Inside this episode
Today we are in conversation with Ida Rolek-Kononiuk (VP of Technology) and we start 2024 and season 2 of this podcast answering the question. How do I set goals and objectives as a leader?
Host: Aaron Rackley
Guest: Ida Rolek-Kononiuk
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Show Transcript
These transcripts where auto generated by Descript. If you see any issues, please do reach out and we can rectify the issues.
Aaron Rackley: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. My name is Aaron and welcome to the tech leadership decoded podcast, where through conversations, we unravel the intricacies of leadership in the tech industry and welcome to 2024. It's a brand new year and as such, a new season of this podcast, which I'm kind of splitting up each season into each year.
So we're in the second year, season two, and we're going to start off the year like many do, and we're going to think about goals and objectives. So, for instance, on this podcast last year, we managed to get out nine episodes. And I have already set the goal of hitting two episodes a month. And I'm going to need your help as a listener.
So, if you have any ideas for subject matters you want us to cover on the podcast, do let us know on X, formerly Twitter, at Tech Lead Decoded. Again, that's at Tech Lead Decoded. Or, even if you just want to be a guest, reach out onto the platform and we'll have a chat. And with that out of the way Let's get [00:01:00] into today's conversation where I'm joined by the awesome Ida, the VP of technology at.
fxcintelligent. And we asked the question, how do I set goals and objectives as a leader? Okay, thank you for joining me today. How are you doing?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: I'm very good. Thank you. How are you today? Yeah,
Aaron Rackley: not too bad. Not too bad. I'm really excited to get started because this is going to be the first audio of the year for the podcast.
I've done some other recordings, but I thought I'd wait for this video recording to get it out first because of the topic that we're doing, which I think Suits the beginning of 2024. So we're here today to talk about goal settings and team goal settings and personal goal settings. But before we get into that, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourselves and what you do?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: Oh, yeah, certainly. Um, I'm a VP of technology at FXC Intelligence. Um, we are an [00:02:00] industry leader in a cross border payments data and intelligence, uh, and I'm leading a technology team full of very talented individuals from software engineers, data engineers, to, to DevOps. Before I joined this company, I acted as.
I was director of engineering and a big organizations as a service owner in the BBC as software engineer. So I was on all sides of setting goals and objectives and receiving them and having them set for me from junior level up to now, now that the PPP level. Awesome.
Aaron Rackley: Okay. So let's just say it's the beginning of 2024.
I've got the mandate to set some goals for me, myself, the team. Where, where, where would you start in all of that?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: context and a direction. So your, your goals or goals of your team don't exist in vacuum in a separation to your company, [00:03:00] your work, your life, the stage of your career, or where do you want to go with it.
So whoever gave you the mandate, ideally should also be the person that could tell you in which direction was their purpose for you and for those goals. And that's a very comfortable situation if you have such a person. Working with you. So the boss, a company CEO or a company board that actually comes to you and says, those are our goals as a company for this year.
Could you please set goals and use them to start to set goals and objectives for yourself and your
Aaron Rackley: team? Let's think about me as an individual first, and then we'll come back to some team stuff later. So as an individual, I in the organization might have a career framework, for example, and the company I'm trying to work towards.
Thanks.
Moving up the ladder, moving up the thing, um, How would I go about internalizing where I think I need to grow? [00:04:00] in the upcoming year? What kind of techniques could I do? Sure.
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: So first, and I find that very, very useful, um, is to gather some feedback. And it can be feedback from people around you or having an honest retrospective with yourself.
Yeah, um, some people are lucky and also have a support of a personal coach or have friends who may be in a similar discipline, and who can take a look at you from the outside. Like what went well the last year? What do you want to achieve? Where realistically in that career framework? What are your strengths and what are your the areas to to improve on this this year?
Um, and then once you know where you are, and what went well, I think the next step is to think what do you want to grow? And my and I know it's a controversial take, but I usually start from building on your strengths rather than [00:05:00] trying to patch up weaknesses, unless there is something critical really slowing you down a real blocker as an There is absolutely no way that you can progress in your career without writing down things.
Let's say you really want to be an architect, but you don't write documentation and you don't prepare any, any diagrams whatsoever. So without that skill, It is very difficult to progress. It is a necessity, usually, to be an architect, to be able to explain your designs or plans or wishes. Therefore, you may have to invest in training or invest yourself in this area and start building, but then find your strength.
