You Do Not Need All The Answers To Lead Well with Sharon Rose Holmes

“Sharon Holmes: Find a sponsor in the company that you can go and talk to. You may be assigned a formal mentor, but I would say, find an informal person.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. Back-to-back podcast days.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah. It's a busy one this week, but both excellent conversations. We had a return guest. Now, today we have Sharon joining us. Sharon Holmes, who's new to us, or at least new to the podcast, but we got to talk to her a few times. I think she absolutely lives up to the idea that her middle name might actually be energy.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, yes. She has a lot of energy. She leans into it and it's good energy to be around.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it's very positive, very building. Incredible tips. Very specific, as well, as just easy to understand. I really appreciate the perspective that Sharon has shared here. It's a fun conversation. We owe the introduction to Joe Messina. Thanks, Joe.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Thank you, Joe, again, I hope you listen to this. Yes, but yeah, the tips were wonderful. You could build an entire framework just from all our tips, especially emerging leaders, new leaders, or even –

Alex Cullimore: Mostly everybody.

Cristina Amigoni: Everybody. Individual contributors, people that have been in leadership for a while, but they're looking at higher levels. Yes, lots to learn and take notes on. Then we hope you enjoy.

Alex Cullimore: Enjoy.

[INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to another episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I are joined by our guest, Sharon Rose Holmes. Welcome to the podcast, Sharon.

Sharon Holmes: Thanks. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. This is great. This is my first podcast. I'm really excited.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, welcome, Sharon. We got introduced to you by Joe Messina, who's also been on the podcast.

Sharon Holmes: Yes, I saw. He did a great job. I don't know if I'll be able to match him point by point. But thanks, Joe.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you, Joe.

Alex Cullimore: Shout out to Joe.

Sharon Holmes: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm pretty sure he listens fairly consistently. We'll tell him to listen to this one.

Sharon Holmes: That's right. I'm going to make sure all my friends listen. This one will shoot right out.

Alex Cullimore: Well, Sharon, what's your background? What's your story? What brought you here?

Sharon Holmes: I'm going to talk a little bit about me professionally. I always like to start with saying, I started my career in sales. A lot of times people, I now work in the talent and the human space. Usually, after talking to me for a little while, people see it, although they don't see it immediately. What I will tell you about my career in sales is I am a talker and I can talk, but I also learned how to really listen deeply. I pride myself in really building trust quickly and trying to understand what motivates people. I didn't realize at the time how foundational that would become.

As I grew, I discovered a real passion for developing and leading others, which led me to earn my master's in management, where I focused on HR and organizational development. I got that from the Kogod, shout out to the Kogod School of Business at American University. I would say, from there, I intentionally built my career around the human side of performance. I really began right out of grad school doing some consulting. It wasn't necessarily a plan, but that's how I started, doing leadership development, consulting, and a lot of facilitation. I worked directly with leaders and teams. Over time, I grew into more strategic, enterprise-level HR and talent leadership roles.

I would say, across my career, I've had the opportunity to work with a range of organizations, including companies like Thermo Fisher Scientific, AAK. Some of my proudest moments were at FMC and Solenis and Comcast. Through them all, I really helped strengthen leadership capability. I helped build succession pipelines and really navigate large-scale change. One of the accomplishments I'm most proud of and I like to do is designing and launching multi-tiered leadership and succession frameworks that supported hundreds of leaders globally. Really creating what I would say, are clearer pathways for growth, improving bench strength and helping leaders feel more confident and prepared in moments of transition.

Most recently, I served as Head of Global Talent for a small Swedish company, Swedish-based company. Like many leaders right now, I was impacted by a layoff. I'll tell you that experience has been both grounding and clarifying. As we talked about earlier, I'm currently exploring my next chapter, considering is it a good full-time leadership role? Am I going to do some fractional work? I would say in between all that, I also launched my consulting practice, Rose Ascension Group, www.roseascensiongroup.com. It's all centered on helping leaders lead with clarity, confidence, and humanity in really complex environments. It's a little bit about me.

Cristina Amigoni: It's a wonderful career arc.

Sharon Holmes: Yes, it has been spiritual as well. I always say, you make plans and God laughs, because there's so many different paths that my life has taken that I never thought. But with each one, I feel like I've learned and I've grown and I've evolved and learned each time, including most recently, where I thought I was facing a setback. There's no such thing, really. It feels like there is and I know people that'll be listening to this be like, “Sharon, what are you talking about? I'm in the middle of a setback right now.” It really isn't. If you lean into it and you try to listen to what is the learning, right? What am I supposed to get out of this moment of transition and try to grow through it? You'll come out so much stronger on the other side, and it's been proven time and time again.

