On The Journey Podcast

Leo Rodriguez

Welcome to On The Journey: Stories for Leaders and Aspiring Leaders. I am very excited about bringing you OTJ. Behind the podcast there is a very simple idea. And it is to give you an honest, inside view into the experiences of leaders who are in the trenches, that are executing and deploying high levels of leadership today. Just like you and me. On The Journey is a platform for them to share, and for you to learn how they are traversing their journey. And I want to do this by exploring specifically the transition points. Whether they were an account executive or an individual contributor, and they moved into a leadership role for the first time, or as they progress into higher levels of leadership, in their careers. Through honest, no holds barred conversations - I will explore their motivations, their preparation, their mindset, who their mentors were, frameworks, their mistakes, thoughts and advice so you can put them into action on your own journey. If you are a leader or an aspiring leader, you’ll, have a first row seat to my guests’ experience, almost like if you can join me and together we pick their brains. Are you ready? Welcome to On The Journey - enjoy it read less
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James Dwyer, The Leadership Development Plan - On The Journey Podcast: Episode 01
17-04-2023
James Dwyer, The Leadership Development Plan - On The Journey Podcast: Episode 01
Welcome to On The Journey, Season One, Episode One. This is the first episode of the podcast and I couldn't have thought about a better first guest than James Dwyer. James is the Regional Vice President - Strategic Accounts Team South at Alteryx. And that's where James and I met and ever since then we develop our relationship and kept in touch with each other. James is not only a great person, but also a fantastic leader that has a very interesting leadership development journey, and he shares it all during the podcast. He talks about how he started performing the role of a leader even before getting the title and how important that is to start deploying leadership even before you get the title before you "become" and get a team. He also talks about his personal 12 month development plan into leadership that he put together very intentionally with his multidisciplinary set of mentors and how that helped him in his journey into leadership, I think is one of the most interesting parts of the episode. He talks about the traits of the people that he hires and how he interviews for those traits. And finally, one of the last kind of hints that I'll leave you today, is his Leadership Progression framework and how he thinks about leadership progression from Me, to Us to Letting Go and Transferring. And he talks about each one of those stages. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed interviewing James and you take a couple of things that you can go and implement today. Welcome to On The Journey.
Britnee Weza, Vulnerability as a Superpower - On The Journey Podcast: Episode 02
17-04-2023
Britnee Weza, Vulnerability as a Superpower - On The Journey Podcast: Episode 02
Welcome to Season One, Episode Two of On The Journey This is a special one I got to talk to a good friend of mine that I haven't connected in a while Britnee Weza. We met at Alteryx and she has a long leadership career working for companies like Johnson and Johnson, Tableau, and Alteryx. Today, Britnee is the Sales Director for the Digital Natives segment at Databricks. It was a fantastic conversation, I enjoyed it a lot. She's one of the first leaders I talked to that said "leadership is hard". And it's true. It's a hard profession. It's tough, we don't typically talk about it among leaders, or recognize it. And it's hard. And that's part of the vulnerability that characterizes Britnee. She also talks about vulnerability and how she got advice throughout her career: to show her chinks in the armor and how that impacted her career positively. She talked to me about differences between a mentor and a sponsor and how they made contributions to her development and shares one of the best advice she got, which was ...Find problems and take a stab at solving them... Britnee talks about giving feedback and why it should be ongoing and not just at the end of the quarter on some particular times. She touches on something very important that I think most of us leaders struggle with, which is leaning in on people's positives and their style to make them successful and not just trying to imprint the things that made you successful as individual contributor. It was a wide ranging, fantastic conversation with Britnee. Thanks to her for being part of the podcast. All these and much more in this episode of On The Journey.
Tifenn Dano Kwan, Hard Transitions & Priorities - On The Journey Podcast: Episode 03
17-04-2023
Tifenn Dano Kwan, Hard Transitions & Priorities - On The Journey Podcast: Episode 03
Welcome to Season One, Episode Three of On The Journey In this third episode, I had the very special pleasure of talking to Tifenn Dano Kwan. Tifenn, or better known as TDK is a great, great friend of mine, I love her to death, we work together at Collibra. But she has a very long career as CMO, she transitioned to the C level suite at SAP Ariba, then became CMO of Dropbox, then Collibra, where we met and work together. Today she's the CMO of Amplitude. TDK, is a very special person, she is an immigrant like me into the US from France, she pursued that goal in her life. And she really opens up in this conversation, she talks about leadership being a career in service of something that is bigger than yourself, and opens up about her very personal journey into leadership. Tifenn talks about how she prepared for the interview of her first CMO role in an overnight flight from Australia, and how she thought hard about strategy and how she wanted to tackle the role. She also talks about how hard it was that first role in the first few months until she made the mental switch and the decision to lead, she had to make a very conscious decision. And she goes deep into what it means to make that decision consciously and then to communicate it to her team. You will get to hear how a high level executive thinks about the big rocks or the big buckets of her role. She talks about Budget, Team, TAM, Product, product market fit as things that she constantly is keeping her eye on in her roles. I hope you learn as much as I did in this episode. All of this and much more in this fascinating conversation of On The Journey. Welcome and enjoy.