Mai Le on the Habits of Great Teams and Leaders
Mai Le is Vice President of Last Mile Technologies at Amazon — her latest leadership position after Head of Engineering roles at Nextdoor and Uber and a 30-year career leading cross-functional teams at high-growth companies.
Ms. Le spoke to the Women in Leadership class on how she leads, how her teams succeed, and how she has navigated her career journey.
“I have experience across many industries and various business units for almost 30 years,” she began, “So I have a 360-degree view of companies and how they run.”
Her leadership style, she said, is something she’s honed over the years, and something she shares with every new team she works with. “What it does is it informs people on how to work with me: How I lead, what I aspire to be, what I expect from my team and my people.” And it is essential to be on the same page with your teammates: “Your title makes you a manager, but the people will decide if you’re a leader.”
“Leadership is about team-building,” Ms. Le said, “and inspiring a group of people to come together with different strengths and experiences. I try to build a team of domain expertise. And, over time, I provide opportunity for them to grow into other roles.
“Leadership is not about just putting greatness into people. It’s also recognizing that they already have much of the skillset, and you’re going to develop it and open up new possibilities.”
For Ms. Le, the skills she aspires to in her own work are the same ones she strives to model for her team. Integrity is one — “to say what I mean and mean what I say, so my words and my actions are synonymous.” Humility is another. “We don’t know it all and we’re not perfect. Whenever I fall short, it’s an opportunity to learn, and every day is a chance to be a better person, a better leader, and a better version of myself.” Furthermore, she said, “I am a huge believer of teamwork, that a player makes the team great, and that that’s far more valuable than simply being a great player.
“I always have this theme of togetherness,” she added. “So regardless of who you report to, your job title, your function or your location, we all come together to achieve something, to build something, to aspire to something.”
As Ms. Le explained, she has concrete standards that anyone working on her team should strive to live up to. She expects anyone in her organization to be a learner — because, simply put, “champions adjust.” Employees should be true to themselves, play to their strengths, and be committed to seize every opportunity.
They also need to be accountable. “Individually, as well as collectively, we need to own our outcome. If you ignore a situation that needs correcting, what you’ve done is you’ve just established a new bar for yourself and for the team.
“Don’t just identify problems and point them out,” Ms. Le continued. “Offer potential solutions. Lean into difficult problems because they’re not going to go away. Commit to improving yourself beyond the challenges of today.”
Ms. Le stressed the importance that teammates show up prepared. “If you show up to a meeting lacking context, understanding of a situation, you’re actually slowing down the pace of your team. It prevents you from actively contributing.” Another mode of failure: “Failing to dissent early. Harboring a difference of opinion and not offering it for discussion and debate. It minimizes the quality of the outcome that we could have had and diminishes the effectiveness of how we can execute and deliver.”
Ms. Le emphasized that every member of the team needs to play for a greater cause than themselves. “The team is only as strong as each individual,” she said. “And the quality, the outcome, it’s all of us coming together. There’s no MVP on a losing team.”
“Many of the things that have happened in my career journey,” Ms. Le reflected, “have been my mentors helping me to see the possibilities of what I can be, where I can go.” And so that was a lesson she took to heart. “I’ve learned to be open. Listen. Be curious and explore the possibilities. Take time to look around you through various lenses of what you can do and where you can go.”
Ms. Le extolled the importance of research: In order to find your place in the world of business, you have to understand it from every angle you can.
“When I look back and ask ‘what have I done?’,” she said, “I find I spend a lot of time reading. Reading blogs, reading books, reading articles. Reading decks and docs and powerpoints and what have you, just to understand, What is this job? What is success? What is that company like? What is that industry like? And then I look to see, What does it require? What are the gaps? And what skills do I have, what do I need to learn, to close that gap?
“I also spend time doing research, talking to people,” she continued. “Being a parent, you end up going to a lot of sports and soccer games, you sit on the bench for swim lessons. One of the things I do is I network. I always ask people around me ‘Hi, how are you? Here’s me, here’s what I do, what do you do? What is it like to work at that company, what exactly is that job, what do you do in that job and what is it like? I explore. I may not have the intention of becoming a lawyer or marketer, but that’s not the point. The point is to learn about their work, their role, their industry, their function. To see what it’s like to be in their shoes.”
And how can you ensure you’re on the right track? How do you stand back, take stock, and course-correct? Ms. Le makes it a point to do this once, and only once, a year, over Christmas break. In between moments of rest and mental separation from work, she asks herself a set of questions in the vein of, “‘So how was my year? What were the ups and downs? How was the job? How is my roadmap? How is my team?’
“And then I look at next year,” she went on. “Because usually at the end of the year, you will write down goals and commitments for the following year in January. I say ‘Okay, what’s next year? What’s going to be hard about next year? What does my roadmap look like? How’s my team feeling? What do I think I’m going to want to do?’”
And finally: “‘Is this the job for me? Is it time to explore new possibilities?’”
This yearly reflection is a powerful tool, she finds, to figure out what’s working and what needs to change. But during the rest of the year? No second-guessing. That’s when you give it your all!
For more information on the program, please visit Women in Leadership Program, CBE.
