Matt LeMay: preference

Transcript context

…There's also a flip side of finding a job. It feels like if you have shown impact in your resume, "Here's all the impact I've driven," this also helps you get hired. True? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's the most common resume advice I see, is show the number, show the impact, say what you did. I have a friend who does resume coaching, and I showed her my resume a couple of years ago. And she said, "I love your resume except for one thing. Why do you write like a little girl? Say what you did, say what your contributions were. Don't say 'I helped. I may have maybe helped people do this'. Say the impact. Put the number on it. " And I think I needed to hear that from her because I think there is a tendency, especially for those of us who do really thrive in that collaborative environment, who our nature is to not want to take credit for work that could only exist via the contributions of many people with diverse experiences and perspectives. It's really hard to say, "Well, I did this and I contributed to that," but that's part of why I wrote this book at the team level, because I think for folks, like myself, who really enjoy and thrive in that team environment, if you can look at the product team as the foundational unit of impact and say, "We delivered this. We were able to work together to have this impact for the business," that feels really good and also speaks directly to the work that that team did together. That's a really interesting insight. I think a lot of this comes from just PMs naturally are trained to deflect credit and to include, say 'we' in everything and just this person did that. So I get where that comes from. So most listeners will probably still be thinking, "Yes, I'm driving impact, I'm great. I don't have a problem here. I don't to change, need to change anything." What are some ways to stress test your thinking? Maybe some questions to ask yourself or maybe your team of just, like, "Okay, maybe I'm not?"…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.