Rachana Kumar Leading Through Success

Automatic Summary

The Incredible Intersection of Technology, Social Impact, and Successful Teams

Today, we have the privilege of having Roshana, the President of Engineering at Etsy, share her insights about the intersection of technology, social impact, and team success. She shares her experiences leading during uncertain times using two key tools: resilience and effective communication.

Introduction

Roshana's background spans numerous roles in the tech industry, addressing many changes, from the financial crisis of 2008/2009 to leading Etsy through an IPO and establishing it as a successful publicly traded company.

Despite her broad experience, Roshana admits that nothing could have prepared her generation for the current global crisis due to the pandemic. There are no playbooks for leading companies, both new and established, through such times.

She offers some key observations, gleaned from her several years in tech and recent experiences. These, she believes, can be useful whether you're a leader or being led.

Key Resilience Tools for Leading through Change

Roshana identifies two key tools for leading through massive change:

  1. Resilience
  2. Effective Communication

Resilience as a Leadership Power

Resilience, she explains, can be broken down into two categories:

  1. Understanding and accepting vulnerability
  2. Practicing productive perseverance

Roshana describes vulnerability as a powerful asset rather than a hindrance to effective leadership. She believes that authentic vulnerability makes leaders relatable and realistic, encouraging teams to share their struggles with balance and managing novel challenges.

Productive perseverance, Roshana explains, is about staying goal-oriented and focused, but also being open to switching gears when necessary. This attention to focus and flexibility is crucial to leading during crises and managing limited energy levels most effectively.

The Importance of Effective Communication

Effective communication is a requirement in any role, but when in a leadership capacity during a time of crisis, it's even more essential. Roshana identifies two aspects of communication that are fundamental during a crisis:

  1. Transparency with context
  2. Acknowledgement and regular check-ins with your team members

Transparency, she explains, should be balanced with context, otherwise, it might end up causing more harm than good. It's also crucial to admit when you don't know something – pretending to know everything could do more damage to your credibility as a leader. She also explores the importance of acknowledging the current turbulent situation and maintaining regular check-ins with your team to discuss affected business operations, mental health, and more.

Embrace this Learning Opportunity

Roshana encourages everyone, leaders and aspiring leaders alike, to view this overwhelming period as a chance to learn and grow. She concludes her presentation reminding us that resilience and effective communication are not just mechanical tools but careful practices that require effort, intention, and care.

As this enlightening conversation drew to a close, Roshana invited attendees to connect with her on LinkedIn, ready to answer more questions and continue the discussion. All in all, she shared a powerful and inspiring perspective on leading with resilience, authentic communication, and empathy during a time of crisis.

Thank you, Roshana, for the insightful conversations!


Video Transcription

Very exciting. So as we pivot, hey, Roshana, how are you? Awesome. You know, this has been a great event today. A lot of good energy. We're coming off uh leaving a little bit better uh than we were just from listening to Helen's talk.And now I get to, I'm so excited to introduce you because you're the president of Engineering at Etsy, one of my personal favorites. Sure, a lot of opportunity to innovate. And today you're gonna talk about the intersection of technology and social impact and successive teams.

So I am now gonna hand it over to you if you wanna share your screen and uh everyone just again, uh get get connected on social. Um You could click on the bubble by any person and you can get to their social channels and um let's just use that. Hash, thank

yes, tha thanks Michael. Uh intersection of social impact technology leading the toes are those are the topics I'm interested in general today. Given the timing I'll be specifically focusing on um leading through a crisis, leading through unprecedented times like this. Today, we'll be talking about leading through crisis.

Uh Nicole mentioned this in the intro. I'm a VP of engineering at Etsy. I oversee one of the larger groups within product engineering at Etsy. I'm based out of uh New York City. I'm also a mom uh to a four year old. I have been in tech for a long time now. Uh I have seen many changes start uh starting from the financial crisis and um 2008, 2009 to when I joined Etsy, it was a start up to get, taking the company through an IP O then uh establishing ourselves as um successful publicly traded company. But uh I don't think anything could have prepared our generation for what we are seeing now, the crisis that the pandemic and the crisis that we are seeing currently, which is not just localized somewhere, it's a global crisis and there is absolutely no playbook in terms of uh how we can lead larger companies, bigger teams or even smaller start-ups or even small businesses.

Any of that, how to, there's no playbook, how to lead you in this time. So based on my observations in the past few months, 34 months, and also my experience working in tech for a couple of dec decades, I've tried to come up with some um high-level tools and skills that um you know, if you're a people leader or even if you're being led, that you can use what I mean by if you're being led is if you either if you aspiring leader or even for that matter, I hope like you can take away something after this presentation today to even share it with your manager or your team leader or something like that.