If you even, anyone listening, if you think about any setback that you've had, you've survived it. Look at you, you're still here. You're surviving it. You may not be doing what you thought you were doing, but you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. That's how I try to also look at it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, one of my favorite quotes that I see often is we've gotten through 100% of the tough moments you've ever had.

Sharon Holmes: It's so true. You don't think you're going to necessarily survive it. When I think about, and I've asked different leaders and different people that I've worked with, what stands out about me? I think you all said it first. A lot of people will say, energy, energy. In fact, my middle name, I can't believe I'm going to say this on the podcast. My middle name is Elizabeth. Named it from my great Aunt Elizabeth. A lot of people say, that E must stand for energy, and I often laugh. I'm like, I don't have a lot of energy, but people think I do. I must be.

I would also say, I have a lot of resilience and I try to really lean into that, because I try – I get down in the dumps like everyone else. I have down days, I have moments where I'm just like, please what are you trying to tell me, right? Again, I try to lean into my strength and pushing through and remembering that, again, as you said, I've survived 100% of all the setbacks and I've come through stronger. I'm going to survive whatever setbacks are ahead of me, because that's just how I'm cut and how I’m made. I remind myself, I stand on the shoulders of really strong women and men that came before me. I can't let them down, and I can't let myself down.

Alex Cullimore: That makes sense. You mentioned you left grad school, you started to focus on the human portion. Did you feel that was something that was just more innate to how you approach things? Was it something you learned with experience? We always debate this, say, how much of it is an innate thing when you meet people like you who really go human first?

Sharon Holmes: Yeah, I agree. It is a healthy debate. I think, yes, you're either born with aspects of it, or you're not. I don't think if you don't feel like you were born with it, that you can't learn it, or you can't lean into it. I think we're all born with different levels of it and it's whatever experiences that you have that will bring out the best of that in you. For me, what's funny about grad school, I'll never forget, two analogies I was given. One, the first day of grad school, I'll never forget this, one of our lead professors, we were all really busy professionals and many of us, there were a variety of people at different ages and levels. I had worked about 10 years in my career before I went back. I felt like I was old. But there were a lot of people who were going back that were older than me, younger than me, and so there was a big mix within our – and it was a cohort style program - that were in our cohort.

He wanted to really center us and he said, “I want you to think about a bird. You can teach a bird to respond to different sounds.” For example, you can whistle and it might lift its wing, and you can clap and it might fly around in a circle and you can stomp your foot, it might do something else. He went on to describe a zillion different sounds that a bird can do. We were sitting here looking like, what this have to do with our program? What I was trying to get to was the focus that we needed to make, because what he said was, “What do you think happens when all those sounds happen at the same time?”

Of course, we were all like, the bird explodes. We don't know. I said, yeah, the bird might theoretically explode. But you know what really happens? The bird doesn't do anything. The bird sits still and just stares ahead. He's like, “I want you to think about that when you're thinking about all the different things in your life, your family, your children, many of you are still working full-time and in this full-time program.” Some of you, like me, I kept my condo in Philly and was still traveling to DC to go to school. “You've got a lot of distractions and you've got a lot of things and this program will eat you alive if you don't really focus on the one sound that's really important and that's what's coming out of this program.” That was the one lesson that stayed with me.

The other one that stayed was, we're all here for a different reason. Some of you are in grad school, because you're bored and your parents have a lot of money and they just want to send you to school. By the way, that's not why I was there in grad school. They’re like, I have a lot of money.

Cristina Amigoni: Not bored. No, no.

Sharon Holmes: I’m not bored. I really wanted to accelerate my strong interest in this specific area of org design and really leaning into human performance and how to optimize that and get the best out of people and understanding all the different styles and types of people. But him saying that upfront really helped lean in when you're on these group projects and it really helped me manage teams and work on teams, because everyone is there for a different reason, right? Some people just want to get promoted. They don't care how we get the work done. In fact, they're not even going to help do the work, but they want their name attached to the work and you got to figure it out, right? Those two analogies have helped me tremendously as I go through life. I still get distracted from time to time, but I try to remember the bird and try not to explode.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. All I can think of is that Shrek scene, where the bird explodes.

