Leadership Takeaways from Adobe For All Summit

Last week I had a chance to attend my first Adobe For All Summit in San Jose, an employee conference designed to promote diversity and inclusion within Adobe. At a high level, we heard from members of the Adobe leadership team about their perspectives and experiences surrounding diversity, as well as heard about some exciting new Adobe employee benefits announcements like expanded parental leave and additional educational resources.

In addition to the fantastic general sessions, much of the learning was found in breakout sessions that employees could sign up for ahead of time based on your own personal career goals and interests. I took a ton of notes, and wanted to summarize a few of my takeaways here. If you attended or tuned in virtually, what did you learn? Let me know in the comments -- would love to hear!

"Fish, like feedback, is no good after three days."

The first session I attended was called The Art of Giving & Receiving Feedback, hosted by Weston McMillan, a Director of Leadership Development & Effectiveness at Adobe, and Sydney Wiecking, a Leadership Development & Executive Coach at Adobe. Both speakers had a TON of enthusiasm for the work they are doing and it showed in their practical & informative session on feedback. One of the themes that emerged was that many people in the audience were looking for ways to share feedback with peers rather than direct reports, which may speak to the very collaborative nature of Adobe. In the session, we learned about the SAID model for providing feedback as well as the concept of "Designed Alliances," which is an intentional way of developing relationships with clear objectives and agreements between parties on how they envision their partnership working.

"Transition your conversations from a state of 'do' (getting business done) to 'be' (a relationship). A 'do' 'be' = Adobe!" - Weston McMillan

One fun activity was getting to talk with the person sitting next to us about a specific area in our professional life where we are avoiding giving feedback and to articulate to them what might be possible for yourself & Adobe if you were able to successfully deliver that feedback. This got us out of the mindset of worrying about what would happen and instead thinking about all of the positive benefits. As part of the exercise, I had a chance to meet a new coworker (who strangely enough I bumped into on the elevator later that day while I was with my manager, so now she thinks I know EVERYONE at Adobe) and we made an agreement to email each other once we tried our new tactics at work (update: I was successful in delivering my feedback!). It was a super practical session in many ways, and a great way to kick off the morning.

"Catch people's superpowers. If you see them do something great, ask how they can do more of that in another area." - Weston McMillan

"Participation is a learned behavior."

My second session of the day was Steps to Build Your Dream Team with Margaret Neale, a Professor & Director of Organizational Behavior at Stanford University. The fact that Adobe is able to attract such impressive outside talent to these events is so incredible, and the student in me loved being able to take in Dr. Neale's thoughtful work on team performance and dynamics.

"Define tasks as a problem to be solved instead of a decision to be made." - Dr. Margaret Neale

One topic I found particularly noteworthy was Dr. Neale's overview of increasing participation, or as she put it, reducing the amount of spectating. Dr. Neale emphasized how participation is a learned behavior; you have to develop and nurture participation as you form and build new teams. She offered three great tactics for increasing participation:

1. Nail the first team meeting. New team members are less likely to speak as much at future meetings if they don't speak at the first one. Get all new team members to speak at the 1st meeting and you've broken that barrier down.
2. Create "buzz" groups. Buzz groups are opportunities for groups to break into smaller groups, do a small assignment like problem solve a particular task, then report out to the broader team. Smaller groups create more opportunity for participation and inclusion.
3. Try "checkerboarding" in meetings. Checkerboarding is useful when you notice the same people sitting together at meetings or group activities. Take it upon yourself to sit in a different seat to mix up people's normal seating arrangements and change the dynamics.

"Inclusion means making space for others to be their authentic selves."

My final session of the day was Improv Insights: The Art of Inclusion with Kimberly MacLean, Director of Learning at Speechless and Jamie Wright, Relationship Manager at Speechless. I had a bit of a bias in attending this: I wanted to see how their program compared to a recent field marketing roadshow my team ran in North America called Magento After Work that incorporated improv thinking and teambuilding with ecommerce innovation (by the way, we are gearing up for another series this fall -- stay tuned!).

The Adobe For All improv session encouraged attendees to get outside of their comfort zones in a series of exercises that included a fun session on "presence builders" to focus on building your physical and vocal presence (think: power pose and lots of chanting!).

However one of my favorite moments of the improv session was in a small group exercise called "Portkey." Here's how it worked:

• Facilitator throws out a word ("apple")
• Anyone in the group can "take" the word by reaching up and saying "Apple takes me to..." and delivering a 1-2 minute narrative inspired by the word.
• The other team members are asked to listen and react positively, but not talk.
• At the end of the narrative, the author offers up another "portkey" word and the next team member can "take" the word.

"Silence your inner critic. Follow the joy."

What I liked about this was the storytelling opportunity it created. In my group, we discovered we had one person who had flown into Adobe For All from India and, despite having traveled to 15 different countries, was visiting the United States for the first time. We had two others who were longtime Adobe employees. It was fun to hear more about their backgrounds and values that the "Portkey" exercised revealed. I thought it was a nice reminder of how we can really build stronger relationships and encourage diversity and inclusion by allowing space for people's narratives. I will definitely use this exercise in an icebreaker setting within small teams in the future!

Conclusion

I feel extremely fortunate to have attended Adobe For All during my first few months as an Adobe employee, and am grateful for the opportunity! I intend to apply as much as I can from the lessons into my daily life both personally & professionally.

Did I almost forget to mention that I got to meet Tan France from the Queer Eye revival in a moment of pure random chance? I was walking outside and there he was! I know. I know! Tan, like I said (repeatedly, while we took this photo), you're amazing!

I'll leave you with this very inspiring video produced by Adobe for the summit, and if you're interested in reading more be sure to check out the Adobe For All recap on Adobe.com.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions in this post belong solely to the author and do not reflect an official statement or opinion of the author's employer, past employers, or any other organization or committee this author may have been, currently is or will be affiliated with.