You're listening to Leading Up with Udeme. This podcast is your guide to developing your skills as an emerging or seasoned leader. I'm Alan Todd, your host and the Vice President of Leadership Development at Udeme. Together, we can work, lead, and live differently to create a better world. Listeners, I want to start this episode by asking you a question, who are you as a leader? This is a critically important question and one that we don't ask ourselves often enough. This week on the podcast, we are revisiting a conversation we had in season 2 of the podcast. I speak to a leader who encourages all of her new managers to reflect on this question. We're going to learn how to use this question to help us lead authentically purposefully, purposefully, and effectively. Lisa Doms is the global head of tech people development at TUI GROUP, the world's leading tourism company based in Hanover, Germany, with over 13 million customers and 16 and a a half billion in annual revenues. We will talk to her about her lessons for leading, authentically accelerating her career and navigating burnout, plus her lessons on leadership development from Fostering Talent at TUI GROUP.

Lisa, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, Ellen. Thanks for having me.

You've spent a lot of time putting together a program to help aspiring leaders be successful once they're promoted. So first, tell us about the program. What is it? Who are the participants? And what do you want them to learn?

The program is called How To, like in how to be a leader, how to build my team. It's a program designed for first-time leaders, so really for those ones who have been in the position for a few months now are likely to start the position in a few months ahead. We want to support them in really transition into this new role, transition from somebody who was excellent in what he or she did beforehand. Then there is this new chapter of being a leader, and we want to support them. They are the scope of people that we want to have on the program. We have great numbers. We're able to increase the numbers from 200 people to nearly 400, which is a great sign and that there is a demand to support those leaders because we have more and more of them, which is great. We designed the program with four modules. The first module is me as a leader. The second module is build my team. The third one grow my team. And the fourth one is manage our business. And we did that because we believe that in order to manage other people, you need to understand yourself and you need to be able to manage yourself in the best possible way, because only then you're able to help others and to create this environment where they are caring about themselves, where they know what they want and all those things.

But it starts with yourself. So this is why we said me as a leader is the very basis of everything that we do in that program.

Let's go deeper on who am I as a leader. How do you teach people to answer that question? What is it that surprised you? What have you learned from looking at how people have answered that question? And what have you learned about yourself when you've asked yourself that question?

Maybe to start with, today we had, as we call it, how to live session, where we had an internal colleague presenting to the audience, and he was taking them through a combination of slides, but also a lot of interaction. It was very interesting to see. He, for example, focused on emotional intelligence and the different pillars that fall into emotional intelligence, like self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Then he went through all those different pillars, and he asked the audience several questions. Just as an example, he asked our how to delegates, what triggers you in terms of getting special emotions? We could see that, for example, the answers were stress, disrespect, tiredness. So no things that are very surprising, but it's always good to have that sense check with the people and to just see if we are supporting them in the best way possible. And I think coming back to the self-awareness part, what I said before is that we want our leaders to be the best managers for their people, and we can only have that ambition if we make sure to create an environment for them to get there. So for example, we use Insights Discovery, which is an instrument that helps you to understand who you are, not just as a leader, but as a person, what's important to you, what are your strengths, your preferences, and where do you have to invest a lot of energy to get something done.

This is an instrument that we use quite a lot across the organization, as I said, not just for leaders. It helps to really understand what comes easy to me and what is not as easy. If we can help our leaders use something like this, and obviously there are other frameworks to understand what their people's needs are, what the individual team members need, what support and motivation and all those things, then we're doing a really great job.

Yeah. Excellent. Can you talk about your journey of self-discovery? Anything to share in terms of answering the question for yourself, who am I as a leader?

Yeah, it certainly was a journey. So it didn't come just the easy way. I used to be a person that wanted to do everything 110%, and at some point, especially being a mother, you just realize that's just something that's not realistic. There are ways to understand, Okay, I have to change something. And so I did. So I think when I was close to my 30th birthday, maybe it was earlier, I started to question myself, who am I? What do I want to be? Or who do I want to be? What do I want to do? And a lot of things came forward that I maybe always knew but never dare to speak out loud. And at the same time, I was able to focus on my strength and to say, Okay, this is who I am, and this is also who I want to be in the future. So there was a lot of calibration necessary to understand and to be the person that I am today. But most certainly, every single piece of that journey especially during the last years, was worth the ride, because otherwise I wouldn't be, I think, probably the leader that I am today or the manager, even as a person.

