Sharon Gee, Senior Vice President of Sales and Partnerships at Feedonomics - Transforming Leadership: A Journey from Stage to Executive Suite

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Hi! I'm Shannon, Lucas.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And I'm Tracy Lovejoy. We're the Co. Ceos of Catalyst constellations which is dedicated to empowering catalyst to create bold, powerful change in the world.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: This is our podcast move, fast, break ship burnout, where we speak with calloused executives about ways to successfully lead transformation in large organizations. And today I'm excited to have my good friend with us. Sharon Key. Welcome, Sharon.

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Sharon Gee: Thanks so much for having me.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: As senior vice President of sales and partnerships at Phoenomics. Sharon is responsible for building a robust partner. Network and helping enterprise. Merchants all over the world grow their business.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: She's led sales teams and business development teams in the commerce technology and systems integration space for multiple global companies, such as big commerce. Scuba, born fluid, acquired by astound and tribal Sharon, grew up in Colorado and received her bachelors. She double, majored in music and business and master's degree in music, vocal performance from Colorado State University, and the University of Northern Colorado respectively.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: During and after college she spent her early career touring as a spinto soprano. If I said that right in the Us. Europe and Asia, with various companies, as if she has free time, but in her free time, because she's a ball of energy. Sharon loves spending time with her 2 kids, William and Dalia, on the flower farm in Boulder, just down the road for me. She also loves good coffee. Stay tuned. She's opening an amazing

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: coffee shop in Longmont, Manhattan. She lived there for 10 plus years. The Colorado Mountains and winning deals board games, you name it and helping others actualize. So fun to have you here.

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Sharon Gee: Yeah, it's I. I'm an excellent company. I know.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Alright. Well, let's start off. I mean you and I saw the sparks immediately when it got to hang out. I'd love to understand sort of in your own words, how you relate to the concept of catalyst. And what does maybe, being a catalyst signify for you in your leadership role.

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Sharon Gee: I think there's lots of different sizes of companies. But one thing that is a through line that you see in a lot of a lot of them is this kind of fire in the belly that people have to make a change? It looks different in small companies where they're out in, you know, in the vanguard in the front, leading, articulating a new value proposition to the market, or making waves, or bringing their their network into a small, fledgling business that they wanna have grow

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Sharon Gee: you see that in startups. You see it in agency business development. When you're out there hunting right? Building relationships. You know, people have to trust you. I think you also see it in public companies. But it's harder to spot, cause it looks more like an entrepreneur than an entrepreneur. They're the ones who are constantly like passionately saying, Yeah, but why are we doing it that way?

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Sharon Gee: Are are you? We shouldn't we? Should we look over here and see if we should look at it over like maybe trying to do it a little bit differently. So I think that

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Sharon Gee: that challenger mindset, depending on the size of the company, changes around, whether it's a challenge external or whether it's a challenge internal and I, you know, after talking to you, you put a great language to it, which I think you call it a catalyst, and that's that's really fun, because I think we've all seen those people and when you when you find them, you go, somebody who gets it, somebody who's willing to like, contend for the thing that we want, that we all see that we should go get

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Sharon Gee: that. It's up to us to go get.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: 100%. And I, just I have a follow up question on that because I know a little bit about your story, obviously, and how you were able to see a market opportunity. Bring that to your company, convince them that it was the right direction, and then essentially kind of been handed largely the reins for that.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: How was that process for you as a catalyst.

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Sharon Gee: Yeah, I think you know, when you're

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Sharon Gee: you're speaking about at big commerce, we saw the opportunity to where omni-channel commerce requires really good quality product data. And so, you know, have amazing partners on on the big commerce side, where we said, Hey, what if if we acquired the market leader and product feed management that powers 30% of the Internet retailer, 1,000 feeds. What could that do for us? What what if that was true, what would it mean for our business? How can we help our customers grow.

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Sharon Gee: and that? What if this, what would it take for this to be true. You start, and the entire sea of people in front of you is a red team, and every person you talk to you have to flip them to blue.

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Sharon Gee: And so what that? Look, what you say, what does that look like? What does it look like being a catalyst helping a company see the opportunity around. Why, acquiring a company might be a good idea. It's it is a giant campaign to help people see your perspective and the opportunity in front of them with business case after business case, and you have to turn business stakeholders and marketing stakeholders and technology stakeholders and a lot of political agendas kind of have to align in order for you to see the larger opportunity there, and I think, number one, you have to have.

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Sharon Gee: trusting amazing partners on the other side

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Sharon Gee: who work with you to help build that. So I couldn't be more impressed with the product strategy of you know Brent Bellam and the leader and Russ Klein and Brian Dot and the leadership at big commerce, because doing, you know, making bets that that put you in a leadership position is hard because you have to do it. 2 years before that anyone else thinks you're ready. And so, luckily that's worked out pretty well with Phoenomics as as now, part of the big Commerce family.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Congratulations.

