Elena O'Donnell: Growing people through authentic leadership

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi Lena, welcome to the den, how are you?

Elena ODonnell 0:16

Thank you, I'm well. How are you today?

Pauline Bertry 0:20

Well, thank you very much. I'm in Prague, it's very hot here, so I'm trying to survive. Where are you connecting from?

Elena ODonnell 0:31

I am in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States, and it's absolutely gorgeous here. Low seventies, no humidity. It's like what we wait winter.

Pauline Bertry 0:44

I'm jealous. Maybe next time

Elena ODonnell 0:45

Top ten weather day today. Yes.

Pauline Bertry 0:48

we need to do the podcast in person and I fly in and we do it in the park or in a cafe or something.

Elena ODonnell 0:53

Huh. Yes let's do it.

Pauline Bertry 0:57

Amazing. All right. First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to join and to talk to me. I mean, you know the story. It's about the future of work, the upskilling, the female leadership and all of the amazing topics we discussed already. But I generally like starting the conversations with asking a person to tell a little bit about their journey, their story, like any significant moments in their personal and professional lives. So could you please, what's your story?

Elena ODonnell 1:34

Yes, thank you for having me. I'd love to share a little bit about my story and and where I have been. I have been in the digital advertising agency industry for over 25 years by way of a computer information systems degree. I have a a degree, I graduated from Indiana University, studied business, and majored in CIS. and really have been doing digital project management in agency capacity ever since. I had some amazing mentors along the way, truly, that guided me from being a developer right out of college in the technology space. I was one of the very few females in my graduating class in CIS and learned that project management was really my superpower. And you with some amazing mentors, really explored the project management industry and career path and never looked back.

Pauline Bertry 2:40

my God, that's, I think that's such a like interesting transition because I think there are a lot of people who are graduating in computer science and then like discovering their like their own paths. So what was the story of you discovering the project management? Like how did you transition from a developer, as you said, to the project management?

Elena ODonnell 3:06

Yeah, I was a a developer right out of college, as I said. I started at a consulting firm in Minneapolis and I really gravitated to organizing and managing the workflow of how the work was going to get done in addition to doing the work. And the strategic orchestration of of figuring out the work path, the work plan, the work breakdown structure was my mind really gravitated to that and I had an amazing mentor at the time and she had asked me if I was if I was exposed to project management. We didn't have it i in school. It wasn't a track to study. It was either finance,

Pauline Bertry 3:50

Hmm.

Elena ODonnell 3:50

operations, marketing, CIS, of course, and I gravitated to computer information systems probably because my dad owned his own software company and I grew up you know, really in the tech space, if you will. And when she described to me project management and it's a career. It wasn't taught in school, as I mentioned,

Pauline Bertry 4:14

Yeah.

Elena ODonnell 4:15

that that in addition to getting the work done, there are people and and you know career paths that actually plot the work and can help glue together cross-disciplinary leads to really orchestrate the work. That was fascinating to me, absolutely fascinating. So I went on this personal journey of through my, really through my my first job of doing the work, but also managing the work. And that is where I really came to life and that's where I found my passion and what I really enjoyed. And from there, I worked at a variety of digital agencies, consulting agencies, consultancy firms, into advertising agencies, really where I was always responsible for digital transformation projects. I would say one of my like defining moments in my career that I will never ever forget, I'm very grateful for. is I was responsible for a very large scale digital project for the US Marine Corps. I was in I would say an early career moment of my life. And it was truly defining because I was doing things for the very first time and learning how to communicate and how to be a professional and how to not only myself but lead teams, lead very large scale teams and communicate with very senior, sophisticated clients. And to this day, I I still think about, you know, the work that I did for the US Marine Corps, the projects that I managed, what I was responsible for, the presentations I gave, the stumbles that I had, because trust me, there were you know, I stubbed my toe along the way and It was phenomenal. And that really, I would say, catapulted me into a more of an executive role with project management.

