Hey. My name is Leah. I am the VP of creators and community at Skillshare.And what I really wanna talk about today is getting buy in because when I first became a manager, I operated under the principle that I needed to be the smartest person in the room and that a good leader was the person who knew the most. And I didn't really consider any nuance to this idea in relation to what direction I was managing. This is kind of the concept of what I operated by in all directions. With my direct reports, with my boss, with my peers. My goal was to be the smartest person in the room, and I thought having credibility as a leader really looked like this. And but what this actually then looked like on the inside was constantly feeling like the dumbest person in the room because I didn't know the most.

I was not confident in my directive down because I didn't have the right information. I was not confident in what I was speaking to upward, and I had this crazy impostor syndrome when I was getting in the room with peers. What I came to realize over time is that a huge part of your role in being a confident leader is not being someone who knows what to do. You can't. There is too much to know. It's someone who can figure out what to do. Being the right person to tie all the perspectives together, to be discerning about these perspectives, to get information, to consider risk, consider trade offs, and to enable a path forward that people believe in. And so if your goal as a leader is to determine and move the most effective strategy forward, there's three things you need in order to do that.

You need information from your team on the ground. What's actually happening within the community? What are users talking about? What nuance exists that you might not see? You need support from your peers, and you need money. And to get these things, you need buy in. So you need your team to give you the right information and be ready to do the work, to feel invested in doing the work. You need your peers to support what they're doing and to help you bring it to life, to make trade offs on their side. And you need your leadership to believe you're pursuing the right thing in order to fund it. And in order to get that buy in and move the most effective strategy forward, you need to build trust. Having credibility as a leader actually looks more like this.

Your team trusts that their voice is being heard, and you're using that to inform direction. Your peers trust your perspective and that they'll support or you'll support them, and the c suite trusts your decisions. And so the path to establishing that trust and getting that buy in looks really different depending on who you're managing. In my experience, being a woman in leadership means you're often expected to be both endlessly empathetic and immediately credible. You need to be convincing, but not aggressive. You need to be likable, but not soft. And while there are systemic issues that are real, I think part of playing that role effectively is recognizing what version of you each level requires or each direction requires.

And so there's no one way to do this, but there is a framework that has worked for me. When you're managing down, the goal is really getting information to develop the strategy and getting buy in from the team that's gonna do a lot of the work. And so the how is the how that I found success with is to be vulnerable and build psychological safety. I believe a team does their best work when they are clear on why they're being asked to do something. Your team is in the weeds way more than you. They should have context that you don't. So for your team to believe in what they're doing, they need to understand the broader context. They need to be invited to poke holes based on what they know better, and they need to help you shape the go forward plan.

So in this case, you're really speaking in intent. An example, often the c suite or the board might put a specific ask or directive in front of you, and it's your job to bring that to your team with your own opinion about it. Sometimes the CEO had this idea is the context. And then the invitation to poke holes to shape that work can look like, this is what I think we could do with this, but I don't know, or this is why I think this, but tell me why I'm wrong. What am I missing? What am I not thinking about? What's just niggling in your brain that I haven't considered here? Your team needs to feel safe to give that opinion and to have an opinion.

And seeing that you're human and you're working through different options and seeing how you're thinking about things or in understanding why a trade off isn't as simple as it might seem, bringing them along on that journey is so helpful in making them feel safe to participate and to feel part of the solution and therefore wanting to help do the work to make this succeed.

With your peers, your goal is really getting buy in to support that strategy, and part of that involves supporting their strategy. What you need are peers that will be thought partners, people that will wanna work with you and will help you make something happen. You're speaking an opportunity. It's not about convincing them to do something. It's convincing them to care about something. Here, this is here's why this is worth moving forward. And a huge part of that is recognizing what they already have on their plate and approaching the conversation as how do we make each other's lives easier by enabling a strategy that gets us both what we want. How can we explore our own KPIs and jobs to be done against each other's and see where we overlap and then amplify what each other is doing? How can we be a team rather than how can you help me do this?

