you if you can't manage yourself, you aren't ready to manage other people.

Neil Benson [00:19:17]:
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. There's a lot of personal development has to happen.

Joel Lindstrom [00:19:20]:
Yeah. Ex exactly. And it's just it's just your weaknesses will be amplified. Your strengths will be too, but the things you're weak at will become amplified. Now instead of it being just you and your work, it's amplified against across many more people.

Neil Benson [00:19:36]:
Yeah. Speaking for myself, tracking the stuff that I need to do in a good task management system and having the persistence just to keep it up to oh, they're not even the persistence, but the habit of keeping it up to date, checking it off, adding new stuff to it instead of just hoping I can remember what I need to do today. That that's something I really need to work on. It's been a a little bit of a struggle for for a number of years. So, I'm I'm continually working on that. Maybe that that needs to be the next course I take.

Joel Lindstrom [00:20:01]:
But I've been at the extreme other side where I my temptation, like a lot of people who work with business applications, is you're too wrapped up in your systems. And I've gotten deep into inbox 0 or something else like that that you've then you find yourself, all your time is consumed around your system, and you're not doing the thing. And so I've kind of had to mod constantly modify that and guard against my tendencies to geek out on the whatever my task system is and just focus on what's the most important stuff. Am I doing that? And just accept that you're never gonna get everything done. Your work will expand at the time you give it, and that day may come occasionally where your task list is empty, but it's not. There'd be the more your you clear your email inbox out, the more responses you get, which fill it up faster. And so it's it's an infinite game and just need to accept that and do the best you can. One of the,

Neil Benson [00:20:54]:
challenges I find moving into a a management role is the lack of big blocks of time available to do good work, to to think hard about a problem and get deep into something. There's a lot more meetings. Right? Just that's just the nature of it. A lot more people to check-in with and catch up with, and that fills up your calendar. And you and you're lucky if you can get in half an hour or an hour to sit down and and think about a campaign or a strategy or a plan. Do you find that as well? And how have you handled that challenge?

Joel Lindstrom [00:21:21]:
I do find that, and I've found some ways that are more successful than others. My first plan was to block off focus time every day. And since I cover North America, I've got customers in every time zone in North America, and so there's not really a perfect time, you know, to do that. I do generally try and avoid scheduling things before, like, 9:30 in the morning my time. And that way, I can I can start a little bit earlier than that? The other thing is it's so tempting to me to give up on sleep just to do a little bit more. Like, hey. If I if I stay up an hour later, I can clear out my email. I can think about this, but you shortcut the fuel for tomorrow.

Joel Lindstrom [00:22:02]:
And by by Thursday, Friday, you're ready to fall over dead. And so forcing myself to get enough sleep, something that's a huge problem at night, isn't a problem in the morning 9 times out of 10. And so I found that for me, it's you know, especially as I grew from a small practice, I was very hands on. Delegation is not second is not second nature for me. I've had to, you know, force myself to do that a little bit more and really kind of prioritize what I put the most of my attention on. And so being able and that also, to me, gives other people the opportunity to get experience and grow too. And so looking for ways to to delegate that. I recommend strongly Cal Newport's books like Digital Minimalism and other things like that.

Joel Lindstrom [00:22:50]:
In my case, you know, in his world, he's an academic, so he can he can say, you know, I'm not answering any emails today. I don't have that luxury. But, you know, I would say be cognizant of how you're adding to the problem. Like, if you have a culture that's very meeting saturated, are you, like, scheduling all your emails to arrive at somebody's inbox? Do you suddenly get 20 emails from you? And, you know, you're adding stress to them, which leads to more meetings and that that sort of thing. I'm a believer that the average meeting is too long. It doesn't need to be 30 or 60 minutes. We just choose that because that's the default. Have a 15 minute meeting.

Joel Lindstrom [00:23:26]:
I try and I've I've done every every permutation. I've tried grouping all my 1 on ones on one day and spreading them across multiple days. There's not a perfect answer for that. Put them all on one day, that's really stressful and a lot of switching between things. Where I've settled there is spreading them out with, you know, with a couple per day. And, you know, some people on the team don't need a weekly check-in, some people are fine with a biweekly check-in, but just making sure you are you're staying in touch close enough, you know, to do that. The other thing that that helped me, and I used to be really all into the productivity hacks, but then I realized it was just, you know, moving the moving the chairs around. But one thing that is that I realized was there's things that are urgent that I have to do, such as if a problem with a customer, estimating new project, checking in on how a project's going, I need to do that.

Joel Lindstrom [00:24:19]:
But then there's the second wave of things that are important to keep the system going or avoid problems from having. The proactive check ins, you know, checking things I need to approve, that kind of thing. One thing I've done there, and then, you know, it'll become a challenge. Like, if you put them all on your main calendar, it will cause a problem because it looks like your time's all filled when it's really not, and I do need to be available for people on my team's time. But I create a secondary calendar for the things to remember because I don't like to put those on task list because they're not really tasks. They're things I just need to do on a regular basis. So I have an approval list I need to check probably every other day. So by creating another calendar that I display in Outlook along with my main one, I can have a reminder to say, check the approval list or, you know, do these 5, 6 other things, the proactive things, like, hey.

Joel Lindstrom [00:25:09]:
Record the message I'm gonna send to team on Monday. That, again, that way, it doesn't fill up my calendar. And that way, then try to get ahead on those things. So, like, it's Thursday. I should be planning what am I gonna say to my message to the team. And, you know, I have to give an update to my management on Monday, so I don't wanna wait till wait and then be thinking about on Sunday or Monday morning. I wanna do that at the end of the week. And if you can keep that going, it's not perfect, but it does make things a little bit more sustainable.