Pauline Bertry 6:25

So how did the industry, like the project management industry evolved during this time that you've been in this role? Because... If my understanding is correct, when you entered this career path, was still quite new to the digital community. And now it's a pretty much established role with its own boundaries and best practices, et cetera. So how are you using, what was the evolution of the role and how you are now using the learnings from this evolution in order to kind of build those best practices into the teams of people that you are leading.

Elena ODonnell 7:10

That is such an excellent question and truly captures my career path in a nutshell the way that you asked that. because digital and the internet and dot com, you know, when it was really born, that is right when my career was taking off. And agencies, consultancy firms were excellent at. Producing work, what was new was how to do digital work, how to do interactive work at the time. And really the evolution went from behind the scenes project manager, task facilitator, you know, even some agencies called it a traffic coordinator, to

Pauline Bertry 7:58

Hmm?

Elena ODonnell 7:59

now it's very strategic delivery lead at scale. So, how do you combine and knit together time, scope, budget with all of your strategic resources across technology, user experience, creative data, even AI. How do you knit that brain power together into a very strategic output? and of course deliver on time or or prior to deadline. And so my career has truly followed that path of managing as I mentioned, managing tasks, managing projects. And then you know, naturally you manage people when you start to manage projects and you have

Pauline Bertry 8:43

cars.

Elena ODonnell 8:43

to understand how people work and and what drives them and what motivates them and how are they at their best? When are they at their best? How do they communicate? What do you need to get the best out of them? And when you start managing people, you start managing the complexities of people and projects. And that really elevates to programs and then portfolios and enterprise level delivery. And so my career has taken on that path of managing a task and one project all the way to enterprise delivery. And I would say now that we are we've been in the age of digital transformation for quite a while. Companies have very significant business problems where they need to transform very quickly. Their business is getting more complex. Thing things need to be done, you know, faster, quicker, cheaper, more efficient to keep up with their competitors. And that creates a really interesting complexity for for my job and allows me to I would say s you know, learn and continually upscale myself.

Pauline Bertry 10:01

And I have one very specific question. I think project manager is one of the most challenging roles to have in the entire digital transformation exercise because you are in the middle of teams and then sometimes like partners or vendors, and then the senior stakeholders, and you are the one kind of orchestrating the entire orchestra to make things work. What also often happens is that it's a role that requires to make sure that all of the elements are working well together without sometimes having a direct ownership over or direct influence over very specific people. And especially in digital, I think it's very particular because you have multiple other players as part of the equation. So what are the elements that you think are making someone successful in this role? Like people who are more junior in their careers and as they evolve becoming more senior.

Elena ODonnell 11:18

Yes, good question. So in our business, our currency is our people. Our currency is all of the expertise and the practitioners that are coming together to produce an output, be it an app, a website, a strategic perspective, a strategy, a journey, you know, a beautiful user experience, whatever that may be. And in order to bring that output to delivery and really to a successful completion, it requires understanding the people that are working on it, the brain power that people are contributing, and really understanding their craft. I I always say that every single person has strengths. And if you can figure out all of the people on your team, what their strengths are and the beauty that they can put into their work. And when you figure out how to bring those together, that's really where you have, you know, this this amazing symphony. And my role, I share this with early careers as well, is to be the conductor. So everyone in the band or the orchestra has a role. And same with a project team. Everyone on the project team has a role. And as a conductor, as a band conductor or a project lead, it is my responsibility to figure out, you know, w what they're playing, what they can contribute and how to really harmonize all of that together, which is fascinating and quite frankly, it's the favor my favorite part of my job.

Pauline Bertry 13:08

Yeah. I mean, I remember you shared that this was your favorite part, but then I

Elena ODonnell 13:14

We do.

