JT22 | Troy Stevenson On What Your Super-Boss Thinks Of You

The feedback process in most companies isn’t always the best but at least you get it eventually to some extent, you know what your boss and your team members think of you. And maybe you also get feedback from some of your peers from time to time, but do you know where you stand in the bigger picture?

Have you ever really wondered what your super boss or maybe leadership thinks of you? How do they evaluate when the time comes for performance reviews and what could you do to get noticed in the right way? Today we are really privileged to have with us, Troy Stevenson, who’s the VP and global head of community operations at Uber.

And he’s gonna share with us some of his career hacks while also giving us some really good insight into how growth company leaders evaluate talent and potential.

Discussion Topics: Troy Stevenson On What Your Super-Boss Thinks of You

• Owning metrics and evaluating methods
• Managing Perceptions
• Building your brand/ reputation
• Being resilient pays off
• The benefit of going beyond yourself

Transcript: Troy Stevenson On What Your Super-Boss Thinks of You

Welcome to another episode of JobTok. The feedback process in most companies isn’t always the best but at least you get it eventually to some extent, you know what your boss and your team members think of you. And maybe you also get feedback from some of your peers from time to time, but do you know where you stand in the bigger picture?

Have you ever really wondered what your super boss or maybe leadership thinks of you? How do they evaluate when the time comes for performance reviews and what could you do to get noticed in the right way? Today we are really privileged to have with us, Troy Stevenson, who’s the VP and global head of community operations at Uber.

And he’s gonna share with us some of his career hacks while also giving us some really good insight into how growth company leaders evaluate talent and potential. So Troy, thank you so much for making the time to join us today. Maybe before we get started, you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your journey so far, just to lay some context and then we could get into the meat of the discussion.

I’m happy to be here. I lead global community operations at Uber. I’ve been at Uber for a little over five years, which is about half of the history of the company. Before that I did similar stuff at eBay. And before that Charles Schwab and then started my career in management consulting at Boston consulting group.

The way to think about it is we are customer operations. Uber has about 9,000 employees around the world, plus tens of thousands more in our partner network. We’re responsible for everything that around safety education and trying to figure out what something goes wrong. And the types of things we might help with can range from just account related customer support.

We’ve got a retail network of a few hundred green light hubs where perspective drivers and delivery partners can come in.

So Troy, the extent and the scope of what you do is just simply amazing. You get to see so many people and therefore develop a very strong perspective on talent and potential. And so your perspective is really good for people in the audience who may be trying to figure out how to get to the next level. So when you look at a person, how do you decide whether this is a person that you see moving on to bigger and better things?

The “what” part of the perspective is what specific objectives did this person have associated with their function? And ideally for a lot of positions, we can tie that to a specific metric, whether that’s quality or defect reduction or efficiency, and are we able to actually move the needle on a metric? I encourage people to find ways to be a KPI owners because then you will be looking for evidence of tangible contributions. There could be false positives and negatives if you only look at the numbers. So, I try to see why that number moved the way it moved and what was this person doing to either make the best of a difficult situation or take advantage?

The more senior you’ve become, how you achieved the objective become more relevant to measure. Did you achieve it with positive outcomes? Did this person build a good team or is she a good mentor? Are they actively looking for ways to share insights and help others be successful, even when maybe isn’t directly attributable to their job? Et cetra.

You mentioned a lot of things there. I want to dive into owning a metric but that metrics don’t always give the full picture. So when you evaluate things like that, would you say that a person who hasn’t moved the needle in terms of numbers, but has demonstrated that they did all that could have possibly been done, that person would still be able to get like a good rating or just generally do well versus somebody who’s moved the needle, but this just went the wrong way for this person.

