#5 Navigating career growth with Stephen Hull

Prepare to be inspired by Stephen Hull's professional growth journey, which began as a Junior and led him to the prestigious role of Vice President. Discover tips for career advancement at every stage, insights into overcoming challenges from Stephen's personal experiences, and how to balance a high-powered career with a family of six kids. 

Don't miss out on Stephen's valuable lessons and experiences.

Episode links:

• Sue Quackenbush's LinkedIn
• Connect with Stephen Hull on LinkedIn

Discover the opportunities at Dynatrace and take your career to the next level: careers.dynatrace.com

Transcript

00:00 Stephen Hull

And over the last ten years now, being in management, every time we have a baby, I get a promotion and I've got six kids. So at this rate, I'm about two more promotions away from being CEO.

 00:20 Sue Quackenbush

Oh, my. Well, that's my guest, Stefan Hall, who is the Vice President of Customer Experience, and I'm super excited to speak with him today about career growth. So welcome, Stephen.

 00:34 Stephen Hull

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

 00:37 Sue Quackenbush

Well, let's begin. So you are currently having an amazing career with Dynatrace and you have seen tremendous advancement. And, you know, a lot of times team members want to know, well, how do I do that? Who do I go to? Where do I find this? This journey, this math?

 00:56 Stephen Hull

Yeah. So it's a great topic. Wherever that road map exists. I want to find it. Right. Because for me, it was absolutely organic growth. And recognizing that that next step, whatever it was, was an opportunity ahead of me. And, you know, looking back, even three, five years ago, my path was, again, to use an analogy. It was murky. The message that I would tell to anyone else listening is it's making progress. It's taking that next step. You're not signing up to run a marathon. You're signing up to take one more step. Take one more step. And again, that philosophy has worked well for me, even you know, from the successes. Yeah. Sometimes, those steps have to be really fast in an order. And other times, again, when it's challenging, it's waking up and saying, Hey, what's that one thing I can do today to make progress? What's that one thing I can do tomorrow to really put me in a better position than I was yesterday?

 01:59 Sue Quackenbush

And that's perfect, because the truth of the matter is, nothing's guaranteed. And when you're growing in your career, you have to look at the opportunities in front of you and look to see how to make the best or maximize them, but really embrace them and engage fully in them.

 02:17 Stephen Hull

Yeah. Just a quick story there. I still remember when I got hired, you know, 12 years ago, the vice president drew something on the whiteboard and he listed all the roles, all the opportunities that could exist in a technology company, because, again, I was looking to, you know, work in I.T., in a car manufacturer, in a bank, and he really sold me in that technology company. The entire company is a potential career path for me. So he talked about things in sales and in marketing. And, you know, my team didn't exist. And so to recognize that, again, those individuals, those people that have moved into those various roles, they all took a risk. But at the same time, the company invested in them. And so for me, you know, my success, I attribute it to, yes, working really hard, taking some risks, but also some really great mentors, mentors along the way that would help me along my journey. And also from a timing perspective, to be patient when things didn't go exactly as I wanted them to or as fast as they wanted them to, or sometimes I would say slow down too fast. But timing really played a big factor in, you know, my success with the company.

 03:31 Sue Quackenbush

What sparked your interest about Dynatrace?

03:34 Stephen Hull 

Yeah. So graduating from university had a degree in information systems, so I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I recognized that I had some skills from a technology perspective, but unsure what I wanted to translate that to. And I met a really great recruiter at a career fair, had a conversation with this company that really focused on making sure that their customers applications and websites and mobile apps worked well. And that was super exciting to me. Like I said, graduating university technology was something that I've always been passionate about. But to recognize that this company, who again specializes and makes sure that other people's apps and systems worked well and apps that I used, apps that I used to, again, book travel apps that I used to do my banking. To me, recognizing that that software was on the upswing and obviously it still is. But again, that's what really attracted me about the technology of the company. But then when I started to get to meet the people, recognizing that they were going to invest in me in that professional development program, to really invest in me as a leader, not just as a leader, but as a as a person and as someone who was hungry to grow. And, you know, 12 years later, here I am.

 04:57 03:31 Sue Quackenbush

You know, I know that you joined the company. In the professional development program. Can you speak to a little bit about that and what you experienced in that program?

 05:08 Stephen Hull 

Yeah, so it's been a great program. It's really shaped my outlook now, not only about the company but about professional development as its name implies. So it's a really great program where it takes college graduates with varying degrees. Like I said, I had an information systems degree. We've had people with more deep computer science, more technical degrees like math. We've even had people who have like rocket science degrees. So we can take those people, those very moldable people, and really turn them into the next generation leaders within the company, recognizing that we're training them to be consultants or support engineers or very tactical roles. But we're really setting them up for career success by exposing them to various other leaders. We're giving them the skills, not just the hard technical skills. We're giving them the soft skills. We're giving them communication skills. We're helping them learn about themselves while also recognizing the work that they're going to be able to do, delivering value to our customers.

