Do Something Scary Every Day with Julie Doleman [Experian]
+ Notes
Julie Doleman is the Managing Director of Global Expansion at Experian - and an unstoppable force of nature. She moved from California to the UK a decade ago and has set up new business units all over the world. She understands how different cultures work, and has learned how to get the best from people in those diverse cultures. Her three CREATE stories defy conventional wisdom. She talks about the power of work environments in which people feel safe to be 100% themselves, how being 100% authentic builds trust and how stepping outside ones comfort zone is the only way to grew as a human and a leader.
+ Transcript
KATZ : Welcome to Humans Leading Humans towards a future of work that works for people. A smorgasbord of snackable stories to help you be a more effective leader. My guest this week is a force of nature. She is a wonderful woman. Julie Doleman, the Managing Director of Global Expansion at Experian. At the beginning of this pandemic we realised, like everyone else, we would have to think about doing things very differently. So one of the things that we do at beep is to run DENS. DENs for those of you who don't already know, is our own inimitable brand of highly interactive, dynamic ,seriously fun design thinking workshops. They normally happen in physical spaces where you have the chemistry of face to face.We had absolutely no idea whether or not we'd be able to replicate them online. But the only way that you really know if something will work is to try. Learning by doing shall be the whole of the law.
Anyway, Julie was one of the very first leaders to throw herself into an online DEN. And I think we were all surprised how well it worked. And I think that’s because we probably all need real connection and opportunities to co-create and collaborate more than we ever have before. I’ve been lucky enough to have the joy of working with her since and believe me, she is most definitely an imaginal leader and she is 100% human. But before we meet Julie, and in time honored ritual to let me explain why I'm dedicating time to make this podcast for you with love.
If you work inside an organisation, whether it be public or private, big or small. If you work with humans. (Actually if you don't work with humans there is nothing to see here, so look away, but if you do, and you sometimes find it hard to get your team to see the world through your eyes, to see what really needs to happen, it seems so obvious to you but you just can't get them motivated or energised to work with you on that journey. We're all in the same boat. It's tough
So bring on humans leading humans.; This audio fuel kit is made for you. With love., Packed with the stories, the tools and the inspiration that we all need to shine as leaders. So keep it in your backpack for those times when you desperately need a shot of energy, to be inspired, to believe that you can succeed. Because here's the thing; leaders across the world have succeeded. They have proved that you can lead teams in even the most complex situations, you can get them to change their behaviours to shift their mindset. If you understand that a leaders only job is to create environments in which people feel respected, rewarded, recognized. Where they can be 100% themselves.
Now, I happen to be lucky enough to know a lot of those leaders. So, I'm on a quest to collect their stories, to give you the courage and the know how to lead more human, so that you can be more successful.
So before I introduce you to the phenomenal Julie I just want to say a really, really big, big thank you to all of you who have sent feedback and suggestions for what you'd like to see more of, and how I can improve the show. Your feedback is really important to me. It energises me, it makes me want to keep going - so please head over to www.katzkiely.com and sign up for the humans, leaving humans newsletter, and obviously connect to our social channels. And if you want to know more about the DENs and our Imaginal Leadership Programs, head over to www.wearebeep.com .
But enough of all of that, it's time for you to meet the extraordinary Julie Dolman.
Julie Dolman, I haven't known you for a hugely long time. But what I have seen from you is that you are an incredible, unstoppable force. I've watched the way that you lead and it's so inspiring to me. So I wonder if you could tell the audience how did we meet.
JULIE Thanks for that Katz and thank you for having me. I”m very humbled and honoured to be here. We met because I was asked to participate by our mutual friend Mark Earl's in one of your Imaginal Dens, at the early stages of lockdown, where we were all trying to figure out what the hell was going on in the world and how we were going to actually manage to lead teams through it. And I have to tell you that it became the one time over the course of the week that I really looked forward to. 90 minutes of just incredible Brain Food and inspiration and tools, and it was incredible. So you played a big role in the uncertainly the early days of lockdown and how to make it all happen.
KATZ : Now it’s me that humbled. Thats really sweet. Thank you so much Julie So, in time honoured fashion, so that people know why they should listen to your experience, and how it's going to help them be better leaders. Do you want to explain what you've done, not who you are because who you are as this extraordinary powerhouse of a can-do woman. But what you've done.
JULIE So, I have been fortunate enough to be in the chair for some really incredible stories of high growth, high intensity. Really incredible work directly with consumers in different parts of the world. So I've spent a significant part of my career, obviously in the US, I now live in the UK, and I have started up businesses all over the world. So, in Brazil and Colombia, Peru, beginning in South Africa beginning in Germany, where I've been able to go into those countries to truly understand consumer need, figure out how we could build products and propositions to meet those needs, and have an impact on real people and real humans, and it's led to significant growth in our organisation. And I've learned more than I could have ever dreamed of in my life.