I think there’s different KPIs have different degrees of controllability. In some scenarios, this person had a hundred percent control over the KPI with no exogenous factors, in which case you’re gonna hold them pretty accountable for moving the number but I think that’s the exception of the rule. In the real world, assessing performance entirely on which direction the number moved would be unfair in both directions. You might end up over rewarding people that moved it positively and over penalising people that didn’t. And so I do think it’s important that you understand the story behind how it moved or what caused it, not just the metric itself. Everyone’s got a story but as a leader it’s important to invest the time in the manner to make sure you understand the fuller picture beyond just necessarily which direction a sales number is moving or a satisfaction number is moving.

This is a good insight for everyone. The other point you mentioned was about sharing insights with the rest of the company, even though that may not be really their KPI. So why is this a factor in how you are evaluating people? If the person has hired a good team, ultimately, they are keeping the good team and doing well. So, why make this a factor?

This was one of the biggest personal insights I’ve had at Uber. I remember getting my annual performance review. I had two really strong leaders moving into our PL businesses and I thought I’m gonna get danged of it here for not being able to hold onto my key people and create an environment where they wanted to stay. But when we talked about the positives and talents in the review, we talked about with executive leadership and you’re really viewed as someone that brings in great talent, develops them, and then coaches them to go on to do really important other jobs at the company and my performance review ended up being one of the real positives and a real differentiator. You want your leaders to be good at identifying talent and good at convincing them to come join the company but the company really appreciates when you fill people that can help develop and coach and shape more people to become even better leaders. The mark of a great leader isn’t someone that can hold onto the same team forever, but rather someone that is so good at attracting and developing talent that they’re viewed as a feeder.

It’s very valuable for somebody who wants to hold onto their best people to realize that this is how they progress. Especially for fast growing companies, if you have good people, they should move around and get an opportunity to do different things.

So we talked about metrics and what the person can do and we always hear about how you should tell your story, manage perceptions. But there are people who sit quietly and hope their work will speak for themselves. Why is it important for the person to speak up when their numbers are attached and how does one do it?

It’s very important to manage your own brand and not assume that everyone’s gonna notice your great work. At the end of the day, you need to represent that work and keep your managers and leaders informed of what is going well and how you are going to improve the unsatisfactory results by setting up operating reviews or check-ins. I think it’s important that you’re looking for opportunities to share things that you learnt or accomplished with others such as your manager that can benefit from them is another soft way to manage your brand.

Some other tactical or easier ways to share information are through a short, concise email that looks personally written with bullet points, your weekly one-on-one with your manager (you need to prepare a list of things you would like to update her/him), and if you’ve come up with important, relevant information for a broader audience, all hands or operation reviews. I think it needs to be a little bit situational based on the type of information you’re sharing and who you’re sharing it with. If you get a polite no to share your information when the slot is full in all hands, you shouldn’t push it but there’s no harm in suggesting.

Troy, If somebody who is two or three levels down has the opportunity to meet with you to present some work they’ve done, how should they present themselves? What would you expect them to be able to do in that session in order to stand out in your mind as somebody with potential?

My advice for people in that situation is these are important brand building moments for you that come rarely and it’s worth the effort to prepare fully. Personally, I would think about all the questions that I can get asked, try to get some answers ready or do a practice presentation to make sure it is structured. The second thing is to be confident because people can sense a lack of confidence. If you are confident, you will get a better engagement and receptivity. This ties to the first thing, practice enough so that you’re legitimately confident so that when you come in you can appear confident. You also need to present in a way that invites conversation with a clear purpose of this presentation whether to collaborate or needing input rather than speed talking for 20 minutes and move on.

The key point you’re making is come in prepared, know your stuff, and if you practice it, you will come in more confident and which will also make it more likely that you’ll have smooth sailing. You’ve mentioned managing your brand and perceptions. How do you build an over brand and does that help in any way?

