Jennifer Sherman – A Strong Ally for our Unit4 ERG Groups

Jen, in our last Women@Unit4 session, you emphasized the importance of including women’s perspectives across industries. What key advantages do you think diverse teams bring to product development and innovation in tech? 

Diverse teams bring diverse perspectives and they help us catch designs that might inadvertently exclude sectors of our population. I am old enough to remember when automatic faucets first became prevalent. Within a few years of their launch in the US, African Americans noticed that they often didn't work for them. It turned out the laser detection systems used by those faucets were created by nondiverse design and test teams. No one thought to test them on darker (and therefore non-laser-reflective) skin!  But beyond the cautionary tales, diverse teams bring in a variety of considerations that can make our designs, messaging, workflows, and our relationships better. You think differently about how to drive efficiency at work when you have to pick up children from school at a set time. You think differently about what makes working from home successful when you live in a multi generation household or about sustainability when you live in a floodplain or coastal region. What I love about Unit4 is that our population reflects the diversity of our customer base which makes us better able to anticipate their needs, challenges and their opportunities. 

Reflecting on your journey in the tech industry, what have been some of the most significant challenges you've faced as a woman, and how did you navigate those moments and grow through them? 

I'm old enough to have encountered a lot of the old garden variety microaggressions that I think and hope have largely gone away - not being invited to the cigar bar where the manager and some male colleagues would hang out after work, being passed up for a promotion by a lower performant man because he was seen as having more potential etc.  The worst was the treatment that was harder to put your finger on. Strong assertive women are labeled bossy (or worse) which is never ascribed to men. The unspoken checks on our behavior still exist in some forms today. I think we still have work to do in understanding and appreciating the nuanced differences in how women lead and assert themselves vs men. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and we have an opportunity and an obligation to explore how each can be leveraged and matured. 

You said that women often confuse failure with being a failure—a powerful distinction. What would you say to women who feel discouraged or question their worth after a setback? How can we shift our mindset so that failure becomes a stepping stone, not a stopping point? 

To be fair, I'm sure there are plenty of men who also confuse failing with being a failure too. This is a universal problem for all of us. For me, at least, the key to overcoming it is to remember that there is no such thing as a complete failure. Every engagement, interaction, event or moment can be framed as a positive one if we take away some gift (often a lesson). In my last role, I ran our equivalent of the CritSit ( Critical Situation ) program and, before a client or an issue could be taken off the list, the team had to agree on what the gift was: what did we learn, what did we improve, what did we fix in our software or process.  Even a lost customer gave us a gift and allowed us to grow. Some gifts we have to earn the hard way and maybe those are the most valuable of all. 

How do you see the unique challenges faced by women of color in tech, particularly when it comes to visibility, mentorship, and leadership opportunities, and what practical steps can companies take to support and elevate them?

Oh, the challenges of intersectionality! Even if you are lucky enough to be in a workplace like Unit4 that does a great job of providing equitable opportunity and treatment of team members, it is often intimidating particularly at the beginning of your career, to enter a workplace where very few people look like you or come from backgrounds like yours.  This often makes us feel the need to code switch to fit in and leaves us feeling like we cannot bring our authentic selves to work. One of the types of programs that I have found work well to support women of all backgrounds and seniority levels, is co-mentoring pods. These were small groups of women at similar seniority levels and possibly of similar backgrounds but across all parts of the organization. They meet, often monthly, and share with their challenges, their wins and provide support for each other. Every time I've participated, these groups have been very powerful and provided a great pathway for people to find their own voice with the support of their community. 

In your experience, how can allies and leaders help create space for People of Color voices to be heard and valued, especially in product strategy and innovation discussions where diverse perspectives are critical but often underrepresented?

I think the key to ensuring that all perspectives are heard is in careful attention to our norms in both individual meetings and business processes. Do you make time in meetings to do a round robin so everyone has space to speak? Do you amplify everyone's voice and make sure people don't take credit for others' ideas? Do you host periodic or end of project retrospectives where everyone provides feedback on their experience and how to improve? All these things need to be habitual to ensure that we can all benefit from the ideas and feedback from all backgrounds and perspectives. 