KATZ : Wow, so you really genuinely have understood how to work in lots of different cultures and how to grow cultures in lots of different cultures. Thank you for that. So Julie Doleman, what's your number one story.
JULIE : Well I've got a few of them, and I'm so excited to tell them to you and to your audience. So the first one is about empowering people to bring their whole selves into whatever they do. So when I started this global expansion role that I was just telling you a little bit about ,I partnered with two pretty incredible individuals Mark Earls and John Wilshire, who I know you know, and we had to figure out how we were going to go into a new country, where experience, the sense that I work for, has a business, and how we were going to create a little startup inside of that business without resources without funding, without really a clue of what our go to market strategy was going to be. But we knew that the core to that was people, and so we would bring a cross functional group of people, whether it was people who raised their hands, or people who were volunteered by the regional leadership team, and we brought them all together for an initial workshop. And when they came into the door we had them write their title and their day job onto a little card. We had them rip up that card and put it into the bin right by the door and just bring their whole selves in. We set the foundation to say to them; “Listen, we don't want to know what to do in your day job, because we actually don't care. We invite you in to just bring all of your incredible ness and all of the richness of your experience and who you are into this environment, so that we can do some great things together.”
And over the course of the week. What was really brilliant is that we had legal people who became marketeers, we had techies who were leading sales pitches for funding, we brought clients in we brought senior leaders in, and we ended up having product people delivering business cases to the leaders within the organisation, and absolutely stepping outside their comfort zones, to really come together and do some incredible things. What ended up coming out of it, and one of the examples in particular is that in India we had a guy who, by the end of the week when we asked everybody to tell us what they did in their day jobs once it all was said and done. He said “Im theHR guy” and we said ..” You the HR guy? You can’t be the HR guy !” And funnily enough, within about four to six weeks of that initial workshop, that HR guy ended up running what became our consumer business. He leaned into it and said :”..listen, I don't know what I don't know, and I know I don't know a lot of stuff, but I want to go for it and I want to bring my whole self in and I'm really open to help and support and guidance and he absolutely was. And he smashed it. And it wasn't all easy and it wasn't all smooth sailing, but it was just a beautiful example of when you just let people bring their whole selves in and you empower them to do great things. And you empower them to realise that it's okay if they fail, or it's okay if it doesn't all go to plan. That's what it's all about, really, really amazing things happen.
KATZ : You're absolutely right! There are two things I'm taking you away from this .One of them is that the only failure that there is, is not embracing failure. And I don't mean fail fast, I mean, if you don't empower people and make them feel psychologically safe so they can say to you: “that didn't work,” you're missing all the beautiful valuable learnings, which is just stupid right? So I love that story . The second thing that really made me think about back in the day used to run this big event. Once a year. People would come from all over the world, people from big companies, small companies, academic institutions, whatever, to talk about what convergence might look like. One of the key drivers and one of the key instructions when delegates were coming to this event, is that you leave your role behind. Come in as who you are. Because, you know what, at the beginning this great digital journey, none of us know what the answers really are. We're all have to be in constant learning,. So you would get senior people from Microsoft talking to some young guy that had just started a startup and of course, everyone has something to learn from everyone. It makes me think that people who are so stuck in this way of recruiting … sector specific people. With 20 years of experience. Forget it. I believe that in the right environment, if you're empowered, you can do anything if you want to do it. I love that story. Thank you so much, Julie, what's your story number two.