And all those different roles that you have, and I think that's something that our listeners probably can relate to a lot. You're not only the manager, you're not only a colleague, you're not only a mother or a father, a friend, sister, brother, whatever. There are so many different roles that you have. Obviously, it's not accepting who you are. Dare to be who you are. Don't be shy about it. I think that's probably one of the most important aspects to really do the best that you can do in every part of your life, not just at work, but really in every single part of your life. Also, not be too strict with yourself. If you've done a mistake, reflect on it, ask yourself the question, What would I do differently? Also with criticism from other people, is there truth in it Or do I maybe even say, no, I think I would do it the same way. Again, I think this is all part of me, but also something that we most certainly want from our leaders at TUI to reflect on themselves and be able to take, again, responsibility for who they are and what they do.

You believe a lot in being authentic as a leader. You talked about being honest and open, admitting weaknesses, being vulnerable. I've heard you say, Daring to be yourself. Talk about what people have to do to be authentic as a leader. I want to tease out the responsibilities of the company and those that are on the leader individually.

If I start with the employee side, dare to do something, leave the comfort zone. Trust yourself that something good is going to happen. Either it's something that you just learned from and next time you're doing it a different way, or it worked out the way you wanted it to. Then if something goes wrong and you have doubts about yourself, and that's something probably everybody is struggling with at a point in time, you at least have some examples of success stories for yourself myself, where you can see that was good because of that, or I was able or lucky enough to learn something in this respect. From an employer's side, I think it's really important to have a psychological safe environment so people feel safe enough to dare themselves to do something. We have our TUI values, obviously T-U-I. We call it trusted, unique, inspiring, and we connect a lot of attributes to those different values. For example, when it comes to trust it, I think it's very important that the words that you speak equal the actions that you do or take. When our people think our managers are trusted or all the people at TUI are trusted, not just a leadership thing, then that's very good.

Because if they feel that the person that they're talking to is a trustworthy person and they can open up, that then helps them to take new opportunities and to dare themselves. I think it's the responsibility of the employer to create that environment.

How hard is it to create that environment? There's quite a bit of literature on psychological safety and helping people to feel safe enough to dare to be themselves, but you guys have taken it to a whole new level. Your two E-Motto, Come as you are. How does that drive transparency and improve trust and performance?

I think the best way is by having examples that prove proof that it's the case. I think that the COVID crisis, and we had to shut down so much of our operations, and managers had a new situation. They found themselves in remote working models. From one day to the other, we were in the office every day, and then at some point overnight, we weren't. And managers had to cope with that situation equally as the employees, obviously. But I think that was a huge challenge for for the whole company, not just for TUI, but for many, many companies across the globe, to get that change done in a good way and to cope with it. I think many leaders probably realized that they don't feel that they are secure enough themselves because obviously they're also just human beings like everybody else. Being that lighthouse for other people in times where everything is so vulnerable and you don't have the answers to all the questions that your teams have, that's a very tough situation situation. But then again, if there is no other choice, then going through it and just taking on the challenge and see where it takes you.

This is probably an important aspect, not just taking on the challenge, but also to talk about it, talk about your feelings, talk about what you think, what makes you sleep at night or what doesn't, what helps you make decisions, what doesn't. So being very transparent about everything that's on your mind, I think that's something that people value a lot because it helps them to see you have probably the same issues like I do. You worry as much as I do about everything that's going on. I truly believe that this creates a bond between a leader and the team, a bond that is very, very important, but also very, very strong and can then deal with a lot of ambiguity along the way. But at least you feel like there is somebody that's going to listen me, somebody that's going to help me, and that's something we want, I think, not just at Tweet, but everywhere.

We'll be back after a short break. Stay with us. The buzz around Gen AI isn't going anywhere. Leaders and managers are key to identifying how their companies can use the technology technology and creating a plan to grow their employees' skills. Learn how Udemy can help at business. Udemy. Com/genai now. Do you feel like you've grown as a leader because of the environment at TUI? You've talked about the people, the mentors, but do you also credit the environment and the ability to feel safe and come as you are?

Yeah, definitely. It's easy to say that TUI is a company where you have a lot of flexibility and a lot of people that believe in, you know best for yourself what you need to do. I'm here in terms of as a sparring partner, talk to me if you think there is a need to. But then again, I trust you to know what you're doing. Come as you are. This is something that's also very important to us. So looking at companies across the globe, obviously, diversity, equity, inclusion are one of the key aspects to think and talk about when it comes to retaining the people and getting new people on board. And also at TUI, we have people, just like every other organization, to look after those topics. And one of our key pillars of our diversity ambitions is that we want people to feel, again, safe as people that they are. And this is why we said, So come as you are, be the person that you are, that you want to be.