If you aren't strong with writing, Maybe you're better with talking, maybe you should do a podcast about architecture. Maybe you should talk to people, maybe you should talks or internal brown bag launches, things like that. Maybe you should mentor a person and record the [00:06:00] videos and meetings. So rather than forcing yourself to work on something that you aren't very good with, I would focus in a career framework, I was focused on what your strengths are, where do you think you have the biggest chances to make the biggest progress, and focus your objectives there to push that next level through your strengths and through the best sides of your, your work and your personality.
Aaron Rackley: Yeah, no, very interesting. And obviously, like you mentioned, make sure you reach out to your, your peers and colleagues to try and get feedback on how you're working, because I think one of the hardest things for me, and for, I guess, a lot of people is. Trying to internally, um, uh, visualize your own feedback, right?
Like you, I'm perfect. I'm amazing. I'm not, but I mean, it's very hard to self reflect, I think, a lot of time. And I think that's a skill that takes a lot of time to build over, over [00:07:00] years. I imagine it will never stop.
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: Funnily enough, when you said you're great, most of the people I work with. actually are under appreciating their own abilities.
And very often they believe when you have like a end of year performance review or an informal chat, see, this is a career framework, where do you thank you for people very often don't appreciate how good they are and how well they do. And that opening conversation as to where you are and having that input from your boss, but also from peers, from people who are already on a level that you aspire to be on.
having their inputs will give you a slightly more objective take on where you are rather than you low balling yourself and think oh I'm actually pretty bad, oh I can't do this, it'll take me years to get there.
Aaron Rackley: It's usually not true. Like you just said there about it might take me years to get there, that kind of stuff.
Is there a concept of like, I'm unrealistic goals. [00:08:00] Can you set yourself up for failure with your Yes,
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: 100%. And I think you have to, and that's a difficulty as a manager. So my technique usually is to ask people to set their own goals, and then we discuss them, I give a general guidance as to what the goal is, and what are the areas in the career framework, but in terms of what objectives Um, people set for themselves, especially on the more senior level, managers, seniors, I would expect them to be able to phrase objectives and tell me where do they think they can focus, they can focus on.
And I expect those goals, right, I hope for them, the objectives to be measurable. Very often, people will phrase objectives that will never be achievable by any objective metrics, they will never be able to prove they did a good job, or they did. they, they plan a thing that is so unrelated to their existing work, that it's very, there is very little chance they'll find time for it.
[00:09:00] People say, my job is what I do eight hours a day. And then somehow on top of it, I'll give myself the objective of learning two new languages, even though my work right now does not really require those two new languages. And I will, um, What else that people often often hope for, I'll start writing blog posts and record podcast, I'll be more productive, I'll publish on LinkedIn.
If it's not part of your work, if it's not tied to what your team does, what what what your role requires of you, you are setting yourself for failure. And it's not because it's too ambitious. It's because you are unrealistic about the time and commitment it requires. And it's easier to achieve goals if your whole context leads you towards it and it gets easier for you.
So you are rigging the game to make it easy. Ideally, you should be tying your objectives to things that will benefit your daily work and that the objectives shouldn't be on top [00:10:00] of the work, they should drive your focus in your daily work. So you can say that um, you will collaborate with other teams on at least two or three big projects this quarter.
Um, and that is a realistic thing that you, as, as you look at your tasks or epics or things that are coming your way, you can actively think, is that a opportunity to collaborate? Should I be reaching out to other teams and checking with them? Are they facing similar challenges? Have they faced them in the past?
Are there lessons? Is there something we can share? And then you collaborate with them. Is there a dependency? Because collaboration can be so many different things. So you can then make it part of your work rather than make it on top of your work, so to say. Does that make
Aaron Rackley: sense? Yeah, I think so. Because one of the next questions I was going to have was around tailoring your goals.
Towards like the strategies of where the company is [00:11:00] trying to go. Right. And I think sort of, uh, slightly what you mentioned in there is kind of similar to that aspect of like, obviously, like you mentioned before you, the company's going to have OKRs and it's going to have its own goals that it wants you to achieve, they want to achieve over the year.
So aligning. Your goals to where they're trying to go so that you can show your, your goals have pushed towards that are definitely a great thing, especially if you're trying to move up your career, right?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: 100 percent Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, a touch should work this way and if any person from a junior level to a manager is working against company goals, they are most likely either wasting time or they are pushing for something that is very unrealistic in a given environment and maybe they should be considering a different environment.
