Pillar Talk: Building Sales Leadership with Rick Smolen
Join Rick Smolen and other seasoned B2B sales leaders on the quest for defining great sales leadership. Learn the pillars of successful leadership, hear stories about what works and what doesn’t, lessons learned, and come away with specific tactics you can apply to your job or career right now.
Pillar Talk: Building Sales Leadership with Rick Smolen
Building Trust Across Functions with Shane Evans
Shane Evans, Chief Revenue Officer at Gong, brings decades of executive leadership experience to this illuminating conversation about what truly drives sales leadership success.
Shane shares the frameworks and approaches that have allowed him to navigate increasingly complex leadership challenges throughout his career.
Shane advocates for embracing a growth mindset and remaining open to opportunities as they arise. This philosophy has guided him through critical career transitions and ultimately to his current role at one of the most respected SaaS companies.
Shane reveals his approach to joining new organizations - prioritizing relationships with cross-functional peers before diving into the sales organization.
The discussion explores Shane's leadership pyramid framework, effective messaging through repetition, and addresses the reality of burnout among leaders and shares how he's helping his team establish boundaries, prioritize effectively, and maintain personal wellbeing alongside professional excellence. By modeling these behaviors himself - openly discussing his own need for balance and recharge time - he creates permission for his team to do the same.
Whether you're an aspiring sales leader or an experienced executive, this conversation offers practical frameworks and thought-provoking insights to help you lead with greater impact, authenticity, and sustainability.
Music by Ben Cina & Ayler Young
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Pillar Talk. This is the podcast where we build the foundations of sales leadership success and attempt to create clarity in terms of what good looks like for current and aspiring sales leaders. We are lucky today to be joined by Shane Evans. Shane Evans is the CRO of Gong, one of the most popular and most loved sales software out there, one that I particularly had a lot of positive experiences with. So, Shane, really glad to have you join us. Shane has extensive leadership experience, not just in sales but executive level experience companies that everyone's heard of, like Qualtrics, MX, TalkDesk and Gong today. So, Shane, thank you so much for joining Pillar Talk.
Shane Evans:So thank you for all the great work that you're doing and inspiring others to raise their game, in a manner of speaking. Yeah, you know, I started this Shane, where I was a successful individual contributor, and I then moved into sales leadership and for years I was trying to figure out, like how do I become a good sales leader? As an individual contributor, all I had to do was close more deals, so it was very easy for me to have a barometer of whether I'm succeeding or not. As I've evolved as a leader, I kept wondering, like am I having a positive impact? Am I having a negative impact on the team? I'm sure there were situations when both of those statements were true at one time or another.
Shane Evans:As time has passed, I'm now getting further and further away from the daily customer conversation and I'm continuing to try to figure out, like how do we have the most impact as sales leaders? So I developed these pillars from talent acquisition and hiring, operating rhythm and fostering motivation and engagement across a wider team business planning. So much of what we end up dealing with if we don't play our cards right is reactive situations. So-and-so has resigned. How are we going to go backfill that position In a high growth environment? You can't work that way, because you've just lost six months of quota, as an example, and that's just one example of so many where you need to be really strong in terms of your cross-functional collaboration so that you can make decisions today that'll have an impact in like six or nine months.
Shane Evans:Of course, there's coaching and mastering the craft, and then there's these like meta ones around communication and like how to be excellent at communication in a world where we're more remote. And then there's an evolution around ownership and how, like do I need to be told what to do or do I take the initiative? Or also balance between like hey, am I all about my team and advocating for them, or am I finding the balance with like the team needs as well as the business, and having to try to find the right place, you know, on the continuum there. So these are the pillars that I've come up with so far, and I'm always trying to learn how to be better at each individual one. Shane, the first question I might pose for you is simply, you know to rise up and be the CRO of one of the most prestigious you know SaaS companies out there are certainly one of my favorites in gong, like, what do you think was the, the strength in your individual sales leadership that helped lead you to that. You know ultimate destination yeah, what's.
Shane Evans:What's really cool, rick, is a career is a collection of micro experiences that you end up having in a multitude of different positions throughout a number of years, and sometimes it spans over decades. And so to try and point to like one moment that I felt like it was the difference maker, it would be dang near impossible. I've got a close mentor and a friend who unfortunately is no longer with us, but one of his euphisms that he used to offer was it requires a truckload of lead. There are no silver bullets, and I think a career is very similar. It doesn't matter where you find yourself. There's moments every single day where there's learning and there's growth and there's people around you. Sometimes they're super helpful, other times they present some growth opportunities what I like to call them where you can use that as an opportunity to get better. And so, if I were to sum all that up, you know, the one thing that's been a passion of mine is to always have a growth mindset, and it doesn't matter the circumstance. You could be ahead in the game by 20 points and up, or you could be down by 20 points and feeling like you're about to just get walked out of the building. And yet, if you always have that mindset of this is a learning opportunity. I think that's what can lead you to great places.
