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In the Hot Seat: Jon Upton of Salesforce.com

Episode 04 of the Talent Development Hot Seat podcast features Jon Upton, Vice President of Sales Engineering at Salesforce.com, where he has worked since 2010. Prior to coming to Salesforce, Jon worked at other software giants including Oracle, SAP and Accenture.  Jon has a passion for empowerment, coaching, and helping others recognize their own potential.

 

Highlights:

  • Where Jon’s passion for talent development came from
  • The importance of being genuinely motivated about coaching and teaching to be a good leader
  • The satisfaction Jon gets from people learning and growing
  • The importance of hiring the best and smartest people and giving them a framework to be successful
  • Strategy and tactics to develop your people
  • Empowerment: you have to give your people the freedom and space to develop
  • Importance of career discussions and feedback
  • “Good leaders take people where they want to go, great leaders take people where they don’t want to go but need to be.”
  • Best leaders push people for where they need to be
  • Jon’s biggest mistake as a manager
  • Taking care of top talent will give you a bigger return on your investment vs. coaching bottom talent
  • How Jon likes to partner with HR/Talent Development
  • The best talent development programs Jon has seen or been through
  • The people who have mentored Jon and what he’s learned about leadership
  • The importance of helping your people understand company strategy and why people are being asked to do what they are doing
  • Importance of communication
  • Book: The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
  • TED Talk: Ken Robinson: Creativity in Schools
  • Tool: Eisenhower Matrix (app)
  • Advice for talent development professionals

To connect with Jon, find him on LinkedIn.

Are you listening?

Sponsored by Advantage Performance Group, the Talent Development Hot Seat features interviews and insights from leading talent development professionals and company executives who are passionate about developing their people. Host Andy Storch asks guests to share some of their successes, failures, challenges, and advice for others as well as what trends they are seeing in the industry. The main goal of the podcast is to help listeners become more successful in their own jobs and accelerate their careers as talent development professionals.

Andy Storch

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