We interviewed JuE Wong, President at Elizabeth Arden, in our latest podcast. Wong shared important tips on managing your team, handling personal tragedy, and insight into how she handled raising a family with a fast paced, international career. Here are our top four favorite highlights:
On good management advice
When asking JuE Wong what advice she wished she received when she was a first time manager, Wong mentioned that the most important lesson she learned was to actively groom a #2 that can support and grow alongside her in an organization. She reinforces this lesson today be ensuring her 8 to 10 direct reports have a #2 that they feel confident can represent them in executive meetings, and can speak on behalf of that overall function.
Wong also advocates for giving your team a lot of leeway to succeed or fail on their own, but in the case of bad outcomes, always ensuring that you’ve put in place a safety net so that the entire team can fall and bounce-back together.
A memorable example for her was when she was a trader at Cargill, she had a $200MM position in the market that she was very enthusiastic about. However, she was in over her head with that choice, and eventually was in a spot where she was facing massive financial losses. But unbeknownst to her, her boss had taken an opposite position to limit the overall company losses. This ensured that she still had a chance to learn and figure out stuff herself, while still not having long-term negative effects on the company.
On having an owner’s mindset
Regardless of your role in a company, Wong advocates that you should always think in terms of a P&L. Even if you are in PR or are an Office Assistant, you should think through what costs are you incurring for the organization and what kind of ROI are you getting on those investments. You can use budgets and a P&L this to stay disciplined in your role and to prove your value to the organization.
On setting targets
Wong always had great respect for sales people in her organization, and ensured that she only set targets which she herself could meet. She was proud to hold the record at Strivectin for having the most sales per hour while working the sales floor with individual customers.
On dealing with personal tragedy
In 2009, Wong’s husband passed away a few weeks into her first stint as a CEO, leading Astral Brands in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s become very comfortable talking about this tragedy in her life as she feels like, by sharing the story, more people can benefit from learning how she handled the situation.
She reminds us all that we have choices. It’s up to us on how we view and move forward from situations -- good or bad. This time in her life ended up being very pivotal for her career. She believed the lessons she learned about how to work better with people as a result of this tragedy accelerated her career trajectory as CEO of Strivectin, and President at Elizabeth Arden.
We interviewed Michelle Peluso, Chief Marketing Officer at IBM, in our latest podcast. Peluso shared how to stay motivated as a leader, how to handle challenging discussions, and being CEO and mom. Here are our top three favorite highlights:
On Staying Motivated as a Leader.
"I think a few things. First of all, surround yourself with awesome people, with friends, with partners, with people you work with, with colleagues, mentors, with bosses, because all of us are on this constant journey of improving. And so there's never a destination in leadership, you don't get there. You know, you can always be better, as a founder, as a mom, as a leader. And so, to have the sort of grace to accept that, that this is just...it's just a journey, and there's always tomorrow, to learn and to improve.
And to be surrounded by people who will call a spade a spade and help you think strategically about decisions you're making or actions you want to take, or things you've done. I think that is really, really powerful. But then it's also all about that support network to keep propelling you forward. I mean, who doesn't occasionally think that they're... If you didn't occasionally think you were in over your head, then you wouldn't be dreaming big enough, you wouldn't be taking enough risk, that getting outside of your comfort zone, that feeling, however you want to describe it of like..."
On How to Handle Challenging Discussions.
"I think humanity is most important. I think really being clear about what do you need to convey. Who's on the other side of this conversation and what's their story? What are they likely gonna hear? Which may be very different than what you're trying to say. How do you think about the whole picture? You gotta be direct, you have to be transparent, but you also have to be human. There's another place that's great to have grace on the journey with you.
I learned, over my career, you can't avoid those conversations. It's really critical to have them. As a matter of fact, if anything, if your instinct is saying something, you gotta listen to it and move quickly. But I think that having them with clarity, with data, with humanity, with a real care and thought to the person who's receiving the news is very important."
On Being CEO and Mom.
"I was CEO for like five or six years before I became a mom. Six years. So I had been CEO for a while. But then I got pregnant as the CEO. And that was hard. And all of a sudden you have a baby and you think, "Gosh, my style, which has really been about hanging out with the engineers late at night as they're trying to figure out tough problems, or taking teams out for dinner to celebrate." I was living in New York and Dallas. I was kind of back and forth. And all of a sudden you're like, "That all can't work."
When my daughter was born, I just realized I didn't want to be on the road as much as I had been on the road. And I really wanted to have...obviously, be with her and have her with me in New York. And so I spent a long time working through different ideas, but I did ultimately say to Travelocity that I needed to have a long succession period. So over six months, we found a successor and I left Travelocity.
But part of it in retrospect was I didn't know how to change the means with which I was leading, and I felt like I just needed to shake it up and go somewhere new where I could say, "Okay, this is my...I'm still as passionate, committed, team-centric, etc., but I can't do it by being on the road every week." I had to come up with new ways of doing that. "And I want to leave the office at 5 every night but I'll be online from 8 to 11." I just needed a change to figure out how to balance being a mom I wanted to be and being a leader I wanted to be."