Joel Lindstrom [00:25:39]:
So I I have

Neil Benson [00:25:39]:
a similar system. I use a a tool called Motion, and I add my tasks to it. So and it's like a task list, and you know, you can group those into projects. But every task gets added to your calendar as a free event, free time event. And then if I complete the task in my task list, it disappears. If I don't, it gets rescheduled. And so Motion is constantly rescheduling all the tasks in my task list based on the priority of the task or the project or the deadline, and and it just works a couple of days ahead. So it fills up my calendar today and tomorrow with stuff I need to get done.

Neil Benson [00:26:12]:
But if anybody else looks at my calendar, that time's available.

Joel Lindstrom [00:26:15]:
Yeah. I will not motion, but using systems like that. I get anxious when I see 3 things at the same time even if there one's a free one. It just feels overwhelming to me. So I don't really like that, but I think I could see how that would that would work well for others.

Neil Benson [00:26:32]:
Yeah. I've got Superware, which is my full time business. I've got customary, which is my side hustle. I've got my family calendar. I've got kids activities. You've got a

Joel Lindstrom [00:26:40]:
lot of stuff. For sure.

Neil Benson [00:26:41]:
Yeah. There's a lot of calendars going on. We all juggle with that. Alright. Joel, is there anything else you wanted to share about, that decision? That, you know, should I become can I become a leader? When you were going through that decision like 4 or 5 years ago, any regrets, any, surprises that people should consider before they make the leap?

Joel Lindstrom [00:26:59]:
You know, I I don't think, not necessarily regrets or mis or mistakes, but I would leave you with one other of my philosophies and lessons learned. When I was in sales, I had a you know, I I I had managers who would pound us over the head to dial the phone. We we sold maintenance software, and I was on the inside sales team. They were like, dial, dial, dial. I want you to make a 100 calls a day, but they weren't willing to do it themselves. Same thing. I've had I've had managers who would, like, pound us over the head, like, you need to get certifi you need to get certified. Get your certification update, but you look at their list.

Joel Lindstrom [00:27:34]:
They have no certifications. I'm a firm believer that as a manager, you shouldn't ask your team to do anything you're not worth you're not willing to do yourself. Not that you're gonna do their jobs for them, but, you know, it's like, that's why I fight against the move into management and forget everything technical that you know. No. You should you should be able to, you know, talk to customers about the technology that you're using. Not that you're not that you're as good as your every developer on your team, but to have, to be have integrity with your team. And, you know, that also, I think, protects you from being an out of touch manager that is overbearing and and being unreasonable. Because if I'm not willing to ask myself to work a little bit later to solve a problem, what right do I have to ask them to do it is my philosophy.

Neil Benson [00:28:23]:
So just just to clarify, are you saying that a good manager keeps their technical skills and certifications up to date to set an example for their team? Or that they when they were an individual contributor, they were the type of person to keep their technical skills and certifications up to date?

Joel Lindstrom [00:28:37]:
Well, I mean, I just I just scheduled the AI 900 and the PL 500 exams for myself. So, yes, I'm asking my team to get certified. I'm gonna get certified too.

Neil Benson [00:28:48]:
Yeah. Right. Alright. Well, good good for you. I I have to admit, that's not a practice I've kept up to date with. So I I I do I do take, training courses. So we did, we did the demo to win demonstration training recently, and I took part in that. And I did my demo.

Neil Benson [00:29:03]:
I'm taking some industry training around financial services because we're doing a lot of work in that sector. So I'm taking a training course in there. So now I do like to set an example of continuous learning.

Joel Lindstrom [00:29:13]:
Well, and especially here's here's what I would say though, especially working with Power Platform. You know, somebody who has developed or worked with the technology 5 years ago, especially with everything in the Copilot studio. If you're not doing that and you're managing the team, especially if you're involved in scoping projects and validating projects going successfully, that's very hard to do if you don't know how the technology works. Then you're basically just a middle manager.

Neil Benson [00:29:39]:
Yeah. Alright. Good advice. I'll I'll take that on board and maybe need to do a couple of certs.

Joel Lindstrom [00:29:43]:
Go get certified, Neil Benson.

Neil Benson [00:29:46]:
Copilot Studio is definitely what I need to brush up on, so thanks for that hint the nudge. Joel, thanks so much for joining us in Practice Leading. It's great to catch up with you.

Neil Benson [00:29:56]:
Thanks to Joel Lindstrom for joining me today on practice leading. My takeaways from today's conversation with Joel are revisiting my why. Why did I take on leadership responsibility? A question I ask myself almost every day. And I'm gonna help others find their why as I support their promotion into a leadership opportunity and try and find a temporary opportunity for them so we can both assess whether leadership is the right move for their career. I'm going to read and reread some of Cal Newport's books on digital minimalism and deep work and continue to find some ways of optimizing my time. There are links in the episode description to both of those books. I'd also love to copy Joel's idea and send a Monday morning note to my team reflecting on the achievements of the previous week and the priorities upcoming for the new week. I think that's an awesome idea.

Neil Benson [00:30:44]:
Finally, technical certification for leaders. Well, I think I'm gonna pass on Joel's challenge of keeping my certifications up to date. I do believe that leaders should set an example of continual learning. But you know what? Our business has got a CFO with qualifications I'll never have. And I think it's the same for our delivery team now. They've got technical certifications I'll never have either. Thanks once again, Joel. I hope you enjoyed this episode of practice leading and found it just as inspiring as I did.

Neil Benson [00:31:13]:
Who would you like to hear from on a future episode? What leadership topic would you like to learn more about to help you scale your Microsoft practice? Send me a LinkedIn message and let me know. Your feedback helps me create the show that you find most useful. Until then, keep experimenting.