Sharon Holmes: Yes, yes. Exactly. All the sounds. I'm always like, don't be the bird.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Sharon Holmes: Again, also, all the different things that you hear with teamwork. I've really prided myself in helping leaders. I do a lot of executive coaching with executives, with CEOs, with senior leaders, especially women who are really – In fact, one of my programs is called Unmuted, and it's all about helping unmute you, right? When you're the only woman, or you're the only person of color in the room. It could be so easy to just shrink down and not lean in. Helping people push through that. When I've coached leaders, especially those that work on teams where, again, they feel muted, they don't feel heard. It's clear, people are all there for different reasons. I try to remind them of you need to focus on why you're there and you need to lean in and get the best out of this. If you're there to get the knowledge, get the knowledge. If you've got something to contribute, contribute. Lean into that. If it's a confidence thing, let's work on that. If it's how do I communicate with power and with strength, let's do that.

It's really helping people really understand that we all matter and we all are there for a reason, and understanding and maximizing that potential, I think, has really been the key to some of those conversations and my own success with teams.

Cristina Amigoni: I love the bird analogy. Now it's going to stick with me.

Sharon Holmes: You love it, right?

Cristina Amigoni: Especially when thinking about leadership and leaders, because as you know, we're in this similar type of work, working with leaders, with their potential, their clarity, but also creating the space for that potential and performance for their teams, and how often are they in that situation where there are so many noises, there are so many different types of whistles that they don't know where to focus, and so they just stop, or they focus in one direction, but it's so distracting to have all this noise –

Sharon Holmes: It is.

Cristina Amigoni: - that they can’t actually do what they're supposed to be doing, which is helping and serving their teams to be able to perform as best as possible, as humans. Uncovering that humanity and recognizing the authenticity, but there's so much noise from above, from behind, from below, from all sorts of sides. Then that noise, even if you focus for a day, or an hour, or a week, then there's a whole new noise of like, oh, and here's the next change, or here's the next KPI, or here's the next OKR, which is the opposite of the OKR from this week. It's just constant.

Sharon Holmes: Correct. Yeah. Just like you said, it's never ending. A little bit of a shout out to my friends from Korn Ferry. I'm going to actually send this to one of my dear colleagues at Korn Ferry, Andrea Deege. I, as you all know, am skilled in a lot of different assessments, but one of my favorites has been, and I know it's basically now the potential assessment. But I knew it as the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential. That's how I started with it.

The reason I like it so much is it really assesses someone based on, first of all, they assess you two levels above, generally, of where you currently are. If I'm a manager and I want to move to a VP, assuming the next level is a director and then a VP, it'll assess me at a VP level. It'll ask me all these different questions. What I learned when I’ve coached people, and one of the assessments is called The Raven. It's basically, it's looking for patterns. It's looking for that noise. How can you recognize patterns through a lot of noise? The first time I took it, I did horribly. I did horribly on The Raven. You can't, by the way, too horribly, but it's just –

Cristina Amigoni: It’s a passive feel assessment.

Sharon Holmes: Right. For a long time she’s like, “Well, I just recognize patterns differently.” I can remember them like, ‘Yeah, Sharon. That's not really it. That's not really the answer.” But that thought, that was what I was leaning into. What I try to tell leaders when I coach them on that assessment, or just around noise in general is, first of all, what is it that you want? Do you want this? Because if you truly do, do you want to become a VP? Or does somebody else want you to become a VP? They're not in the room, it's just you and I. Let's break that down and let's talk about, do you want to do this and why? Then once we do that, then we can talk a little bit about the things that they're doing today, including chasing every ball, try to be that perfect manager.

May or may not be working for them as a manager. But why it's not going to work for them at a VP level is because you are at a much higher level. There is a lot more noise when you move up that ladder. How do you start recognizing, leaning into all these different experiences, these really good experiences that you've had as a manager and as a director that will help you recognize, I've seen this before, I've seen that before quickly, so that you can assess a direction. Also, leaning into your team. Because I am known and anyone who's gone through what people have described as the share of those leadership experiences that dates me all the way up to one of my Comcast days, when I was really helping leaders and sales leaders, I would talk a lot about the answers are ultimately in the room.

You don't always have to be the one that knows the answer. In fact, I encourage you to strengthen the teams around you and the people on your team to help broaden the answer and help them execute solution. Your job is to really assess and you know you're probably now going to be in a position to sell whatever solution you and your team have arrived at to the top. Your job is to assess based on what you know, you've got a position at the next level, is this going to work, or not and help your team understand that that's how you build their strength and their leadership capabilities, strengthen your own, and you're pulling them along. Because when we get you to that VP spot, we hope that we've got somebody from your team, or another team ready to move into that director level, or that manager level. That's the ultimate to me reward of leadership that you're really bringing people along. It's not always your way, but you're taking the best of that.