Let me connect that back to your leadership development program. Your two phases are about building and growing your team. And I'm wondering if you could share some strategies. These frontline leaders are stepping up to management. They're going through your program. Talk about how you teach them to build and grow their team.

Yeah, I think what's very important is to have a vision in mind. What do you want to achieve with your team? Where do you want to go with the team? If you have that vision and you're able to communicate it and to also inspire the team to follow this vision and to believe in the vision, that's certainly one of the most important aspects from my point of view. Then again, you need to understand what tasks do we have. That then tells you what roles do I need, and that then tells you what skills do I need. If If you know all of that, you can then start to look for the right people to build the team. If you, for example, if you're in the situation to take on a team that's already there, which is probably the majority of situations, it's important to understand who is part of the team, who is colleague A, who is colleague B, to talk to them, understand what they're doing, understand what they need, what motivates them, what is also a trigger of stress, for example. I think that's also equally important to understand. If you know all of that, you can then...

You have a good transparency of the team and you can understand where the strengths of the team are. Also, you have good visibility of the areas where you might need to develop the team. Then it comes to the next module of the program where we talk about how to develop the team. I think other than, for example, Insights Discovery, what I mentioned earlier, or similar instruments to develop the teams, I I think it's also important to understand that as a manager or as a leader, you are a coach or you should be a coach to your team. You should ask the right questions. You should listen very actively. What are they telling me? So understanding what is on their mind. Also ask them, Hey, where do you see yourself in the future? It's not just my point of view to share with them. I also want to understand or we want our leaders to understand and to talk to to their teammates, where do you see yourself in the future? Let's say five years, maybe even longer than that. Because then again, it's that personal vision that you have, and that then tells you what you need to do before that.

Having this conversation, this life cycle of talking to each other, understanding, ambitions, potential, being honest about it, saying, Hey, you know what? I can see many great things in you, and this is something that I really valued a lot in situations like this or like this. But then there are also things where I could imagine we could do something to develop you in another direction, or we could have a discussion around what would you need to develop that or that skill or competence. Yeah, talking about it, being a coach, being a lighthouse for them, I think those are things that help people to grow, to develop themselves.

Yeah, that's really, really powerful stuff. We look at a lot of research and we find that managers often and struggle with having those conversations with everyone on their team. Like, what motivates them? What drives them? What are their strengths and weaknesses? And what is their ambition three or four or five years from now? What do they want to be? What do they want to become? So I think it's really interesting that you all are teaching that and driving that level of conversation. It's an area that when we do look at the research, it's an area that has so many people interested in today and a big, giant opportunity for the field of leadership development. Okay, so now we're going to move on to wrapping up. We have a question that we ask all of our guests. That is, what are you curious about and learning now? What are you curious about?

Probably the most relevant thing to me, and that's both for private and professional life, is how to take even better care of myself in terms of getting a healthy distance to work when I shut down my computer, embracing my private situations much more not worrying about work. The work is going to be there. Even if I wasn't there, the world would just go on moving. So feeling responsible for what I do is certainly something that's just in the core of my professional me. But then again, I'm not responsible to save the world. So in the end, there is a healthy way to take responsibility, and there is an unhealthy way. And by understanding that you're only getting yourself burned out, only getting yourself losing energy or wasting energy because you're doing stuff that is not top of the priority list. At some point, I started to really look into what needs to be done today, what needs to be done tomorrow, and the rest, it will find its way. And doing that and seeing how it helps me to have more energy in my private life and to be better balanced at work and in my private life.

I think that's the best proof that this way is the right one to go.

Nice. All right, Lisa, thank you so much for your time and participation here for joining us on Udemy's Leading Up podcast.

It was an honor. Thanks again for having me.

Thank you for listening. Season 6 of Leading Up with Udemy returns on Wednesday, April 17th. Follow Leading Up with You to Me to get notified of new episodes. You won't want to miss it. If you enjoyed this episode and you're ready for more, I recommend listening to our episode with Netta Schlickman, the Chief Learning Officer of Deloitte Leadership and Human Potential. We talk about human potential and finding your purpose. The Leading Up podcast is produced in partnership with pod people. Our original theme is by Soundboard.