Shane Evans:And the last thing I'll say here early in my career, I've always been a planner.
Shane Evans:I've always been very goal-oriented and I'm very impatient. That's part of the downside to my personality, and I had to learn early on that you can't chart a linear path for where you want to get. And so if you were to try and say, hey, how did you arrive at Gong? I have four kids, I tell them all the time I never woke up one morning and thought, man, I want to be in tech sales. It was just opportunities kept opening up, doors kept opening and I would look and evaluate is this a growth opportunity? Can this help me become a better version of myself today? And so that mindset has allowed me to take on some incredible opportunities and it's led me to Gong, which is just an incredible company with an amazing team. I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to work with this group today and I would say that there's no one moment. It's just having that growth mindset and being ready, when an opportunity presents itself, to take advantage of it and learn as much as you possibly can in that moment.
Rick Smolen:Yeah, I guess when I hear you talk about being a planner, being goal-oriented and impatient, it reminds me of a story like a magic moment in my career, where I learned that the path I was on or the track I was taking wasn't going to get me to where I wanted to go. I was on an international assignment, so I was 12 time zones away and the way I was interacting with a co-worker that was in New York while I was in Asia, it was a little bit of me one-upping them and I had a new leader come into the organization and maybe I was even showing off a little bit. Now I'm supposed to be a pretty senior leader in the organization and so one-upping somebody that's like junior and showing off for like a new leader are not necessarily the attributes of a super successful leader, and I don't even think I realized it at the time. Now a new leader came into the organization and had been being CC'd on that. I thought their reaction was going to be impressed. At all my knowledge, their reaction was like hey, I actually don't think you're a senior leader at this company and we probably should talk about that, which based on.
Rick Smolen:My expectation going into that meeting was shocking and it was probably some of the best feedback that I ever got, where you know, it simply relayed that. What I observed in that situation was you know these things that you were doing and not necessarily helping the business with all the knowledge that you have, and if you want to be a senior leader, you need to be thinking about how your communication is going to come off to others. And I think from that moment forward, that feedback was instilled in me and that every communication especially when I'm feeling in any way emotive about maybe not hearing news I want to hear, or seeing suboptimal execution out there, that was like a magic moment for me that helped me say, okay, I've got to change the way I'm doing things if I'm going to take that next level in my career path. Any like magic moments or growth mindset moments where you were like, okay, I got to pivot here because what my normal things that would maybe make me a successful salesperson aren't kind of helping me in this leadership trajectory.
Shane Evans:You bet, let me give you a positive and a negative, so one really positive and I love I hope what you're laying down right now is just so valuable for people that are early in their career trying to find a way to get ahead around, recognizing when you're getting defensive or recognizing when you're feeling yourself going to the place where you want to become like proving a point and you mentioned showing off as well. Any of these indicators, I think, put us in a situation where we're not going to do our best work because we're in our ego state, where we're just trying to look good or get ahead as opposed to helping the team win. And where you get ahead is when you really are focused on what's best for the team and how do we help the team win in this situation and so successful? I'll start first. Early in my career I was working for a payments company and I had a chance to work in every department. There's a whole series of events that led me down this path, but I was in collections, customer service, operations, even in the R&D or the innovation team and I finally decided I wanted to go into sales Because I've worked in every department, I had this incredible connection with people and I had empathy for what they were trying to do and I knew the product better than anybody, and so I was able to hit the ground running. Because of those that trust I had been able to create and the empathy that I had Fast forward decades later in my career I go into a new company.
Shane Evans:I'm a new executive, the team is underperforming and there's another executive that's been there for a while and I find myself getting into arguments with this executive about something as silly as pipeline attribution, like who's getting credit for what, and we basically wasted a good quarter trying to argue about who was right. And then the end of the day, we realized wait a second, we both want the same thing. Why do we care who's getting the credit? And yet we wasted weeks and ended up being months trying to figure out, like who is going to get credit for attribution. And so those are two moments where one I had great empathy, great trust and relationships.