So this is generate and not just like very specific to engineering teams or anything like that, it can be used anywhere in tech or even broader industry. So at a high level, I'll talk about two tools that uh you can lead during that you can kind of cultivate or use during massive changes. Then I will after that, uh open up our questions for about um five minutes in the end. Um As my side slays slide says, managing is just trying to cope leading is being more proactive about taking people along the journey. This is one of my management philosophies. What I mean by that is if you're a really good manager, sometimes you might be just reactive and um thinking through how do I get through this? I just don't want to manage myself and my group through things. I want to proactively lead. And when there's a crisis like this, collectively, all of us take this journey together and I'll talk about what are the tools that I've cultivated, as I said, two important tools to hopefully do that better. Um Each specific skill tools that I'm going to mention, um We'll have two categories within that. I will explain them as we go through it. The first one is resilience in the kids are amazing at being resilient. This is my son in the picture here.

Well, we were in Chicago last year and he was trying to push the bean there. He, he really thought he could move it. He might have fallen up off a couple of times, but he got himself right back up in front of hundreds of people and he absolutely didn't care what people were thinking if he was falling, he was just going at it and he got a little exhausted or bored. But as we grow up, something happens, we don't want to fall in front of 100 people. We don't want to be vulnerable. We are worried what people will think of us. This is called shame bias. I learned it from uh another person called Karen and the shame bias is something we cultivate as we become an adult. And it's actually a hindrance to being a successful leader. Vulnerability is the key to resiliency. As Brian Brown said, what makes you vulnerable? Makes you beautiful?

Traditionally, you know, resiliency was more associated with like strong men who could pretend to get through a crisis without showing any signs of vulnerability. I think it hurts the leader and the team they are leading more than it has to pretend because being vulnerable also means you're like authentic and you're real, you're relatable. One of the things I've tried to do in the past three or four months at Etsy in general, we try to keep it real. But one of the things I have even been very open and honest about is like the struggle of being a working parents when both parents are working and there is no family around or all the support system you had built, which was childcare, like in paid support system. And that doesn't exist anymore. I didn't want to pretend like, oh my day job was not affected, it was very much affected and uh it was in the beginning, it was a struggle till we figured out a schedule and sorted it out. And I think the more I talk about it and be honest about it, my team also then feels like, you know, we are doing, they can be efficient at their work.

But also if they want a mental health break or if they wanted to take, have very flexi flexible schedule for childcare that uh we are making it a they, they can talk about it and, you know, hopefully me and the larger leadership are Etsy are making it available, the flex flexible, flexible schedule available to them.

This is the first thing, vulnerability and the second thing related to resiliency is um practicing productive perseverance. What I mean by productive perseverance is like, it's really important to be focused and goals oriented, irrespective of what the time is. But um it you should also be opening to switching gears, especially when there is so much change around us and already we all have limited energy with all that's going on. One of the things, uh you know, exceeded say in 2017, when we got a new management, our CEO decided that we only needed to focus on a few vital things. We had to stop working on a lot of things that was like very dear to our heart, but it was clearly cri critical for the business. And as someone who's been through that cycle and seen how the business turn, turn around and how successful it is today, even though at that minute, it was very challenging to make those decisions. I think it really serve us well when the energy is limited and there's so much going on in this pandemic, you know, companies have, have had to lay off people.

I have been fortunate that I see that our business is doing well so far, but uh not, you know, all the businesses are doing well, especially during these times, it's very important to reflect on what is really important. And if needed, either switch gears, even if you switch gears, just focus on the few things that you need to do and not try to do everything. So then we'll move to the second to. This is very basic, right? Like communication is almost a good communication is almost a requirement for any job even more. So if you're a leader, you have to be really good at communicating, I think. So there are so many aspects to communication. I would like for us to focus on two aspects of communication that is very important during a crisis like this. The first one is transparency with context. I can, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about what I mean by that is share as much information as a leader. Or if you're being led, ask, you know, if you feel like you don't know how decisions are being made, ask your leadership, why? Uh No fe I feel, I hope most companies have the culture where it's open and transparent, but just sharing information with her context, I think sometimes can hurt them more than it can help teams.

So as a leader, if you're providing a new piece of information, that might kind of uh be a change to how people are currently functioning, always try to provide context. I'm an engineer. So I think of like both quantitative and qualitative ways and how, what was the decision framework and how we arrived at this decision. It might not be the always positive, good news, even if you're sharing, not good news, sharing it with like full transparency and context as much transparency as possible, I think is really helpful. And most importantly, when you don't know something say you don't know there there is no point pretending like as a leader, I always know everything. So just as an example, recently, a couple of managers within my group were asking me, what, what will the future of remote workers if they look like? And they wanted to answer them. But it is already to be clear, has always been a very remote friendly workplace. Over 20% of our engineering is already remote.

