The importance of mindset & reflection for professional growth

hello everyone thank you for tuning in again I am Kaye bitman the content director at she can code and today we

are discussing the importance of mindset and reflection as you embark on your journey of professional growth I’ve got

the amazing Nicole Yip principal engineer marketing and channels technology at the LEGO Group who is here

to share her own perspective on success emphasizing the importance of actively

seeking diverse viewpoints Cole we got a lot to chat about today so welcome Nicole thank you very much thanks for

having me can we kick off with a bit of background about yourself please you’ve got an incredibly interesting background

for all of our listeners as well Nicole was on a recent live webinar with us and that is also on sho. so you want to

check that one out and she had a really interesting discussion about empathy in Tech um but for our listeners for our

podcast who haven’t um heard of you yet Nicole tell us all about yourself sure

um so a super quick intro to me and then a little bit of a longer uh discussion about where I’ve come from so I’m a

principal engineer at the LEGO Group I’ve been in engineering for around eight years now mostly in devops and

infrastructure roles at the LEGO Group I’ve been focusing on the engineering teams behind the e-commerce part of

Lego.com and I’ve been taking those teams through their devops Journey as an infrastructure engineer and then as an

engineering manager and now as a principal engineer um so how I got into technology was I’ve always really liked

putting things together um and Building Things and that eventually led me to completing an engineering degree that

specialized in mechatronics and most people will know that as automation engineering because it’s more globally

called that um It’s a combination of mechanical electronic and software engineering and it focuses on the

bringing together of those disciplines to create a system that actually does something that functions um I did that

in New Zealand and from there I moved to Australia to become an IT consultant um

that was me focusing entirely on software engineering um but I landed roles in devops and infrastructure the

ones where you kind of need to know about several parts of a system and they all need to come together to to do the

thing or to know that the system was working or wasn’t working so there was a bit of a theme going on and then after

working with several project teams in Australia to get their environments and pipelines up and running in AWS I then

moved to the UK and I’ve been with the LEGO Group since then with a focus on on e-commerce on lego.com

amazing can I can I pick your brains a little bit about what was like to study in New Zealand obviously in the UK we

always hear that lots of ladies that take um courses in anything to do with engineering kind of on their own there’s

not many ladies what was that like in New Zealand did you find that it was quite equal or did you was it just you

it was it’s kind of the split that you would expect from from an engineering degree unfortunately where there wasn’t

that many females but there was around 30% in my team uh in my cohort I guess I

should say um we found that some disciplines over indexed on female Engineers so um biomedical science for

example was closer to 50 50% chemical and materials Engineering also was really really high um and so we we found

that females tended to group to certain uh disciplines yeah yeah it’s always

interesting to hear how um different countries have have that uh gender split and as you said yes most most

disciplines in engine engineering are still dominated by men um but you yourself you know you you started off

you said that you wanted to um build things and and I’m assuming take things apart when you were younger as well you

were that type of child was it was it something at home that had inspired you

or is it a teacher at school or were you just literally that child who tinkered with everything I think I’ve always

liked to learn things and so taking things apart was the easiest way to get insight into something that you didn’t

know before like how does a pen click and stay clicked or unlicked but with the same motion um that kind of easy

access into finding out something that you didn’t know before and I think I I

really enjoyed that because looking back over my life I’ve picked up so many different Hobbies because I like the act

of learning something new um not necessarily finishing something new that’s a different

story yes that’s that’s a whole other podcast there um so we’ve got a lot to cover

today and I wanted to get started with from your perspective um there is a

significance in actively seeking diverse viewpoints for professional growth and development can you elaborate on this

idea of seeking the uh diverse perspectives uh of others yeah so this

idea came around because I’ve been reflecting on my career how I’ve got into where I am today and because I did

a stint in in people management for three years I did get to talk to people who were on different parts of their

their career journey and professional growth is typically talked about as learning more about something forming

opinions about doing things our way or the industry best practice way and I’ve

been reflecting and I’ve found that if you focus on seeking and collecting different perspectives and different

ways of looking at a system having that Focus has really grown my career I think that’s what has um brought me to where I

