We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tyrone Webb Jr.. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tyrone below.
Tyrone , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
My first exposure to resilience was coming out to my parents while in college. I didn’t know whether I was going to be accepted as the first-openly gay Black man in our family, and only son. My father took my journey well but not my mother. Over the course of time, I had to learn to walk in my authenticity and work through my relationship with my mother where we are now inseparable. It’s when I am telling my coming out story. My recent expose to resilience was an incident I experienced in the workplace for being who I am. I was harassed and suffered a hate crime from a colleague while our manager and other peers were in the room. I reported the incident to HR, who was supported, but the company turned against me quickly. I had to stand firm and fight for what was right which was no easy feat. In the end, I left the company to start over at my current company. I had to quickly recover to start new.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
My name is Tyrone Webb Jr. and I am from Newark, NJ. I moved to Atlanta, GA nearly 12 years ago for a job opportunity at SAP where I stayed for 10 years. Since living in Georgia, I’ve purchased a home, recently engaged and build a community of new family and friends.
I currently serve at the Chief of Staff and Director of Communications for North America’s Enterprise Business Unit at DocuSign, the world’s largest e-sign company with more than 1,000,000 paying customers and over a billion users worldwide. In this role, I have end-to-end responsibility in standardizing key sales programs across North America as well as develop and execute the Enterprise communication strategy to foster an engaging workplace culture. Under my leadership, the business generated in $1M+ pipeline creation and saw an increase of 6 pts for DocuSign’s NPS score.
What I am looking forward to next is speaking at the BFUTR 2023 conference in Toronto later this month. I have a 10min leadership talk on the main stage.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Lead with Influence 2. Owning Mistakes
3. Take Risks
I realized early on that if you’re going to take a risk it’s going to come with mistakes. You have to own those mistakes in the midst of taking those risks. It’s a fail fast approach. I learned how to lead with influence as a Chief of Staff. This comes in handy when you are leading people who aren’t your direct reports. You have to find the balance in getting them to aspire to the goal while executing well.
My advice is simple…fail fast. The faster you fail, the quicker you’ll learn.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
My parents were keen on setting me up for success. I was in tons of extra-curricular activities, pre-college programs (8th+ grade) and other educational programs during the weekends and summer months. My parents believed I was going to be successful, therefore I knew I was going to be successful. They also allowed me to make mistakes while on my journey which was important.
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