Shane Evans:The other one I came in. I did not spend the time getting to know the team. I was more focused on my success and how I looked and how I was showing up versus how the team was showing up. What's funny is the latter one was later in my career. You would think that by that time I would have figured that out. But I think every day you need to check yourself and figure out OK, where am I at today? Like I would have figured that out. But I think every day you need to check yourself and figure out okay, where am I at today, like, am I trying to help the team or am I trying to optimize for my own individual?
Shane Evans:success, and the latter is just a dangerous place for us to play.
Rick Smolen:Yeah, so today, though, you now have a global sales leadership team. Frankly, revenue leadership team, revenue leadership team Is there a framework, shane, that you use to either identify or to manage your team today within a leadership framework?
Shane Evans:Yeah, you bet. Two comments here. On the front end, I think, as a sales leader today, our average tenure is 18 months, not to put anyone in a bad place, but you've got a short window where you have to have an impact if you want to be around in that company for a long term. And so when you come in, I think it's critical that you get everybody aligned and understanding what it is you want to accomplish, which means you're going to need to have some form of a framework to articulate what it is you're trying to accomplish. And so, as I think about the framework that I use today, I'll describe it for you in a pyramid form. The very top of the pyramid is the overall vision and the objective. So for us at Gong today I'll be very transparent it's a billion dollars in ARR. That's what we've set the mark of what we want to get to in annual recurring revenue.
Shane Evans:The second layer of the pillar is really around objectives or initiatives that we want to accomplish as a team, and what I found is that a larger team or the organization can only handle about three to five objectives each year.
Shane Evans:These are like the big things that you want to accomplish, which, if you did them, it would lead to significant success for that broader team, to significant success for that broader team. The third layer, as we come down, is really about operating principles, operating rhythms so think about metrics, processes, how you're gonna run your weekly cadences, your monthly cadences with the team. The operating rhythm. And then the foundational layer, or the bottom layer, really is about people and it's about getting the right people. It's about developing, getting the right people. It's about developing internally the right folks so you can be ready for that next level. If you want to progress in your career, you will only be able to advance as much as you're able to get the people below you to scale, and so it ends up being super critical that you're able to get the team ready for scale as you progress. So those are kind of the four layers that I use today.
Rick Smolen:One that I always get a lot of value out of hearing from others is around their cadence. So as you start to get into a place in your career where there's too many people for you to have success in a one-to-one dimension, you now need to say, okay, how do I work more successfully in a one-to-many? And so you do. Come up with this sort of operating rhythm or the cadence of like how meetings happen, so that we can minimize internal collaboration, maximize customer impact and do all that type of thing. How would you describe the cadence of how you'll run? You know your revenue functions today and maybe you know any sort of learnings that have helped in how you've iterated on that.
Shane Evans:So one thing I think people are ashamed or kind of scared to admit when you get promoted to your first management job, it typically doesn't come with a user manual for how to do that job. And so you're going from what has been a very transactional, where you're managing a book or a territory, to what needs to become more strategic, ideally, and sometimes people struggle with knowing how to make that leap and make that jump. And so what we found is putting together some basic recommendations on your daily, weekly, monthly rhythm as a frontline leader that will help you be successful. And this goes like incredibly simple. So weekly, one on ones with each member of your team, a weekly forecasting or a huddle with your team to both acknowledge what's going well and to identify where there's challenges, and to share some wind stories.
Shane Evans:And we think about the environment we're in, where most companies are in some form of a hybrid work environment.
Shane Evans:We're not coming together as frequently as we used to, so this need for people to be even better aligned than they have been in the past is critical.
Shane Evans:I would also say on a monthly basis, it's identifying what are the times you're going to come together with the other departments and teams to figure out how you can better support and work well with one another.
Shane Evans:And then, on a quarterly basis, the one that is really important is what I call the coaching plan or the improvement plan on what, as a leader, you're going to help your team focus on, and it's very simple you pick two or three things that are doing well and two or three things you want them to focus and work on and make it easy, and then give them examples and make sure you're providing the coaching as you roll forward. And, as I think about an operating rhythm, if you do nothing else as far as structure goes, if you can nail the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly rhythm, it will lead over and over again to consistent results because you're showing up with consistency for the team, and I think that's what a lot of first-time leaders really struggle with Now. You can then roll that up to second, third, fourth line leadership. The motions and the cadence doesn't change that much as far as having a reoccurring routine that you can get into. That leads to incredible outcomes the way that you consistently deliver on that over and over again.