And then having that information and buy in from your team, having support and buy in from your peers enable you to have the confidence in order to manage up. And your goal in managing up is really to get buy in to resource the strategy. It's not about being vulnerable at this point. It's about getting to the point and being explicitly clear about what you're recommending and what you don't know. I believe what leadership often needs from you is clarity of thought. So usually, they have less time. They don't wanna come along for the whole ride. They often just want to know where you got. Managing up does not require an invitation to poke holes the same way because they're gonna do that anyway. And in this case, they likely don't have as much information as you. They're not gonna be the ones that are doing the work.

So what they need to know is that you see the holes, and you've made a plan for them. I think a mistake that we can often make, I've certainly made this mistake many times, is feeling like we need to make something look better than it is. But I think where trust comes from upward is in someone fully believing that you will see and point out problems when they inevitably arise, and therefore, you're making the most informed decision with that in mind. There's not risk of you moving forward on something and not identifying when it's going wrong. They trust that you're gonna do that. You're speaking in impact in this case, so both quantitative dollars, and qualitative sentiment, and you're speaking directly to what, you know and what you don't know, the assumptions you're making, the risks that you believe are there, and why you still think this is the best path forward.

A way that I tend to think about this is often when I'm managing down, I wanna start by bringing people along on my thought process so they feel part of the journey, and then we can arrive somewhere together. That's how I think buy in really happens in that direction. But when you're managing up, you wanna act in the interest of time and clarity and start with where you landed and what it looks like there, then be prepared to bring them along on whatever leg of the journey they're interested in exploring more deeply. Ultimately, being a leader is not about knowing. It's about finding out. It's about working with people to get information, knowing how to tie all that info together into a plan, and building a plan that people want to support. And I deeply believe that building trust effectively in all of these different directions are key unlocks to enabling that to happen. That's all for today. So thanks y'all.

And I see there's another there's another chip recommendation in the in the chat. So thank you for that. If you've got any more, feel free to send them my way. I'm gonna copy and paste my LinkedIn again in here. I love talking about this sort of thing. I love hearing what type of management strategies have worked for people. So I definitely would love to connect and chat more about this, in the future.

Leah, you were so fast that I I couldn't believe, like, no one can can fit in this ten minutes, but I see that you were prepared and you had maybe your clock somewhere around you. Yeah. Thank you thank you for that talk. If anyone has has a question, please feel free to drop it. We have something around two minutes more. Your side is saying amazing session. I cannot agree more.

I really took the lightning talk to heart here and tried to speak as quickly as lightning. So sorry if that was too fast, but, hopefully, we got what we needed.

You you fit in the time frame just perfectly, even a a time for some questions. Please, everyone, don't be shy. Now it's the moment. In most of the sessions, you don't have that opportunity. But, yes, we we do encourage you to connect with CLIA, continue the conversation on LinkedIn. And okay. We have a question from IRSA. What's the most common mistake leaders make when trying to gain buy in?

Yeah. I think the most common mistake is convincing people that this is the right thing rather than under helping them under getting their perspective on why they should care about it. So I think in managing down, it can often be, here's what we need to do. And sometimes that's true. It's just here's what we need to do, and there's no debate for that. But I think when you can help your team be part of the solution, they're gonna be so much more willing to do the work creatively. And then I think when managing up and often managing in a lot of directions is we want we have this tendency to be like, trust me.

This is the best plan, and therefore try to hide what's wrong with it. And there's no such thing as a perfect plan. Everything has risks. Everything has holes and gaps in it. And I think when you are calling that out directly as this this is a problem that exists. This is a problem that could exist. Here's what I think can go wrong, and here's why I think we should do this anyway. People really trust that you're gonna spend their money correctly and stop spending it when things are going wrong. And I think it's I think that's where we tend to tend to go wrong is painting a better picture than exists. Yeah. That's that's my answer.

Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. We have a message from Lucy also, saying so many trade offs. Thank you, Leah. Indeed, thank you so much for joining us today, being here with Woma Tech Network. And everyone, see you in the other sessions. Thank you. So much.