When thinking of the skills needed in the technical community, communication isn’t often the first skill considered. Yet, after studying communication, senior programme manager at the identity network and access division of Microsoft, Shannon Kuehn, tells us how having a different skill set can actually help you stand out in IT.
Shannon’s current role has a plethora of tasks, from streamlining identity efforts to making it easier to understand modern authentication. Part of her team’s role is trying to demystify concepts and touch the unmanaged audience that Microsoft provides.
But, if you had told Shannon 10-15 years ago that she would be working at Microsoft, developing these broader communities to adopt Microsoft platforms, she would not have believed you.
You see, Shannon only fell into the tech industry in 2006, as an admin assistant.
However, her employer invested in her IT education as they didn’t have anybody taking a lead from an IT perspective. By investing in Shannon’s IT education, it did help her become comfortable being around tech. The consultants reminded her there was no dumb question and recognised that Shannon’s background wasn’t in technology, but they were happy to bring her up to speed.
This was a new industry for Shannon, as previously she pursued a path in communications, “I loved speaking in front of people, so, I went to school for communication studies”. But after finishing her degree, Shannon fell in love with DJing, which meant she naturally became more technical. She got tired of leaning on her developer friends who would tell her to just “Reboot the computer”.
“I always trusted them and then I realised they were pulling my leg. So, I said, ‘You know what, I’m going to figure out how to do this on my own. It can’t be that crazy.’”
This DJing helped into her IT development. Figuring out how to connect X to the computer, to doing Y on the computer showed Shannon how well she got on with technology. This led her to her first truly tech-related job: being someone on a helpdesk. It was the real start of her tech journey.
“So, I found my way into tech, and I sparked this sort of love of trying to figure out how to make things work. I often feel like if I had gone to school for traditional computer science, that I don’t know if I’d be here, I’d probably be doing something different. But I fell in love with tech at an interesting stage of my life.”
Finding her affinity with technology was initially because she enjoyed the problem-solving element of it. But now with her 16 years in the industry, her reasons for enjoying tech have also changed. “I think for me, it’s getting folks who have similar backgrounds to me more familiar with the software. Breaking down and demystifying these concepts can help everybody understand IT.”
This reference back to language and learning is at the core of Shannon’s work. Communication is essential – not only to help solve problems with clients, but, getting them into the tech. In her experience, a lot of the “IT” people overshare and communicate the nuances that the customer doesn’t really need to know: “I have a lot of experience, where these people in IT were so smart and fantastic, but would go off on a tangent with too much detail, where the customer only wanted to know how to resolve the issue.”.
Shannon often felt like those people who have been in the technical realm from an early age, get “stuck in the weeds very quickly”, whereas Shannon has a different background. She can understand how to pick out the main ideas/queries that customers are wanting and read the room to gauge how they learn, and to see if everybody understands.
“I’ve always been that translator for customers and colleagues of mine. I’ve always been a big believer that the only way you can communicate anything technical to somebody is that you need to break it down – so I have heavily leaned on my communication skills whilst in tech. My wife even calls me the cheerleader as I have to get people excited about tech.
Having that balance of “soft” and “hard” skills is something that many engineers (in Shannon’s opinion) struggle with. Although soft skills are thought of as being the easier skill, Shannon thinks it’s probably the hardest thing to try and figure out.
Reading a room, understanding the best way to talk to somebody, keeping them engaged or entertained, are all difficult; especially in the age of information saturation. A lot of experimentation, a lot of different conversations and perceiving how each individual learns is key for Shannon. She explains that as an adult student you’d learn differently from how you did when you were younger.
“Rather than a 25-minute explanation, those soft skills lend themselves well to keeping someone engaged and summing up what they want to know in five minutes. Engaging them and keeping them excited can help them learn more.”
In her experience in the industry, Shannon has seen that women are more inclined to doubt themselves, thinking they are inadequate for a position. Shannon did once feel this imposter syndrome, but forced herself to “knock it off, as it was clear I knew what I was doing”.
Shannon gives an example, “I had a co-worker who had a highly available exchange environment. One of those exchange nodes went down and I wrote to him, I’d be there shortly to help. He responded with ‘OK, I’ll log into the server’, but the server was down”.
That was one of the moments Shannon established her abilities in tech and became her own advocate for self-belief.
But this doubt that many women have in their own abilities could be the result of a lack of representation. More representation matters as, in Shannon’s experience, you can have a better perspective and understand products better.
Although the majority of people in her professional life are men, a lot of them are fantastic advocates and try to find a way to engage everybody and give others the limelight. This could be from the right level of conditioning. They have worked with many people who have mentored and guided them to this concept of inclusivity which goes beyond sex to include other protected characteristics like race.
“I mean all of my mentoring was from straight, white men, and they believed in me. They were not like ‘I’m going to hold these cards and not show them to you’. They were very open, transparent, and encouraging. In fact, one of my closest mentors recently reached out as he lost his job due to covid, and asked if I can help him into a position. So it was like a full circle and it is a great experience when you can now give back.”.
So, this mentorship opportunity is invaluable as it champions people who may not have been confident to go into a new realm and aids them in being successful, too.
Remembering that there are no stupid questions, something that may be crystal clear to one person may not be to another. Encouraging learning, and mentors knowing the different ways to communicate, can also help shift these negative mindsets in minority groups in tech.
Shannon thinks that there should be a way that companies can encourage others to start, where the senior leaders create this catalyst for diversity and enablement.
“You should make people feel empowered to ask questions, which can be hard to do. Remind others that they should keep their own best interest in mind, which many forget in a business setting. One way to do that is communicating there are no dumb questions.”
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