Rick Smolen:Shane, as a leader, you're not able to be inside the different one-on-ones and you're not in the huddles where they're coming up with the forecast. And maybe you're, on occasion you're on a monthly cross-functional meeting to sort of participate and even assess what's going on across an area within the business. Do you like what's the point or the area in which you are I don't want to say inspecting, but maybe that's partial of it like observing the operating rhythm in motion. Like, for example, are you reviewing the coaching plans that come through on a quarterly basis or are there other ways that you're looking across how to provide coaching to your leaders on how to execute these things?
Shane Evans:So what I found. This is somewhat of a cheat code that I have. So at Gong, we capture every interaction and I'm able to set smart trackers. So, even though I can't be in every meeting, I'm able to tag when someone says, hey, your team's amazing or your team did a great job here, I get alerts and I'm able to follow back up with the team. So, even though I'm not in every call or every meeting, I found ways to extend what I can do.
Shane Evans:Now, if I don't have a tool or technology one of the tools that I've used in the past for tips and tricks I've asked leaders to help give me a nudge when they see something great, so that I can be present for good things that are happening. Because, at the end of the day, we still all want feedback. As human beings, as creatures of habit, we want to hear what we're doing well, and we need that reinforcement behavior, and so that's one thing that I found works very well. The other tip I would give folks is the ability to find coaching opportunities, and so this is where you need to get consistent and regular feedback. The big unlock for me in my career I mentioned earlier one was empathy. The second thing that I would point to is the desire for consistent and undiluted feedback, and it can be hard to hear sometimes, but if you can get feedback from frontline staff, frontline leaders, on what things are going well and what things need to be improved upon, you're gonna find you have a much better finger of the pulse of what's happening and you're in the know of what's going on across the business.
Shane Evans:And sometimes we're almost afraid to ask because we don't want to run the risk that things might not be going as well as we, the business, and sometimes we're almost afraid to ask because we don't want to run the risk that things might not be going as well as they as we think they are in our head, which, again to what you said at the outset, that's like this dangerous place we get into of like brainwashing ourselves that hey, everything's good and you know, la la land, uh, I don't have to deal with all these problems if I'm not hearing about them, there are problems, and the faster that you can get to them, the if I'm not hearing about them, there are problems, and the faster that you can get to them, the faster that you can treat them even though you're not in the room, the better off your team will be and the better the performance will end up becoming in the end.
Shane Evans:So that desire to seek consistent feedback and to have these truth signals that are coming at you, both positive and constructive, really allows you to be extensible and not have to be in the room for every single meeting. But it requires this web of connective tissue, this ecosystem of leaders that feel comfortable that hey, even if it's bad or not so great news, I can pick up the phone, I can have a very direct conversation with Shane and he's going to help me. He's going to like, help me work through that, not say don't bring me bad news or shut me down because it may not be the news that that person's looking for.
Rick Smolen:So just unpacking what you just described. So the first it sounds like you've been very purposeful about fostering an environment of recognition, whether it's through like trackers or like if somebody's doing something exceptional, I want to know about it, and it is one of the most underutilized tools and it's probably the least expensive because it's just recognition. But being purposeful about recognition, boy, do salespeople in particular sort of appreciate being recognized. And so, while, yes, we're all coin operated, to some extent, just that level of appreciation sounds like that is a big motivating and driving force. And I do agree that you need to be purposeful about identifying opportunities to conduct recognition.
Rick Smolen:The second point you were talking about is sort of creating an environment of candor and having these coaching opportunities, and I, you know the story I told is the same thing. Like I got coaching, whether I wanted it or not, and it rocked my world a little bit but led me to get better. I'm wondering about like it's one thing to say cool, you should be giving feedback, you should be seeking feedback and you should be appreciating it and getting it. Is there like any examples recently? Like I think about this for my current team, I have a leadership team and I want to help them all improve, and I believe that they want to improve.
Rick Smolen:I struggle with the balance between supporting them like, hey, what are you trying to get done? How can I help you? And then evaluating them and saying, hey, I'm observing some things that could be going better. Or hey, on this front, like hiring is super important, I think it needs to be, you know, elevated in terms of its urgency. You know, I think for you to be effective, you've got to accelerate or prioritize more of your time on that. How do you find that balance of determining what to actually coach on and then delivering that feedback which, you know, like, like, our words have heavy weight, so we got to be careful what we say, you know.
