What are the key milestones on your path to leadership?
The first stepping stone on my path to leadership was probably when my father moved our family to Seoul, Korea during the Asian economic boom in the mid-80’s. At the time, South Korea was still considered a developing country, a far cry from the fashion and Kpop-fueled epicenter it is today. But, I literally lived on the doorstep of remarkable economic transformation and socio-political change. I attended a small international school, served as student council vice president, captain of the volleyball team, editor-in-chief of the paper (which is how I got to meet Princess Diana). I was your prototypical model student, though most importantly, I was exposed to a community of expats and global public servants, who inspired me to want to become a diplomat. So, when I got to Stanford, I stocked up on international relations and political science courses, thinking that was my ticket to the UN.
Unfortunately, studying policy and history was nothing close to the dynamism of witnessing a developing nation all of a sudden flip to a developed nation. I didn’t feel like I was building anything. Meanwhile, I saw classmates in my dorm engineering and constructing tangible products and prototypes, which seemed so empowering. In particular, one student was working on a solution for the end of a hose, the nozzle, to make gardening easier for his arthritic grandma. I was struck by the humanity of design and all the different ways you could help people live better. I wanted to do that! So, I changed my major to, at the time, a small and relatively unfamiliar discipline—Product Design—and learned from the best in industry about how to solve any kind of problem creatively through understanding user needs, psychology and human behavior. Simultaneously, the dot com boom presented all manner of opportunities for exploring your inner entrepreneur. This led me to a career in digital design, and ultimately to IDEO where I spent 12 years, initially as an interaction designer and project lead across multiple industries, and soon as a business leader in Design for Health, gradually focusing on a field that is in desperate need of the power of human-centered design.
Most of my career in design and innovation consulting was spent helping businesses in a variety of industries understand their next horizon - it was super broad and interesting, but after time, felt really comfortable. Imagine a warm down blanket. I wanted to make a different kind of impact, telescoping in and out of the rigors of concepting, execution, and scaling. So, I joined a digital health start-up as Head of Design & Experience, employee #13, to build a product, brand, and culture from scratch. The experience of leading this work has been hugely valuable in my latest role, as I am navigating how those beliefs and approaches take flight within a 100,000 person company.
My current leadership position at Microsoft predominantly involves relationship-building and advocacy—why you believe and do the things you do, how our solutions best support the goals of the end user, and how we can do better, together. How these processes fit with those processes - sort of like a design diplomat, to bring it full circle. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to be at the forefront of new waves of technology. When I graduated from Stanford, the internet was just taking off and XD wasn’t a discipline. Now at Microsoft I get to be at the forefront of the next gen of computing. I feel simultaneously blessed and responsible for defining some of the guardrails of ethics, privacy, and affordances that will impact peoples’ future relationship with technology.
What are the key challenges you have faced as a leader?
This year has, not surprisingly, amplified challenges as a leader, including the need to approach every conversation with unwavering empathy. People are anxious about family, work, social issues, their personal safety and well-being, and they have long needed to find connection between their own experience and others’. Creating the space for tough, honest conversations by sharing your own vulnerabilities is always a difficult balancing act. On one hand, you want to be seen as strong, inspiring, and optimistic. On the other, you want your team to know that you are swimming in the same human channels of emotion and ambiguity they are. You want them to believe you have their back because you understand and care, and also because you are there to lift them up. As a female leader, this can be perceived as maternal. That’s not necessarily a ding. However, it plays into stereotypes I’m consciously trying not to reinforce. It is, simply, who we are as leaders.
That said, I feel, as a female leader, there is little room for failure. I feel I am judged twice as hard and, as a result, push my team that much harder. I believe strongly in encouraging a growth mindset and experimenting and learning through failure. There’s that tension again. I believe good leadership starts with trust and providing plenty of autonomy. I also feel a strong sense of accountability and fear of judgment. So, there’s a constant interplay between allowing my team to fail-fast and communicating that “we got this.”
Finally, more than anything, I am a huge believer in radical collaboration. But, not everyone is of the same mindset. Getting other leaders to embrace the benefits of working together, align on goals, and experiment with new ways of doing things is particularly challenging when the value of collaboration is not shared. But, this is as much an opportunity for empathy as any. Understanding and unlocking the things that motivate people is pure gold.
Describe your leadership style / what are your core values as a leader?