Many LGBTQIA+ professionals face the challenge of being their full selves at work. How can allies help create safer, more affirming spaces for LGBTQIA+ individuals, particularly in environments where coming out or being visible might still carry risk?  

This one often takes more conscious effort for allies to deliver on because, even if someone is comfortable being out in their LGBTQIA+ status, it may be invisible to us if it has not come up before. When my partner and I walk down the street, we look to the world like a straight couple even though we are not. This is not unique to this community. Many disabilities, socio-economic differences, religions and sometime even race can be invisible. So, the lesson here is that everyone needs space and voice. Everyone deserves respect, consideration and inclusion because we do not know what battles they face and what life they lead. In turn, we do not know what ideas they could bring to the business, what innovations they could deliver and what new norms they could create that will move us all forward. So, the practices of making sure EVERY voice in the room is heard and EVERY person has the space to deliver feedback that is considered and valued is much more important here. It is our diversity of thought and ideas that makes our community and business stronger and will, in turn, make our customers more successful and better able to serve their communities. I love our work because we deliver software that allows those who serve people to serve at greater scale, velocity and pace. We get to have outsized impact on communities across the globe but only if we do it together as one team of diverse individuals who come together with mutual respect, curiosity and a willingness to engage.  

With your experience leading high-performing teams, how have you approached supporting mental well-being in fast-paced, innovation-driven environments? 

I'm going to respond about mental fitness at work, which is to say the everyday practices that help us stay focused, resilient, and balanced in a fast-paced environment. Of course, when it comes to more serious mental health issues, that’s a different and important conversation. In those cases, it’s essential that we create space for open dialogue and ensure people know about the support and resources available — which we absolutely provide. 

We can't achieve sustainable velocity and innovation without mental health and wellness. I think there are three parties that need to be part of this conversation. First, we, the individuals, have to be self-aware enough to understand our needs, our optimal operating environment and the behavioral blind spots that may impact how we work with others. Then we need the courage to share all of that, at least with our manager if not with our whole teams. Then each team needs to align on their operating norms and procedures so that they can best collaborate and communicate. It is then the responsibility of the leader to coach each of us, to expose blind spots and to responsibly challenge our notions of what our boundaries and limitations are.  

I have a suggestion for a language that might help with the conversation: Spoon Theory. Spoon theory was developed for pain and disability management, but I think everyone can make use of it. Think of a spoon as an arbitrary unit of measurement for energy. We all wake up with some number of spoons, and the tasks we must do each day cost a certain number of spoons. You know that thing that really drains you, but other people don’t mind it? A given task could cost each of us a different number of spoons. Our job as a team is to maximize the ROI on the spoons we have, and we can do that by thinking about how we allocate work. If your duties exceed your spoons, talk to your manager. Maybe you are burned out, maybe the team can realign, or maybe you aren't in the ideal role for you. 

I used to think I couldn't speak in front of an audience. I would get physically sick and even told my first manager to never ask me to speak at conferences. That was a career-limiting problem for a product manager. It took a coach pointing out that nervous energy can be managed and used in other ways to get me over this limitation. Now I dance before taking the stage and I use my body freely on stage instead of trying to stand still. The cost of public speaking went way down in spoons! I'm not saying that every limitation and boundary can or should be overcome, nor should managers see themselves as boundary breakers, but velocity requires growth and growth comes when we step outside of our comfort zone.  

Jennifer’s words remind us why it’s so powerful to have leaders like her standing alongside our ERGs. Her openness about challenges women face, her belief in the strength of diverse perspectives, and her commitment to creating space for every voice make her an incredible ally to our mission at Unit4. We’re grateful to count Jen as part of this journey, and we look forward to sharing future blogs that spotlight more of our allies who help us build a stronger, more inclusive community.