So instead, what is much better is yeah, let's say in my company right now, our goal for this year on a company level as [00:12:00] to continue to grow and develop our people and continue to be the great place to work, which sounds lovely. And we indeed are a great place to work. But then what does it mean for technology just saying, right, it's not really measurable.
So I can tie it inside technology, I can say the goal is to set goals and objectives for all of the people and empower our people. to hit at least 80 percent of their goals. Here, I'm making a big leap of faith, because I'm assuming people will not read it just to make the goals extra easy. I have trust in all of the managers and teammates, they will be asking people to do ambitious things to put themselves outside of the comfort zone, but in the same time provide support and create environment that will allow people to reach those those goals, setting them so people fail wouldn't make sense.
So that will be the um, that goal. we are trying to hit as technology. And then each manager for each team will be able to say what that goal means for them. It may be that particular [00:13:00] team has to focus more on certain areas. In one team, it may be performance in another team, they may be looking at better documentation, better onboarding processes.
So what it actually means can be interpreted. But I'm asking people to create an environment in which people will have clear expectations. And we'll be able to hit their goals and set those goals and hit them, which then entails doing regular reviews of those goals, reviews of the progress, asking people what help they need, maybe changing team processes to focus on certain goals areas.
So you're gearing the whole team processes and you're evolving the whole team work so that people's goals are the very content of their work almost every day. And then the same time you make those goals tied to what you want to achieve as a company. And I think it works as a wonderful mechanism for a leader to, to harness ambitions of people and their drive to be better, which most [00:14:00] engineers have.
in abundance and harness it and, and direct it's not just to create better solutions for the sake of better solutions. Let's create the drive to be better in a particular direction that you're interested in today, be it security, customer focus, better performance, more documentation, more dynamic infrastructure.
I know a cost optimized infrastructure. You might have 15 different things you want to improve, but you pick one or two and then you harness everything towards it.
Aaron Rackley: Yeah. Interesting. I think. Um, just to pick up on something you said there, which, uh, was about, um, you can easily fall into the pit, pitfall of making them too easy, right?
Making your, your, your goal and objective, especially team members or anyone who's just trying to fulfill an obligation that the company is trying to, um, give you instead of it being an internal reflection on yourself as well. And, um. What do you think, um, people that are [00:15:00] brand new to this, so say you're a brand new leader, you've only just, this is the first time you're actually working with your direct reports to help set objectives.
What kind of things should I be looking for in, because as you said there, you normally ask them to do their first set of goals, right? Imagine they've never had goals before. We, I've never worked with them to do goals. Like what kind of things should I be looking for to start out? Doing this
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: depends. Have you got career framework you can use or not?
Because if you have career framework, you can ask them what they're like, like you are right now, you should see what level they are on right now. So you're saying I'm assuming you're working toward the next step. So pushing yourself out of your comfort zone will be this. But you may not have a career framework to use.
It happens often. Um, it's not an easy thing to just have. And in that case, um, it's I would ask person, what type of work they found the most challenging the last [00:16:00] year and what type of work they found the most satisfying, and then dig a bit deeper, because there is there is a lot of satisfaction in overcoming your own limits.
When you do very, people usually don't get massive satisfaction from just repetitively completing tasks that are very simple. People usually strive for a bit of a challenge, they want to achieve something new, hence climbing the tall mountains and things like that, or sports achievements, and whole progress.
I would think that if a person tells me what was the challenge that satisfied them the most, I would think pulling that thread, we will find where to challenge them and setting each goal, you're asking, is that what you've done last year? So how did you do? How would you measure it last year? What is the progress?
What is that growth from the last year? If last year, you've completed Five mid level projects, would you like to do bigger projects this [00:17:00] year? Would you like to take more ownership, more responsibility? Would you like to think wider about them? So if you were considering software engineering, did you also think about security or testing?
So in some direction, there has to be growth, either in quantity or quality or speed, like what is that improvement and the difference we are expecting from a last year, I don't believe that goals Or objectives can be successful if we just say do exactly the same thing as the last year. Yeah, I think that would be quite a flat thing to do.
Aaron Rackley: Yeah, you got to strive to towards something, right? Um, I think one of the things we were talking about there was like, um, setting goals, but In terms of short versus long term goals. Yeah, uh,
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: so I would set goals. So there is a difference that we didn't really actually elaborate on. There was a difference between goal and objective.