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Sharon Gee: Thanks. Yeah, it's a. It's such an amazing team. I mean it. It makes it easier when the when the group of people that you're looking looking at are are as quality as the feedenomics, founders and and team that they built. What an amazing organization! So now we just have to have to make sure we do right by the customers, and and unlock that potential that all of us have seen.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): That sounds special and sounds amazing for you, as a leader, to have been able to step in and help maintain such. What was already such positive culture. That's great!

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Sharon Gee: It's just a privilege there's there's nothing else there, right? It's about making sure that you're doing right. By by all the people who believed in it.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): That's fantastic, not always, not always true in an acquisition. Right?

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Sharon Gee: Yeah, I think that's more the exception than the rule. That's true.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Right. So you've spent a lot of time driving transformation and organizations, and would love to have you share with us from the catalyst lens, not just the the entrepreneur, but from the catalyst executive lens. What are one or 2 major challenges that you've experienced when trying to drive transformation within an organization.

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Sharon Gee: I think, laying bare the the real situation. Whatever the situation is, whether it's political or whether it's the mark, what's happening in the market that you need to address, or whether it's personalities or people, or or the theory of incentives that play. You know, when when companies get bigger they tend to silos so that they don't.

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Sharon Gee: so that they don't slow down right? Because if if it requires all of the people in a company to make a decision. You move too slow. And so creating functional teams that are that have decision. Making power in and of themselves is not necessarily a bad thing. Right. You see that with companies like Amazon, who've done a lot of work to try and make it possible. For, you know, even if they have duplicative roles. In some cases they will. They will end up having

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Sharon Gee: teams that that from soup to nuts from the beginning, in the of an initiative all the way through the the Goto market and the launch and the maintenance and the support and the Pr. And the marketing. They will group all of those into one group specifically, so that they don't slow down because inertia is a killer. Right? It? We have to make sure that that we can do that. So from a catalyst lens. One of the biggest challenges and opportunities, I think, is understanding where that machine that you are in

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Sharon Gee: is serving you, and where you might need to question and break down where the pieces exist or float on top of it. Right? So you might have. This team has has its own catalyst and goals and direction and and move. You know it's it's moving and and momentum is going in a certain direction, and some, instead of

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Sharon Gee: trying to figure out how to say, no, don't do that. It's anti, you know. It's it's counter to what we think we should be doing. You have to figure out how to kind of jet stream in together where your your

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Sharon Gee: you need to figure out how to put the walls on the river. So the river still works with you, instead of trying to dam the river, because it will always overwhelm you, you know. So I think that's the biggest challenge is

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Sharon Gee: one, how do you build trust with the other catalysts? Who, whose agendas might be competing with yours? And that might be necessary for the success of the larger company?

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Sharon Gee: So that's one of the biggest ones. And then 2. So one build, trust to identify that beautiful Venn diagram where what you want is what they want, and then focus there. Get really narrow around how you can do that together. And that's kind of the partnerships thing like I've said that over and over there's not a thing a salesperson sells that a partnerships person didn't tell them to right, and so, making sure that you can align what the initiatives are, where where you can get the go to market, where one plus one equals 3 on the go to market.

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Sharon Gee: I think, is one of the other biggest opportunities and challenges that catalysts have.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): I love that, and and going back, I know you named it one trust in in 2 Venn diagram. But you also started with something that really caught my interest of laying bare the real challenges. And we just done a piece of research with our catalyst leadership trust. I don't know if you've heard about the the group of executives we bring together looking at, what is it that makes their superpowers shine like? What is it that helps catalyst get to that executive level.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And one of the things we see is that systems thinking which is what I hear when you say, really laying bare the real challenges, right? Whether it's political or relationship, or whatever the case may be. And so it sounds like you're able to come into your role and really look at what's truly happening here.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Where's power? How are decisions made, you know, who are the the folks that are happening? And then within that decide the Trust building. The Venn diagram, which is super powerful.

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Sharon Gee: Yeah, I I like where you're going. With that. I think one of the other pieces is

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Sharon Gee: it's so easy to to to pit yourself against a thing. Because as humans, we want to solve problems. And I think what's really interesting is sometimes the problem is actually the inertia. It is the structure in which you exist. And and it's a motivating enough people to say, let us. What if we existed in a different way? Because it's usually never I I never had the experience where people are trying to trying to prevent you from doing a thing usually right like I think our our

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Sharon Gee: our work businesses and Hr. Teams and teams in general culture is mattering. And so I think we've we've made a lot of progress since my early career where it was. I think there was a lot more outward contention in work where people had specific agendas where they were willing to do that I find myself in a much more collaborative world in the past decade, I think, than than early in my career. And so the challenges we are. But that sometimes makes the challenges harder because they're lurky.

