As you all may have seen in the agenda, what I'm talking about today is the leader identity. Now what do I mean by the leader identity?Really this is about what is the identity shift or set of identity shifts that's required when you are moving into your first leadership role. Now, some of you dialed into this, might already be in your first leadership role. Some of you may be further along and have led teams many times before and maybe have more experience in that. Some of you may not be in a leadership role as yet and may want that in the future. But regardless of where you are in your leadership journey, we're going to talk about what those shifts are that are required for that.

And I see everyone is already using the chat to drop in comments. Please continue to do that. I love seeing your thoughts, your reactions throughout. There might even be one or two places where I explicitly ask for for you to drop in your thoughts, so, please do that. Alright? So talking about the leader identity, let me actually start by taking you all back in time. I'm gonna paint a very quick picture of one of my early leadership roles years and years ago. Wasn't my very first one, but it was an early one. I had, moved from a a different role into a new company, and I inherited a team of three. So those folks, of course, had been at the company longer than I had. Two of them were best friends with each other.

They were early in their careers and, you know, best friends with each other, meaning chatting at the desks, really, really getting along well, working well together. One person who had been there since the company started, so he had all of the relationships and the knowledge of the company culture and, was maybe a little resistant to feedback because he was like, I I know this place better than you do. Right? I also hired in a few more people, another early career professional, and somebody more experienced than me, actually, who had been doing doing this longer than I had. So we ended up with this motley crew of five people. One of the folks that I hired, the the one who was earlier in her career, was really struggling to adapt to the company culture and to break into that that little click, if you will, of of the two who were getting along really well and just kinda wasn't fitting in in general and was feeling a little lack of belonging.

And the person who was more experienced who I hired, was doing great. They were they were really kind, really valued. Everybody loved working with them. And they were, I started to notice, quietly burning out by taking on too much. So all of this is going on around me in one of my early leadership roles as the company is going through, a reorg because they just acquired a smaller company. My team went through a reorg. The VP of the team transitioned out. My own manager changed twice. So on top of all the team complexities, there was so much organizational instability. And I I was forced to pivot my strategy and direction so many times, and I still wasn't as experienced of a leader then as I am today.

So what did I find myself spending time on in those days? Well, gosh. Where do I begin? On one hand, I was trying to help and support that burnt out experienced team members that they wouldn't leave. I was trying to strike a balance with the with the person who had been at the company a long time trying to, you know, manage manage ego there a little bit, while also trying to establish my own credibility with them. I was trying to help this new person integrate, both make friends on the team as well as understand the culture. All of this while struggling to create clarity for the team on what are your priorities. Let me help you execute on these priorities. I was completely overwhelmed. Everything felt so chaotic and as if it rested entirely on my shoulders and it really felt like it did.

And as a result, what I perhaps wasn't spending enough time on were my leadership duties, my other leadership duties, like getting to know the other leaders at the company, my peers, my stakeholders, the people I needed to have influence with, thinking about where I wanted the team to go, growing future leaders, being creative, being innovative, being expansive, all that strategic thinking that you need to do to to lead people and to lead a team.

I also wasn't really, I think, managing communication channels with my team and with other teams. Right? How do we work with others? And and I was really, really struggling. You know? And I think the only thought I was having, even though I felt happy at the company, I felt committed, I was glad to be there, but I was constantly insecure and worried about my impact. I was thinking all my time is being spent on just managing these people related things. Where is the time for my actual work? When do I get to do my work? And it took me some time, you know, to realize that the people leadership aspects of a job, once you are a leader, aren't a distraction from the work or the real work.

Once you become a leader, that is the work. Right? They are the work. And this despite my background in people development and leadership development that Anna told you about a little bit at the beginning. You know, my job is to spend time in front of rooms, helping others be more effective managers and leaders, and teams work better together, to to coach other leaders on how to show up better for their teams and and, be strategic and things. And here I was struggling with that myself. But but that's how it goes. It takes a little while to really to learn it and know it in your bones. So, today, I, not not that you can take a shortcut to to leadership effectiveness, but, you can think of today as, like, a quick playbook. Right? I've tried to summarize my learnings, from those early years into five key mindset shifts that I think are needed when making any kind of transition into leadership.

