Building Trust and Breaking the Ice

It’s interesting because you’re in a leadership position. You have to come in and try to establish trust with everybody, virtually. What were some of the things that you did that you found works really well? And were there some things that you tried to do that didn’t work very well, and you decided, okay, I won’t do that anymore?

I started with my department. I started by sharing very candidly my journey and my path. And I actually start each of our department meetings, having somebody do this and talk a little bit about and basically introduce themselves and complete with embarrassing stories and embarrassing photos. I included a photo of myself at age three in Wonder Woman underoos.

Well, that's an icebreaker.

For me, I find that it does work well when you can be a little bit vulnerable with people. What did not work well was trying to cram too much into a single day. So a mistake that I made was, in the beginning, I thought, well, I would like to spend time with every single person and do it in the first 30 days. And it just mathematically is not possible. There aren’t enough hours in the day, particularly where there are other work priorities.
And so if I tried to put too much, too many in a day, I really didn’t do it justice. I really didn’t spend enough time with people. And it’s almost worse to find time with someone and have them feel rushed and not heard.
So I learned that I needed to be a little more realistic about how much was possible in each day, Thuy?