And um so we have a culture of always accommodating remote employees, but I honestly don't know what the pandemic will look like over the course of next year or what the future of work, not just in America across the world will look like. So I, I was like, if I could credit all those things, I think I would have a different job than what I currently do. And it's OK, it's OK to sometimes say, I don't know. And the next thing is acknowledge the situation and check in regularly as a leader. This is another form of communication. If you are not already doing, it's super, super important during a big change or a crisis like this, you do this regularly. What I mean by acknowledge what's happening is there's of course, the pandemic, there's also, you know, racial tension right now and there are so many things happening depending on who's on your team. I'm very lucky to have a pretty diverse team. Uh And depending on who's on your team, the stress and mental load of different people on the team is so different, depending on who they are, where they are from. First of all just acknowledging that this is not business as usual, you know, just let's not put a fake pla uh face and like bringing our whole self to work.

I think itself to work means acknowledging that things are not ok right now and talking about it and providing safe spaces for employees to talking about it. And I also try to regularly check in with everyone on my team. Like I have family across the globe. Like my parents live in India, my sister lives in Singapore if I'm checking in with them regularly because they're doing, I think it's as important for me to check in with my team. Few things we have done at Etsy, which I think has been helpful is our uh CEO and the executive team have been addressing the company in a more open and ended town hall kind of way more often than they have ever done. And that's I think been super helpful. Second thing that I'm doing regularly is um when I, I have a group of 1516 engineer, uh engineering managers within my group managers and directors, I used to meet them weekly or biweekly before. Whereas now I have uh I do like smaller check ins and stand ups so that as things change situations change, we all collectively know how to address it, how to react to it. And we are all prepared the same way. I also increased my open office hours that literally anyone in my organization can on a weekly basis, book one on one time with me and chat with me. First of all, when we are all short of time, it might feel like, oh, it's more work, more meeting.

But as a leader during a time of crisis, being a good people manager and being available for your people is so critical. Ok, I think this is at a high level of all the things I discussed. Uh One of the things I want to say before we do a quick recap, a recap of everything I discussed is uh I have been through different crisis as a leader, as I said, like, you know, the financial crash business turnaround. But I also think if you either if you're a leader or aspiring leader, even though currently it's so stressful, uh you can learn so much if you think of this opportunity for change. And as also a chance to learn real life experience is always trunky studies. Uh uh I feel like whenever there has been um big change either at my company or something like this globally or even the financial crisis in 2008, I have always looked at them and reflected on them as all the things I've learned from it and try to document some of the things.

That's why I'm sharing this with you now. And I hope you all can also, even though, you know, it's, it's hard on all of us can look at it that way. A quick recap of what we, the two tools we discussed. It's our resiliency and communication within resiliency is vulnerability and perseverance um practicing both of them and within communication, transparency with con context and acknowledgement and check in with your team members regularly with that. I'm gonna open it up for questions and thank you.

Great. Thanks Roshana. Please put your questions in the box and um I can help you if you're sharing your screen to get those over. Um lots of obvious connections happening. Hopefully you're connecting to Roshana.

Yes, I will also face my linkedin below once um You can get that on,

I can get that up for you, Rosana. No problem. So let's uh get some good questions in ladies and gentlemen. What do we have here? Lots of introductions. This is the question for

Gabriella. Any questions that would be great?

OK. Mm Anna. Thank you very much for being super insightful and inspiring

talk. Sure. I'm wishing

you the, the, the great uh the rest of the great uh conference and thanks a lot for joining us.

Thank you. I hear some questions I can answer. Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

Let's take, let's take uh because there are so many questions and people say love here in Russia, how vulnerability is the base for resilience? I didn't understand that part. Someone is

asking. Sure. Um I think uh as I said, traditionally, we have always thought of resiliency as someone who is strong, who puts like a face of like come what, whatever we won't. Um But I actually think of resilience. Yes, really? Stay staying focused and getting to your goal. But along the way, showing chunks in your armor and saying like, I know this is not easy. It's challenging for me as well because uh vulnerability helps peop other people. If you're in a crisis, there is no point pretending like everything's perfect and normal whereas it's important to focus but also be your authentic self and sh show who and the challenges that come with it. And I think that makes leaders really relatable and authentic. Yeah.

Right. I totally agree. And being vulnerable is a strength even though it's very often perceived as weakness. But that's how we build this, this empathy and how we say, hey, I understand what you are feeling and that's how great leaders are born. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot to Roshana and thank you, enjoy the rest of the conference. How people can get in touch with you. They have more questions. What is the best way to get in touch with you? Linkedin, Twitter, linkedin,

linkedin, linkedin. I'm most like on linkedin, I will um past my linkedin and I will also respond a few questions there because I have my time. Thank you. Thanks.