So, whether you're moving from being an individual contributor to a first time leader, or maybe you're already a leader of individual contributors and you're moving to be a leader of leaders, or or even more experienced than that. Regardless, these mindset shifts are identity shifts. Right? Leadership is its own identity, and I think that's what makes them a little bit challenging, but it's really, really essential to to master them. Alright? Alright. So, shift number one. The doer identity, d o e r. The first shift is about unlearning your doer identity. The doer identity, the fixer identity, the executor identity, whatever you want to call it. This is kind of a tough one to start with because the the the doer is who you've been all this time. Right?

The doer identity is possibly your your your comfort zone. It's your competitive edge. It's what's gotten you here. Very likely whenever I see first time leaders, likelihood is high that they've gotten there because they've been a stellar individual contributor, top of their game. And it can be really hard to let go of hands on work. In reality, you might not have to let go of your hands on work completely. I think that's relatively rare, especially in tech. Tech leaders are are playing multiple roles. They're leading people, they're leading strategy, and they're still individual contributors. They still have to to to execute on on technical work. But having said that, your value now when you become a leader is no longer just in your individual contributions. You still have some of those.

But your real value is in the systems and in the people that you enable. Your job has fundamentally changed. So your definition of success kinda has to change with that. It has to shift from the literal tangible input, whether that's writing code, building systems, into systemic impact. Right? What is your team velocity? What is your team health? What are big strategic initiatives, and and how are those moving forward? And how are they taking the team and the function of the company where it needs to be in a year, for example. So so it's that that that elevated thinking. That's not to say your personal efforts aren't aren't valued at all, if they're not a virtue, but your leverage is what's really, really gonna be a strong virtue.

So this means you might have to embrace a little bit the the some delayed gratification in the form of delegation. Right? That could be delegating your work. It could be delegating new work. But that's that's what being a leader is. It's being a force multiplier. It's developing the next generation of people to to gain that expertise, that expertise that got you where you are. Now you're trying to grow that in your people. Alright? That's your kind of new superpower, if you wanna think of it that way. Sometimes I see new leaders in this unable to let go of the doer identity and micromanage not because they want to or because they wanna be controlling or anything like that, but there is a there is a maybe subconscious need to to feel valued, to feel like you're doing something, to feel like there's some sort of output.

But, ultimately, you wanna think about how do I enable growth and ownership for my team, not maybe inadvertently take that from them. Yeah. This could involve deliberately sometimes taking a step back, maybe even allowing people to make their own mistakes when the when the risk is is low enough. And it also involves coaching your team. So, yes, teaching them how to do things, but coaching them, right, asking powerful questions to enable them to think of the answer rather than providing the direct solution every single time. Right? You, I I think that beyond just correcting their immediate problem, you want them to be able to think for themselves. Right? So, again, letting go of that doer identity. Alright?

Ultimately, what I will say on this shift is you wanna ensure you're not the single point of failure on your team. And and I I I by that, I mean, it it shouldn't all rest with you, the legacy knowledge, the domain knowledge, the context, how to do certain things, and, yes, the decision making power. Even if ultimate decision making still rests with you, you wanna be distributing system knowledge throughout the team and distributing, power, frankly, and ownership around your team, rather than just focusing on your your execution and and your speed. Right? Alright. So that's our first shift. Right? I'm learning the doer identity. And I often find in my coaching work when I'm working with new leaders, this is the hardest one, and that's why I I talked about it first. Right? Let's talk about, two other ones that kinda go together.

One shift is in understanding who you need to be, managing, who you need to be hiring, managing, and and growing. Right? One of those is former peers. Very often, I see new leaders end up in a situation where they've been promoted, and now they are, managing people that they used to be peers with, maybe even friends with. And and that can turn into, you know, sometimes strange or awkward situation. I've heard, tech leaders tell me it can be painful when your friendly colleagues start to treat you a little differently or or whatnot because now you're a manager or now you've promoted or whatnot. And that's natural. You know, we value collaborative relationships. I I think I have heard women leaders in tech in particular tell me that there's this pressure to be liked, And so it can be strange when when the their their power increases and, you know, in a certain sense.

Even in even in very flat environments, very collaborative, collegial environments, you gain a little bit of power, and it it can start to feel a little weird to to own that. Right? The dynamics of the relationships have changed, but I think, one of the shifts that's required here is around boundaries and around fairness. Right? Your job isn't to be liked. Actually, your job is to help the team execute on on priorities. You don't wanna fall into that loyalty trap of, you know, these are all my friends and everybody has to like me and, you know, trying to be the cool manager as it were. Right? I think you can be perfectly nice and kind and friendly to everyone while also, having boundaries, making it clear what your role is, and really, I think, prioritizing the collective good of of the team over maybe the comfort of a personal friendship.