I think that that sometimes is what's hard for leaders to come to terms with, because they're maybe getting promoted, or looked upon based on what they've done. If they're really good, it's based on what them and their team are doing.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that's when we find out a lot of times as we – especially when we're working with particularly new leaders where you've just been promoted at an individual contributor role and now you've got a team, and understanding that your job is no longer – your job is not to do the things, and your job is not also to have the answers. Both of those tend to be gut feelings we have to go to, because we were rewarded for a long time for doing things. We assume that management means having a bunch of answers and there's a lot of that training of like, it's about listening. What if you could ask the questions, so you can find the answer? I love how you put the answer is in the room and you don't have to be the one to have it. It's a lot easier to understand that, or to actually find the right answers and the good answers when you're willing to spend that time listening, getting curious and jumping into what's the knowledge around the room? What knowledge exists already?

Sharon Holmes: That's right. That is an excellent way of putting it. But it is hard. In fact, as you probably know, just like me, because we do this work, oftentimes you do get promoted. If you're lucky, there's a leadership development program for you. But often, we're showing you how to approve timesheets and we're showing you how to do the technical thing that you’re promoted, but we're actually not really teaching you that we should. The best practice is that you have regular one-on-ones with your team, because guess what? Your job just shifted. From whatever your individual contributor role was to being a people leader. That's now your most important job. Your job, yeah, we want you to keep the ship afloat, or the plane in the sky, but we also want you to be able to bring your people along.

Now they need to be elevated. You need to be listening to them. Guess what? Some of the hardest leadership lessons is that person that was your peer that you're leading, right? There's going to be some energy there. Well, I like to put it as energy.

Alex Cullimore: It's a nice way of putting it.

Sharon Holmes: They may not necessarily want to follow you and –

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Not Sharon's middle name, Energy. Different type of energy.

Sharon Holmes: Right. They also may be doing things completely different. It's not wrong, it's just different. I always invite leaders to really take the time, step back and get to know them differently, right? I say to every single leader, if you don't take anything else from this podcast, that if you moved into, or planning to move into a leadership role, that you do a one-on-one very differently with every single person that you're now starting to manage. You get what I call a leader agreement in place, because you're now not their peer. You need them, but they need you as well. You want to get their agreement to support you in this new space. You want to try to clear out all the animosity.

I'm not going to say it's going to be perfect in every case, because there's still going to be somebody that's going to be maybe mad about it, especially if you were going toe-to-toe with them for the promotion. That's a coaching session with Sharon, Alex, or Cristina. We've got to go do it differently in that conversation.

Cristina Amigoni: For a few months. For a few months of coaching.

Sharon Holmes: Correct. At the crux of it, it is really about, I want to get to know you differently. We're going to now have a real different relationship. It's leading with authenticity and integrity. It's leaning into just who you are as a human, not I’m your boss now. That's having to deliver work for you if you were their peer. You are going to have to step into that leadership seat quickly, but you're going to have to build that relationship real differently. Some people are going to lean right in with you, and some are – The other thing I would advise is if your company doesn't offer a program for new leaders that I'm not talking about the tactical stuff. I'm talking about –

Cristina Amigoni: Approving time sheets.

Sharon Holmes: That's all right. What's the optimal way to do this performance management that I personally hated myself? The trick is to not wait till the end of the year, or the performance period and to do something informally/formally quarterly. That's my secret. Just lean into how are you doing, adjust the goals quarterly and move on. Make one of the weekly, or bi-weekly, or monthly one-on-ones. However, often you have them, but they should at least be monthly. Turn one of those into a formalized-informal performance. Make that your own best practice. Document it and it'll be so much easier when you get to that fourth quarter, or that period, where you've got to do that performance review that we all can't stand. That's the secret to really getting the best out of it and not making it a chore. Because guess what? You've now done it for three other quarters in a year, and now this fourth quarter is just tying it up into a bow, right? It becomes a lot easier to do that.

Yeah. I would advise new leaders, if your company doesn't offer it, there's lots of stuff out there on the interwebs, there's all sorts of AI right out there. ChatGPT is my best friend, right? But there's so many. Not to plug ChatGPT, but there's so many out there that are almost like your leadership coach. You can almost just put in, I'm going through this situation, how do I then handle it? What's your best recommendation? I also say, get yourself a sponsor. Whoever sponsored you into that promotion and it's not always your next level boss. Find a sponsor in the company that you can go and talk to. You may be assigned a formal mentor and you can certainly leverage that person, but I would say, find an informal person. Each one of us needs, we've heard this term before, our own personal board or directors, right? You need to find a sponsor in the company that you can bounce things off.