JULIE : So my second one is about building trust through authenticity. Before I moved from the US to the UK to run a pretty significant team. It was recommended that I do a little bit of research on the cultural nuances and the cultural differences between US and the UK and I stumbled across a YouTube video as you know, all good leaders looking to learn how to lead do, and it was a video with this incredibly posh older woman who had this amazing blouse on that was like exactly what you would imagine a very posh British lady to have lace you know all the way up to her neck. And to this day I don't think I've ever heard anybody sound so posh, but her video was all about the fact that English people are incredibly private, and you can sit next to somebody for 30 years. Every day, day in and day out and not have any idea if they were married, or if they had any children, or what their life outside of the office was like. And I remember sitting there thinking: “oh my god, this is not gonna go very well. How am I actually suppose to be my authentic self, if people don't understand my why. If people don't understand what gets me out of bed in the morning. And so I decided that what I actually needed to do on my first day on the job, even though it might seem like a completely ridiculously narcissistic thing to do, was that I was going to put together a PowerPoint, all about me. And I was going to share with the team: My why. The first picture on the screen was of my children, at the time they were four and seven. They are the reason why I get out of bed in the morning, and I showed them my husband and a picture of my mother and gave a little bit of colour around how hysterically amazing she is, and I showed them my favourite band and the food I like to eat and where I'm from in California, and how the West Coast is the best coast. And at the end of my presentation. I was met with completely blank stares. No, I think there might have been a few slow claps, and then they shuffled out of the room, like they were leaving a funeral. My boss said: “Wow, looks like you totally nailed that one!” “Yep, this is not going very well already. And over the course of the next 90 days, they needed to understand my why but I needed to understand their why’s too. So, I sat down with every single person on the team. And while I was very sensitive to the cultural differences and I was very sensitive to different personality types I know I can be quite polarising. I just wanted to understand people's why to understand them . I knew that by being my authentic self. I could begin to build trust, but I also knew that they were handing me something very personal was very very personal, and in accepting that why I needed to remember to remember. And that is something that guides me as a leader and as a person, which is if somebody tells you something important. You can't forget it. You can't ask them the same question. Two weeks later, like oh do you have any kids or, “Oh I didn't know you had a daughter…”, well actually, you told me that she was your Why. So when you know that Joe's daughter had her first birthday, you go up to him on Monday morning and you say: “How'd it go, was it amazing was she so happy?”
Remembering to remember is critical, and it is how you start to build trust. I am always committed to authenticity, and that is about driving transparency, and that is about consistency and communication and consistency of style. You can't be one way one day, and then switch gears on the team, the next day. I did crazy things like I turned my office into a collaboration space where people could just go in and I only had a standing table in there, and it was all about brainstorming and collaborating and building trust with one another and setting this new culture, that would drive high performance, that would drive the results that an incredibly ambitious team and myself as an incredibly ambitious leader, knew that we needed to deliver. And that was all based on this foundation of trust. And the only way in my mind to build trust is by being an authentic leader.
KATZ : I couldn't agree with you more and Harley from Burning Man was talking about the absolute need for authenticity, to build trust. But I guess some of the people listening well think well, yeah you know, Burning Man is built on the principles of trust and transparency and authenticity, this is kind of easier for her. And then Isabel, was talked about the imposter syndrome, which we all have. So my question to you is, how did you find the strength. How did you feel after that moment where you've given your all, this is who I am, guys, this is not the way that you do things here but I'm going to do it like this from here on. How did that feel and where do you get courage to do that.
JULIE Well, I definitely walked out and thought, wow, what am I doing here, this is like a square peg in a round hole. However, I knew what I could bring to the table. I knew that I would hit many many obstacles. I knew that I absolutely underestimated the impact of coming to a new country. And the fact that I was leaving behind my support system, I was leaving behind my network I was coming to a country that I thought, well it's English, how hard could it be, and you know I opened a menu my first day here and I was like I don't even know what a Courgette or an Aubergine is I thought this was supposed to be English. And I wasn't everybody's cup of tea. There was a guy on the team at the time and I has my one to one with him. I sat down and right as he sat down, he said: “You know what, I'm just gonna be really open with you, I don't really like Americans.” I think …this isn't gonna go very well. I looked at him and I said: “Yes. Thanks for the challenge. I love a good challenge.” in the back of my mind I'm like; seriously who says that, but actually I said: “Great, I will turn you” Fast forward two and a half years and he ended up leaving to move on and, and that is leaving do, he said,:”I think we should hug.” I said:”Are we there? Yes! This is amazing!” Butit wasn't easy, and I just had to persevere through, and you know imposter syndrome like Isabel said absolutely, I mean I remember walking into the office, the first day going, what am I even doing here, I lconvinced these people that I can do this. Now I actually need to do it . But I could and I did and our growth story was pretty phenomenal while I was here.
KATZ : The reason that you managed to succeed with that was being able to bring in your authentic self and to be 100% yourself and gain respect that you brought, … you said the word consistency a few times as you were talking, and it occurs to me that that's a missing word in the Create framework. So that is added. I’ve seen it so many times where a leader says one thing one day and completely the opposite the next day. And that is not a good way of creating psychological safety. Now, so thank you so so much for that second story. What's your third story.