am today in the the amount of time that I’ve been in the industry I can give you an example of what I mean by

perspectives so because I came to technology from an engineering background I had a lot of learning to do

in order to just be part of a software engineering team I started off by observing the the software engineering

teams I started as an iteration manager or a scrum manager uh sorry scrum Master

as it’s known in agile and then I really dived into figuring out how you implement log collection and monitoring

for the project that I was working on um that really opened my eyes to other part

of the technology industry that you just don’t learn about in at University or you don’t learn about it in any other way other than being in a software

engineering team because going in I I knew about code bases I knew about writing code I knew about testing and

executing code but when you start working on something like a logging system I suddenly had to learn how to

remote into a a virtual machine I suddenly could see what that look like I

suddenly could see log files appearing in different parts of the system um

and that was something that I could have maybe learned theoretically but by seeing it by logging in by seeing the

file appear when I executed the the code that that really brought things together

and suddenly it made sense that implementing a system to look for and send those log files from multiple

different machines that different pieces of the the system were running on into one central place would make monitoring

would make reconciliation of the processes so much easier and and that itself could become a its own system and

so that was just the start of me starting to see a system from a different perspective it wasn’t just seeing it from a back in engineering

perspective and through the code it was now seeing the logging and the monitoring side of a system the devops

side actually you know deploying it um and yeah that kind of just snowballed

into starting to see more and more parts of the technology industry yeah because um when when you started there you said

you know coming from an engineering background you felt like you had lots to learn but actually um it was a positive coming in from a

different perspective and a different background um and which I think a lot of companies seem to think they grasp that

idea of yes let’s have lots of perspectives because that really helps um but they’re not so great maybe

finding the different perspectives and finding that especially you know gender diversity and other forms of diversity

in the workplace um you you’re absolutely right when it actually comes down to it the everyday projects that

you work on um to seeing things from different perspectives is so so important um and and you now did

wonderfully in your in your example there how does challenging the conventional wisdom of knowing stuff

contribute to personal and professional growth there is this idea of knowing

isn’t it yeah um I guess when you go into a new role or you’re starting a new job there’s this inherent pressure of

needing to learn what to do and how to do it as fast as possible and there’s always this idea that there’s transferable skills that you can bring

from your prior experience that will help you get up and running um faster and an example of that is if you know if

you just know how to do front-end or backend engineering you’ll be fine in any other front-end or backend

engineering role that’s kind of the the thinking that goes into that kind of mentality and you can actually see it in

interview processes just like you were saying a lot of interview processes start out um saying so have you worked

with a front-end framework like react angular or View you know that kind of question usually comes up and it’s all

coming from this uh concept of if you know stuff then and the more stuff you

know the more senior you are but there’s always a trade-off you can learn very

very deeply about a select few areas of technology or you can learn really really broadly across a range of

disciplines within technology but the challenge is you can’t really stay at the Forefront of all of them um I mean

I’ve managed to go from entering the it industry to being a principal engineer within eight years and part of the

recognition I’ve received I think stems from my curiosity and the ability to like synthesize and bring together many

different ways of looking at a system and communicate those potential blind spots that other people might have um

and things that they might need to consider and pinpointing at the right times to to highlight that to the right

people I think that has been my um my skill set that’s been kind of recognized

yeah and it comes from this this growth mindset from this curiosity to just learn broadly and and not be afraid that

it has to be a deep level of knowledge um to to get to where I am yeah I think

that that puts a lot of people off as well doesn’t it from applying for certain roles ladies are well known for

not applying for things if they don’t tick all of the boxes if they don’t know how to do everything whereas men will

apply and just think well I’ll learn when I get in and you’re right that knowing stuff if you are are something

in an interview and you don’t know and you think actually I would have to learn to such a deep level to to be able to um

actually feel confident in this role that can really hinder some people kind of I mean you would turn down some jobs

that you would have been really good at and um all all because of that knowing

stuff and it’s interesting that you bring up that statistic because I found out about that um someone mentioned that