You need to find your critic. You need to find someone who is not going to always tell you the sun, shiny, wonderful thing that you did. They're going to say, “Okay, what you did was great, but here's how you could do it better.” They're going to always be pushing you. I always encourage to find someone within your functional area of expertise and/or your industry. For me, I've worked a lot in life sciences. I've worked a lot in technology. I tend to find people in those, but I also try to find people at that next level.

For me, I'm looking at Alex and Cristina on how you decided that, right? I'm also looking at other entrepreneurs from a consulting side, as well as VPs, SVPs and the talent space and the HR space to really help groom me. How can I learn? Here's where I've gotten consistent feedback. Here's what I'm doing to improve it. What are you noticing? Are you still seeing that? What can I continue to do better? Seek those people out, because we're all 100% responsible for our own development. It's not always going to be the company. Yeah, they promoted you and maybe they don't have the money to hire Cristina and Alex, or Sharon to come in. We can just program, right? Go out and seek those resources for yourself, because it's ultimately going to be you, continuing to get yourself to the next level.

Alex Cullimore: That's great advice. I like both of those. Find the ways to develop yourself. I especially like the performance review one, because people like that touch point and they like that feedback and there's nothing more miserable than having a stellar year for nine months, and in the last three months, some projects go up and that's all that your performance review is about, or whatever. Whichever way it goes, is if you don't have that understanding, you're not going to build that relationship and then everybody is dreading that review process.

Sharon Holmes: Here's a pro tip. Here's what I'll say as a pro tip that I've tried to do. If you as a new manager aren't doing this with your team, or your manager's not doing it with you, individual contributors, listen up, you do it with them. You'll schedule the one-on-ones. Now, some managers are very formal and they're like, “Well, is there a problem? Why are you scheduling this?” “No, I just like a regular check-in.” If they prefer to do it, let them do it. But you take the lead if they haven't done it. You take the lead to say, “Hey, can we focus January, April, July and October to have a more formal conversation around my performance, or March, you pick it, March, June.” You pick the four times a year that make the most sense once the year starts, or whatever your year is based on. Two or three months after the year has started. “Can we take one of those formal one-on-ones and really talk about my performance? I want to talk about my goals. I want to talk about how I'm moving the needle.” I know some of you listening right now are going to say, “Well, Sharon, I haven't even gotten goals. It's March 4th and I haven't gotten goals.”

Cristina Amigoni: We all have goals, though.

Sharon Holmes: We all have goals. That's the point.

Cristina Amigoni: We have personal goals in our careers.

Sharon Holmes: That's right. Take those. Talk about what you're doing, right? You should know from a company standpoint, even if your manager hasn't gotten to it, give them a little bit of a break. Send them to Cristina, Alex, or me, to help them understand why it's important to give their team goals, right? Aside from that –

Cristina Amigoni: Before March, for the year they're in and three months have already gone by.

Sharon Holmes: Exactly. But if they haven't done that, sit down, come up with your – what is our company all about? What did we accomplish last year? Listen in. There are town halls that are had. There's always going to be earnings calls all over the world, especially if they're publicly traded in some country, or not. Listen to the earnings call. Listen to the things that the companies are talking about that are important and the way they're trying to grow. Every single company out there, particularly if they're publicly traded. Even if they're not, we'll have a plan. They’ll have a three to five-year plan. What does it say? You take whatever it says and go to ChatGPT and say, “This is my job.” Put your job description in there. “Here's what the company's goals are. What are two or three goals that I could come up with for myself based on my job that could help move the company forward?” You know what? Present that to your leader. Your leader may get a little offended that you're doing some of their work, but that's their problem, right? You just put it up there.

Cristina Amigoni: Like, they didn't do their work.

Sharon Holmes: Any good leader will appreciate that and may say, “Hey, can you do this activity for someone else?” Work for the rest of the team. I encourage everyone to take ownership of that. It's not an excuse to say, well, a company didn't do it. I don't have any goals, and I'm just going to keep schlepping along and be mad at everyone. Take ownership of that and do it for yourself.

Cristina Amigoni: As a leader, being in that position with a team that actually comes to you and says like, “Hey, we're seeing this and this and this and this, and this is where we want to focus the next couple of months to fix.” I'm like, “Great. What do you need from me?”

Sharon Holmes: Jumping all over it. Jumping all over it and taking it.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm blocked. What permissions do you need? Want anybody to talk to?

Sharon Holmes: Who do I need to move? That is the best solution. Those people that have... No, I love it. When you come to me with an idea, or your own, and we may not be able to do it. I may have gotten some words from the top. They're like, “No.” But I don't want to squelch that energy and that enthusiasm. We may have to do that idea on a smaller scale, or we may have to leverage it in a different way. But what I don't want to do is squelch someone's energy, or enthusiasm. I really, really, really want to encourage people to lean in, again, when you've got people on your team that they're not necessarily coming for your job. Even if they are, so what? Come for my job.

