Pulled from The Pantry - Vol. 2

For background on Pulled from The Pantry, check out the inaugural volume here.

...when you look back on your whole career 20, 30, 40 years from now that you will look at the years you spent here as the most transformative years in your career. The years where you learned the most, grew the most quickly, were exposed to the most incredible people and the most innovative thinking. I want these years to be the years that literally change the trajectory of your career.

-Mike Gamson

I remember reading this post nearly seven years ago, overwhelmed by gratitude that I had the opportunity to work at a company like LinkedIn. Included in Mike Gamson's post is a graph visualizing this value proposition. This school year, I made a few appearances in some college courses. I included a slide for those talks that visualized my own LinkedIn journey mapped to Mike's chart. As I reflect on my seven-year run at LinkedIn, I am most grateful for realizing this promise of career transformation.

Here's where I went for inspiration and insight while processing the reality of leaving LinkedIn and closing out this career chapter with gratitude. Enjoy!

Joyful - Ingrid Fetell Lee

This is an energizing read from Ingrid Fetell Lee and a Next Big Idea Club selection in January 2019. The author highlights the ten aesthetics of joy from her research. The one that sparked the most joy for me in my LinkedIn tenure is abundance. Of course, there are the fully-stocked break rooms, endless cafeteria options, and the most robust benefits package. There is the value of relationships matter that invites you to connect with the more than 16,000+ employees around the world (we were just over 5,000 employees when I first interviewed). But it's a different flavor of abundance that I value even more than those.

Looking back on my notes from a Navigating Change course, our professor offered a side-by-side comparison between a "problem solving approach" and an "abundance approach" to organizational change. While the problem solving approach sets out to overcome major problems, challenges, and obstacles, the abundance approach sets out to embrace and enable our highest potential. It's this abundant mindset that sparked the most joy for me. Where I could dream big about creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce and equip, engage, and inspire LinkedIn employees to do the best work of their careers.

Working at LinkedIn offered that "kid in a candy store" kind of feeling.

"Like a kid in a candy store" is one of the most iconic images of joy in our culture, expressing the wild, almost delirious pleasure we take in being let loose in a bountiful world.

Range - David Epstein

I first read this book back in July 2019, another Next Big Idea Club selection (pattern recognized, I pull a lot from book recommendations from NBIC). Side note, David has since taken on the host duties for Slate's How To! podcast and it's a worthwhile listen. The first chapter of this book is an immediate hook, comparing childhood experiences of Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. I knew the stories about Tiger's laser focus on golf from his toddler days. I never knew about the range of sports Roger participated in as a kid. "He would later give credit to the wide range of sports he played for helping him develop his athleticism and hand-eye coordination."

Range came into play when I started facilitating learning experiences at LinkedIn and sums up the roles I played at LinkedIn. I joined the L&D team in July 2016, but I only started facilitating workshops the following year. My foray into facilitation started with our Day 1 orientation program called Introduction and a four-week, small group course bringing Fred Kofman's book Conscious Business to life. Two learning experiences that couldn't be any more different. On one end of the spectrum, a high energy day full of content delivery energizing new hires and making them feel validated in their decision to join LinkedIn. On the other end of the spectrum, a four-week program with weekly hour-long, unscripted conversations to develop more conscious attitudes and approaches to our work. I grew to appreciate this range and how I could move along it not only at the session level, but within a session, too.

Thinking about all of the unique learning experiences I delivered to a variety of learner audiences around the world across multiple modalities to champion our culture of learning. All the roles I played, the projects I led, the experiences I collected. More ready for whatever comes my way next.

...breadth of training predicts breadth of transfer. That is, the more contexts in which something is learned, the more the learner creates abstract models, and the less they rely on any particular example. Learners become better at applying their knowledge to a situation they've never seen before, which is the essence of creativity.

When - Daniel H. Pink

If timing plays a role in any moment, this read is worth pulling off the shelf. With my LinkedIn tenure coming to an end, I wanted to revisit what Daniel Pink writes about endings.

Most reactions to my news have been a mix of happiness and sadness, a sentiment I share. It's been validating to have teammates share in my excitement for what's next, a rare part of the LinkedIn culture. And it's been hard to tell them because these relationships mean so much to me. Naturally, there's a word for this mix of emotions.

Experiencing this moment of poignancy is a signal to me that I did something right along the way. If I didn't feel it, I would be worried that I didn't make the most of this experience.

The researchers found that at the core of meaningful endings is one of the most complex emotions humans experience: poignancy, a mix of happiness and sadness. One reason we overlook poignancy is that it operates by an upside-down form of emotional physics. Adding a small component of sadness to an otherwise happy moment elevates that moment rather than diminishes it.

I learned a lot, grew a ton, worked with incredible people, and approached it all in new ways. I'm leaving LinkedIn a better professional and a better human. For that, I am grateful!

Excited to have some time to properly reflect on my 7-year run in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for an upcoming Pulled from The Panty where I will share more about what's next!