 06:15 Sue Quackenbush

You know, sometimes we get into situations or we're at a point in our career where it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere and someone might feel stuck. They might not see that next promotion coming any time soon. What advice can you give for an individual in that situation?

 06:34 Stephen Hull 

Yeah, that's a great question. Again, what comes to mind is I don't know if I ever saw that next promotion from a title perspective. I was focused on two things one, making my boss's job easier. I knew the things that would keep him or her up at night. I focused on how can I deliver value to them. But then also from my team. And again, even if when I was an individual contributor, how can we elevate the team? How can we elevate the individual accomplishments celebrating those successes? When you what I found at least, is when I took a step back, I was able to see that we were making progress. And again, with that, when I became a people leader, it was, yes, helping my leader, helping provide value to him. But then also it was giving opportunities to my team, giving them opportunities to put them in positions where they're going to learn, where they're going to grow. And and so for me, again, taking a step back a little bit really gave me that perspective to highlight, Hey, I am making progress. Even if I didn't have that title, even if I didn't have that that next promotion. I was still making progress towards becoming that best version of myself.

07:47 Sue Quackenbush

That's wonderful. And so you have all these resources, right? And you look at your career journey today, and so you're moving roles every approximately two years, right? And more may maybe faster. And I guess, you know, would love to hear the flipside. Any hurdles or challenges that you've overcome while you are progressing within your career, within Dynatrace?

 08:13  Stephen Hull 

Yeah. So recognizing that with all my promotions, I'd probably say the most difficult, the most challenging one was from that individual contributor to a manager. And for me, that was specifically I felt like I was good in my job and I was doing the things that I was asked to do. But as a leader, I realized I couldn't do it myself anymore. I really had to rely on a team to be able to go further and to be able to continue to progress relying on that team. That philosophy changed my life. Right. And change my leadership to recognize that as we continue to grow, we had to do it as a team.

 08:56 Sue Quackenbush

Which is wonderful. And I and I love the idea of the ability for growth, not only your growth but your team member growth and how important it is that everyone recognizes it's the team, the strength of the team, the growth of the team enables you to continue to fuel and support the growth of the organization. So I think that's fantastic. I'm going to flip gears a little bit. So tremendous career growth, growth of the team, challenges at work. How do you balance it with Career Head? How do you do it all? Because there's only 24 hours in the day and we all have that same amount of time. And I would have to say, Oh my, you have a lot on your plate. So how do you balance it? Love to hear some tips.

 09:44  Stephen Hull 

So I have a beautiful wife at home, and she's getting the kids ready for school today. I had to come in to work early to record this, but that's step one is making sure that my family life is in order. And as you mentioned, about every promotion every two years  coincides with another baby at home. That's number one for me and, and my kids as well. They love hearing about the stuff that I'm doing at work. They love coming into the office. We had a "bring your kids to work day" a couple months ago and they just really see and to be able to talk about my work with my family, that's key to my success, but also to have my work impact what happens at home. And so for me again, I like to talk about like integrating, integrating my faith, integrating my work, integrating my family. That's been again one key to my success so far.

 10:40 Sue Quackenbush

That's wonderful. And I love it. And you know, it reminds me and I would have to say similarly, the ability to have a family that supports your travel, supports the time you put into the office, the commuting you need that support mechanism. So I  fully agree with you.

So Stephen, I hear this unusual tidbit about you where your dad worked for Dynatrace. He has the same name or you have the same name as him and the same birthday. Is that true?

11:13  Stephen Hull 

Yeah, it is. And, that caused a little issue on my first day on the job recognizing that my dad had he had since worked there, but he left to go to another company and they really thought that my dad got rehired. So I inherit his email address, all of his accounts. And then it was like, hey, what are you guys doing? Why is your dad accessing these systems?They looked at the name, they looked at the birthday, obviously, they, they didn't look at the birth year and then again, we got that all cleared up. But yeah, 12 years later here I am still in my father's footsteps.

11:46 Sue Quackenbush

Well, I can honestly say you are a role model. I love the attitude, the positivity and you're absolutely right. We vote every day. We choose every day where we want to put our energy in. I thank your wife for all the support that she gives you because that is so critically important to have that support. And again, thank you for joining me today.

12:09 Stephen Hull 

Thanks Sue again, it was my pleasure and thank you for your leadership, you know, in this, not just with this podcast, but really making sure that as, as a team, a we are one team and to recognize that as we continue to grow as an organization, making sure that we're putting our people first.

12:25 Sue Quackenbush

I think that's a testament to you and your team and the work that we're doing to really advance what we're doing at Diamond Trace.

12:34 Sue Quackenbush

Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Real Talk. Subscribe to stay tuned on more episodes to come.