Cristina Amigoni: You're going for the next job anyway.

Sharon Holmes: Exactly.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Sharon Holmes: I want people to fight it out, right? I also want subject matter experts. I recognize that not everyone, and this is what my grad school experience and all my consulting experiences taught me as well. For those of you that are listening that are like, “Sharon, I don't want to be the CEO. I don't want that job. I don't want to be a VP. I'm good.” Wait, we need people like you. I always say in careers, you either go up, or you grow out. There are people who look at those of us that have managed people and they're like, “Yeah, I don't want to do that. I don't want to manage that. I want to manage them, or people.” I get it.

What that tells me, especially if you're really smart and you're leaning in and you're maybe on a quieter side, you may see patterns and things that are going on that I'm going to miss, because I'm doing things up here, right? I need you to lean into your voice in our one on ones and share what some of those things are. Some of the best things that we've launched and done have come from some of my quieter team members. I can remember, my most recent company, AAK, I don't want to call her out. I won’t say her name. But she sits – I don't know who she is by this description. She's originally from Poland, sits in Sweden. She, when I joined the company said, “Hey, I want to be the Global Head of Talent.” Everyone around, “I don't see it. I don't see it.” What I saw in her was enthusiasm. I saw that she had a real desire to grow. Whether or not she was going to grow ever into the Head of Global Talent, I wasn't leveraging that as that's never going to happen, so I'm going to just check you here.

It was more about what excites you. What is it about this job that you really want to do? Every single project that I gave her, she did. She did it too infinitely better than I would have ever thought of doing it. Okay, her name is Kinga. But I loved her. This day, I still think she is a phenomenal person. I hope that they're really leveraging her, if she's still at the company, because she's smart. She’s on the quieter side, but she's really, really such a talent that I was so impressed with as I got to know her. Nothing like me at all, but that was okay. It was about leaning. It’s what her gifts were and what she was really interested in, and leveraging that for the greater good of the team.

Cristina Amigoni: It's wonderful when you find people like that, because you see it. They have the safe space to speak up and actually tell you what's going on and what they desire. Even if nobody else sees it, you're like, I'm still going to create the space for that growth in some ways.

Sharon Holmes: Yes. One thing I really appreciated about her, because I do have a lot of energy. I do move fast pace. I recognize that about myself. That wasn't necessarily her pace. I remember early on we had a conversation. I had always said in the beginning, look, I am very open to feedback. I can't fix it, If I don't know I'm doing it. Please know, my intent is always good, right? I never do anything with the intent of doing something bad, or this bad outcome. Please, start there. But if I've done something to offend you, or I've said something, I can't fix it, or not do it if I don't know.

She was one of a few on that team that took me up on that. I remember, I had called her out in a meeting. I can't remember what I said, but it was a broader team meeting. I thought I was complimenting her. I was like, “Now, you're on your way,” something like that. Like, “I'm so proud of you.” She told me privately something to the tune like, “I was always on my way. When you said that, it made it seem like I was just not doing anything, until you came along. No, I was always on my way.” I never for a minute thought she would see it that way. I was so appreciative of her telling me that, having the courage, not letting it build up till it was like she was ready to explode, not holding it in, but having the courage to hold me to my words, which is like, look, I always have an open door. You can always come to me. I thanked her for that.

I said, I would have never known that you took it that way. I mean, I was almost speechless, because I was like, I don't know how I could have said it differently. I now understand how you took that, that feedback is always a gift, and it told me so much more about her and how she takes information in. I tried to be so much more thoughtful. I would always check in periodically after that. Like, was anything I said, or anything I said in the meeting stand out for you, or how did you take that? Just to constantly check in. But I wanted to make sure. Sure enough, we were aligned going forward. I've always appreciated that. I say to people out there listening, you've got a new leader.

First of all, let me say to people who got a new leader, that was your peer. Just give them this, right? They're already uncomfortable, because they're moving into a role where they were your peer, and now they've got to lead you. That's as uncomfortable for them in many cases as it is for you. The relationship is absolutely going to change. If you don't get all caught up in your feelings about it, it could really change for the better. Help them help you and just understand that that relationship is absolutely going to change.

I would also say, be absolutely honest with yourself and with them in one on ones, in things that they may do or say. Everything's not going to be your way, right? At least, if they know how you're taking information in, or how you might feel about something, they can flex as best possible to get to the ultimate way. I certainly have people on my team that unbeknownst to me, my style was different from their style. They expected me to read their mind. Then one day, they explode, right? I'm like, don't be that person, right? Lean into take advantage.