to me as I was looking for RS to move to the UK um and so when I came across the the job ad for the LEGO Group I had that

in my mind of like you don’t have to take all the boxes and you can still apply and to be honest that’s the only reason I applied I wouldn’t have got

this role if someone hadn’t said that to me just at the right time because I didn’t tick all the boxes I talked about

it to the hiring manager um a couple years afterwards and they were like yeah we took a

chance um but look where I am today so exactly I’m just bridging those those

gaps that if you have any um are are you know you have all of the skills that are

necessary it’s just learning as you go um and and feeling like you’re at a company as well that can encourage you

to to do that I was speaking with a lady on here um only yesterday and uh she

said she had a similar um background you know she said a company a good company eight years ago took a chance on her um

and she said I didn’t have all the skills I didn’t even have a technical background and she said I can’t believe now she works in cyber defense and she

said I never would have thought I’d ended up in that it was just f finding a good company um who just took a chance

on her uh and bridged the the gaps in the things that she she didn’t know all

or everything that she needed to know for that job um but there are some great companies out there uh who do that um

Nicole you have a term called unknown unknowns can we talk a little bit about

what does that term mean the unknown unknowns I would love to claim it as my

term I just use it all the time but it actually comes from like something like 1955 um it’s from two yeah it’s from two

American psychologists who created this analysis technique called the Johari window or Yari window I don’t know how

to pronounce it um but it’s a framework that helps you put into perspective and kind of makes it okay to acknowledge

that there are things that you just don’t know there are things that are it so it’s got four different axes and they

are known to yourself unknown to yourself and on the other side they are

known to others and Unown known to others and where unknown unknowns come

from is that axis where it’s not known to you and it’s not known to others and it will just Blindside everyone it will

Blindside the world an example of that is the fact that zero days exist so a

zero day is a security term where someone has found out a super critical vulnerability and a piece of software

that has been around for can be years can be months it could be anything but the fact that no one knows about it

except for this one person who discovered with the zero day it that’s what an unknown unkknown

is and the the risk of all of that happening is that you know there’s zero

days that can be um taken advantage of by all sorts of of entities around the

world um but I guess where I’m trying to go with this is that the concept of

having of unknown unknowns is acknowledging that there are things out there that you just don’t know about but

other people know about and other people don’t know about and it’s only through curiosity and talking and reading widely

will you actually discover these unknown unknowns and it’s by being super curious

It’s that you uncover different parts of what I’m bringing it back to is the technology industry or the industry that

you work in and that potential opportunity um that the problems to solve over there might actually be super

interesting and energizing to you I when I did the the mechatronics course that didn’t exist for five years beforehand I

would never have heard about it at school I would have never heard about devops when I was in university because

that wasn’t a term that existed at that time so by being really curious by

acknowledging that there are things that you don’t know that the industry doesn’t know about just yet um it it forces you

to say there must be something else out there let’s let’s talk more what else am I not aware of and and it’s looking for

those opportunities to to grow into these spaces that you weren’t aware of before yes it’s so interesting because

we get um asked from our community uh so much about transitioning into Tech and

especially doing it later in life um and just thinking you know what actually I don’t know a lot of things I’m I’m too

late to the game and I haven’t learned everything that has happened already and actually it’s it’s absolutely you’re

absolutely right in putting yourself in that mindset of actually just being curious about what’s to come you don’t

know everything that’s due to come and that it that’s okay as well and it’s

just you know catching up on the things that you need to know and being okay with the fact that you don’t know all of

the um unknowns as well um is yeah it’s it’s a it’s a certain mindset isn’t it

coming into technology I mean the amount of people that uh that come on these podcast that talk about being in a

certain frame of mind where you have to constantly be willing to Lear as well

because as you said things changed so fast in the tech industry and even the course that you took didn’t exist a few

years ago that’s one of the the fun things so

right there’s also a weird Duality that um a lot of people don’t talk about

where uh for example I was a senior infrastructure engineer but at the same time I was a junior front end engineer

like you can you can go really deeply into a certain discipline in technology and you will by definition then also be

junior in all of the other disciplines um and just because your title is senior doesn’t mean there’s opportunity and