And people sometimes just use it as, as the same thing. And in my understanding and how I [00:18:00] approach it, goal is that sort of long term, more ambitious, aspirational thing. And objectives are a more particular. time, time specific element and actions that you can perform towards this goal. So goals, I would usually set for a year or like for a long time, because it's something more ambitional, but on objectives, I would set I would calibrate objectives to a level of a job.
So managers or directors are supposed to think long term. So their objectives also can be more long term because they may be planning now for something that will happen three months from now. So I can have an objective for a manager to plan and execute on their recruitment plan for their team. And I won't, I won't just cap it as a one quarter because the recruitment plan for a year, my staff will start to die and in six months, we'll have three new front end engineers.
But for a junior team member or a mid level team member, I would say their objectives probably are tied to a quarter because we only plan [00:19:00] for a quarter ahead and you have a good clarity of your work for a quarter ahead. And I would tie it to a quarter and assume that The company requirements context is so dynamic that a quarter from now, which can be something else.
And I would build it quarter by quarter and review it each quarter.
Aaron Rackley: And like you said there, you'd reviews each quarter. So, you know, if the business is adapting or your team's adapting or any kind of external factors, then it's good. A good point to start, have a look, make sure you're and re evaluate them.
Thinking as a leader again, and I, I use this word very Um, likely, but accountability, how do you keep your team motivated and accountable towards the goals that they've. So, and then again, how you do that for yourself, right?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: I believe in rewards and recognition. So, what's the point of the whole objectives and goals all together?
It's not just to tick something, it's to be able to recognize if people are doing a [00:20:00] good job. Good job. Yeah. And so from product perspective, you can measure like have we shipped enough features and have enough users using them? But as a technology leader, I'm not just counting, you know, how many lines of code we wrote and how many tickets we moved.
I care about people growth and how they work and what they do and the way to measure are they working the way you're achieving What I would like technology to achieve, like bigger technical maturity, the more collaborative environment for me. see people hitting those goals and objectives. Therefore, accountability and motivation should not only be regular review of a person, it should be a celebration and acknowledgement.
So I believe in fanfares, I believe in quarterly all hands, where you elaborate on those goals, you say this team, this person did this, this happened, that happened. Look what the progress we've made. Look how our goals us hitting those goals, how it impacts the whole business, all of us as a company, like what what [00:21:00] we were able to achieve.
And I believe that focus that that verbal public acknowledgement of achievement and importance of it, how it wasn't a paper based exercise. It's changed the things at impacted other teams or other members or users, I think that that's one of the big things. And I then expect engineering managers or team leaders to also celebrate with their teams and with the people that they manage.
In the same time, if goals are not hit, that requires a conversation, a proper conversation as to what support is needed, what is happening, what has changed, and not just like, well, okay, nevermind, you're not hitting it. Oh, well, lean in, dive in, pay attention, care about it. And that, that really brings results, I think.
Yeah,
Aaron Rackley: that makes sense. Um, how can we, as obviously, as an individual contributor, the goals are pretty, [00:22:00] um, oriented towards yourself as a leader, you, you got to strike the balance. So how do we strike that balance between. The goals that you're individually trying to, uh, achieve and the ones that are related to the team that you're, you're, you're working with, or do you see them synonymous together?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: So I see them quite synonymous, but it may be because I, I'm used to, I used to work in the big teams in the bigger environments. It's been a long time since I worked in a company where we just have like two engineering people, we work in a context, you've got inside technology, multiple teams and departments.
And then you also have sales, you've got commercial, you've got people team finance team. And I believe software engineering is a team sport, we hit those goals together. It makes no sense for one person to just better themselves if it doesn't benefit others. like each thing to go to production and be there for users.
It requires hands of [00:23:00] three, four or five people sometimes for a person writing the specification requirements, the code testing, the code review, the release of it. It requires quite a few people. So I think that objectives should be tied to the whole team. And one person is developing something. And usually if there is a goal to, to learn something, to get better in something, I would mirror or shadow it with a goal of sharing that with others.
In our career framework, alongside the knowledge and ownership, you always have teamwork and collaboration. And it goes hand in hand at It would be very hard to progress your career just by getting a stronger knowledge, but not improving in any way on a teamwork or collaboration, not sharing that knowledge with others, not influencing, not implementing it in something that other people can use and see.