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Sharon Gee: They're tricky things that are actually hard problems, that multiple smart brains, introverts, extroverts, engineers go to market leaders, analyst strategists need to come together to be able to kind of

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Sharon Gee: lay bare. What is the actual challenge here? And so I I like what you're saying there, but I often think sometimes the challenge is, how can we redeploy those these existing resources that we have without spending more? How do we get more out of it. How do we become more efficient? And particularly in the market we're in now, there's a lot of challenging ourselves that or require that. And so some of it

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Sharon Gee: is like challenging our concepts of what people are good at. It's sometimes it's, Hey, maybe that person doesn't have an engineering background. But they're a really spectacular sales engineer, because they understand the the technical concepts, but they know how to relate to people really. Well. So sometimes it's about challenging your concept of what people are capable of. Sometimes it's maybe that person who's on that product team would actually be really good in the go to market team because they could infuse some empathy into this org that has historically only lived in that team.

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Sharon Gee: So those are some of the ideas that come to mind when we think about, how do? How do catalysts identify their their areas of opportunity and challenge, and then break through or redirect the walls to to their benefit?

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): I I love that and totally agree. And to me this is, you know, you mentioned earlier that catalyst can sometimes be harder to see in the organizational context that they'll be seen as entrepreneurs. And this to me is where we can see kind of a divide between how people talk about entrepreneurs, and that will what we talked about with catalyst.

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Sharon Gee: You see.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Like, yes, there's business opportunities that I've identified and we're going to create shared value. And sometimes what we need to do is go past looking at just the business opportunity and be looking at the system. Which is super interesting.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): If if I hand you a magic wand, Sharon, so right here through the screen. Boom, considering these challenges, and you've laid out several right like being able to make bear what the challenges are building the trust, finding that overlapping Venn diagram being able to redeploy in creative ways.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): what type of support or resources do you feel would best enable

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): when you were in these moments of challenge.

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Sharon Gee: I think, one of the things that you guys do so well, and that we we definitely value on our side is, you know we have leadership coaches that our leaders work with who are external. They, you know, it's like having a work therapist, which is the best thing in the world because you get 2 smart brains helping you work through these problems that make you feel seen. While also allowing you to kind of get a 30,000 foot view of what you're doing. And then I and understand your strengths and skills.

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Sharon Gee: and then come to the table with new ideas that aren't necessarily in the in the thick of it. You know what I mean there they. So I think you guys offer this amazing opportunity for people to identify how they can help in an effective way. You know where you have that voice of reason saying, I hear you want that. But, like, are you actually adding value to the company like you have to make sure that we're meeting the goals of the organization before we go meet your catalyst objectives. Whatever you think that you know whatever you've defined them to be.

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Sharon Gee: So. You know, I think.

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Sharon Gee: leadership coaching is some is a cultural thing that a lot of companies haven't yet kind of moved towards yet, and I think it's one of the biggest benefits that that we have, because continuing to invest in our people when they're doing new things.

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Sharon Gee: You know, people rise in companies because you they know the company. Oftentimes they, you know. And and we we are so upset when we feel like we have to bring in someone externally in order to be able to like meet that challenge because they've done it before. And I think that that just means we're not doing enough work to

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Sharon Gee: figure out how to help our help. Our internal folks who have amazing understanding of the problem space and of the people and of the you know of the let's call it the board game lay up. We. We have to just give them examples of different strategies. Right? So the magic wand, what would you do? I think I would like.

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Sharon Gee: try and matrix learn Kung Fu. All of the leadership, coaching wisdom that comes along with being a executive for 35 years. The best way to do that is to try and pipe it into the brains of our already existing in seat leaders, because it's definitely the most efficient way to help them grow to help the culture grow and realize that you can grow within the organization you're in, and then also deliver value for the company.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): I think you're also pushing what sometimes we talk about when we think about executive coaching, which I love because executive coaching is is at its foundation like a set of goals. And how I want to develop as a leader and someone who supports that you're also talking about having a thought, partner.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): that is really there with you as you move through these elements. And I know when I first started in coaching, and I was figuring out who I was which actually led me to thinking about catalyst is, people would say to me, I've never worked with someone who could keep up with me.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): and I think that's a struggle for catalyst executives is to find folks that can be right there with them. No, no disrespect. It's just that we have a brain that works in that way and work jumps laterally and moves quickly and builds connections. So that's just really.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Well, and I think has has a has a similar share. Some some kind of shared experience like it is a unique for all of the ups and downs, and understanding how the resistance the antibodies might attack you is different than a lot of other business problem solving things.