Pauline Bertry 13:15

want to follow up on that because that's my favorite part as well. I think what I observe often in consulting or agency world is that, like in order for the project to be a success, You need to have, as you say, like very specific team that is the best suited to deliver this specific project. And you need to have the processes that enable this expertise, their expertise to shine. And I would love to ask you from your experience in like different agencies, cetera, what are the top things that made a project a success for the client and for the team. And what was like, are the things leaders of the organization, like founders or VPs of agencies should think about when planning the team setup for a specific project.

Elena ODonnell 14:22

Yes. Well, there are many. There's a lot of ingredients in putting together like a killer team. I would say ignore and don't build it on hierarchy or level. So good ideas

Pauline Bertry 14:38

Mm.

Elena ODonnell 14:39

can come from any and all levels. Yes, it's important to have leadership on an engagement so that they can, you know, essentially steer the ship. However, amazing ideas come from all nooks and crannies of the team. So I would say, you know, good ideas come from all agnostic of level or title. allow the team to take risks. Risks are key. Some of them will absolutely pay off. That's that's where that tension comes in and really great ideas and healthy debate happens is diversity of ideas and being able to take risks. Of course, you know, on brand for me and my role is communication, critical communication, being able to talk about the roses and the thorns, truly. That is where we learn, that's where we grow, that's where professional growth happens, that's where per personal growth happens. And also really understanding the goals and the objectives. Every time you're joining a meeting or you're with in a huddle or you're in a brainstorm, whatever it may be, orienting everybody with, hey, what's the goal? What is the objective? What are we trying to solve? What is the problem we're ultimately trying to solve? And it's pretty you know, those ingredients I feel like are key to putting together an an excellent team and making sure you have the right ingredients for success.

Pauline Bertry 16:16

And I noticed that also in the beginning and now you talked about like giving people space to learn and giving people space to take risks, to experiment. And you also talked about mentorship, so having someone to guide you and steer you, et cetera. And I would love to learn a little bit from your experience. What are the... like practices you've seen in agencies that are specifically focused on creating the space for people, like to give them mentorship, to give them opportunities to take risk, to give them the feedback, as you say, they communicate like in a transparent way so that they can learn. So what are the things that you saw working and not working? And what are the things like if tomorrow you have a completely new team and you join a completely new organization, you decide, okay, that's something I keep forever. And what are the things that are like absolute no-go? And you have seen them way too many times and you think they should die.

Elena ODonnell 17:26

Yes. So specifically on the topic of mentorship, I think it's important to really get to know your team, your colleagues, your leads, those that you're working incredibly close with. When you're in a high pressured, which we primarily are, in a high pressured situation that usually has a deadline, there's very specific deliverables, there's high stakes from, you know. A revenue perspective, from a timeline perspective, it's critical to get to know the people that you're working with and also leading, which was a really interesting thing during the pandemic, trying to get to know people, you know, online. When it wasn't, we couldn't sit around a table as much to really understand folks. But what I mean more by that is What makes them tick? When do they do their best work? Little stuff like are you a morning person? Are you an afternoon person? Are you an evening person? Do you work late because your best thinking happens at night? when I mentor people and I I am in a formal mentorship program where I'm formally mentoring someone, but then I also you know, unofficially casually mentor. people and not just in my company, within my industry outside of my company. it's it is it's like figuring out communication and what makes someone truly tick and what are they passionate about? Where do they feel like they can contribute? What value do they add? Where do they find their sweet spot across the spectrum of work that they do? You know, some people are really interested in shaping something, whereas someone else is very interested in getting into like product development or the mechanics of something.

Pauline Bertry 19:27

Hmm.

Elena ODonnell 19:27

And that's super important to know when you're you are placing people against these very critical deadlines and critical deliveries on behalf of our clients. So mentorship I feel as though doesn't happen enough. It's not honored, it's not celebrated, there's not enough advocacy. This is my, you know, personal opinion, there's not enough advocacy for our early even mid-level careerists to really

Pauline Bertry 20:01

Yum.

