Deb Liu: evaluation

Transcript context

…You also talked about mentorship circles. What is that and how do you create one? Yeah, so I've had access to coaching circles or mentoring circles. I've been in a couple lean in circles. I'm a couple, now I'm in a executive circle. And these are really your peers who help you think through problems but also point out your blind spots. They say, "Hey, I think you're weak in X." And one example was in our lead circle, one of the things that was a huge challenge was there were a few folks who said, "Hey, I want to get promoted." And someone else goes, "Well, have you asked your manager?" That's a very simple question, but that really lit up one of the women on the team, she's like, "You know what? I haven't asked. I was just waiting for him to offer it." And instead, she asked for it. And another woman was offered a position in a different office and we said, "You should ask for, what are they promising you? Can you get that written? When do you have the opportunity to come back?" And made her really think through not just saying yes blindly, but actually very thoughtfully saying, "If you have the option come back, would they compensate you, would they cover your travel? What are the things that you need?" And she said, "I never really thought about that." But I think having a group of people who are brainstorming your career and your challenges with you gives you so much more perspective, and they're not there to tell you the answer. They're there to ask you the hard questions that you probably have forgotten to ask yourself because you're so deep into it. I've been a member of four of these circles over the years, and they are just incredibly powerful because they give you very different perspectives. One of the circles was the women VPs at Facebook. It was just great to be able to run, if something happened, you could run it by them. We called it the Leading Ladies. It was just an opportunity to have people who are in the same situation as you, and you could run the ideas by them, but they can also say, "Hey, I hear that you're having a rough day. Let's talk." And that kind of support is something that's really invaluable, and I think we don't use that enough in our industry honestly. For someone listening that's like, "Oh, I want one of those," do you just create one? Do you find people and let's start a circle, or is there a place they can go to see what's out there?…

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