My 4 years ‘Out of Comfort Zone’​ Journey

Today, 4 years ago, I started my internship at trivago. I had no idea on what to expect, despite joining young & motivated professionals on their mission to become the travellers first & independent source of information for finding their ideal hotel.

Now, 4 years later, I find myself in a role I could not be more passionate about working with people I could not be more inspired by. This sounds very in-comfort-zone like, right?

Let me tell you that it’s quite the opposite. And here is why:

Challenge own competencies:

During my time at trivago I think I’ve never worked on a project that has been an easy fix. I’ve been always given the responsibility for topics that would slightly, but surely, outweigh my competencies. First reaction to that? pride. Second reaction: panic. Third reaction: ambition! This has not changed until today. I remember the moments at home thinking “How the hell should I manage that?” or “What do they think who I am? Superwoman???”. This included projects with high budget responsibilities (as an intern), the freedom to just initiate whatever I think was a useful format to foster our company culture, sending me out to public speaking events to represent the company (me?), and the biggest challenge to take on leadership roles for different team sizes & with this the responsibility to ensure talents can develop in these teams. All of that felt way out of comfort zone, made me struggle a lot, but empowered me to develop even faster.

Working on topics that could not be more intangible:

For the last four years I’ve been working on topics with regard to company culture, core values, talent engagement, organizational design & identity. And while there are with no doubt aspects that can be measured, there is a huge portion of my work that simply cannot be reflected on a KPI dashboard. On top of that, the feedback loops of our initiatives can easily take up to 6 months before seeing if something was successful or not. And then again, you might “feel” it in the organization, if you can really measure it is not 100% guaranteed. This makes business discussions around these topics not always easy, often ending in rather philosophical debates which are hard to grasp when being used to data-driven conversations. Reacting to these challengers who seek for clear data and fact based results, can demotivate & create insecurity in your own belief of your works impact. This is a big out of comfort zone experience, since having fancy data backing up your ideas gives you a great deal of confidence. Being convinced that the way HOW a company is operating determines its success no matter the product, I’ve been learning to deal with the fact that the impact of my work is not 100% visible for everyone, and because of this, it needs even more energy to push for it.

Nobody wants to fail, but you simply got to do it:

Failing hurts, and you have to do it many times to grow from it. This is at least what I learnt in my past years. How many times did I pitch a topic and did not get the excited reaction from my audience I expected? How often did I realize that the impact of an initiative would be less than thought upfront? How often did I start full of passion and lost faith half-way through the project? How often did I need to present in front of an audience and felt disappointed about my performance? How often did I get direct feedback that I hurt a talent with a certain behaviour/ comment/ reaction?

Yes, I am failing. All the time. Sometimes on a big scale, sometimes on a smaller one. Each and every time it hurts and I would like to hide myself somewhere. But the truth is that, if you do not experiment, challenge, push & fight, try out and risk — you’ll never end up creating impact.

Leading talents & teams & topics:

I think the biggest “out of comfort zone” experience for me was the moment I started leading a team. Someone placed an invisible mirror in front of me, which would make it inevitable to constantly reflect about myself. I got confronted with a lot of feedback, sometimes more than I felt comfortable with, making me aware of all my blindspots: being not focused enough to drive productivity, not willing to give away responsibility, too perfectionist, not always open for other perspectives, not data driven enough… uff there are many and I’m working on them as much as I can. Don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing chance to grow. Is it always easy? no.

However, the huge challenge in leadership is rather about others: creating an environment where people can thrive. Thrive in terms of ambition, ownership and business mindset, personal growth and development, team work and collaboration. It sounds like a no brainer, yet I haven’t mastered this challenge 100% — which makes me realise that I need to keep developing my leadership skills to be able to provide this environment to my teams, while it sometimes would be easier to simply push for results on a topic level.

Now, all of these uncomfortable experiences as well as the successes, fruitful conversations, eye-opening discussions, support of peers & leads, belief in my strengths and potential… have lead me to where I am right now.

I am a lucky cookie to be able to work with so many talented people on topics we’re absolutely passionate about while staying assured that trivago won’t leave me in my comfort zone for too long. Can’t wait for the next learning experience!