growth available in all of the other areas so while you could enter into the technology industry in one discipline

there is still so much more for you to learn and so much more opportunity out there so there’s there’s often this

thing where people project onto others if I know this so and so must know it because they’re a senior not true right

if if I’m a senior infrastructure engineer and I’m talking to a react engineer and they talk to me as if I

know react as like because I’m senior in everything technology it’s is not going to work

right um so just by talking with each other and acknowledging that there are things that you’re going to know there’s things that you’re not going to know um

it that opens up all of these opportunities to to explore and and find more areas that could be super

interesting yeah especially with ladies when they step into senior positions you’re right it’s kind of no only do

people project onto others and they assume that other people know I know a lot of female leaders feel like they

think everybody should know uh they think everybody thinks they know everything because they’re in a senior

leadership position and it puts a lot of ladies off from taking that leap because I think everybody’s G to want to know

everything and they have that imposter syndrome feeling that but if I don’t know everything maybe I’m failing um and

it’s yeah it’s a it’s an awful uh position to be in because like you said you have your experts in in each field

as well and that just because you don’t know everything doesn’t mean that somebody else doesn’t and that’s what your team is there for um to to figure

that out and to um stay curious obviously is um uh is important as well

and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about early life experiences um what is the impact of early life experiences and

social networks on shaping our perspectives so when you look back at

early life experiences if you think about kind of the the norm of kind of schooling and education which on the

face of it focuses on teaching as much stuff and theoretical knowledge as possible um within how many years you’re

there but actually that theoretical knowledge is such a small part of what shapes you into who you are um and for

the most part the theory that you learned at that time gets thrown away and you start learning all over again a

more focused set of skills and maybe a bit of theory in the role that you actually end up in the person who you

actually become and the the types of things that you get exposed to is more influenced by the social networks that

you grow up with because they’re the ones who you’re talking to they’re the ones who are uncovering your unknown

unknowns or known is it known unknowns or unknown knowns one of them where they’re not known to you but other

people around you know them and it’s that mix of your family Network the

Friends The Wider societal environment that you grow up in um and the conversations that you have what they

decide to talk about this is the power of words right what they decide to talk about is what you’re suddenly going to

be exposed to oh they used a term that I’m not aware of let me go and search what that means um whereas if there’s

people who are just not talking about a certain thing maybe it’s the color blue you know let’s take an example you will

never know that the color blue exists unless you’re curious outside of the the people that you’re talking with um so

yeah yeah I completely agree and I um love the fact that you brought up the

the way that we’re schooled as well um you learn a lot of things uh in school

and then you forget all about them anyway and you almost like you start learning again I remember when they changed the um curriculum uh several

years ago and I I remember covering a lot of Stories on it because businesses has almost caught on that everything you

get learn at school if you want to go into technology is just so disconnected

to what is actually like to work in technology um and I still think that is the case in lots of things but I

remember them changing the curriculum to have a Computing curriculum instead of previously it was just um spreadsheets

and how to do them Mal merge and that about it and there’s still work to be done

there but you are right it’s the the way that you are schooled you kind of foret all of that and it is more important as

you said as the um social networks that you grow up around um which is is something as well of you know if you if

you don’t have those social networks in your life that are talking to you about careers in Tech or or anything like that

and you’re not familiar with what it will look like um then it can be quite hard to Be Inspired in that area uh so

you know if you don’t see something on TV for instance um it can be quite difficult to think actually I’d love to take up a career in technology which is

why a lot of the ladies that I talk to they’ found that later in life as well where they actually I had a friend who

done it or um a lot of ladies they they tell us that um they have husbands that worked in the field and they thought

that’s a really good area to go in um and then and then they relearn uh everything um which it’s always so

interesting to hear how people fall into into the tech sector um you were on our

webinar for uh empathy in business so uh I wanted to touch upon a little bit about that again today how does the

power of empathy tie in with per personal and professional development so there’s like one way to

start understanding a new way of looking at a system is to actually work on it so for example I worked on implementing a