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Sharon Gee: Yeah, always. Them.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Yeah. Go ahead.

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Sharon Gee: So please.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: You go. More thoughts.

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Sharon Gee: I I I love that. What coaching does is it helps us be the best versions of ourselves, and then learn how to bring those, whether it's to work or to like. We're all here to be better humans, right? Like we're all just humans working jobs, because that's what we need to do. And and we're hopefully, you know, making products and services that make the world a better place. But at the same time it's it's

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Sharon Gee: we're we're not necessarily. We're kind of far afield from it. It doesn't feel like an everyday life. Necessarily, you can literally see your direct impact on humanity. And but I think that when you like kind of like being a mother like, you know, if you can be the best mom to your kids that you possibly can. You know that you're doing your part for the world? I think if you can be.

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Sharon Gee: Leo, I used to think force of nature is what I wanted to be. And now, Mother Nature is what I want to be right. I want to create a space. I want to create the resources and the the you know. Like, if your gale wins all the time.

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Sharon Gee: you're not gonna you're not gonna be able to to do what is necessary. But if you can bring the sunshine and enough rain and and the situation where where people feel like they can grow it. People want to grow plants want to grow like, you know, the farmer in me comes out a little bit, but I think, realizing that sometimes fast is not efficient

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Sharon Gee: and sometimes force of nature isn't doesn't create. The growing environment that Mother Nature does is one of the challenges that catalysts have because they they see through. If we only did this, and I think it's really easy to become contentious about that, or to be of the the bull in the china shop, or to be, you know, I think you know I have had to learn. That's one of my biggest challenges. My whole life is slow down.

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Sharon Gee: Bring people along, help them, understand. Tell your story. Tell the story right. If the story is, my customer can't do this, and if we were able to, what needed to be true for my customer to be able to have a better experience here, or my partner to be able to have a better experience here. That

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Sharon Gee: thoughtfulness around creating this space that allows other people to then grow with you, I think, is really critical in terms of how can we accelerate transformation? Sometimes you gotta slow down to speed up.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Okay, I fucking love that so much. And I was gonna ask you, actually, I was, gonna say, I want to go off script Sharon, because even before you

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: gave us that freaking phenomenal mic, drop thing, I wanted to ask you so one of the things that I love about you that, I think makes you unstoppable, that, frankly, I'm I learn from you so often when we talk is you can walk that line like almost nobody else, like your energies off the just so. Just so, you know, like what Sharon and I went away on the weekend, and like she's up at 8 every on the weekend like she's got so much energy, I'm like, oh, I feel bad.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: She's a ball of energy can see the force of nature thing

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: the other side of catalyst can be that we can show up. We have this, the the the dichotomy of the get shit done. Make the world better move faster. But a lot of times we also have empathy, and it's like, and we can have empathy for people who can't move as fast as we can, or maybe like they're not in the right role. And we're just like with a little bit more coaching or whatever

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: that's a tough line to walk. And I love the Mother Nature analogy, and I'm wondering if you can just describe like double click on that a little bit you're like I watch you make these business choices that are bottom line compassion for the person, and also the right thing for the business and the bottom line. Compassion doesn't mean it's always a great conversation for the business or the person. Can you walk us through that? Because I just see so many catalyst, myself included, really struggle with that line.

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Sharon Gee: I think there's a lot of

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Sharon Gee: efficient prioritization, of of whatever resources you have is something we all have to do

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Sharon Gee: that might mean oftentimes like time is my favorite one of those, because it's the one thing that we all never get back right. And so how you spend your time, and how your team spends their time. Is this, really, you know you, you can expand the concept to whether it's resourcing of thing. You know, whether you're buying inventory. If you're a retailer, or whether you're re, you know, resourcing your team and figuring out how many team members to have and what the right balance of profitability to cost is right, like you can kind of expand it. So I'll just start with like time. But

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Sharon Gee: when we're thinking about, how do we spend our time? One of the things that, like I really realized is in order for us to get the best out of all the people we work with. We have to understand that they're so different. Some of the engineering leaders I work with are deeply, deeply introverted, and are so thoughtful, but they communicate wickedly, efficiently in writing.

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Sharon Gee: And so what I realized very quickly was, instead of pulling them into a meeting with all of my revenue leaders who are talking like this.

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Sharon Gee: Maybe I should write an executive summary that gives them that answers all of the questions that after being in emails with them, many meetings with them for a long time. I know they're going to ask me.

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Sharon Gee: what is this about? What is the opportunity? How much money will it make? Who needs to be involved? What are the dependencies? What are the costs? When can we get this done by? Who? What, where? When, how about any initiative, whether we're gonna run a campaign, whether we wanna build a feature that's gonna take resources from them and who needs to be involved. And what is our upside and then downside for participating in this, because there's always a trade off. If you're saying I'm gonna reallocate time, or I'm gonna reallocate resources, or I'm gonna reallocate engineering work or

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Sharon Gee: go to market. You're always doing something instead of something else. You need to wrap. Everything's a business case away.

