The backstory of my great allies

Allies

Last week I shared the post on the actions ALLIES take. While I’ve talked about the growing need to build more allies in our industry, many do already exist – and their behaviors are something we can all learn from. For instance, 15 years ago when I made the bold move at Microsoft to move out of licensing sales leadership and into product management, there were many people who told me flat out that I would fail. This advice did not inspire confidence but it did inspire me to prove them wrong so I took the decision to make the move anyways. Knowing that this would be a tough road, I asked a leader in the engineering team, Brad Anderson (now President of Products and Services at Qualtrics), to help me learn how to speak to engineers and provide value back into his organization. Though I did not know it at the time, I was building an ally. 

Brad subsequently advocated on my behalf in many ways, most notably by introducing me to his team members, sharing my objectives and as a result, providing a level of credibility to me that enabled me to lead some extraordinary efforts with his team and at Microsoft.  At the time, I don’t know that Brad even understood the impact of his allyship and the actions that he took but he has learned from his experiences with me and other individuals that he has chosen to support how to work with even more intentionality to be an ally.  You can hear the full story here ALLIES – Gavriella Schuster #beCOME an Ally Power Panel with Gavriella Schuster – YouTube. 

We all seek to be heard and be seen. Allies give you the space for both, by including you in the conversation and valuing your contributions.

Having the support of ALLIES does not guarantee that your own career trajectory will accelerate at the same pace as these women, but it will empower you to find the courage and confidence within yourself to unlock your full potential.  You may be surprised at how far you will go when you believe in yourself and give yourself permission to go bigger and lead.

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#empowHER50 Celebrating Women Powering Microsoft’s Trillion Dollar Shift with Gavriella Schuster

Thank you Mariana Carvalho and Women in Cloud for this Spotlight of my 25 years at Microsoft as part of the 50 year Celebration!

One of the top skills I learned at Microsoft was the importance of inclusion. If I had not focused on including others in my ideas, in the way I planned and executed initiatives, campaigns and programs, that there is no way I would have been successful.

Once we had identified a market opportunity, my focus was how to craft objectives and an agenda that would attract those around me to want to work towards it. How I could identify their WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) and ensure that what I was doing would drive success for those around me. I learned how to engage others, how to share my ideas when they were nascent to bring in other points of view and make those ideas stronger. I learned that nothing at Microsoft got done as a tops down command – everything was organic from the ground up. In the early days of my career when there was so much to be done and so few resources to do it. We all needed each other and we needed to pull together to capture the vast opportunity ahead of us. There was no right or wrong way of getting things done – almost everything was built from the ground up creating a foundation for the future.

As you read this interview, you should know that behind everything I ever accomplished there were hundreds of people both within the company and within the Microsoft Partner community that worked to achieve our objectives. I never did anything alone.

I very often have likened my role as a team leader to that of the first ball in Newton’s Cradle of Balance Balls. I started something, but it was others who kept it moving and helped it become something I could only dream of.

I am grateful for all of the great leaders who empowered me and gave me the opportunity to keep trying through the failure until we found success. And I am especially grateful to my peers, those who worked within their teams, hashtag#mspartners, Women in Cloud, The WIT Network who believed in our many missions and made them a reality.

When you are in the midst of working, you seldom take the time to look back at the progression of your career. I know that the decisions I made to move to new roles at Microsoft were not made by a desire to move up within the organization but through a desire to make a difference. I had a desire to continually learn new skills, to push myself to new experiences, to build more bridges within the company and within the community and to make an impact. I am thrilled that as I look back on my career, that this is precisely what I wanted to achieve.

Thank you Microsoft for giving me the platform and the empowerment to make my dreams come true.

Read the full interview on Medium.

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