Looking back on my first leadership role, I thought my job was to have the best idea and push it through to execution with operational efficiency. Wrong! I’ve learned a lot about my own strengths as a leader and my beliefs about what makes a great leader, specifically around servant leadership. I have always been a better listener than a talker. When I first joined Microsoft, I spent a good deal of time interviewing every single person on my team to understand the challenges, the opportunities, the rituals, and the stories that marked the identity of the group. I believe it’s my job to empower every person on my team to achieve excellence and to collaborate with each other in the process. To do that, you have to understand what motivates someone and how you can create the right conditions for people to thrive. It’s human-centered design applied to organizational change. And, I believe you need to establish a strong culture of empathy, inclusion, prototyping and humility to ensure that diverse perspectives result in truly innovative products. Sometimes that means rolling up your sleeves and getting into the muck of product-making, other times it means stepping back and simply acknowledging the progress that’s been made.
What advice do you have for women who are trying to establish themselves as leaders?
Someone once told me that, as a leader, everything I do impacts my ability to lead. That includes what I eat, my sleep, how I speak to people, how I think about myself and others, really everything. So, look for the bright spots and spend your time and energy on the things that augment your vision.
It’s easy for women to fall into a place of feeling like we have to achieve perfection at work and at home. This is not only an unhealthy belief, but we’re setting ourselves up for a good deal of disappointment and stress, especially with 70% of all care-giving falling on the shoulders of women. For those women coming up the path I would say we have unique qualities and should not try and transform ourselves by “fitting in.” Rather, start by figuring out how to bring what is complementary to the table. Ask yourselves where the gaps are, find the right allies, and communicate, communicate, communicate. Empathy, collaboration, the ability to see through problems in different ways are all qualities we should embrace. The future truly is female. Everyday, I remind myself of the tremendous value in those differences.
In my career, I've been fortunate to work with great partners. They’ve not always been women—unfortunately, that’s more often than not, an anomaly. But, I’ve found that’s okay, as long as you find your cohort of supporters. Find complementary thought partners. I’ve worked across a lot of industries and worked with “multipliers,” whose superpower is to make you better, in part, because of their differences.
Lastly, write your own narrative. Early on, decide the story you want to tell about yourself. Literally, write it down. Then, shape your experience around that plot-line. It’s easy to get caught up in the perceptions of others and allow that to become your brand. Your abilities, your unique perspective, your drive...it’s all tremendous value that people need to hear about.
How would you advise organisations who want to foster diversity and gender equity in leadership?
Don’t wait until people prove themselves as leaders. Recognize the potential for leadership in people, and give them the opportunity to take the helm, even before they might be ready. As a woman of color and having observed plenty of women growing as leaders, I see we can be tentative about instigating change. Or, we have to work a lot harder to earn a seat at the table (which, incidentally, is different than having a voice at the table). We should all take a page out of Admiral Grace Hopper’s book and “ask forgiveness, not permission.” Organizations can create room for this tacit permission by pushing a diverse group of leaders to the fore now, and provide the right on-going support to enable success.
In addition, create a culture where every voice gets equal airtime. I used to feel that if I didn’t have the most critical point to make, I shouldn’t waste peoples’ time by speaking up. As an introvert and my own worst critic, it was easy for me to stay silent. I recognize it’s an inner monologue we need to actively chase away. I hold a weekly staff meeting called Coffeemakers which is centred on the belief that we’re there 100% as leaders to serve our people. It’s not about being loudest and most visible or making coffee for those who are leading, but the opposite. Round-robins ensure that everyone is heard, and a regular practice of shout-out’s highlight the contributions of team members. We make sure we hear and provide whatever teams need to get the job done.
I’m always encouraging my team at every opportunity to learn and be curious. I share books with them about leadership and design as symbols of the learning journey. I also ensure we have rituals in place, where we can discuss what we’ve all learned from our successes and failures. For my new role, I interviewed every person on my team, which is 65+ people and then brought what I learned back to the team so we could talk about both the challenges and opportunities to activate to the best possible state together. My job is to create the structure and conditions necessary for success. It’s about being a facilitator.
How would you describe the innovation landscape for women today?
The most encouraging aspect of women in innovation today is the growing number of us in this together. Sixty years ago, my great aunt showed up at architecture school as the first and only female in her class. As the first female architect in Korea, she broke all manner of glass. Critical to her ability to do this was an equal partnership with her husband, who was also an accomplished architect. Together, they built a business with my great aunt at the helm, but it’s not unreasonable to assume she would have been hard-pressed to succeed on her own.
Fast-forward to the present, and there are so many women on behalf of women creating for women. Women’s health is one example of a nascent opportunity that is gaining momentum because women are rallying around each other to drive innovation, including investors, entrepreneurs, and people supporting products and services built by and for women. I am optimistic this is not a trend, but a new wave. The ripples are still small, so it’s imperative that we enthusiastically rally behind even the smallest seedlings of an idea to increase the probability of success.