Shane Evans:Yeah, great, great. Such a great question. So two things. One, I'm a parent. I've got four kids. One of the things I've learned is that modeling is so powerful, and so if you want a culture of feedback, if you want to be able to give that feedback, you have to be able to receive that feedback. So that means one asking for it and making it safe where people feel like they can be honest with you, and then the power move. Here, the unlock code is sharing that feedback with the team. So being vulnerable and transparent enough to say hey, team, I got some feedback, I've internalized that, here's some things I'm going to work on. And when you start showing up that way, it actually creates an environment where people I found are much more willing to be like, hey, give me some of that feedback. Like, I want to hear undiluted. Now there will still be some folks that aren't as open.
Shane Evans:And so the other thing I found I'm not a big believer in give like three positive, one negative or seven positive and two negative, like these old school methodologies of like trying to like give a little bit of sugar before you smack them in the face. What I found works best is be genuine, be transparent, be authentic with people. Hey, I need to give you some feedback. Are you in a place where you can actually hear this? If not, like let's find another time.
Shane Evans:But I think, by setting it up, I'm about to give you some real talk, and I think it's okay to say look, I'm doing this because I want you to improve and I need you to continue to raise your game, and I think this would really help you If it's coming from a place of being genuine. Yes, words matter immensely, but people are going to feel if you care about them and if you're showing up in an authentic way in order to be able to receive that feedback. And so, if you want to have that environment, you need to be authentic, and then you need to find ways to deliver that in a very concise and direct manner.
Rick Smolen:We've both entered new organizations and what I'm reflecting on is you've got to earn this trust. You've got to earn that relationship where we can model the behavior in terms of asking for feedback and being vulnerable, about sharing it, and we've got to earn the relationship where what we're saying is being interpreted as coming from a good place and I, you know, as I reflect back, I'm like huh, what was those first several months like? As it relates to earning trust, as it relates to like solidifying your position as a leader, so that people felt like, hey, this is an environment that I can say what's on my mind and I can get feedback. And it's like well-intended Like what do you share with folks? Many folks right now are joining new organizations. There's been a lot of like that type of thing happening in tech, if somebody's entering a new organization. Or, as you reflect back on your own experiences, what do you think like to establish that type of trust where these authentic, real conversations can happen? Is there anything that's particularly worked for you?
Shane Evans:Let me talk about coming into Gong, because that's super relevant recently and I had a few key learnings that helped me. I'm a big believer in first team principles and, for those that haven't read the book, pat Lescioni wrote a book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and one of the things he talks about in there is your first team. A lot of people coming into organizations feel like their first team is the people that report to them, but the reality is your first team is your peers, the people that you usually interact with on a weekly basis, and so, coming into a new organization, it's imperative that you spend the right amount of time up front getting to know that team. So when I came to Gong, we have a big R&D operation in Tel Aviv, israel my second week with the company I flew over there and spent the whole week with that team. So I didn't go out and visit customers. I didn't go and visit sellers out in the field, even though that was the team that I was managing directly. I went and spent time with our R&D organization and the leadership in that team and then I went on a tour and did that with other teams and I made a big investment on my first team as the starting place to try and make sure that I had context for what was happening.
Shane Evans:Now, when I start working with my team, I've got a much better sense of what's actually going on, and I think a lot of people, when they come into the company, they feel this immense pressure to win their team over. But I don't think that you can do that until you win over your peer group and you have their respect.
Shane Evans:And I can also share a few examples where I've gone into companies and just wanted to deliver results so desperately that I go right to customers and right to the sellers and what you find is that they're watching you out of one eye when everyone else is looking at how you're going to show up, and it's going to take you weeks, if not months, before you start actually seeing some of those results come to bear. And so I think it's really important that you work cross-functionally when you're coming into a new organization to start to build that trust. And again I'll come back to just kind of finish where I started. It's the first team principles that I have found that really matter, really understand who your first team is and where you need to build that trust and credibility. And it's not to say that your direct reports don't matter. They matter immensely, but they're going to see what you're doing to help remove obstacles and roadblocks and help them be successful. And so it does show up in that way and roadblocks and help them be successful.
Rick Smolen:And so it does show up in that way. You know, it's really funny. I don't know that I've ever really truly connected the dots on this, where I've always believed that your, you know, like I believe that your first team is your peer set and not the organization, but it's so like that in my mind has become a bit of a throwaway line, because I think what that actually means is really tough. It's actually really tough to put that into practice. I also used to, I learned, you know, years ago that, like, the first 30 days at a company should be about establishing relationships. When the temptation is so high on you know, digging into the pipeline, making an impact, everything's leading you to do what you were hired to do. I always found it tough. What does it mean to establish relationships? Does it mean I could get a coffee with everybody and learn about their hobbies? Just having these meetings with your peers alone isn't sufficient. You gotta, like, have a strategy about how to how to establish relationships in a productive way. I love this example of spending a week with the r d team. That is so counter intuitive to what most leaders would do, guilty like.
