OYP Episode 03: Raj Shah
Raj, Managing Partner at Publicis Sapient, talks about balancing what you are good at, what you’re not good at, and what you want to be good at to achieve long term success.
Interview
Ashley Snow - Welcome to the Own Your Potential Podcast, where you'll hear stories from leaders across the globe about how they've taken control of their career growth and lessons on how you can too. I'm Ashley snow, and this is episode three with Raj Shah showing up. First things first, can you tell us a little bit about your career journey?
Raj Shah - So today I am one of the business leads in the telecom media and high tech vertical in North America. My story starts about 26 years ago, I joined core Sapient as the first intern, I joined after a friend of mine came into college lab that I was working in and said, Hey, does anybody know anything about this world wide web thing? I said, Yeah, I've been writing a little HTML. So that led to a one hour brown bag session at Sapient in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then that led to a part time job offer or an internship. And then that led to about 25 years of full time employment starting as an associate technology.
Ashley Snow - So you've grown up at sapient, how would you say your approach to professional development has evolved over the last two and a half decades?
Raj Shah - Well, it's a simple exercise, which I tell everybody who I work with today, can take a sheet of paper and divide it into three columns at the top of the column, write, What am I good at? Second column, What am I not good at. And the third column, What do I want to be good at. And if you find a lot of your opportunities are focusing on what you're good at today, then you're not growing, right? If you're gonna have a sense of being uncomfortable, then you're not growing. What you need to do is balance the first and the third column. The first column is like, the company wants you on a project or working with a client or doing a certain thing. The third column is how you can grow and where you can grow, and how you want to continue to grow. That effectively, was how I started self advocating having that conversation with the person who hired me. Another arrow in the quiver, I added over time was to create a network of people that I could go to who would give me feedback about, you know, this is my perception of what I'm good at what I'm not good at what I need to be good at. But what's your perception of me? And give me examples of where I can do that. So a trusted feedback network.
Ashley Snow - I know you're a strong proponent of having presence in the workplace, can you explain what presence means to you and what people can do to exhibit it?
Raj Shah - A huge part of presence is just living the values on a day to day basis. I think the other thing where our presence is going the above and beyond, it's connecting with a teammate. Maybe it's as simple as the messaging teams or the instant message or the text message to somebody who you haven't talked with on a day to day basis. It's like Hey, what's going on how you doing? that content of being there of showing up a fully engaging with your peer group, your teams, your extended teams, meeting your vertical or your craft, that's a really a key concept, a key foundation for being recognized in the organization, building a brand within the organization. And being known for not just being you know, somebody that's good to work with, but being known for or being known as somebody I really want to work with.