The worst thing you could do is say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything's great,” when everything's not great. You want to make sure that you own your pieces of it, but you give them the opportunity to flex and to change. We're all human. I would hope there's no leader out there that wants to intentionally tick their teams off, right? If you’re that kind of leader, don’t do that.

Cristina Amigoni: Hopefully.

Sharon Holmes: Hopefully, you don't do that, right? You want the best for your team. Give your leader that opportunity and just be your authentic self with them. Again, use ChatGPT, use all the tools out there to frame your words. Again, I think everybody is always searching for that win, win.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I love how you said that. It also just reminds me that just everybody's a little bit different in their style. Having that feedback, having those discussions allows those gaps to close. It's not about fixing those. It's not about being different than who you are. Just be who you are and make sure there's enough room for people to reach across the gap.

Sharon Holmes: I love that. Be who you are, but make room, right? There's all kinds of different people out there. I'm learning with all the different generations in the workplace. I continue to learn something new every day. We all do things different. I try not to only rely on what they say about Boomers versus Gen X, versus Gen Y, versus Gen Z, versus I don't even know what they all are now.

Cristina Amigoni: I don’t either. Some letter of the alphabet.

Sharon Holmes: Exactly, right? I try to just let people tell me honestly and authentically what kinds of things are important to them, how they want to grow professionally. If I can help them grow personally, let's talk about that as well, because I'm here for all of it. I'm here to celebrate all of that. Even if it means growing off my team and moving to another team, great. That's what it's all about. It's not about me hoarding talent. I know you're laughing, Alex, because we have had those conversations with the leaders, where they've wanted to – I've done a lot of global work, so some of the hardest conversations is when I take a leader that may be based in, I don’t know, Singapore, or China, and their next-in-line really needs a much more global assignment, grow, and that may be in Amsterdam, or that may be in UK, or that may be in Philadelphia.

It's like, first of all, you're probably so focused on your right hand that you're missing, that you've got this whole bench over here that's ready to move up, and you need to set that person free. Those have been some of the most challenging conversations that I've had to have with leaders. It's really letting your talent shine.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, for sure.

Sharon Holmes: I know we've all experienced that.

Cristina Amigoni: This is all wonderful advice and tips on the leadership experience and how to make a better experience for yourself as a leader and for the people that you lead and the organization. Sharon, you've shared your new website, congratulations, on your new consulting practice. Where else can people find you?

Sharon Holmes: Certainly, on LinkedIn. I'm under my name, Sharon. I think it's under Sharon E. Rose Holmes, right on LinkedIn.

Cristina Amigoni: We'll put it in the show notes.

Sharon Holmes: That's right. I'll do that. You can certainly find me – I don't do a lot of other social media. I should, but I'm more of a stalker, I think, [inaudible 0:42:20], Instagram and Reddit, and some of those others. I think I just like to do the stories in Quora to get it twice. I think my best friend right now is going into ChatGPT and learning and doing a lot of research. I also do leverage – One of my best friends just told me, and she must own 9,000 businesses. I can't keep straight. She's incredible and leadership consulting, and she also has a full-time – I'm like, I don't even know how you do it. But she just recently told me, there's more to AI than ChatGPT, which of course I know. But she's encouraged me to take – There's a lot of courses out there that you can take.

I would say, to anyone out there, whether you're an individual contributor, trying to expand, or you're trying to move up to definitely not be afraid of the whole AI. We've had this conversation. AI is not clearly going to replace jobs.

Cristina Amigoni: It's not going away.

Sharon Holmes: It's not going away. You've got to lean into it. What I will say is AI isn't going to replace jobs any more than cellphones replace the phone company. Yes, most of us don't have landlines anymore. A lot of people that worked as operators for the phone company and worked as engineers for the landlines out there were able to grow and leverage their skills in new technologies. That's exactly what AI is. In just the HR space that I work in leadership and talent, I don't have to now spend half a day pulling all of these talent analytics into Power BI and trying to pull out a trend. I can probably type all that stuff in to some AI tool that I love, Copilot, something in Galaxy AI, Gemini, or ChatGPT, and say, here's what I'm seeing, test my theory. Or whatever it might be. Now you've got more time freed up to really lean in to what you truly should be doing, the influencing, the reasoning behind it, right?

AI is not 100% accurate. It's only doing what we tell it. It still needs your brain, your human brain to lead. But are we going to need telephone operators that much longer? No, we're not using them now, right?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I'm sure they do all sorts of things for the billions of smartphones out there, because there's more smartphones than landlines.