Building a personal brand or reputation is super important and that doesn’t happen overnight. Every encounter you’re having is affecting your reputation and I would assume people are always paying attention that you wanna be thoughtful about the way you represent yourself to your manager, colleagues and especially a senior executive for those high profile meetings because that’s gonna be their only impression of you. It takes years and years to build your brand and only minutes to destroy it. That’s why I do think it’s worth spending that extra time on preparation and coming in confident. Be honest and authentic to yourself because it’d be very hard to build a disingenuous or not an accurate brand of yourself for an extended period of time.

I remember writing about the three cases of death for your brand. One of them is being disingenuous because people could pick up when you’re shading the truth or not being forthright. Another one which is more of a personal pet peeve is entitlement because I don’t like being around people that have an error of entitlement and it’s tough to get past the way you treat people poorly.

You’ve also written about your own career journey and personal career hacks. One of them was about learning from failure. What were your takeaways from the moments you thought you hadn’t done well? What did you learn from that whole process and how should people approach failure?

Yeah, I think failure is a common part of life and a common part of a career. And it’s nobody bats a thousand percent and. One of the things I like to do in my free time is refer. I have a blog called coaches corner and it’s based on my experience, coaching, my kids, baseball teams and soccer teams and things growing up.

And when I think about when you win a game, you celebrate and you’re excited and you go out for pizza and have a great time and you move on. But you don’t really learn anything from it because you’re in the moment celebrating the win. It’s the losses that you really learn from cuz when you lose it’s painful and you don’t go out and celebrate and you have time to reflect and look at the game, film and analyze what went wrong and what can I do better next time?

So I think those losses are by far the biggest morning opportunities. I’m gonna lose a lot in business. Like these are competitive markets, we’re a competitive company. We’ve got functions we work in or are super complex and things don’t always go well. And so taking the time to, to diagnose and learn from those failures is super important.

The vast majority of failures are very survivable. So I think people get a little over-concerned that, oh my God it’s, didn’t go well, or this metric’s a little down this month. I’m gonna lose my job. That’s not usually how it works. It’s how you handle it matters a lot. If you can explain what went wrong and what you’re gonna do next time, you can actually turn that failure into a brand building opportunity with your manager and your team.

And there’s a certain amount of resilience that I look for in people too. Make sure that you get up, dust yourself off and get ready for the next pitch.

I really like the point, which you said that even a failure and how you react to it is a brand building opportunity. Not everybody is able to react well to failure and actually turn it around or at least handle themselves in that process. So Troy, do you have any other tips that you’d like to share with our audience, many of whom maybe early in their career, or perhaps trying to figure out how to get to the next stage in life?

I think if I were to give a few pieces of advice to people that are at an earlier middle stage of their career, thinking about how to build a reputation that I want, and the relationships that I want, one would be find ways to be useful to your boss. And I mean that like beyond the context of your own specific job, which is a given, you’ve gotta be good at, but find things that she needs help with, that you’re good at and raise your hand and know, offer to take more on or find something that’s just not getting done on your team and raise your hand and volunteer to do it. And I find that not only is that a group would have an impact, but it gets noticed and it’s very appreciative. I think the same thing applies to peer leadership. You wanna be the person on the team that your teammates view as a mentor and a go-to person and a peer leader. And then when your boss leaves and the most common promotion path is you get promoted into your boss’ job. When he or she leaves, then the team looks at you as yeah, of course. Sally is the one who would move into that position. She’s been in the job already. When one of my direct reports leaves for a new role and I’ve gotta make the decision whether I promote someone up from the team or look at external or elsewhere? One of the key things I’ll think about is. If I choose this person on the existing team, how’s the rest of the team gonna feel about it? And if I feel like, oh, while they’re gonna do this as a demotion or like they’re reporting to a peer or that it’s not fair, I’m much less likely to go that route where there’s other times where I’ll dig in.

