For this week’s episode of the Salesforce Admins Podcast, J. Steadman hosts a conversation with Stephan Chandler-Garcia, Lead Developer Advocate at Salesforce. We learn how to navigate a world where roles overlap and bring more vulnerability into your collaborations.

Join us as we talk about Salesforce roles as a spectrum, being a T-shaped person, and how working at a gym can make you an excellent Salesforce professional.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Stephen Chandler-Garcia.

How working in a gym is great Salesforce training

We wanted to hear from Stephan because even though he’s now on the Developer side of things, he also has experience as an Admin. We’ve been looking at the spectrum of Admin to Developer and how the two roles can work better together, so we thought Stephan would be great to hear from. “I’m lucky to have worked my through the ranks as many different roles in the Salesforce ecosystem,” he says, “and I’m able to hold a little bit more of that perspective.”

This all goes back to Stephan’s first job. His mother was an aerobics instructor, so he and his siblings all worked at the gym in customer service at the front desk. If you think about it, it’s a bunch of customer-centric interactions: managing your contract, making appointments with trainers, buying snacks or equipment, etc. “When I got my hands on Salesforce for the first time it was all super familiar,” he says. The bottom line is that there are tons of experiences that can help someone succeed as an Admin in ways that you might not expect.

Becoming more T-shaped

One thing Stephan brings up is the concept of T-shaped people. The idea is someone with a very broad set of soft skills that help them leverage their deep expertise in a particular area. They also happen to be the ideal person to work on a cross-functional team. “Those soft skills are core to getting your message across and delivering it to your colleagues and to the business,” Stephan says.

The important thing is here is not that some people are T-shaped and some people aren’t. It’s that these soft skills are just as important to develop as our expertise, and cultivating them is key to succeed in Admin/Dev collaborations. For Stephan, one of the most valuable ways to start is to teach yourself when to say, “I don’t know.” Admin Identity with LeeAnne Rimel and J. SteadmanIt’s ultimately about bringing vulnerability into your interactions so you can figure out the best way forward together as a team.

There’s so much more in our conversation with Stephan, so be sure to listen to the full podcast to get all the details.

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• Admin Identity with LeeAnne Rimel and J. Steadman
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