Right? Ultimately, I think for a team that is the more compassionate choice, as as hard as it may be. I think the other side of of managing former peers, that third shift, is managing people who are either more experienced than you, or or better than you, quote, unquote. What I mean by better than you is, even if they're not more experienced than you in their career, they're they're a lot better at something than you are. So this is that situation where you're in the leadership position, but you are working with someone who is actually incredibly competent and, and, and much, much more experienced, right? Or maybe older than you, right? Or, or things like that. I've certainly managed people who are in frankly other generations, than, than I am. And I think it can be natural in these situations to feel a a certain amount of pressure. I I'm I'm the manager. I'm the leader.

I've heard leaders tell me before that, you know, there's a pressure to be, the the smartest, not from a place of of ego necessarily, but, but to be able to show value. Right? I'm in the leadership position. I wanna kind of make my make my value known. But I I think that you can provide value even to someone who is more experienced than you, from a different generation than you, or significantly more competent than you in something. Because, again, your value is not just in that technical depth of expertise. You may have some technical expertise, but your role has shifted to kind of leader coach now. Right? Manager coach. How can you ask questions to facilitate their thinking? How can you trust their expertise but help them in other ways? Or maybe run interference for them, so to speak.

How can you shield them from some of the organizational politics that might get in the way of their doing their job? Being a manager, unfortunately, involves things like budget wrangling and such. But it's also about creating alignment, strategic prioritization. So it's not just let me solve this technical problem for them in this moment, but how can I secure resources for them? How can I grow them? How can I connect them to people so that they're forming the relationships that I already have and not hoard those relationships? I think that one of my most, toughest experiences I would say was with a manager who who was doing that, who was kind of, hoarding those relationships and and wasn't opening that up to to for my growth. And so you you wanna be thinking about, no matter what level of experience this person is at, or whether I was their friend before or not, I'm here to create leverage for them.

I'm here to connect them to resources and to people and to help them do their job better so that this team, does better. Right? Now moving on to the next shift here, I do wanna talk about communication. I referenced this a little bit earlier as one of the mistakes I was making in my early leadership role, which was I was not really focusing on my communication. Here's what I mean by that. First of all, once you start to lead people, your words carry weight. They just do. Whether you realize it or not, your words start to carry weight. And, you wanna be thinking about, what am I focusing my energy on? What conversations am I in? Which conversations do I need to be in and not be in? What meetings do I need to be in and not be in?

Who needs to be communicating with each other that isn't communicating right now, and how can I enable that? That's now part of your role as well. You also wanna be thinking about, what you're saying and being very intentional about what you say. I don't mean that from, like, an HR perspective or anything, but more in the sense of being really intentional strategic about what you say and to whom. For example, with your team, a casual comment can easily be interpreted as as a directive. Right? Or taken very literally or taken, as as a thing people have to run and do. You might be just having an incomplete thought or musing something out loud. That can distract people, lead to some wasted effort. So ambiguity is really a liability once you become a leader. And clarity is your is your friend.

So, you wanna really own your communication with a high amount of empathy. And the shift that I see in, a lot of new leaders and something sometimes people struggle with is, how do I move from being somebody who communicates as an expert contributor? Right? I have the answer. I can solve your problem. I'm gonna speak up in this meeting because I got something to say. I wanna make my point, right, or I wanna pitch my thing into someone who communicates as, like, a strategic translator and a buffer for the team. Right? You're the person making the connections now. You're the person saying, okay. Let me let me figure out who's the best person to handle this or where this communication needs to go.

You're suddenly taking a step back and almost moving pieces around rather than being the one who needs to make the point every time. Yeah. So clarity is key. I think, one of the lessons, I learned pretty early is that authority comes from clarity. What your team needs most from you is clarity. Certainly what to work on, what to prioritize, but also where they stand with you. Where they stand in the company, where where the team is headed, where they're headed, what their growth looks like, how to interpret events or changes that are going on at the company. They are looking for that clarity from you. And so that's where your focus should be when it comes to communication is how can I create clarity here? Or at least, not create, less clarity. How can I not contribute to the lack of clarity? Right?