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Sharon Gee: But the issue is business people. Often

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Sharon Gee: we do business cases like this. And in verbally, we're like, Oh, I have an idea. And it's like going too quick. And it's sometimes not as thoughtful as it needs to be. So I just implemented a rule that says, Team, we're writing executive summaries. It gets us all on the same page. We send it out. Everyone reviews it and you get a request for commentary. It's something I've learned from engineering

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Sharon Gee: counterparts. When I was working agency life is. They write it all down. They communicate about it asynchronously over slack. They get all their ideas on a paper, and then, if you haven't already solved 90% of the ideas. You can come to a meeting and do that thing where you like. Come together and say, Okay, we agree to disagree or, yeah, we're all aligned or not.

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Sharon Gee: And that's and just an example of like.

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Sharon Gee: how do we allocate time you have to build that consensus? And so finding ways to build consensus instead of just bulldozing through. Because you're the louder voice, or you are more outgoing, or you are articulate. Doesn't that doesn't build followership right? It doesn't get people on your team. It doesn't make sure that they know you've thought through the challenges or invited them to help you think through things you are definitely not thinking about because you don't have their view.

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Sharon Gee: So I or or their expertise in many cases, right? So I think part of it is just understanding that people are gonna people, and they're all different. And so we we as so how to bring this back to Catalyst Shannon, I think, is

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Sharon Gee: catalysts are unique breed. They go quickly. Oftentimes they're super communicative. They're empathetic. They understand. Oh, that's a problem. And and so they look like they're running too fast a lot of the time, and I think what they need to do is understand that there are more required checklists in their running too fast. If I put my work on making sure that in this meeting I want to hear what that head of engineering thinks about this, and I'm not letting go until I figure out. Sometimes that means create space.

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Sharon Gee: What do you think about that problem? Right? Say their name invite them? How much like what needs to be true for that to be the case right? Like just the asking questions instead of making assumptions. These are all like.

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Sharon Gee: I would say hard one. Things that I've like struggled with my whole career when it comes to bringing people along. But I think once we practice those, you know, the trust gets better, the relationships get better, and the initiatives go much faster, because there are a necessary set of conditions to make a thing happen where everyone is aligned, and so as efficient as you can be to make sure everyone gets that alignment, even if they're not getting there. The way that you would is actually the more efficient way.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: It's interesting. What I hear, what I hear in there is the and this might not take you a lot of time. This might be a fairly intuitive thing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: but it sounds like, you see.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: the the value value is like really business focus. But, like, you see, the essence of the person in front of you. And you understand that maximizing again business. But it's it's there's a benefit to those people, too. So it's like a bi-directional maximization, right

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: that by maximizing those people for the system that you have deeply understood, all, all boats rise, and it also gives you the opportunity, from a a little bit of an emotional distant distance distance. Because you are bringing in the business case to say this isn't the right decision right now, too, and it's I I've never. I don't think, Tracy and any of the conversations I've heard anyone talk about like there's a little bit of a puppet master in there in the most benevolent way of

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: making sure that everyone in the system is feeling fully maximized and engaged and supported and heard. And that's what gets you to that next level.

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Sharon Gee: Well, and I'm not. I would definitely say I'm not good at this. I think this is the thing that, like I would say, I'm not

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Sharon Gee: consciously like unconsciously competent at it. We all just want to be able to magically not think about it and be super relatable. I am consciously incompetent at it, trying to become consciously competent at it right where it's like, okay, in this meeting, like, I'm writing myself notes in this meeting, I need to make sure I get this person, this person and this person's input because I haven't gotten it yet. And I know that I need it in order for all of us to feel good about what we need to do next. Right? So it's

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Sharon Gee: I wouldn't say people are just magically good at this thing like it's like learning how to sing. Nobody comes out of the womb knowing how to sing a high seat right like you, but but when you hear an opera singer singer like Oh, that just, you know, sounds so easy, and that's like they trained really hard for many, many years to learn how to do that thing, and so I think

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Sharon Gee: it might not be natural to all of us. But I am 100 confident all of us can learn how. And so you know. Maybe I'm not good at it, but I I aspire to be.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I think it's the intentionality, and, like people come back and take our classes like time and time again, because we don't have some of those the scaffolding, because, being a catalyst is an innate way of being, we are likely to default to that that fast way of being, and I just like the fight going back to the singing. What you know, I think a lesson for catalyst that I would love to extracted. This is like, look if someone starts off as a as a baritone, and it's not serving the group, and they need to move into being

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: like that. No harm, no foul, if that's where that person and the collective are gonna thrive, it doesn't have to be like an angsty decision. It's just like you're looking at the whole system and setting everyone up for success.