Elena ODonnell 20:02

place them against where they can shine, what are their strengths. And it you know, if I were to take that somewhere, I would completely turn the dial up on mentorship, advocacy, like getting to know someone's strengths in all of the ways to figure out where and how they can do their best work.

Pauline Bertry 20:28

So in my experience, I was generally leading teams to like maybe up to 20 people. So this is the scale that I think as a human being, I was able to kind of maintain in my head and like be also up to date because Interests are changing. Like today a person wants to learn, I don't know, CX analytics and tomorrow they want to learn data visualization because the market evolves, the industry evolves, et cetera. And I'm curious, what are the things that would allow me to scale this up if let's say an agency is like at 15 people and we have a founder and maybe one VP and then 15 people in the team. I think they still have the connection. What are the kind of practical things meat-sized companies can put in place to start creating this mentorship, to start enabling, let's say, mentorship in the organization based on people actually knowing each other so that, as you say, it's the real interaction. It's not just a tick box or a spreadsheet. what like, how do we get there? How do we do this?

Elena ODonnell 22:05

Yes. Well I think I would start by saying it is completely up to each individual, regardless of where you are in your career path, to be your own advocate, right? So it is completely up to me, it's completely up to you, it's completely up to all even up our interns. To explore and advocate for themselves and and like own their career journey, right? And the way that someone can do that is asking questions, starting to create their network. I remember someone told me that right out of college, like this is building your network, and building your network is really incredibly important and it should expand outside of your current company. So my advice would be. Literally set up one-on-ones with each discipline from a CX perspective, a data perspective, an AI perspective, creative director perspective, even if they have a very senior title and asking a few key questions. Even you know, the basics. How did you get into what you do? What drew you to that? What are the really difficult business problems that come across your desk on a weekly basis? How do you think about those? why, you know, what is important about your role on the team and in the company and being curious, like truly, truly being curious, even if it's not in your on your job description, I think is the best thing that you can do from a as a mentee, truly as a mentee

Pauline Bertry 23:51

Mm-hmm.

Elena ODonnell 23:52

perspective. Asking questions, The the curiosity, if you have curiosity, truly success you will find success because you're interested. You're listening. Learning how to listen is I think an a skill that we don't talk enough about. There's a lot of really smart people in the room, but being able to listen and interpret and understanding how that impacts you. And your career and your career path and your own journey is incredible. So my advice is be curious, ask questions, be bold, set up meetings with people. And Pauline, you're bold, you're brave. You reached out to me. And I feel like you are an incredibly, you know, smart, bold woman. I really do. And I'm I'm so honored to be talking

Pauline Bertry 24:50

Thank you so much.

Elena ODonnell 24:51

to you about that. Because I feel like that's what we need to

Pauline Bertry 24:54

And same.

Elena ODonnell 24:55

do in the world is connect with each other and continue to learn, you know, from each other. That's how we're gonna get better and better.

Pauline Bertry 25:04

I mean, I returned the thank you. Thank you so much for your kind words and for also for finding time because I mean, I know you are busy, so I appreciate a lot. But I want to go into one additional direction. I think what I've observed in my experience is that there is generally in organization, a lot of kind of focus on getting people up to speed on craft and like helping them learn new tools, new frameworks, try new technology and so on and so on. And then what often happens, and I know we talked a little bit about that when we first met, is that often people get to like first level of leadership without necessarily having the leadership skills. because they were good at their craft. And I know that also was one of the topics you seem to be very passionate about on growing the leaders and helping the younger generation of leaders get to the next level of leadership so they can... start leveraging the knowledge they have about the craft to lead others rather than do everything themselves. And I would love to kind of ask you a little bit around the practices in this area. So for an agency, let's say like 30, 50 people, most likely they start having a need for this first level of leaders, first level of... first generation of leaders. How do they promote them and how do they build their capabilities to make sure that the leadership, like the big leadership is happy and the teams is also happy, the team members are also happy.