Rick Smolen:I've established good rapport with the engineering organization at most of the companies that I've been at, mostly because I just admire and respect how much, how smart they are and how much of an impact they have on our organization's success. But to roll up your sleeves and say, yo, I want to actually get in and better understand what you're doing. The few times that I've done that, the returns have been massive. I mean like, like, and yet our inertia makes that so hard to do. So you have to really create the space. Was there anything in particular with these other functions that, like you did that helped truly establish the relationship? Because, look, they're appreciative that you came over and did that, but you're still like the revenue guy. You know you're not like one of them. Like what? How do you like, how do you get tactical about actually building that rapport with R&D, with finance, with legal, with these other functions that you know we partner with but we're not, like, directly responsible for?
Shane Evans:I read a book years ago called the first 90 days, and there's a thought in there that has stuck with me throughout my career, and the analogy they give is anytime you take on a new role or position or you get promoted within a company, the first 90 days are going to be the critical time in which you set the trajectory for what you're going to be able to accomplish in that role. And so you think about a bullet being fired out of a gun. Whatever trajectory you aim that at is going to be how high you can get, and so if you invest heavily in other teams and departments right out of the gate, it actually raises the trajectory of what you can accomplish versus having that be flat, and so that's something. Whenever we hire anyone, I always tell them hey, you're not going to get this first 90 days back, you're going to get sucked into pipeline, you're going to get sucked into fires and problems. So resist the temptation to get into the business and focus on relationships with people and the product, so you really can understand what we're all about as a company, because it will allow you to be way more effective. And so now what ends up happening? I'll give you two tips.
Shane Evans:Every interview I do the first question I ask people and this is a cheat code for anyone that watches this and ends up interviewing with me in the future my first question is take two minutes and tell me about yourself outside of work Hobbies, family interests that you have on the weekend, like nothing work related. And it's what I found even when I went over and I mentioned I met with the R&D team. My first question was give me two minutes on you outside of work, and if you were sitting here, I'd be taking copious notes because I want to get to know them, and it's one of those where, when people know how much you care, it totally changes what they're willing to do for you. And so again, it goes back to being genuine, being authentic. It's actually slowing down a little bit on the front end to go a lot faster, and we're still human beings. We still want to have interpersonal relationships with one another, but I still do the same thing as I meet with people get to know them as individuals.
Shane Evans:And then the next piece I get into is where can I help you be successful? What can I help you to do? Maybe it's something with my direct reports, maybe it's something with a process that we have, and so now I'm trying not only to build a relationship, but I'm trying to say how can I make your life better? And you'll be amazed at the amount of input that they're going to give you. And now the doors are opened up.
Shane Evans:So in the future, back to being eyes on, hands on. You now have advocates that are willing to bring stuff to you because they know that you are approachable and that you're genuine, that you want to help, and so those are a couple of things that have helped me as I've come into Gong. And I've come into Gong and this is back to you know, the top end little, little tips I've learned throughout my career on having to enter in different situations, but I think those are things that have really helped me find success earlier by being focused on relationships, focused on what matters to people and what's going to help them win and be successful.
Rick Smolen:Yeah, I got it. Like, I will say that, like, if I take anything away from this conversation, it's like I could be doing such a better job of this cross-functional relationship development, especially parts of the org that like just don't directly connect to sales, marketing and CS but are equally important sales, marketing and CS, but are equally important, and all the evidence suggests that what you're saying is 1,000% accurate, and yet, if you aren't purposeful about it, it will never happen, which so that is the thing.
Rick Smolen:It's just not gonna show up. You actually have to go do that work, go take the initiative to kinda make that happen, and I think, even if you're not new, it's really not too late to start to do that. But Shane, what about the building, trust and rapport within that? You know your supervisory, you know environment or organization.
Shane Evans:So this goes back to the framework that you and I were talking about, and there's a communications component here, when you articulate the initiatives that you're gonna be focused on. So
Shane Evans:let's go back to the framework that you and I were talking about, and there's a communications component here, when you articulate the initiatives that you're going to be focused on. So let's go back to you're starting a new role. You're a new revenue leader. You've got to spend time to get to know where the priorities are and get alignment from other peers. Hey, this is where I think we should be focused. Are you supportive as you then get your team's input on
Shane Evans:that? Make sure they have a chance to form and challenge what you think the initiatives are. There's a whole communication strategy around this to make sure you get it right.
