‍Intro [00:00:00] Welcome to the Taylor Ten, a fast paced, ten minute deep dive into the minds of those shaking up the marketing world, bringing you the sharpest insights, boldest ideas and breakthrough trends driving the industry forward. So tune in, get inspired, and stay ahead. 

‍Dave Finn [00:00:17] Hello, I'm Dave Finn and welcome to the Taylor Ten. I am lucky to be here with Joyce He. Guinness Brand Director to learn as much as I possibly can in ten minutes about authentic and personalized leadership. Joyce is so good to have you here. Thank you.

‍Joyce He [00:00:31] Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. It's always fun to talk about something else other than the day job every day. So I'm looking forward to it. 

‍Dave Finn [00:00:39] We've been working together for a better part of a year now. And, you know, I've I've admired your approach to leadership. I've seen you take the reins through what I would call clear and direct communication and empowering your people and your agencies, and then, when necessary, rolling up your sleeves and showing how it's done yourself. So we'd love to just hear how you would describe your leadership style.

‍Joyce He [00:00:58] Yeah well, first of all, thank you. I do feel very lucky to have such a strong team and I definitely don't take that for granted. I think for me, the mark of a great leader is really like if your team can run itself without you. And so, you know, what I always tell my team is that my role is really to be a coach. Like I'm not here to test you. I'm not here to evaluate your work. I'm not here to give you a grade. Like I'm really just here to support you. And for me, I think the two biggest ways I can support are, one, giving you a higher, bigger platform when you need it. And two is breaking down the barriers where you need that type of help. So to put it simply, where I feel the proudest and the most success is, if I'm not there, if I'm traveling or if I'm on vacation or whatever it is, and my team doesn't need me at all. That is to me like successful leadership. 

‍Dave Finn [00:01:52] So I feel like a lot of people might be very uncomfortable with that feeling I have that feeling of of letting go and letting your team do it. And did that come naturally or did you have to kind of pick that up along the way? Because I know that can be scary for a lot of people. 

‍Joyce He [00:02:04] Yeah, no, it's definitely uncomfortable, especially as someone who kind of came up through the system that kind of I'm in right now at this company. And so I think it's just honestly, it's a lot of practice. It's a lot of muscle memory. I will say the way I started, which is what I have kind of coached some of my team members, is just picking 1 or 2 things that you just let go and you just decide, hey, if whoever is leading this makes a decision that is different from the decision I would have made, that's okay, because I think the core of the idea or the project or whatever it is, of course you helped shape, but it's down to the details. I think it just starts with practicing like 1 or 2 things to let go of that has really helped what I'm about. It's not the first time that I've seen the team work together, and so I have the confidence throughout the year that they can do it. So really, you know, now I feel much more comfortable about it for sure. And the beginning was a little bit of practice. 

‍Dave Finn [00:03:05] How do you fight through that practice phase, that feeling of being uncomfortable? What what allows you to kind of trust the process as you do to find it and to to make sure that you don't unintentionally kind of get too involved or or show a lack of trust. 

‍Joyce He [00:03:19] Yeah, I think it's just little wins, to be honest. I think the more you practice, the more I get comfortable, the more the team also gets comfortable at like taking off the training wheels and not having someone to rely on. I find that things like skip levels or even just like face time visibility with senior leadership in an organization, it really helps, right? So as much as I can give those opportunities to my team, like I do not need to talk to those people have heard enough for me. Like those are really the opportunity for my team to shine. And so, you know, it's, it's really how like I need I need trust. Building works is just little steps until you get comfortable ripping their the wheels off. 

‍Dave Finn [00:04:02] So I want to bring up something specific that happened earlier this year. We had this all agency summit for everybody's listening and it's all agency summit on the Guinness team. And it was the first one of Joyce's tenure and there were dozens and dozens of people in the room or on Zoom or whatever it was. And Joyce made the choice to start with explaining and going into her personal and professional background well beyond the typical bio slide that you might see. But in a way that was very clear and allowed all of us to see what made you tick joyce  and what makes you, you frankly. So I'm just curious to hear from you. Why did you feel it was so important to open on that note as a leader? 