Elena ODonnell 27:09

Yes. Out of the entire career progression that I have experienced, that is that was the hardest for me and also the hardest for people that I observe. When you are doing the work, you are managing the task, you are executing the thing, and all of a sudden you're Growing in your career, and you become a people manager or you become a leader, then you're not hands-on, let's say, you're not hands-on keyboard. Instead, you're you're orchestrating, you're leading, you're leading the leaders. And that is a significant step for people to take, and it's an incredibly hard one. Because you think, well, it would just be quicker if I did it myself. I don't have to tell someone what to do, and I don't have to explain the outcome and what the goal is. I know exactly what it is. I'm just gonna do it myself. And therein lies the the difficulty when we want and encourage leaders to lead and and not do. so

Pauline Bertry 28:25

Hmm.

Elena ODonnell 28:26

to be managing the business but not not exact. You know, doing the work is a hard jump to do. And I would say it takes practice, just like doing our job and our craft for you know, for myself, coming up with a work breakdown structure of what a project may take to get across the finish line. That takes time and that takes a lot of experience to really look five steps ahead, understand the risks, mitigate the risks, figure out what the impediments are. but also to lead a team and to lead leaders to be able to create the work breakdown structure and help them understand what the impediments are going to be and what the risks are going to be 10 steps ahead. That also takes a lot of training and experience. And I think my role as a very senior leader, it's very exciting to help people explore and help other leaders explore. How can they manage successful outcomes? The way that they can manage successful outcomes is to ask questions. Again, is to be very curious, is to understand what are all the building blocks that it's going to take to get the successful outcome or the successful project out the door. And it doesn't mean doing, it means orchestrating, managing, leading, connecting the dots. If there is an impediment, run to the impediment. Talk about the impediment, bring the people together that there may be a conflict and that's okay. That's what happens. There's healthy debate, like I said, that you know is can continuously happening. There's very different points of view. And as a leader, you need to be able to bring, you know, that diversity of thinking together, talk it out, figure out what how to how to break down the impediment and move forward. So I would say leading a team of leaders. Is a trained skill that takes time, it takes patience, it takes a lot of love for the journey, and it's not, you know, there's so many ways to get to a solution. There's dozens of ways to get to an answer, and mine may not be right. It you know, so many people have different ways of thinking. So I think honoring honoring different points of view and helping leaders truly think through there are many ways to get to a solution and there's many right answers and that's okay. Like that's okay. You you have to trust your people, you have to trust the process and you have to be very again, trusting in communication and that diversity of ideas.

Pauline Bertry 31:19

I like it. And let's say tomorrow you get a team of 10 newly promoted project manager leads, meaning that they've been project managing like a task or a piece of like maybe like one project or like one specific element. And now they are getting to a next level. their programs are becoming bigger, et cetera, et cetera. So let's say you got in an imaginary world, you get a cohort of 10 people who are very passionate, very good at craft, newly promoted. How would you help them get to this level of confidence you were describing where They can lead people around them without doing the work themselves and without having to get hands-on into every single task.

Elena ODonnell 32:22

Yes, that's a great, great question. And what a dream scenario, because we do have some amazing

