Over the last 5 years, I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to lead people and lead teams.  In this time, I’ve learned countless lessons the easy way and even more lessons the hard way. Well, the other day I had a conversation with a co-worker who was developing a list of questions to help people have effective one-on-one conversations with their direct reports.  To prepare for this conversation, I went through my one-on-one preparation notes and interestingly enough I started to notice a theme.  The next day, I went back through many of these notes and identified 10 leadership principles that I’ve tried my best to embody and have tried my best to pass on to the people the I lead directly and indirectly.

  1. You can’t effectively lead without preparation – As a young leader, I would dread one-on-one meetings. I would look for reasons to cancel them.  I avoided giving feedback.  I would schedule meetings for 30 minutes because I didn’t want to find ways to fill up the entire hour.  But one day it hit me, this is a manifestation of my own selfishness.  I was placing my comfort zone above their growth.  I realized that these people are counting on me and that if I did not prepare, if I did not get out of my comfort zone, then I was only letting them down.  So I started devoting about 1.5x the meeting duration a few days prior to diligently prepare.  Expectations, assessments, dialogue-eliciting questions, guidance on how to grow, etc.  I wanted to make sure I was ready and not wasting their time…during this hour and at this job reporting to me.  It wasn’t until I had this realization and started focusing on preparation did I really start to think seriously about leadership.  It wasn’t until this time that I really felt like I was having an impact.                                                                                                                                             
  2. Find your own personal leadership style – Part of being an “authentic leader” is to be self-aware and genuine, and when I think of the word “genuine” I think of being your true self. When it comes to leading people, you can’t be genuine unless you find your own leadership style.  I can’t lead like my boss and my direct reports cannot lead like me.  We won’t give feedback the same way and we won’t guide and coach people the same way.  In your one-on-one’s, are you a person that is straight to the point?  Do you ask probing questions to get people to identify areas of weakness in themselves?  Do you spend most of your time talking about the solutions to feedback?  In the day-to-day operations, to you lead by example?  Are you authoritative?  Do you lead quietly behind closed doors?  Asking these questions helped me discover my own personal leadership style, and recognizing that style and leveraging it has helped me feel much more confident and comfortable leading people.                                                                                                                                                                                                      
  3. Make empowerment a priority – Even though I would like to believe it, I know that I don’t know everything, I am not the best at everything, and I cannot really accomplish anything by myself. After gaining the maturity to have this realization, the next step for me was to figure out how to improve the capacity of the people around me.  This is the only way to improve the capacity of the whole and my own personal capacity as a leader.  It starts with being opportunistic about guiding and coaching people…looking for each and every opportunity to teach, whether it be a 2-minute conversation or scheduling an hour meeting.  In any given week with everything on my plate, it’s easy to neglect.  So I had to make empowerment a priority, I had to set aside time to think about it, because at the end of the day, I truly believe that a company is not going to move forward without the people moving forward with it.                                                                                                                                     
  4. Know how to navigate, because people are expecting it – When there is an urgent problem or challenge, people look to the leader in the room to navigate a path, to roll up their sleeves and say, “Okay team here’s what we need to do.” Navigating a path has a certain level of personal risk.  What if you are wrong?  What if your plan fails?  Leadership is difficult because often it requires you to sacrifice, to move forward into uncertainty.  Even if I do not know the answer, I need to have a crystal clear path to get to that answer.  Often this skillset is necessary even when there is not an urgent problem, but in day-to-day activities like meetings.  When a meeting is off track, not serving its purpose, going nowhere, someone has to step up to eliminate the wastefulness, determine the right objective, then determine the best way to achieve that objective in the meeting.  Leaders do this.                                                                                                                                                                         
  5. Be your own worst Devil’s Advocate – Before you present any idea or strategy, make any recommendation, give any advice, you must first argue the other side of the argument. one of the biggest failures I see in managers and leaders is that they are locked into a point of view, they are stubborn, and proceed with something that may be good but not great or even something that is bad.  But playing Devil’s Advocate on yourself allows you to come into a meeting much more open to conflict and feedback.  You’ve already gone through a process of understanding that your idea very likely has flaw or blind spots.  Knowing this allows you to hear, to listen, to focus on the problem rather than “your” solution.                                                                       