Shane Evans:not only are they usually not there physically, but even when they are, they're probably not there emotionally, meaning they're multitasking. So what you're sharing? I can't tell you how many leaders I've worked for that have told me hey, everyone understands our vision. Everyone understands the strategy because they've said it over and over again, and you'll find when you're in these leadership roles that you have to repeat things 7, 10, 20 times before it even starts to register. And so I think that's where, when you talk about getting the trust of your team, I had a mentor and a close friend I worked with and he used this analogy of painting a barn, and if you really want to paint a barn, well, you have to saturate it, like it's not one coat of paint. And so he'd always remind us hey, that was a first coat of paint or a third coat of paint. We're going to need like 20 coats of paint on this thing before people are going to really start to see that it is red, and you would think that people would just see it and get it. But it requires that repetition, that reminder, and so I think, when it comes to your internal team, it's really about gaining alignment by getting input and feedback and then communicate, communicate, communicate. People are hungry for context.
Shane Evans:I've made a lot of missteps as I've come into different companies and trying to drive change and not getting people bought in to understand the why behind the change. And then, as you try and go and drive that change if you don't have people bought into it. It just makes it so much harder. It just takes more time for you to get where you want to go.
Rick Smolen:And so if you can really figure out the best way to communicate and it's usually not just like one mode or medium it needs to be written verbal, like all hands meetings, like as you think about a calm strategy. It needs to be multi-pronged because people aren't gonna get it in one mode. I wish I could tell you like, hey, slack is the answer or Zoom is the answer. But it requires multi-mode and the repetition to make sure that people know what you're trying to accomplish. And that's when you start to get people's trust, when they start to see that you're communicating, that you've got alignment and the results follow. I think that's where you start to get that, that mass adoption or at least mass understanding of what it is you're trying to achieve as a leader yeah, I mean in roles it really becomes.
Rick Smolen:How do I get really good at repetition and one-to-many communications? And it isn't just one medium. Email is good, some people like to read. A video on. Slack is good, some people like to watch it and feel that connection to you In all hands. An interactive environment, some people like that.
Rick Smolen:So you've got too big of a team to have just one mechanism to do that. I almost feel like as senior leaders, we should be accountable to some level of one-to-many communication and you almost look back at the end of the week and be like hey, did I communicate out to this org this week, or did I get bogged down in meetings and reactive to stuff? Did I take the time to actually share a couple top-of-mind things that are happening to make people feel more connected? Again, it takes intent but and it's not intuitive Like repeating yourself over and over again feels weird, but you know, to get it to sink in. I like the paint, the layers of paint, as a great analogy to reinforce that. Shane, just to close things out here, as you're developing your leadership team, like today, are there any sort of things that are top of mind right now that you are seeing in new and developing leaders that are working, as it relates to building better leaders, better coaches, better business planners.
Shane Evans:You bet. I will say I think that our environment has become much more challenging. So if we were competing in a flat race with like 50 degrees weather, where there's no real heat or cold extremes and it's just flat, we're cruising along, we've gone to an environment it's hilly, temperatures are up and down all over the place, and it's just become a lot more challenging. And so you think about athletes or performers that want to put their best output, and the conditions have shifted drastically. It requires a completely different mindset, and then physical readiness, and what I mean by that and we think about that in terms of business and leadership it means that we need to continue to be aware of where we are, have strengths, where we have weaknesses and what it's going to take to succeed in this new environment.
Shane Evans:And I have a lot of team members today that have come to me recently. This is both at Gong and at the previous companies I've been at and have shared a little bit of frustration around. Hey, I'm burned out, like I've got nothing left to give, and so I do think there's an element here of pacing. I think there's an element here of finding boundaries that you need to set up in order to be effective, and so leaders want to be successful. They so desperately want to succeed that quite often, they work too many hours. A lot of what I'm seeing right now what we're trying to focus on with our leaders is it gets back to some of the fundamentals around how do you prioritize your day, how do you set up boundaries on what you are able to do and what you're not able to do, and then how do you help your team become more effective? There's this element of delegation and of knowing how and where to help, and then letting people fail and then giving them coaching, and what I'm finding is that this environment has changed significantly, and so there's different skills that we are needing to focus and hone in order to help people find success and do it in a way that's not going to cause them to have this miss or imbalance of, like professional and personal lives, because I'm a big believer that if you're able to get away and recharge, you're going to be way more effective, and a lot of that has to do with prioritization, boundaries and then finding time to recharge. Notice, I'm not talking to you about like skills, like communication or deal reviews or discovery. It really is back to personal well-being and personal health, because we have a lot of motivated folks I don't think this is unique to us and the conditions have shifted drastically, where what it takes to succeed today is very different than what it took even 12 months ago. And so, being aware of your conditions around you and setting yourself up in a way that allows you to be successful, that's where we're spending a lot of time with our leaders today to make sure that they can find the best version of themselves that allow them to perform at their optimal rate and pace
Rick Smolen:How does that show up?