Pauline Bertry 32:27

haha

Elena ODonnell 32:30

leaders out there that are so good at what they do, and I'm so lucky to work with a lot of them. honestly, my first question that I like to explore with leaders typically is tell me about the risks. What do you see as the risks in front of us? And not As a person, but at the bigger picture when you're looking at a project or you're looking at something that needs to be delivered, where where are the edges? What's beyond the edges? Where do we feel like there's constraint? How are you gonna think about managing the constraint? you know. And even if the answer is I don't know, it's better to be able to talk and be aware of the edges, understanding the edges. Like I said, understanding the constraints. And that has to do sometimes with people limitations. It has to do with time limitations. It has to do with you know the the hard stuff. It has to do with burnout, it has to do with People are spread all across the world working in a really complex macro environment with different time zones, different living situations. And so to truly think about as a leader, you should think through risks, but also figure out how to enable a team as best you can and ask for help. Ask your colleagues for help. Bring it up in a leadership forum. Bring it up in a team forum. Asking folks, even in a one-on-one, what can I do to help you succeed? What do you need to be successful? How can I help you bring out the best work possible? Because as a leader, you need to know, you need to be able to help advocate for people and enable the best work possible. So I would say, you know, asking those provocative questions of leaders and having them think through all the items I just mentioned. another thing that's really critical is truly open communication, creating a forum in which feedback is important, feedback is accepted, and we all have very different communication styles based on a variety of you know, personality and you know, business tests that you can take to understand where you sit from a different personality perspective and using that to really acknowledge there are different types of communication, but communication is the most important thing. Hey, if you have something really difficult, Pauline, to talk about or you want to bring up you have a safe space with me. I would like to create a two way communication. with you and just know that you cannot my door is open. so I think the basics, it's really the basics of helping people explore how they can be their best, the best communication. And then specifically in my craft is you know helping them think through, like I said, all of the edges of an of a delivery and how to get there.

Pauline Bertry 36:09

And I want to go deeper specifically in the feedback and communication area topic. please like disagree with me if you don't feel the same, but I think I see kind of a very interesting disbalance in the universe around this topic is that I think a lot of people are talking about the importance of transparent communication, the importance of feedback, that the feedback enables learning, etc. And then at the same time, in my personal network and what I read in the internet, etc., there are a lot of people sharing stories of... sharing examples of the opposite, right? having this transparent communication, not having this feedback, not having this loop of interaction and growth. And I believe that the reason for that is often not like bad intentions, but it's because junior leaders not always have the right toolkit and even like coming with the best intentions and with the best like wish to help the team, they might not have the tools to be able to get there. So I would love to ask you if like you are mentoring like a young leader, how would you advise them on setting up this space for this team? And what are the like, almost maybe like example of sentences or like frameworks or maybe like they are running the discussion, they could leverage when they're like facing a difficult situation and they have to talk to their team, but they might like they see there is a problem, but they don't know how to approach it. So what would be like, how would you help them establish this? transparent communication and feedback culture.

Elena ODonnell 38:16

So, in terms of feedback, I think it's an incredibly important thing to learn. It doesn't come natural to give or receive feedback. It feels foreign. We don't, we don't, I don't know, to talk very vulnerably about yourself or to give feedback to someone else. It's a very vulnerable, can be a personal thing. And I have had the privilege of being in many leadership forums. And seminars where I have learned the importance of feedback and how to be transparent and how to say the sentences, how to say the words, how to give it in a very professional, constructive manner. The main thing that I learned and I take away and I think about all the time is to ask permission to give feedback. So, as an example. Pauline, may I give you some feedback? And in in in a personal way, but also you and you have the opportunity to say, I'm actually not in a great headspace right now. Could we talk tomorrow? Absolutely. Or you would say, thank you so much. Yes, let me, I would like to hear what happened. And so making sure that you're creating the space and you're creating the tone so you are aware and you are prepared to receive feedback. It it changes the dynamic so you're not caught by surprise. And you know, some people feel like they're in trouble. And it's not that. If anything, if anything, it's the opposite. It's all about professional growth and within Growth, there's so much learning. And again, being curious and understanding how people interpret your words, interpret your actions, interpret how your leadership style is. You're gonna learn that from your peers, your colleagues, and being open and accepting you know, being open to hearing feedback, I think is one way that we can really continue on our growth journey.

Pauline Bertry 40:38

Yeah, I fully agree with you. And that's also one of my favorite takeaways, I would say from McKinsey, because McKinsey is huge on feedback culture. Like you will receive feedback 300 times a day and sometimes not even when you ask for

Elena ODonnell 40:57

Okay.