Sharon Holmes: I tell people all the time, I talk to so many HR people who are terrified that their jobs are going to go away, especially recruiters, and that’s not – I do tell them that position I’ve led. I've certainly managed TA teams. But when I talk specifically, I'm like, all those complaints you've had around reading hundreds of resumes yourself and letting human error. Now, you've got tools out there that can read hundreds of resumes at a time, send you the ones that match the job description, and now you can do the real analysis to present to the hiring manager, when here’s why pick the top, these top people for you to interview. They can schedule for you. I mean, a lot of your time is now freed up to actually do your real job.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. To do the human part.

Sharon Holmes: Yes, that companies want. I tell people though, don't be afraid. But I know we just got y'all track working. You can find me in LinkedIn.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, and your website and we’ll have both in the show notes.

Sharon Holmes: Yes, please. Certainly, I would say, when I was really thinking about this company that I wanted to build and in the sea of company, for both these friends that are out there, we all do a lot of the same things. It's just who you could have with. But one of the things that I pride myself on is that voice in the room, where you're the only one. For me, a lot of times, I've been the only woman and I've been the only woman of color. That's not a bad thing, right? It's being able to break through whatever things people might be telling themselves about you, as soon as you walk in the room. Then the first two things you'd say to come out of your mouth that will shoot whatever their thoughts are about women and women of color, just out of the hemisphere. Then you just become who you are.

I say, I really help coach women, in particular, from all around the world at various levels, how to lean into their voice. That's why my program, Unmuted, is really one I'm excited about. Doing that work with employee resource groups out there. Because as much as I know, DEI is a mad word, at the moment. Culture is not. It speaks to the culture you want. We have all sorts of people, and including men who want to be champions of people who are different, and of themselves. We've got many who are who are quiet, who don't feel often they fit into whatever the view leadership has in their company. Unmuted is for anybody. It's for the one who feels like they don't really have a voice and they want to get better at that in their professional spaces.

Cristina Amigoni: Awesome. Yeah, definitely check that out. We have one last question for you, Sharon. What's your definition of authenticity?

Sharon Holmes: For me, authenticity is really alignment. It's when who you are, what you value, and how you show up consistent, especially when things are hard, right? If things are hard, especially as a leader, a lot more, especially in today's world. Authentic leadership doesn't mean oversharing. It doesn't mean having all the answers. It means being honest about what you know, what you don't, and how you're learning in real time. That's really what I pride myself in doing with my teams. Anyone that's reported in me knows I said, I don't have the answer. Let's figure this out.

I pride myself in really being self-aware. I try to have a lot of emotional courage, and I really lead with respect for the humanity of others. I think that most authentic leaders really create environments where people feel safe enough to be real, to stretch and to grow. Because authenticity to me isn't just a personal trait. It's something leaders model, and it's something that they make possible for others. When I talk about leaning in as a leader, that's what you need to do. It's what happens when trust deepens, and trust is not earned overnight. New leaders moving up, and you're now managing your peers. It's not going to be overnight. It's not. But when it's there and it's deepened, your performance is going to improve, and cultures actually change. I've seen this. I've done this. I've helped lead this. Ultimately, in that sense for me, authenticity isn't about protection, or perfection. It's really about integrity.

Cristina Amigoni: I like that. I love that. For sure.

Alex Cullimore: That position.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Sharon.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Thanks for sharing everything.

Sharon Holmes: I'm so excited. My first podcast, I did it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. You did it. First podcast. Yes.

Sharon Holmes: Yay. I would love to come back any time. Update.

Cristina Amigoni: We'd love to have you back.

Sharon Holmes: Yes. We will come back together, and I'll share. I'll learn more about what's going on with you. You'll learn more about what's going on with me.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly.

Sharon Holmes: Any of your listeners out there, just man, we want sharing that, right?

Cristina Amigoni: We get to decide. That's our own power in this podcast.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. We'll just bring you on.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We'll just bring you back. Yes. Yeah.

Sharon Holmes: Yes. Wonderful. Well, thank you. This has been great. I wish you both continued success. You two are phenomenal. The work you're doing is great. You're inspiring me to think about a podcast now, so thank you for that. It's really fun. I just love this format. Thank you so much again, and it was my dream honor to be here.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, Sharon.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for listening.

Sharon Holmes: Bye-bye.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We Are Siamo, that is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. If you’d like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is @wearesiamo, S-I-A-M-O. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or, I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere else.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. We’d like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you. And Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next time.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

[END]