‍Joyce He [00:04:37] I think I mean, I'm sure everyone agrees. I think these days were also just caught up in the daily churn, right between emails, meetings, Zooms. I know I can barely keep up and we're so focused on delivering what we need to for the day, for the week, for the month. So the kind of human of it can all get lost. It's funny you bring up, you know, the typical bio slide, which. I envision that's just a bunch of photos and logos and that's the exact type of thing that I think people forget. And what people don't forget are stories, right? So for me, it's really it was really important to kind of share a couple of stories to help kind of set the the stage and vision and explain a little bit of kind of who I am and why I work the way I do. And so, you know, I know that I have high standards. I know that I nearly always have feedback. And in fact, that's feedback I've gotten from my husband is my consistent feedback. You know, I think it's really important for my team to understand where that comes from, right? So I am an immigrant. I immigrated to the United States when I was four with my mother. My father had actually come over four years earlier, two weeks after I was born. In fact, to really set up roots, earn enough money to lay the foundations for a life here. And so for me, that kind of notion of doing the best you can, putting in that extra inch of care and hard work, that's just how I grew up. And so that's really shapes the way I strive to build a team and bring my team together as well as to just add that extra thoughtfulness that makes all the difference. And I think we really see that come through in the way that our team has evolved over the past year and of course the results that prove it. 

‍Dave Finn [00:06:23] Who or what else would you say have been the greatest influences on you and your approach to leadership over the years? 

‍Joyce He [00:06:28] Okay. So this is going to sound a little sociopathic, but I remember. 

‍Dave Finn [00:06:35] We're good with sociopaths. Let's do it. 

‍Joyce He [00:06:37] Right. Great leaders. No, I'm kidding. I actually I, I feel like I've actually learned a lot from like, mediocre leaders in the sense that I've come away from those experiences with very tangible memories of what not to do or what I would do differently. And so I think in that the lesson is really like even in suboptimal conditions, I genuinely believe there's things that you can take away and learn from that. I also try to hold a really firm line between like too much what I would call industry inspiration versus just like human learning. And so don't get me wrong, I think, of course it's important to stay informed about the industry and learn from industry leaders, but I do think there's a risk of like entrenching ourselves too deeply in this like, bubble that you kind of lose sight of just the everyday humanity and Dave you know, I love my 90's pop movie culture references, but the metaphor that I always think of is that scene from Bring It On after they were failed by, you know industry leader Spirit Fingers guy as they went out to seek inspiration from a variety of disciplines You're remember that scene where they're like and we learn tap we learned modern dance, we learned jazz, we were in mime. That's kind of my approach is like, I like to find like snackable inspiration everywhere. I will share two of my favorite followers on Instagram are Adam Grant, who is, I believe, like a social psychologist, really smart guy, but just really snackable kind of lines that give you a different perspective. And then the other one is Newhappyco, which is little charts, graphs and whatnot. But again, I'm just like really great little bubbles of joy that you can find inspiration from in the everyday. And again, I think those are kind of the things I remember versus like listening to a long TEDTalk or reading a long article or whatnot, which you know, sometimes tends to fade as wallpaper. 

‍Dave Finn [00:08:45] So, I mean, I know there's only one way to end this. Based on what you just said, I would love to hear from you. Who you think is the better leader and why Kirsten Dunst character or Gabrielle Union's character in Bring It On. 

‍Joyce He [00:08:56] That is really tough. I don't know. I'm going to have to go with Gabrielle Union on this one. You know, I like a underdog. I think she did the best with the conditions that she was born in and really rose up to inspire. So, you know, I didn't pick her because she won, spoiler alert. But I think it was more the journey along the way and also her opening of her perspectives. Right. They started as enemies and then they became, I guess, frenemies. So I think that was that was a good arc for her. 

‍Dave Finn [00:09:26] And I would not recommend to bring on sequels to anybody. Just watch the original if you haven't seen it. 

‍Joyce He [00:09:30] Amen. 

‍Dave Finn [00:09:32] Joyce, that was ten minutes, believe it or not. Thank you for your time and your insight. It was great catch up with you and thanks all for listening. See you next time. 

‍Joyce He [00:09:39] Awesome. Thanks, everyone. 

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