Pauline Bertry 40:57

it. And so people get very used to it. But I think often like the feedback has a very bad branding at some point. So when, like often when talking about feedback, people will naturally be like, like you will criticize me. So I also find that sometimes if you say something like, could we talk a little bit about like how collaboration went or how we think about the collaboration in the future, that also kind of creates this safe space to have this discussion without having the person in front of you. being stressed and like, my God, I'm gonna get critiqued. And I have, I think, one last question on the same leadership topics, et cetera. People who are For people who just became leaders or managers, once they start understanding the importance of feedback and the importance of sharing their perspective with their teams and helping their teams to grow, I think it's a very tough balance to respect a little bit. At which moment, when do you give feedback or when you don't and what are the areas you kind of direct the person into. Because, I mean, there are, course, like very tactical things that you need to communicate anyway so that the collaboration is smoother. But I think in good relationships, feedback conversations are almost becoming like mentorship sessions, et cetera. So, and how do, like how to find this balance? Like when you are giving feedback or mentoring someone on giving them advice where you believe is right, following the direction that you believe is right versus letting them also explore their own path and build on their own strengths and figure things on their own. Any practical tips on there?

Elena ODonnell 43:32

Yes, I truly believe that every person should be true to themselves and be you. Be you to the best, best, best you can be. And receiving feedback. You it's your choice. I mean, it it's good to hear the roses and the thorns of how people interpret your work and your words and your leadership style. and I would say use it, put it in your toolkit and continually build and refine your leadership style, you know, as you go. It takes experience and it takes a few stubbed toes. It takes some really amazing moments. And all of that really culminates into who you are. Don't change who you are, lean into who you are, be your authentic self. That's incredibly important as a leader. And your team will pick up on that and also feel the genuineness of being a very authentic leader and being you to the best you can be. and and that I would say is a is probably the best leadership style you can have is to be your authentic, genuine self as a leader.

Pauline Bertry 44:50

I mean, I'm sorry, Elena. I know I promised it's going to be the last question, but you started in the direction that is super interesting to me. So I cannot let you go without asking the last, last one. think this piece of like building your authentic leadership style is something that is often thought about and talked about, but it's extremely difficult to. to actually build one and to actually discover one. Like, do you have any closing thoughts on, like, you are a young leader, you are trying to discover your authentic leadership style and like who you are and what you are about and what drives you, what you are passionate about, et cetera. Like, how do we do that?

Elena ODonnell 45:38

Yeah, it has everything to do with finding what you are passionate about, truly. Finding and honoring what you are passionate about. I happen to be really passionate about people and watching and enabling people growth and leadership growth. I am I'm so passionate about it. I get incredibly excited when I see early careerists all of a sudden become managers, become team leaders, become you know, they're growing in their career. That gives me so much joy. And I find a lot of passion in helping people grow their career. And I think as a leader, you truly have to find what are you passionate about? Passionate about a specific business, a specific industry, a specific communication style, a certain methodology. Find those passions, harness those passions, and that is where you will honestly naturally become the best version of yourself and the best, best authentic leader you can be.

Pauline Bertry 46:43

my God, I love it. I'm sorry I need to let you go, but I would very much love to have you for another conversation on passion because that for me could become a whole another one hour conversation.

Elena ODonnell 46:58

Do it.

Pauline Bertry 46:58

Let's do it.

Elena ODonnell 46:59

Yes.

Pauline Bertry 46:59

Amazing. Thank you so much, Elena. It was pleasure talking to you and learning from you. Thank you so much for finding time.

Elena ODonnell 47:08

Thank you, Pauline, for having me. I really appreciate it. It was very fun and enlightening and quite inspiring this morning.

Pauline Bertry 47:17

Thank you so much. I hope you have a good rest of the day and that this kind of sets the mood for the upcoming week.

Elena ODonnell 47:25

Absolutely. Thank you. Take care.

Pauline Bertry 47:25

Thank you. Bye bye, take care.