Aaron Rackley: Yeah, because I think that's interesting because something I've read I was doing a lot of [00:24:00] reading in preparation for this podcast, but one thing I kept seeing was this very 50, 50 side of whether, you know, how to avoid, I'm trying to think of the right phrase, but it's like how to avoid being your goals being impacted by the outside of the world, that kind of aspect.
And then, and then, and then the other side is like, what you're saying there, which is, you know, some of it needs to be, because like you say, you're all part of a team, you're all part of the same company working towards the same goals and. I think a lot of times when people sit down to work out their goals for the year, they get too personal and they do get too much of it.
It's about me. It's about being about me. But what you've got to remember is when you've gone from a individual contributor to a leadership role, it's no longer about you. And most of what you do is about the team that you're working with. And Tell me if you agree or not, but I think one other aspect to that is the team is [00:25:00] not just your immediate people that you're working with.
It's the, the whole group of individuals that are part of. that end goal that you're trying to achieve within the business level,
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: right? 100. Yes, yes, you're, you're very, very much right. So the team that reports to me, I'm basically just supporting them and I'm conveying the business goals and interpreting those business goals and translating them for the team.
But my personal goals will very much be tied to. Correctly translating the company goals into what those teams are supposed to do, and then engineering managers or team leads will then translate and interpret the goals I'm setting for technology to their own teams. But once again, their success, I cannot imagine a team leader hitting all of their goals whilst every person reporting to them fails to achieve theirs.
It is an extension. There is that buildup and it's whole a pyramid where a person who seems to be a team leader actually is supported by the people who Report to them. [00:26:00] And I can only succeed if people reporting to me succeed in their goals as well. Mm-Hmm. . So that's how, how I, how I see this structure.
But then we also have, quite rightly so me as a leader of a team or of a department, I don't, don't only have people who report to me. I have my peers. So I have to manage sideways. And then I have people above me. So, so my boss and, and then people on his level. And there is that question of how my goals tie to their goals?
And can I represent my successes, my goals being hit correctly? Can I shape my goals in a way that if all of the people reporting to me had their goals, and they did very hard job, and they did very well, how can I then represent that and channel it upwards and showcase all of that success as a success for the whole department and the goal hit by like whole technology?
that this, you know, zero failure for a year. Perfect. That's what we had. No, not a single bug on the production for a year. Perfect. Tech work. You hit that goal. And [00:27:00] that's the moment when you want to sing about it to your bosses, because it's a measurable thing that you achieved with all of the people reporting for you.
Sideways, it's a bit different. Like how do we sing the roles between Technology and finance and technology and people are slightly more complex, but still if we work in one company towards one goal, we don't work in separation. There is that sort of thing. There is finance, supporting recruitment, finance, supporting growth of infrastructure, making sure we have money for the growth that is necessary, making sure it's all planned well and spent well and wisely.
So it all aligns
Aaron Rackley: as well. Interestingly, like we said there, one of the things that. It's always apparent is that the company has its goals. It has its KPIs and they're normally very known, um, in, in a corporation or a business, you normally know what those are. Um, I was also reading another thing that was like a 50, 50 split in the blog posts I found was around how.
How much of your [00:28:00] goals you should share amongst everyone. So some places were like, everyone should be open, everyone should be talking about goals so that everyone can help achieve each other's goals. And some places were like, Oh, no, hush. So where do you sit on that? Oh, that's
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: a big, that's a big thing.
Um, so in the past, I was one of the people I share my goals openly, and I try to phrase them and think about them in a way that I'm an no point of time I should be in any way ashamed or embarrassed about my goals. If I'm If I have to make some tough decisions, I'm making tough decisions because it will ultimately drive certain success and will allow company to be more successful and all of us to be more successful.
And most of my goals always are joyful. I see them as a productive, optimistic, optimization things, which I'm very happy to share with people and share my progress. I can imagine in some departments, it's maybe more tricky. I'm trying to think what I could imagine some people having goals [00:29:00] that may be sensitive, or they may show point out things that aren't perfect.
And maybe it's not, it wouldn't be wise to mention it out loud in any way that, you know, we want to improve from this to that. Maybe it's better not to say what are we improving from. So let's, let's powder after that. But no, I'm a firm believer that if we publish our goals, and we share them, we can then find groups of people who have very similar goals.
