How These Senior Leaders Make Time For Their Own Professional Growth
How do busy senior leaders find the time for professional development? Between building a vision, managing direct reports, meeting quarterly report deadlines and finding the right people to fill key roles, blocking out even a few extra hours can feel like a stretch.
Yet, Rachel Herbtsman, vice president of data innovation at Ampersand, a data-driven TV advertising sales and technology company, claims it is crucial for leaders to take time for professional growth, beyond brushing up on the latest industry and software trends. (Trust us, generative AI isn’t the only splashy technology transforming the workplace). While conferences, webinars, bootcamps and classes can help leaders expand their knowledge base and open the door to new career opportunities, they can also provide a breath of fresh air and nurture soft skills, such as emotional intelligence, that contribute to more effective management.
Employers also stand to benefit from growth-oriented company cultures that encourage employees to invest in their professional development. A study from the Society for Human Resource Management found that 77 percent of employees who left their jobs could have been retained, with many citing a lack of career development opportunities as a determining factor in their decision.
Built In talked to Herbtsman and vice president of engineering at Clear Street, a cloud-native prime brokerage fintech company, about how they make time for professional development and the difference that has made to the confidence and clarity of their leadership.
Ampersand, powered by multiscreen TV viewership insights from 42 million households, gives advertisers rich data to plan, scale and evaluate their investments.
Between the demands of leading and managing a team and executing on strategy, it can be difficult to find time to prioritize your own learning and development as a senior leader. How do you make sure you find the time to do so in the workplace?
I believe that a large part of being in a leadership role is understanding the resources available to strengthen my own skills. Resources can be a vague term. It might mean taking a class to learn a new technical skill, keeping up with the trades or attending a conference to hear about the latest industry trends. On the other hand, when time is limited and schedules are packed, a casual conversation with someone with varied skill sets in or outside the industry might be just as impactful. I've found there is usually an opportunity to learn when there's a desire, and much of that is a function of self-discipline.
Being an effective leader takes empathy and open-mindedness. Without the ability to continue learning and evolving, it is very easy to become complacent and, ultimately, stagnant.”
How does your company culture enable you to do so?
Ampersand understands the need to support individual career growth and subscribes to various resources to encourage these types of opportunities for professional success. One trusted platform is LinkedIn Learning, which has programs spanning from quick refreshers to full-fledged course cycles. Ampersand’s leadership truly values its people and, as a result, has specific learning and development budgets allocated to promote distinct learning agendas.
In addition, Ampersand advocates for employees to have a presence at industry conferences and events. Not only do employees benefit from attending and absorbing other viewpoints, but the company also sees gains from having its workforce in the spotlight. At the core, Ampersand fosters an open and collaborative culture that stems from the top. Employees are encouraged to lean into the “Amp” community.
How does prioritizing your own learning and development make you a better leader or manager of people?
Being an effective leader takes empathy and open-mindedness. Without the ability to continue learning and evolving, it is very easy to become complacent and, ultimately, stagnant. In my experience, the spark for innovative growth has stemmed from new realizations inspired by external outlets: friendly conversations, industry events, online courses or trusted advice. The capacity to think of a more operationally efficient method for reaching a desired outcome is a direct result of those experiences. Working more efficiently has allowed me more time for other stimulating developmental projects.
I’ve been most effective in my roles, both as a leader and a hands-on team member, when I’ve been excited about the tasks. It’s this excitement that radiates to team members and direct reports to further engage the whole group. When there is shared enthusiasm for team projects and company growth, productivity rises and overcoming challenges becomes more rewarding for everyone involved.
Clear Street is a fintech company with a cloud-native prime brokerage platform.
Between the demands of leading and managing a team and executing on strategy, it can be difficult to find time to prioritize your own learning and development as a senior leader. How do you make sure you find the time to do so in the workplace?
In leadership roles, your focus naturally becomes more strategic than tactical. It can be easy to get caught up in back-to-back meetings, so I prioritize making time on my calendar to support the team and learn about new technologies and new business trends. It’s important to understand the balance between when you need to be present and when you can delegate.
Clear Street is using the latest technology to build a prime brokerage designed for today’s complex, modern global market. This makes learning critical at Clear Street (and for me personally). We must be prepared for what’s next in our changing world, and keep innovating. This is what justifies prioritizing the time to invest in learning.
For me, learning usually takes the form of evaluating technologies or solutions that my team or the business as a whole want to implement. Discovering something new in a technical or financial publication and feeling the need to dig deeper can lead to insights that help us make the right decisions.
We must be prepared for what’s next in our changing world, and keep innovating. This is what justifies prioritizing the time to invest in learning.”
How does your company culture enable you to do so?
Clear Street is a broker dealer registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). That’s why FINRA exams are required for several roles at Clear Street, including engineering roles that involve trading algorithms.
For other roles, exams are optional, but Clear Street highly encourages employees to take them and fully funds both exams and prep courses. The exams are highly beneficial to overall career growth and can reshape employees’ perspectives and understanding of markets.
The firm also hosts regular Lunch & Learn sessions where leaders and employees from across the company discuss their projects and goals. Learning more about what’s happening across the business gives me perspective on how my team can be more impactful and also reveals areas of interest where I should dive deeper.
Within the engineering group, we advocate for technical design reviews among guilds and individual team members, and encourage employees to attend industry conferences. Last year, I attended Current 2022, a technical conference for event-driven design, streaming technology and real-time systems. More broadly, our office location in New York City offers unique opportunities to participate in frequent tech and finance industry events.
How does prioritizing your own learning and development make you a better leader or manager of people?
At Clear Street, we’re revolutionizing the backend infrastructure for Wall Street by building financial infrastructure for today’s institutions using cloud-native technologies. We're pioneering technology-first prime brokerage. In order to deliver on this goal, it is crucial for me to keep abreast of new technological platforms and trends in the financial industry.
For example, at the Current 2022 conference, I furthered my own career goals by learning more about the latest in data streaming. With expanded knowledge of platform advancements and real-time data processing tools, I’ve developed a new mindset that has influenced our vision for Clear Street’s event-driven, “data-in-motion” strategy.
We have also been evaluating better ways to manage workflows and pipelines. Emerging technologies and platforms abound in the finance industry, often promising to be better than their incumbents. I like to make time to build out a small proof of concept to experience these technologies first hand. Diving into the technology our engineering teams are using helps me better support their work and provide more meaningful feedback.