log collection and monitoring system I used jump boxes I saw log files I St AG

I did all the Hands-On stuff another faster way to understand A New Perspective is to learn from the

experience and the perspective of others so sure you won’t understand it as deeply and you and you might not become

the subject matter expert but you can start to build it into your meal mental model the the more you ask and the more

you’re curious about it so imagine if you have no idea about security imagine

that it’s a complete Black Hole you don’t know what it is maybe you know the the title security but now you’re sat

next to a security expert they’re a wealth of knowledge they know everything about the the whole uh discipline within

technology and you can capitalize on this opportunity and it’s by harnessing the power of empathy and all of those

techniques around it and to be curious and that is how you will extract information that goes from their mental

model their way of communicating about security into your mental model your way of seeing the world um and it’s only by

using empathy will that translation actually happen because people can talk at you about

security non-stop for AG it’s a super interesting topic but if you don’t have

the the techniques to try and ask the the open questions and the clarification questions and the you know just

continuing to be curious until it starts to make sense to you and it fits into your way of seeing the world the the

mental models that you’ve built up around the industry until you can internalize it you’re not really able to

take on that New Perspective so yeah all of the the things around uh the power of

empathy is is how you can actually gain these um different perspectives you can

start to collect these different perspectives without needing to invest the many many years of becoming an

expert and and being Hands-On in that thing so I’ve managed to collect security I’ve managed to collect um

accessibility performance in a couple different disciplines just by being super curious and asking those

clarification questions being willing to put myself out out there and say I think this is what a good accessible page

looks like what am I missing and you know just talking it through I didn’t build the page I I found it on the

internet um but I I was trying to make it fit in my mental model what are the

different ways that you can approach it from and and find those different views and perspectives yeah yeah I I love

everything you just said I think as well with empathy it’s um something that people don’t put on their CVS and I

think they should is one of those really important soft skills um because most people think coming into Tech you got to

be highly technical um and that’s it but actually when you said about communicating and how you can take on

what somebody else is saying it’s okay somebody to talking at you if you haven’t got that skill to take it on

yourself then it’s just not going to go in and it’s not it’s not going to work um I think empathy is one of those

lovely soft skills uh that not everybody has and it’s something that we should all um highlight if it’s something that

you you a skill that you think you have and and definitely put it on your CV uh if you and if you can um give examples

of where you’ve used it as well um so so important um what about Collaborative

Learning we spoke a little bit there about empathy and um communication but what is the value of Collaborative

Learning and shared experiences uh in fostering growth this kind of goes back

to the uh what we were talking about around the the early uh early life uh

experiences where now if you go into a team that is super collaborative it

means that they really value knowledge sharing and they value working together and that gives you many many

opportunities to uncover your unknown knowns things that are unknown to you but known to others in the

team and this is where um I I was kind of talking about I can be a senior infrastructure engineer but a junior

front end engineer and if the team doesn’t talk a lot about the the software engineering things that they’re

doing I have no opportunity to go and Google that new word that that they were talking about like I can’t Google

hydration if if I’m not part of this open knowledge sharing uh collaborative

environment um like the the team can hopefully not assume that I know

something like prop drilling because it’s basic to them and and I am a senior so I need to know that thing so being in

a a Collaborative Learning and and you know shared experience environment it

helps uncover those unknown knowns and and help the team grow together yes

definitely and again another um really useful soft skill being able to collaborate um as a team and being able

to communicate um I I think as well a collaborate uh Collaborative Learning as

well is something that people who are who are not in the tech industry they don’t always realize that you’re going

to be doing that and you’re going to be working as teams it’s a really big misconception that you you kind of work

siloed when you come into Tech um and that you’re some kind of weird personality that just loves to sit on

your own and work on your own and actually everybody that works in Tech always says actually I have to

collaborate with lots of teams I get to learn from lots of teams um and that’s sometimes something that a lot of those

people just didn’t know was going to be a thing when when coming into technology um and has almost taken some people um

by surprise uh it’s I don’t know why more people don’t know that um that you

get to learn from each other what about advice what advice would you offer to individuals uh who are seeking both

personal and professional development so I guess the I brought this concept to the the podcast around

you know collecting different perspectives and and all of that but I think that that has to go in hand inand

with a couple different phases so I talk about unknown unknowns because you first need to discover what’s out there

discover the opportunities that you could grow into and then pick the cherry pick the ones that energize you and

start learning learning and exploring and and making that unknown unknown more

of a known to you yeah then you need to understand that’s where the empathy comes in that’s where um synthesizing it

into your own mental model so that you can speak it in your own words is the next phase and then actually

implementing it starting to tell tell others about this thing I can now advise people about security stuff even though