Shane Evans:more about what I'm doing in my personal life, from like when I'm taking vacation and what I'm doing so that I'm again modeling that behavior and encouraging them to do the same. I'm telling them hey, look, between these hours in the morning, this is my workout time. That's sacred to me. If you're someone who likes to read, if you're someone who likes to do yoga or breathing, like, you need to set that time and like, respect it.
Shane Evans:And so I think there's some personal things that we're talking to them about what they need to be doing, and then there's also professional things around. Hey, there's certain things you can control, and then there's uncontrollables. Let's get prioritized on the controllables, and so it goes back to operating rhythm. Like you can't control every deal and the outcome for every deal, but you can control the way you set up cadences with the team on how you're going to help them find success, and so I think those are two different ways in which we look at both the personal and the professional to help them get what they're after and to find success.
Shane Evans:Shane, I just want to thank you as I reflect on some of the things that we talked about today. I think one just like that stands out to me is that modeling behavior, and like you're only as good of a leader as you're as good as a leader and so modeling the behavior of what that is is so powerful.
Shane Evans:And the other thing that's really standing with me is like it's not just that you're onboarding in the beginning, but like the relationship that you establish cross-functionally, the relationship that you establish cross-functionally at the end of the day. This is all like a series of like any issues within a company or almost always comes back to, like the humans involved and so like. When you build those real relationships with somebody, it doesn't matter about the attribution and what we're fighting over. All the things the conflicts, the obstacles get so much more easily dealt with. Those are the top two things that I feel like I can take away and continue to work on. I just want to thank you, shane, for joining us today on Pillar Talk. I look forward to speaking with you again soon.
Shane Evans:Rick, thanks for the time. It's great to spend time with you today and I learned some things that helped me focus where I need to be. So love spending the time. Look forward to doing it again in the future, thank you.
Shane Evans:Reflecting on the conversation we just had with Shane Evans. The first thing I take away from the conversation is how Shane entered Gong and he executed successfully on advice that so many receive and so few follow. That advice is to use the first few weeks of your time at a company to build relationships, and I give that advice all the time. I mean it. It's good advice, but it's generic and broad. Everyone agrees with it. Oh yeah, of course, and of course some effort is made. But the instinctive thing to do is to get to know everyone on your team and to dive in and to learn and to attempt to make an impact. There's just so much momentum pushing for that. In fact, that's what you were just hired to do. But Shane told a story of holding off on that instinct and establishing a true relationship with his peers and doing that successfully. Now think about it. If he didn't do it, then when would he be?
Rick Smolen:able to.
Shane Evans:Shane was only a few weeks away from being truly in his role and having the tsunami of responsibility surround him. It's going to be really difficult to build true relationships with partner organizations at that point in time, but he did the upfront work around it and my belief and bet is that his success in the organization has been amplified by that early, correct and counterintuitive step. We can all learn from that. The second takeaway for me from my conversation with Shane is around overcommunication. He shared a great analogy that communicating to a large group is like painting the roof of a barn red and that in reality it takes 20 coats of paint to get that red to shine. We need to get our message across over and over and through more than one medium to be heard by the team. This is also counterintuitive for leaders. Once news has been shared or a decision has been made and communicated, one thinks that the team has received it and took it in and is now operating on the premise of what was shared. But in reality people often need to hear things many times for it to stick. And while counterintuitive to do, shane shared that doing so has built a lot of trust, and trust with our teams is a place we would all want to get to, has built a lot of trust, and trust with our teams is a place we would all want to get to. Lastly, I'm taking away what Shane shared about modeling behavior as a leader. He gives feedback, he's open to receiving feedback, he learns about the person, not just the employee. He shared multiple examples of acting as a leader and it's a reminder to me that the simplest way to leadership success is to be a leader. Now remember, mediocrity is the default setting.
Shane Evans:I want to thank Shane Evans for being our guest this week. I want to thank Ari Smolin for producing those amazing tunes you're hearing. That's Isla Young and Songs of Summer. Thanks for listening to Pillar Talk. We will see you next time.
Rick Smolen:Take it easy.