One thing that can help is is just, you know, really strategic use of data, Getting a sense of, you know, who who do I need to be meeting with on a regular basis in order to be have the information I need to help my team. You can think of it like you're you're a human, gatekeeper of sorts with your team. Right. The last shift I wanna cover here is on finding your leadership voice. Now, this is a topic that I'm sure other, speakers as a part of this are gonna touch on in some way or another because I think for women in tech, this is a really, really, really important topic. And frankly, the leadership landscape is flooded with advice on this topic. There's books and articles and podcasts and countless frameworks, many of which I talk about and teach in my classes. So I, you know, they're they're out there. They're out there. And but the sheer number of them can make it a little confusing. Right? What leadership model do I follow?

And what I say is it's definitely wise to consult these resources, but your goal, I think, shouldn't be to to just copy any one single model when it comes to your leadership voice. There actually is no one right way. You know, I think that, I was just coaching, a leader the other day in tech who was saying that she she feels like in order to learn effective leadership, she has essentially looked at the leaders that she has had in her life, right, her managers, other leaders she has seen, and just kind of tried to pull from each of those and pull from what works and and make that her her leadership style, which I think is an interesting way to go about it.

Because I think if you copy any one style, that can lead to inauthenticity, which can lead to burnout. You know, you don't wanna be something you're not every single day. That's as true as a professional as it is, when you're a leader. So, you know, I suggest drawing from the wisdom that resonates you from a lot resonates with you, excuse me, from a lot of different sources and try to integrate into what works for you. This is easier said than done. Okay? Because there's something I wanna name here. Being a woman in tech myself, my my whole career prior to being an independent consultant coach was in tech. And, I often felt immense pressure to to perform, a certain type of leadership.

So it was either to perform toughness, or or almost its its opposite, I guess, which is to perform stoicism in order to be taken seriously. Either I'm the loud one talking over everybody, or I have no feelings whatsoever and I'm just completely stoic. And I think that this isn't helped by the fact that the archetypes that we often see in the tech industry tend to be, you know, especially these days, I think it's increasingly these aggressive impulsive sort of archetypes. But I don't think that any of us should feel like we need to take on, you know, forced bravado or anything like that in order to be taken seriously as a leader. I think as a woman in tech, you don't need to do that, but you also don't need to have forced stoicism. You know, you also don't need to dim your light completely.

I I think it's it's it's good to notice what other leaders are doing and start to notice essentially, you know, how they operate and when is the way that they're operating in line with your own values and when is it not in line with your own values. That could be the the celebrity leaders that are out there that we read about in the news, but it can also be just leaders at your company right now. Just really start to notice. How are they making decisions? How are they communicating? How are they showing up in in rooms where, there are a lot of different people and a lot of different voices that need to be heard? What aligns with your core values, and when does it conflict with your core values? This is like a leadership analysis I like to do sometimes. Ask yourself, why might they be doing what they're doing? What are they optimizing for? What are the pros and cons of operating that way?

And think about whether you would do the same thing. And if so, why? And if not, why not? I think the challenge is really to define what what powerful leadership looks like for you and to build that muscle. I actually did this experiment, in preparation for this talk. I consulted a few of my friends who happen to be women leaders in tech, some of them new leaders in tech. And, I asked them what does powerful look like to you? And I got so many different answers. I got that powerful is radical transparency, powerful is empathy, Powerful is accountability. Powerful is resilience. Powerful is enthusiasm and inspiration. So, there really is no one right way.

And, and I I think you have to to to find that for yourself. I really love that. I feel like we can talk a lot and forever, and I Yeah. Really appreciate your insights. And I know that Oh, as you all may have seen in the agenda, what I'm talking about today is the leader identity. Now, what do I mean by the leader identity? Really this is about what is the identity shift or set of identity shifts that's required when you are moving into your first leadership role. Now, some of you dialed into this, might already be in your first leadership role.

Some of you may be further along and have led teams many times before and maybe have more experience in that. Some of you may not be in a leadership role as yet and may want that in the future. But regardless of where you are in your leadership journey, we're going to talk about what those shifts are that are required for that. And I see everyone is already using the chat to drop in comments. Please continue to do that. I love seeing your thoughts, your reactions throughout. There might even be one or two places where I explicitly ask for for you to drop in your thoughts, so, please do that. Alright? So talking about the leader identity, let me actually start by taking you all back in time.