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Sharon Gee: This analogy the best, because physically, baritones can't become tenors. It's like a limitation of their vocal fold. Right? Sometimes you can sing a different part, but like

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Sharon Gee: it's a perfect analogy, because sometimes the capacity of the person might not be what the fit is for the team. But that's not the person. Right? So people wanna be on high performance teams. And they wanna know what their role is within that high performance team. It's why, you see, it's why I was willing to, you know, leave a higher title to come to a different level. And sometimes people change what levels they're at within different organizations in order to be able to participate in a vision. And

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Sharon Gee: hey, I can see how my contributions would really drive the vision that I see there right culture vision mission. Your role in that

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Sharon Gee: I love the idea of like an opera. You can't put an OP. On an opera with one person you can't put on. Is it sports? Analog, you know. Put put play, you can't. You can't be the winning championship sports team with only one player right? Like it's that same analogy, high performance teams, which is what we're all trying to create. They require the same thing. Trust in your teammates or your counterparts on stage with you, or whatever in your you know, knowing that someone's gonna show up and respect you on a phone call. Be respectful

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Sharon Gee: of your time and of your diligent practice and discipline in order to do your craft, whatever the thing is, whether it's sports or art or business.

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Sharon Gee: and making sure that you like. Do that in a way where you know what their role is, and they know what your role is, and that trade is both trusting and fair. The worst ever is. When you have a bunch of high performers and somebody on the team who's not really pulling their weight, it demotivates everybody right. And so the best thing is actually to have people in roles. They're good at right? And so oftentimes I think that's one of the

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Sharon Gee: one of the challenge. You know, when we're when you money ball teams and figure out like you know, maybe this person is having a baby, and they want to take a different kind of like they wanna I have. I have an amazing person on my team now. His name's Aaron.

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Sharon Gee: He came and was on my team before, and he, his wife, was, gonna have a baby. And he said, You know what? I need something a little bit more. I I wanna leave this more strategic partnerships role and go to something that's a little bit more transactional where I can. You know I've been a salesperson before. I know I can make good numbers, and maybe not have as much mental load on this. More. Let you know I need something a little more transactional and a little less strategic for a minute, while I'm kind of doing this family thing and guess what? He's right back on my team leading the sales team in Europe now, because

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Sharon Gee: because he, because he kind of left, you know, he was out of that phase of his life and into another one. And we just have to make sure that that's fine, right like, if all of a sudden you think this person is great on this role, but it's not serving them. If it's not serving them is definitely not going to serve you, and so finding ways to make it pot like.

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Sharon Gee: If you look at anything as like one screenshot in time. It's not very. It doesn't work very well, like people are. People have arcs, right? We have families, we have children and and parents, and you know we struggle, they struggle. We need to be able to make sure that our whole humans can be like brought to the table and and done, you know, and that that gets tricky right. But like we, we need, you know, we do need to be responsible to each other that way. So I think, making sure that we can

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Sharon Gee: no observing ourselves, but also in our team members, what what we all need to be able to be our whole humans, and whether it's that Eki Guy idea of like what I'm contributing, what I'm good at, what I love, what the company needs, and it sits in the middle, I think, making sure that we're all figuring out how to do that is really important. And I think that's why leadership coaching is so important is because it's often hard to know ourselves. So how can we possibly articulate that to our business?

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Sharon Gee: So that's one of the areas? I think you guys do a lot of good in helping us.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: I love that you brought it back to coaching. Sorry, Jose. I have to jump in one more time there because I was gonna bring that back, too, because this is the other balance you were like, we need to invest in our people right? And like, this is like, if people are interested in growth. And yet not all people are gonna grow into success in their role. I'm just wondering if you have any advice like this is what I really struggled with is like, I wanna set everyone up for success. I wanna give them umpteen chances. But at some point to your point, if they're not the high performer on the high performer

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: team. You're doing more people into service. Do you have any clarity about when to make that call?