Even once the goals and objectives were trickled down, interpreted, calibrated, and you set your own objectives, you will then find other people in a company who have exactly the same objectives and you can help each other. If so, you wish, if you'd like to work
Aaron Rackley: together. Yeah, no, it's interesting. I find that a lot of stuff that I bring people on the podcast to talk about, there's always the competing sides, right?
So I think one thing I'll be looking at in the future, the podcast is getting multiple people on for the same topic, but from different sides so that we can, [00:30:00] because the whole idea of this podcast is to aim at people just starting in a role, right? And I am a firm believer in that to fully understand the subject matter, you need to know all sides of that conversation and understand why people have the thought process they have.
So it's interesting to hear your side. I'm excited. I'm excited to go away and start thinking about. My, um, goals for the year because I've got the message like past week that I need to start sitting down and filling in my form on my, um, on my app at work and I have to start thinking about getting the goals from my team as well.
So it's been really helpful for this insight in. your thought process. Is there any more areas you think you'd want to cover? I think
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: we went through most of it. I think probably the last part would be to not worry about the goals, just not working over time. And I think both managers and individual [00:31:00] contributors should easily entertain an opportunity to just edit the goals during the year.
Once you set them, they aren't set in stone, I believe they are flexible. And if if the things change, if you change, if your plans change, if your hopes change, and the expectations around you change, you can always come back to it and you can change it a bit and you can edit your goals and that's okay as well.
Aaron Rackley: I think that's the important takeaway I think of all of this right is that yes we have to set goals for a lot of these companies they require them and they are there but just remember to just take it easy don't get too stressed out and you can always adapt them right.
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: 100 percent it's not, it's not a plan that you have to execute on and someone will hold you accountable to every single word.
There is spice, there is spice for flexibility. And I hope you'll have a great time setting your own goals.
Aaron Rackley: Well, I appreciate you talking about that. But before Um, we end the conversation. I [00:32:00] like to ask all of my guests one question, which is, I have a bookshelf behind me with a load of books on it that I buy from.
I get a recommendation from every guest, and then I go out and buy that book and read it. And it can be any book, it doesn't have to be tech related, it can be your childhood favourite story. But um, what book would you recommend to someone to read?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: I will go with Turn the Ship Around. Turn the ship around.
Is it already on your, on your bookshelf or
Aaron Rackley: not? It's not on the list, no, but I have heard a bit of it before. For our listeners, would you like to tell us about the book?
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: Softenley, it outlines and follows a particular person in American, in the Navy, um, as he takes the leadership of a, of a ship. and approach as to how to empower people and how to empower the whole ship to function when you can't really see and micromanage every single bit.
So how to let go. It's that important [00:33:00] moment in your career, where you just start to trust people and you are okay with the fact you don't know everything, and you will never know everything and people will do things and you just have to trust them to do it. Well, and how do you build that relationship with people where you know about the important things, but they also feel they can do a lot themselves independently.
And it's okay, it's about intent, it's about communication, it's about taking responsibility. And it really allowed me to grow as a leader. And to move from having a full control of everything I do, like writing code, and you know what the results are, to working with a living, breathing organism and multiple human beings, who will do a lot of things I will not know about, or who will have knowledge and experience I I will not own and it'll be theirs and they'll do things and I will be fine with it and being responsible for such a thing, especially when you are in the military and like seeing it from a perspective of life and death as well as like for me, it [00:34:00] really changed
Aaron Rackley: a lot.
Yeah, I think the military is very good at producing. stories and books around leadership and management because they they've got it, they've
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: got it right in many places. Yeah, like a lot, a lot of depends on it doesn't it? So I think that yeah, they did it quite well. They do it quite well, quite often. And I think American military spends a lot of time thinking about leadership and particular growing leaders.
And yeah, and it's, it's a great book. I recommend it. There is even I think a Warwick book with exercises if you a person would like to do it.
Aaron Rackley: I would definitely, definitely purchase it. Um, I have heard of that book a couple of times from other people, not on the podcast, but I have heard of it. So definitely add it to list now.
And, um, so before I let you run off, um, where can people find you online if they want to chat
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: about LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the best place.
Aaron Rackley: Yep. Okay. I'll put that into the show notes. So again, thank you for coming on, talking about this. It's. [00:35:00] I'm excited to, to see where my goals go this year.
Ida Rolek-Kononiuk: Thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure to have this chat. Thank you. Thank you.