JULIE So my third story is about doing something that scares me, and stretching myself outside of my comfort zone. So, a few years after uni, I experienced significant loss, I lost my best friend. It was incredibly unexpected and literally over the course of just minutes. And little did I know that a few years after that I would lose my father who is my absolute hero in life. And so here I was at 26 years old, and I had no idea why this was happening to me. And the most annoying thing that people can say to you when you've experienced loss is, you know, everything happens for a reason you think.. “What kind of nonsense is that, what can be the reason for this?” And so, you know, I searched for a while to understand the reason. And the only thing that I could actually come up with, and I'm really glad that I did, was that life is short and you never know what's going to happen, and you've got to just go for it. And I never wanted to have regrets I was lucky enough to look back on my relationship with my best girlfriend and my relationship with my father and know that I had no regrets. I left it all on the table and I knew that, that had to be one of the driving forces of my foundation moving forward, and that I had to continue to push myself outside of my comfort zone and do something that scares me, in order to really just go for it and feel great about going for it. And I'm not talking about being reckless, because there's definite differences between stepping outside of your comfort zone and being reckless. And while l, I actually do recommend skydiving and bungee jumping, that's not exactly what I'm talking about here. Very, very fun but not exactly what I'm talking about,
I'm talking about things like not being afraid to go for a role that you might not be ready for, that you might not have all the skills for, I mean walking into my boss's office a.. I'll never forget this.. where I had been passed up for promotion a few times, and with my heart beating completely outside of my chest I walked into his office and I said: “No one can do that job better than me and these are the five reasons why I'm not going to be passed up again. That is my job. And this is what I will deliver and he went, yeah, good call.” And I walked out of his office going: “What have I just done? What kind of an idiot does that.” But actually, it scared me. I went for it, and it went really really well, I did of course go into that role thinking oh my god what have I done, but actually I smashed it and it was a brilliant opportunity.
Things like moving to a new country. I never in my life thought I would live in another country if you'd asked me, just 10 years ago, would you live in another part of the world and leave everything that you know and love, I would have thought you were crazy. But I've been here eight years now. So, leaning in doing things that scare you or that have scared me, have been absolutely brilliant in my life. Moving to this country has been the best thing that I could have ever done for myself, for my family, my children are these incredible sort of dual culture kids and they really appreciate the world which I knew nothing about when I was their age. And so I guess you know, at the end, the worst thing in my life that can happen is that somebody dies, and I'm here to tell you that getting comfortably uncomfortable and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone will absolutely not kill you.
KATZ : Oh my God. God, I couldn't agree with you more, you know, we have one precious life. And just because something's normal doesn't make it right, to kind of push against that kind of feeling that you have to be a thing or you're not good enough to be a thing or the imposter syndrome. There are so many women leaders, who could achieve so much more if they became more comfortable with facing that discomfort, if they could think:, yeah, I'm going to do this. Yeah, it feels uncomfortable and I'm not even sure if I can, but you know what, I'm going to give it a go, I”ll give it my best shot. And I've got the joy of working with you now, And I see the way that you lead. I see your authenticity, and the way that you create trust, and I can't even thank you enough. Brilliant, brilliant stories, which will keep me thinking and pondering for the rest of the day and I hope all the listeners will be the same. So the last thing we have to do obviously is to decide what shall we call your episode.
JULIE : Oh no, that's the hardest question of all those maybe do something that scares you every day. You can change it, I'm okay with that. Here's something that scares me.
*KATZ** ::I love it I love it, Julie, thank you so much for your time and your energy and your experience and and thanks for being an emotional reader and thanks for joining us and sharing your stories and I will see you very soon. Yes, please. Thank you for having me Katz, I love that. Thank you,
Julie Julie Julie, every week, I think that the conversation can't get any better and it damn well does. Spectacular stories, thank you so so much. And thank you, dear listener, for joining us on our learning journey, I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I know that you know this already, but I fiercely believe that everything can be better, always. And I really really really want to get your feedback so what did you love what resonated with you, what could we do better. What do you want more of who you think deserves to join my list of imaginal guests. So if you've got any suggestions or comments, or feedback or of course, a story that you think might inspire listeners in next week's episode, head over to www.katzkiely.com or DM me on LinkedIn. You have been listening to humans, leading humans towards the future of work that works for people. This podcast is brought to you in partnership with the marketing society. And if you're a senior leader, and if you happen to need to know how, And the network to succeed and if you're not already a member, head over to their website and become part of that tribe I would 100% recommend it, and a massive, massive thanks to the fantastic SuperTerranea for the magical sting of stings, go to www.wearebeep.com . To find out more about the create free work and how we support companies by unlocking the problem solving potential of humans. If you love it passed it on to your friends and colleagues and anyone you think might need a shot of inspiration and energy, thank you so so much for joining me. Please subscribe, the links are in the notes. Do not miss any more of this storytelling magic, be inspired. Be imaginal be more human, and I can't wait to see you next week.
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