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Sharon Gee: I think, you know, like any company setting objectives and key results for what the person's role is is how you make them a high performer. I think it's really easy with salespeople, because they have a number on their head to say, Oh, that's my high performer on my team, right? I think there are so many objectives

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Sharon Gee: cultural leadership ambassadorship of your company's culture, right? Like I've got an amazing woman on our team who's just a huge advocate in the Latin community, and she's doing, I think God's work, or whatever right she's doing. She's doing the amazing work to evangelize. No, you people who look like me can do roles like this. And here we are, and she's she's a leader, and she's this like, and I think she's just killing it now like? Is she the most senior person at the organization? No, but she's an amazing leader, and so leadership

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Sharon Gee: is not. It's not a vertical structure like it. I I think I have. You know, a guy on my team call Greg, who's like one of the most amazing cultural leaders I've ever seen. He's been with, you know, work with worked with me for the past 5 years. I have. I have examples of strategic industry leadership. A guy on my team called Matt. We've worked together now at 3 different companies, and nobody knows the industry like he does. He can just see, you know, all the tectonic plates shift and knows how to predict where to step based on all of that, and which partners are gonna

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Sharon Gee: succeed in that. So I think I think

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Sharon Gee: I challenge, not your concept. But I challenge. The general concept of leadership is based on seniority. That's just like, so I think we all know that as a as a fact like that's just not what leadership is. There are people who we want to be around at work, no matter what role they're in and knowing and and setting up the

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Sharon Gee: structures within our companies to recognize people for their leadership in their capacity and their role.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Right.

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Sharon Gee: Think is critical. And so whether that's cultural like.

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Sharon Gee: you know, this person knows people so well. They're a cultural ambassador, they're, you know, giving, giving them ownership of of a series, a podcast a newsletter you know, a customer advisory Board. You know, a a partnership event, you know, finding ways to make the objectives and the key results. To say, this is what winning looks like you. You look, you are what winning looks and feels like today.

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Sharon Gee: the and making sure that that's like a system that you can implement, I think, is one of the biggest areas of investment, particularly in a digital world because we used to do it so well in in person. Right? Because, as humans, we say, I see you, I see what you're doing there. You're awesome. Thank you for doing that. It's really hard to do that digitally. When everything feels so transactional. When you have to schedule a 15 min, call to say, you know what I think. You're great like. It feels kinda empty, even though we all want it. We all need those

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Sharon Gee: so challenging our own concepts of in this very digital and remote world. How can we make sure that that regular cadence of Benny's, or high fives, or the bonus ly points, or whatever it is the the recognition of you beating your targets. I call it a like a smile when my team does something awesome. You know that high chain on slack is like.

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Sharon Gee: go get it, everybody cheer right? Because it's really hard to to get that digitally. So I think we need to invest in that more as remote, as remote.

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Sharon Gee: You know, members of the globe.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Some of these things. I'm guessing that you could give a whole talk on how to manage Gen. Z. To like. I just pull it like you're really good at understanding some of the ways of empowering folks that aren't necessarily about the change, just for the next. For the next conversation. Sharon for the next conversation.

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Sharon Gee: Yeah, I'll I'll do some thinking on that.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): I'd love to step back. You mentioned when we were you were talking about your challenges and building trust, like building trust with other catalysts, and so would love to understand in your career what has been the role of or value in being able to find your fellow catalyst and be able to, you know, connect with them about insights and challenges.

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Sharon Gee: I mean, you can't do it alone. Right? The value of it is is is anything you're trying to do will not happen alone period.

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Sharon Gee: You want to be known as the person you want on the other person wants on your team, not the person they want on the opposite team. You know, it's

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Sharon Gee: I. Board games are a really nice analogy, because sometimes it's really fun to gang up on the person who's strong and has a strong opinion, because you don't want that. You know what I mean. Like you see it in board games a lot. You have the I you know, the instigator, and then you have the opposition. And then in these groups of 4, you have the person who says I don't really care. And then the person who votes on the opposition or the instigator, and they're the one with the power actually right in any, in any, in deciding what direction something will go. It's the voice of the voter who says, I like your this in in this idea versus that one. I vote for that one.

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Sharon Gee: That person is the catalyst that you need to bring along with you, because nobody you

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Sharon Gee: there campaigns are not yucky.

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Sharon Gee: Running a campaign is, I've got an idea, and I want to bring you onto my side of seeing this, because I don't believe you yet have the same information I do, because if you did, you would make the same conclusion I am making. That's what any campaign is right, and

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Sharon Gee: the importance of that is, if you don't do it effectively, trustingly, with like doing it in a way where you're building trust, where people can believe the thing you're saying like, there's a reason. Political campaigns have smear campaigns so that you don't trust what they say right like we have to build trust, and then work with the people in order to bring them along with us and hopefully improve the ideas as they go, because ideas at first in like ideas are never done.

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Sharon Gee: Right. Systems are never done. Rollouts are never done. They're only they're only a screenshot in time of where they are in their arc of like success or not. And so I think, making sure that you have the staying power for making sure that ideas can live beyond just the idea.