I’ve never ever been a security engineer um and so I think it’s those four different phases and taking

opportunities through that um is is what’s going to help you grow as an individual and it’s what you choose to

what unknown unknown you cherry-pick to is where you’re going to end up growing so I didn’t know about security so I

decided to cherry-pick that one learn it understand it from a couple different people and then start start using that

what I’d gleaned from from all of them um you could do it on a personal level as well um I decided to learn crocheting

and then I learned it I I Now understand it and I’m now running workshops at my company because I now run the craft club

because I really like crafting so yeah yeah I’m sure loads of people want to learn that as well something I think we

all attempted in lockdown but if you’re running workshops amazing you know what I think um you you are absolutely right

as well on um cherry picking things I think it’s so easy isn’t it to get lost in the day today where actually you

forget about personal growth and you forget about trying something new and learning something new um which isn’t

only putting you at a disadvantage but also your employer as well because good companies they really encourage people

to grow and learn and develop um as when you’re in the right environment you feel like you can do that and sometimes when

you’re in the wrong company and you just feel like you know what I’m so bogged down in my day to-day I completely

forgot about growth personal growth and development growth um a professional

growth so yeah it’s it’s so easy isn’t it just to forget yeah I’ve got a really

funny story where uh there was a lead engineer in the team who came along to our Craft club meetups and his

reflection was everyone should have something that they’re learning everyone should have something that they’re

completely Nob at and they can and it just humbles you it takes you back to

the point of there is stuff I don’t know and and this is how it feel and they can

start to create that empathy with more associate Engineers or or you know that kind of thing where oh I I can’t I can’t

see the stitches but you just pointed it and said this is this is correct or this is wrong and that’s how it feels when

they’re mentoring a more associate uh engineer in in it things it it’s so obvious to them because they’ve done it

for years that’s it’s inherent but for the associate engineer everything looks the same it’s all blending together so

yeah it was a really interesting reflection of everyone should just go and learn a brand new thing and and experience that to reconnect with with

that experience and that just kind of ties in with the Lego groups ethos as well doesn’t it learning new things and

building and staying curious um so yeah it’s really interesting you have craft clubs all kind of fits

together um Nicole we’re almost out of time and I wanted to ask you one last question is there anything you’d like to

share with our listeners uh anything that you wish somebody had told you before you embarked on your

journey well about halfway through my journey um I attended a a conference

thing and there was a message that someone said there that stuck with me ever since then and it was start before

you’re ready so the message was that no one is ever really ready because there

is always an unknown sorry unknown unknown hiding around the corner no one can refine a ticket to an Nth Degree and

guarantee that nothing else will crop up if you do it exactly as the ticket says so getting in the mentality of starting

before you’re ready and starting to collect those New Perspectives around you um is is something that I would I

would advise no one is ever ready for anything that they do so don’t wait to be ready because it’s not going to come

just start I love that start before you’re ready I’m gonna throw that at a few people pass that one off as my own

that is a brilliant piece of advice I think as we’ve said throughout this a lot a lot of people um put things they

they uh put things off they feel like they can’t go for that really good job or move forward and learn something new

um and you’re absolutely right starting before you’re ready the start start of something the

starting point sometimes is the only point you need um but yeah that is that is great advice um and it’s obviously

LED you um very far so far down your own um professional uh career path um so

Nicole thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day um and for coming on uh to shano’s podcast been a pleasure

that’s all right thank you for having me you and to everybody listening as always thank you so much for joining us and we

hope to see you again next time