  6. Put yourself on the line for positive change – It’s easy to accept “BAU” aka business as usual. It’s easy to walk by a negative conversation without saying anything.  It’s easy only concern yourself with only the things that impact your role.  But it is very difficult to take a risk, to put yourself on the line for positive change…to see things that need to be improved, whether it has to do with quality, people, process, and then to take the initiative to improve them.  It’s difficult to confront problems or misconceptions and attempt to solve and uplift a situation.  And what’s even more difficult is to develop the “desire” to do these difficult things.  Having this desire to take on the difficult things to make a positive change, especially if you’re putting yourself out there at risk, takes courage.  To me, this is the type of courage that earns respect and makes you become a better leader.                                                                                                                                                                                  
  7. Don’t hide behind your natural leadership – I’ve met several people who had natural leadership ability, but I felt like they tried to hide it. They did not let it loose.  I’m not sure if it was because they were afraid to do the difficult things leadership requires, i.e. navigating in uncertainty, putting yourself on the line for positive change, holding peers accountable, or if they just didn’t know how to be deliberate in how to use their natural leadership ability.  When leading is a new concept, you have to consciously plan on how you can be a leader throughout your week.  Identify meetings where a leader is needed.  Identify people who need some guidance.  Purposefully seek out challenges in email strings to help solve.  In essence create a roadmap for yourself so that you can expose your natural leadership.  Part of hiding most likely is confidence as well, and creating this plan will help to build confidence.                                                                                                                                            
  8. Engage in peer leadership – Just because someone is at your “peer” level doesn’t mean you can’t be a leader to them. Leadership is down, sideways, and up.  It starts with setting examples of doing things the right way, not falling into the status quo trap.  on my team recently, we had some difficulty getting people to use project plans.  one person on my team was exceptional at this and was actually meeting my expectations.  I told him that, done the right way, exposing what he is doing to his peers and the benefits of doing so will set an example for them to follow.  In meetings where there is no supervisor and just peers, it’s easy to get in the “we’re all the same level” trap and not step up when a leader is needed.  Forget that these are your peers, if you see this happening, guide the conversation to a solution.  However, you can’t expect people on your peer level to just come to you asking for advice.  You have to open up the two-way street first.  You must lay ground work.  For example, if you go to them with a problem you are working through for their perspective, here is what might happen:
    • First, you will have a better chance at solving the problem the best way
    • Second, as you explain the problem, you demonstrate your competency
    • Third, you reveal to them that you are vulnerable and that you are open to seeking other’s advice
    • Finally, next time they have a problem, they think of you as a person to come seek advice from
  9. Be emotionally agile – one of the most internally insightful articles I’ve read in the last few years was one by Susan David and Christina Congleton called “Emotional Agility.” In order to be an effective leader you have to be able to identify your emotions, face them head on, and label them as what they are, i.e. simply emotions.  But here is something I never thought about before reading this…once you do this, you can see the particular emotion you are feeling for what it is, that is, a source of data that you can use to solve a problem.  This process allowed me to connect dots and solve problems that I might just ignore or think were unsolvable.  If I am “frustrated,” I need to label that emotion, use it as data, get to the source of my frustration and turn it into relief.                                                                                                                                                                                 
  10. Connect and be vulnerable – Being vulnerable is one of the more difficult leadership challenges for me.  But I know it’s important because I truly believe that I cannot gain real trust with my team until I openly share personal experiences, connect with them on their level, and empathize with them about their problems.  Obviously there are certain lines that can’t be crossed, but a truly transformative organizational culture requires openness.  I have to let them know that I need them as much as they need me.  I have to give them permission to hold me accountable, and tell them I want them to feel free to give me any feedback directly.  But this is not enough.  It’s a great start, but to truly gain trust, I have to believe in them, and more importantly show that I believe in them.  Showing requires vulnerability.  on the surface, being vulnerable might be counter to taking and authoritative position to navigate through a difficult problem.  But you can’t go it alone, you will need help, so this demands you are capable of asking for it.