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Sharon Gee: the execution, the go to market, the ongoing support, the advocacy, the go to the all of the pieces that are the measurement and ongoing measurement. And then optimization, because the machines need to evolve over time. I think all of those things are critical, and if you don't have a catalyst at every single one of those life cycle journey points of your idea, you'll fail.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): That's so beautifully said. And I I I this, I'm gonna have to go back and listen to everything here, because if there's like a zillion metaphors that you're bringing forward. And I just I'd like, I wanna I wanna incorporate them all. And Shannon and I in our class, we talk about influence and some of the steps to creating influence. And one of the things we talk about is is needing to go in assuming allyship.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And I just loved how you talked about that I'm going to assume you'd make the same decision. I am if we all had the same information.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Right? That's such a gentle and yet optimistic perspective. Like, yeah, we might be in opposite places right now. It's just because we haven't had the chance to really talk it out and share information.

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Sharon Gee: And I might change my view right like, I only know what I know right? I'm gonna come to the table, and if I don't ask you questions about things. I think giving yourself the freedom to have your strong opinions but loosely held, is really important, because if somebody comes to you with information that you didn't have. You need to not die on that hill. You need to say, oh, my God, the data you're presenting to me!

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Sharon Gee: Maybe we should look at it differently. You're totally right. Oh, my gosh! What if like, what if it was okay? If we all just said we were wrong and that, and then we changed like. Let's give ourselves the freedom to be wrong and say, my perspective was this, but until you showed me that. And then I really I learned.

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Sharon Gee: you know, when somebody said, it sounds like you're flip flopping your point of view, I said. Oh, congratulations! You flipped flop. My point of view. You were so effective in your communication. I need to merchandize that to you better, so that you don't look like you're inconsistent. You need to look like you're willing to have your mind to be changed right? Like that. Growth mindset applies to everybody at all levels. And if somebody comes to me with a channel that is the delivering a better cost of acquisition for the same output. You better believe we should put money there instead, you know what I mean. So like, I think I think what we all know is.

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Sharon Gee: here are my decisions or my proposals based on the information I have. Please tell me more information I need, or help me understand what you need in order to see the information I have, and make sure you understand it. So we can get to the same conclusion. It seems pretty like obvious, but it's like, really not like.

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Sharon Gee: Sometimes executives don't even have like

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Sharon Gee: the same meetings where you have a head of technology and a head of product and a head of Goto market and sales all in the same room, even talking like you gotta start with the cadence like, who are the people whose opinions you actually need? If you're building a dashboard, and you don't have your business stakeholder. And the person who builds the who sources the data for you and the person who builds the report all in the same room. Boy, things are gonna get weird for you. Really.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): Totally.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: All right now you can see total total girl crash! She's amazing. Last question, the fun one who is your favorite catalyst, past or present, and why.

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Sharon Gee: Reese, Witherspoon, Reese Witherspoon, who got up there and created and sold a production company for near a billion dollars, who

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Sharon Gee: said stories for women by women matter, and it will, and it will make business sense to tell these stories

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Sharon Gee: absolutely. If I could go work for her tomorrow. Are you listening, Grace. If I'm she's my hero, right like, I think.

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Sharon Gee: beautiful blonde that everybody, miss.

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Sharon Gee: Underestimated

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Sharon Gee: genius! Who could tell stories, no matter what stories they were, whether they were hers when she was the mouthpiece as the actress, or whether she became this super extremely legitimate

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Sharon Gee: executive producer and then runner of, you know her production company that she then sold like she's the she's the goal, right? She's also

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Sharon Gee: a mother. She's also a partner. She's also an amazing dog, like all the things right, like she's like I I and there's so few of them. I we were doing this conversation like, Okay, you know who the tech leader is. You know who the business leader is. You know who the finance leader is, and they're all men of these big, big, big companies. And I love men because they have. They have given me the opportunities in my life that I needed, but I think the fact that we don't have very many women holding up that I sold this company, you know. Like for me, it's like

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Sharon Gee: it's Rhys Witherspoon, it's Taylor Swift. It's beyonce. It's Kerry Washington like and it sucks that they all come out of this

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Sharon Gee: kind of

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Sharon Gee: essentially entertainment industry. Like, I think that means we need to look at ourselves a little bit and understand what that means. We think the role of women in society is and their ability to contribute. But I'm glad to say I think it's changing.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Amazing, especially with bad ass leaders like yourself.

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Sharon Gee: So. Yep.

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Sharon Gee: thanks for having me. You guys are awesome.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Likewise. It's so fun having you, Sharon, alright to our listeners. If you'd like to learn more about how to create big, bold, positive change in the world, make sure to check out our book, move fast, break, shit, burnout, or go to our website at catalyst constellations, com.

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Tracey Lovejoy (she, her): And if you enjoyed this episode like I know Shannon and I did, please take 10 s to rate it on itunes, spotify stitcher, or wherever you listen to your put to your podcasts, you have other catalysts in your life, hit the share button and send a link. Their way.

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Shannon Lucas - Catalyst Constellations: Thanks! Again.

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Sharon Gee: Thank you.