And what I’ll see is actually like the team’s gonna be ecstatic if I choose this person because they’re really nervous about someone outside coming in and they think SADS. Awesome. And they already feel like she’s the team leader. And so that I think that really sets her up well for that role. So find ways to be a team leader. And then third, and this is my least popular bit of advice probably when I’m talking to millennials or younger folks that from a different generation is that hard work matters a lot. And it’s not that I’m saying you shouldn’t have some work life balance or your whole life should be 24/7 in the office. But I think it’s become fashionable to say that hard work doesn’t matter. And that putting in the hours doesn’t matter. And it really does, especially early in your career. So find those times and those career phases where putting in the blood, sweat and tears is gonna make a difference and make sure you’re doing it. Cuz that’s when you’re gonna learn the most and grow the most and establish that brand. Make sure you don’t burn yourself out. And I look at my career, there’s been periods where it’s felt super, super hard. And then other times when it’s okay, now I’m in a situation where I can cut back a little bit, but you gotta be strategic and thoughtful about that.

The reality is if you take two equally talented people and with everything else being equal, if one of ’em is put it in 50 hours a week, and the other is putting in 35 hours a week, the one it’s putting in 50 hours a week, it’s just gonna get more done. I gotta be a little careful. I shared this advice cuz I know it rubs some people the wrong way, but the world is what the world is. And effort does matter in sports too. Like just to a certain extent natural talent is great and athletes are born not made, but when you talk to the Michael Jordans or the Jerry rices or the Tom Bradys, these are the folks that are not only more talented than everybody else, but they’re working harder than everybody else too. It’s not a good long term strategy, but there’s times in your career where, when it matters, you have to put in the effort.

What advice would you have for people trying to make a break into a bigger role or a different kind of role and how should they go about it?

You’re gonna apply for a hundred jobs for every 10. You’re gonna get, you’re gonna interview 10 times for every offer that you get. Like it’s just a numbers game. It’s a big world. And there’s a lot of factors that go into it.

And so if you’re not even giving yourself a chance, you’re not gonna get those. You don’t have much of a chance to get the opportunity if you don’t at least take that chance. So I wouldn’t be asked, feel about it. I go into it also realizing there’s a sort of luck. Maybe you’re not quite the most qualified person, but you just really hit it off with the hiring manager and you really connect on something or you share your perspective on how you approach the job. And that becomes more important than well, this person has an MBA. This person doesn’t, or this person has eight years of experience, and this person only has six. There’s a lot of intangibles that go into hiring decisions.

You wanna be a little bit careful that you’re not applying to absolutely every job that comes up where you just come across as either a little bit clueless or a little bit disingenuous, or you’re just trying to constantly buck for promotion. So don’t overdo it. I see a lot more examples of people not going for stuff than I do with people overdoing for stuff.

Troy, thank you so much. This has all been extremely valuable. If I might just take a minute to summarize some of the points that you mentioned. I think the first point was about having an impact. That means owning a metric later on, you mentioned about putting in the hours, but essentially owning a metric demonstrates that impact.

The second one was around managing perceptions. So how you do something, not just what you do, be good at meetings. Come prepared. Make sure you don’t screw up the few opportunities that you have to meet leadership, build a brand, be a little bit strategic around this and avoid doing negative things that will impact the brand.

Like you said, it takes a long time to build it. Takes no time to destroy it. The fourth point was about surviving most things. So essentially, even if you fail, it’s not the end of the world and how you react to that failure actually can be a perception or brand enhancing point. Another one that you mentioned is going beyond yourself, being useful to your boss out to other people and doing it. In a way that you almost become the natural successor to your boss or to somebody else. When the time comes, because you’ve almost positioned yourself as the bench for that individual, and you do that by just doing a wide set of things and being helpful. And the last point was not to be afraid to apply for things and without overdoing it and being completely off pace, but to have a sense of what you want to try and achieve and then go for that, even if you aren’t exactly a hundred percent qualified for it. So thank you very much, Troy. These were all excellent insights. I’ve learned a lot from this as well as how I could have conducted myself in the past and how I should conduct myself in future.

So thanks once again, Troy, for joining us. This was Troy and Amit with JobTok, see you next time.