Speaker: Adam Kay, Chief Revenue Officer, Playroll
What challenge did you have before working with Pete & Emily?
Adam Kay: Before working with Pete, I was finding it very challenging, working in an exceptionally fast paced high growth environment to find sufficient time to step back from the day to day work and really think about some of the more strategic objectives I had in my role, but also about my own personal growth and development. Whilst the business was certainly supportive and really encouraged personal growth, learning and development. I was the main blocker there, never allowing myself the space and time to truly think and have honest reflective thought on where I needed to work. So working with Pete gave me this unvested voice in my life who wasn't coming at things from the perspective of the benefit of the business or the benefit of my team or the benefit of other people. It was truly a non-biased, impartial but expert voice, enabling me and challenging me to work through some of the biggest challenges I was facing both in my own career development and some specific challenges I was facing in the workplace at the time.
What did you like about them and how they worked with you?
Adam Kay: I really enjoyed working with Pete. Firstly, he's a genuinely decent human being. He was happy to talk about things going on in his private life. And I was happy to share mine and he showed genuine empathy and friendship, which I think is very helpful even in a professional circumstance and professional setting to be able to have authentic relationships. But of course, I really appreciated Pete's expertise and track record of running scale up revenue teams. He'd certainly seen many of the challenges and lived through them and overcome many of the challenges that I was facing at the time and felt that I was in a safe pair of hands. Naturally as well. there was a vulnerability coming from Pete who didn't profess to know it all. And so when we encountered challenges that were perhaps different or nuanced to his experience of it, I never felt it was a one size fits all approach and that he used his logic, his insights, but also his curiosity to figure out what might be the best approach in any given circumstance.
What results did you get with Pete & Emily?
Adam Kay: I think like many people, I suffer from imposter syndrome. I've been very grateful for a very steep career trajectory. Often finding myself in roles that I don't fully feel equipped or trained or managed, to be able to do. So immediate results that I got from Pete, was this being comfortable in my skin. Not always having to know the answer, knowing that because it was a challenge meant that it wasn't immediately obvious what answers were. And therefore me thinking that I was insufficient or not good enough to do a role. Pete gave me the confidence that this is a genuine challenge. This is a very difficult problem to solve. Over time however, Pete was able to kind of help me carve out sufficient thinking space, thinking time to think strategically about what I wanted to do and pull myself out from the inevitable day to day treadmill of working in a ridiculously fast paced environment. So seeing myself grow as a leader, getting clarity on some of my long term objectives, perhaps even reversing my plans in terms of what I thought were my objectives but turned out not to be really helped me identify what was important, what I needed to focus on and what I didn't need to focus on at the same time.