I'm gonna paint a very quick picture picture of one of my early leadership roles years and years ago. Wasn't my very first one, but it was an early one. I had, moved from a a different role into a new company, and I inherited a team of three. So those folks, of course, had been at the company longer than I had. Two of them were best friends with each other. They were early in their careers and, you know, best friends with each other, meaning chatting at the desks, really, really getting along well, working well together. One person who had been there since the company started, so he had all of the relationships and the knowledge of the company culture and, was maybe a little resistant to feedback because he was like, I I know this place better than you do. Right? I also hired in a few more people, another early career professional, and somebody more experienced than me, actually, who had been doing doing this longer than I have.

So we ended up with this motley crew of five people. One of the folks that I hired, the the one who was earlier in her career, was really struggling to adapt to the company culture and to break into that that little click, if you will, of of the two who were getting along really well and just kinda wasn't fitting in in general and was feeling a little lack of belonging.

And the person who was more experienced who I hired, was doing great. They were they were really kind, really valued. Everybody loved working with them. And they were, I started to notice, quietly burning out by taking on too much. So all of this is going on around me in one of my early leadership roles as the company is going through, a reorg because they just acquired a smaller company. My team went through a reorg. The VP of the team transitioned out. My own manager changed twice. So on top of all the team complexities, there was so much organizational instability. And I I was forced to pivot my strategy and direction so many times, and I still wasn't as experienced of a leader then as I am today.

So what did I find myself spending time on in those days? Well, gosh. Where do I begin? On one hand, I was trying to help and support that burnt out experienced team members so that they wouldn't leave. I was trying to strike a balance with the with the person who had been at the company a long time trying to, you know, manage manage ego there a little bit, while also trying to establish my own credibility with them. I was trying to help this new person integrate both make friends on the team as well as understand the culture. All of this while struggling to create clarity for the team on what are your priorities. Let me help you execute on these priorities. I was completely overwhelmed. Everything felt so chaotic and as if it rested entirely on my shoulders and it really felt like it did.

And as a result, what I perhaps wasn't spending enough time on were my leadership duties, my, my other leadership duties. Getting to know the other leaders at the company, my peers, my stakeholders, the people I needed to have influence with. Thinking about where I wanted the team to go. Growing future leaders, being creative, being innovative, being expansive, all that strategic thinking that you need to do to to lead people and to lead a team. I also wasn't really, I think, managing communication channels with my team and with other teams. Right? How do we work with others? And and I was really, really struggling, you know? And I think the only thought I was having, even though I felt happy at the company, I felt committed, I was glad to be there, but I was constantly insecure and worried about my impact.

I was thinking all my time is being spent on just managing these people related things. Where is the time for my actual work? When do I get to do my work? And it took me some time, you know, to realize that the people leadership aspects of a job, once you are a leader, aren't a distraction from the work or the real work. Once you become a leader, that is the work. Right? They are the work. And this despite my background in people development and leadership development that Anna told you about a little bit at the beginning. You know, my job is to spend time in front of rooms helping others be more effective managers and leaders, and teams work better together, to to coach other leaders on how to show up better for their teams and and, be strategic and things.

And here I was struggling with that myself. But but that's how it goes. It takes a little while to really to learn it and know it in your bones. So, today, I not not that you can take a shortcut to to leadership effectiveness, but, you can think of today as, like, a quick playbook. Right? I've tried to summarize my learnings, from those early years into five key mindset shifts that I think are needed when making any kind of transition into leadership. So whether you're moving from being an individual contributor to a first time leader, or maybe you're already a leader of individual contributors and you're moving to be a leader of leaders or or even more experienced than that. Regardless, these mindset shifts are identity shifts. Right? Leadership is its own identity, and I think that's what makes them a little bit challenging, But it's really, really essential to to master them. Alright? Alright.

So shift number one, the doer identity, d o e r. The first shift is about unlearning your doer identity. The doer identity, the fixer identity, the executor identity, whatever you wanna call it. This is kind of a tough one to start with because the the the doer is who you've been all this time. Right? The doer identity is possibly your comfort zone. It's your competitive edge. It's what's gotten you here. Very likely whenever I see first time leaders, likelihood is high that they've gotten there because they've been a stellar individual contributor, top of their game. And it can be really hard to let go of hands on work. Now in reality, you might not have to let go of your hands on work completely.

