What’s A Challenge You Faced Early On?

I was coming straight out of grad school into my first few roles and was given team management responsibilities. In many cases, the team members I was given were two or three times older than I was. It was challenging to earn their respect but I talked to a lot of people about how to manage different age cohorts.

I found that the most important things were to be really clear with your expectations, be super consistent in the way you engage, and try to have some fun. Those management approaches allowed us to build teams of people who cared about the work and about each other.