"Attitude matters" - Amazon VP
A deciding factor in promotions
Welcome to this week’s free article of Level Up: Your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans. If you’d like to become a paid member, see the benefits here, and feel free to use this expense template to ask your manager.
We have three events this week with live attendance and Q&A exclusive to paid members (RSVP below):
June 18: How to Get Support for an Executive Coach, and Make the Most of It — Ethan Evans & Sue Bethanis
"Do your spirits lift or sag when the person enters the room?"
Among many strong candidates, she (the Amazon VP) sees attitude as a deciding factor for promotions in today's low-growth environment.
In a slower-growth economy, there are fewer opportunities to move up and thus the bar is higher.
The reason is that a person can be smart and capable, but still unpleasant or draining to work with. Our emotional energy for work is a limited resource, and leaders are constantly busy and tired. Therefore, the energy their team members bring to the room is a real and valid promotion criterion.
Someone who saps the energy from a leader through constant criticism, nitpicking, or negativity is a liability, no matter how "talented" they may be.
Two things to consider about your attitude and the energy you bring:
1) Many of us love to be "right."
We love to be the person who figures out the puzzle or who has the sharpest insight into a problem. Sometimes, this leads to showing off how clever we are by poking holes in the ideas and plans of others.
But, just because you are right about something does not mean your input will be welcome.
Criticism without offering to help or providing a solution makes you feel clever, but it does not make you many friends.
I have some of these "smartest guy in the room" tendencies. I love to find the flaws and to make clever observations. With engineers in particular we are trained to seek the right answers which can become an overused strength.
2) Instead, start with the question: "How can I help this person succeed?"
I have learned (am learning?) to do more of this.
If you pass your cleverness, criticism, and fault-finding through this question filter, the room will love you and the energy you bring.
Then, when leaders talk about who should move up, who they want to spend more time with, and who helps them get through their hard days, it will be you.
You will be top of mind and front of the line for a promotion.
Additional phrases/questions to remind yourself the next time you have the urge to show off:
“It doesn’t matter what you want to say, it matters what the audience can hear.”
“Would I want to work with me? If not, why?
“Am I in the right room?”
"Doer vs Relationship Builder"
Do not fall into the trap of “just doing more work.”
1 more hour of doing out of 60 hours will not make a difference compared to how much relationship you can build in 1 hour a week.
"You've made yourself a doer, someone reliable I can give work to...but not someone I have a relationship with. Therefore, you are a tool."
Realize the law of diminishing returns and know that there is always more to do.
Watch this clip of Ethan live executive coaching a client (Director of PM in FAANG) from a Level Up paid member-only event.
Dissecting Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs), for Amazonians & Non-Amazonians — Ethan Evans & David Anderson
I wrote part of one of the Amazon LPs (read here). David Anderson wrote one of the most popular posts on the web about the whole list (read here).
You can learn from the Amazon LPs no matter where you work:
LPs give everyone at a company a shared shorthand for making decisions.
They set a style for the business.
The LPs can be abused.
The LPs can also be weaponized.
Despite these flaws, you can learn a ton from the Amazon LPs, either deciding how you want to adopt them or deciding how you want to be different in specific ways.
Dave and I worked together at Amazon and share a lot of views in our writings.
We are teaming up for a deep discussion of the LPs and other leadership topics. Level Up Newsletter & Community paid members and the Scarlet Ink Newsletter paid members are invited to join us live (video recording will be later shared).
Level Up Community: Inside Look
In Slack, what members are talking about and how they are helping one another:
Ashwin Krishnan had Ethan on his 90-second podcast where they had a fire round chat including Ethan’s life motto. Watch here.
How do you balance being a partner and competitor with your peers in an ambitious company where most peers are aiming for the next promotion?
What to do with a toxic employee in a company that makes it difficult to fire?
Defining Staff+ Engineer roles and talking to a Fellow Engineer (VP, SVP on the IC track).
Recommendations on how to start sending regular internal updates via email with a focus on format, content, and how to identify the best audiences.
Discuss frameworks and strategies to build tech infra for expanding channel (inbound/outbound) footprint beyond email and website.
How to make charitable donations go further.
In-person meetups.
Hiring / job postings.
Resume reviews.
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Existing members, if you want to join our private Slack Community, click the Slack link in this member-only weekly Friday article.
Connect With Ethan & Jason
Level Up is your source for career growth solutions & community by retired Amazon Vice President, Ethan Evans.
Tim Ferriss asked Barbara Corcoran (Shark Tank) what advice she would tell her younger self, her answer: "Only hire happy people...complainers are thieves."
Very impressed by "Doer vs Relationship Builder" section and I am more realised how being builder of relationship makes a difference.