I think that's relatively rare, especially in tech. Tech leaders are are playing multiple roles. They're leading people, they're leading strategy, and they're still individual contributors. They still have to to to execute on on technical work. But having said that, your value now when you become a leader is no longer just in your individual contributions. You still have some of those. But your real value is in the systems and in the people that you enable. Your job has fundamentally changed. So your definition of success kinda has to change with that. It has to shift from the literal tangible input, whether that's writing code, building systems, into systemic impact. Right? What is your team velocity? What is your team health?

What are big strategic initiatives, and and how are those moving forward, and how are they taking the team and the function of the company where it needs to be in a year, for example. So it's that elevated thinking. That's not to say your personal efforts aren't valued at all, that they're not a virtue, but your leverage is what's really, really gonna be a strong virtue. So this means you might have to embrace a little bit the the some delayed gratification in the form of delegation. Right? That could be delegating your work. It could be delegating new work. But that's that's what being a leader is. It's being a force multiplier. It's developing the next generation of people to to gain that expertise, that expertise that got you where you are. Now you're trying to grow that in your people. Alright?

That's your kind of new superpower if you wanna think of it that way. Sometimes I see new leaders in this unable to let go of the doer identity and micromanage not because they want to or because they wanna be controlling or anything like that, but there is a there is a maybe subconscious need to to feel valued, to feel like you're doing something, to feel like there's some sort of output.

But, ultimately, you want to think about how do I enable growth and ownership for my team, not maybe inadvertently take that from them. Yeah. This could involve deliberately sometimes taking a step back, maybe even allowing people to make their own mistakes when the when the risk is is low enough. And it also involves coaching your team. So, yes, teaching them how to do things, but coaching them, right, asking powerful questions to enable them to think of the answer rather than providing the direct solution every single time, right. You, I think that beyond just correcting their immediate problem, you want them to be able to think for themselves. Right? So, again, letting go of that doer identity. Alright? Ultimately, what I will say on this shift is you wanna ensure you're not the single point of failure on your team.

And and I I I by that, I mean, it it shouldn't all rest with you, the legacy knowledge, the domain knowledge, the context, how to do certain things, and, yes, the decision making power. Even if ultimate decision making still rests with you, you wanna be distributing system knowledge throughout the team and distributing, power, frankly, and ownership around your team, rather than just focusing on your your execution and and your speed. Right? Alright. So that's our first shift. Right? I'm learning the doer identity. And I often find in my coaching work when I'm working with new leaders, this is the hardest one, and that's why I I talked about it first. Right? Let's talk about, two other ones that kinda go together. One shift is in understanding who you need to be, managing, who you need to be hiring, managing, and and growing. Right? One of those is former peers.

Very often, I see new leaders end up in a situation where they've been promoted, and now they are, managing people that they used to be peers with, maybe even friends with. And and that can turn into, you know, sometimes strange or awkward situation. I've heard, tech leaders tell me it can be painful when your friendly colleagues start to treat you a little differently or or whatnot because now you're a manager or now you've promoted or whatnot. And that's natural. You know, we value collaborative relationships. I I think I have heard women leaders in tech in particular tell me that there's this pressure to be liked. And so it can be strange when when the their their power increases and, you know, in a certain sense. Even in even in very flat environments, very collaborative, collegial environments, you gain a little bit of power, and it it can start to feel a little weird to to own that.

Right? The dynamics of the relationships have changed, but I think, one of the shifts that's required here is around boundaries and around fairness. Right? Your job isn't to be liked. Actually, your job is to help the team execute on on priorities. You don't wanna fall into that loyalty trap of, you know, these are all my friends and everybody has to like me and, you know, trying to be the cool manager as it were. Right? I think you can be perfectly nice and kind and friendly to everyone while also, having boundaries, making it clear what your role is, and really, I think, prioritizing the collective good of of the team over maybe the comfort of a personal friendship. Right? Ultimately, I think for a team that is the more compassionate choice, as as hard as it may be.

I think the other side of of managing former peers, that third shift, is managing people who are either more experienced than you, or or better than you, quote, unquote. What I mean by better than you is, even if they're not more experienced than you in their career, they're they're a lot better at something than you are. So this is that situation where you're in the leadership position, but you are working with someone who is actually incredibly competent and and and much, much more experienced, right? Or maybe older than you, right? Or things like that. I've certainly managed people who are in frankly other generations, than than I am. And I think it can be natural in these situations to feel a a certain amount of pressure. I I'm I'm the manager. I'm the leader. I've heard leaders tell me before that, you know, there's a pressure to be, the the smartest, not from a place.