Ex-Mozilla CEO on Cultivating People Skills
Engineers increasingly end up as company heads and could learn from the experience of self-confessed introvert and former Mozilla CEO John Lilly, who learned to be a “people person.”
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What’s the Latest Development?
Former Mozilla CEO John Lilly’s self portrait is that of a classic introverted engineer who when immersed in a problem may not notice you passing in the hallway. In this interview with Kermit Pattison he explains how as a manager he had to teach himself to be more of a people person, for instance trying not to look at his shoes, and how not to take on everyone else’s stress.
What’s the Big Idea?
Lilly says his whole attitude changed when he realized that: “We hired awesome people. They just don’t know how to do this yet. So let me act like a teacher and help them figure out how to learn and how to be really good at this.”
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