Professor Daniel Rottig recently invited me to speak to his FAU Executive Business School class about Leadership.
Rather than the usual presentation, I took a different approach. I ran the class through my “career walk” from my first job as a management trainee to my career as CEO of several multinationals and finally starting my own business.
At each step of the walk, I thought back to milestone events – leaders, decisions I made, opportunities.
Who we are today, is an amalgamation of the experiences we have, the choices we make, and the people we connect with (and what we choose to make of that). Some of the lessons I learned along the way:
When we focus on what we value and what excites our passion , our path is true. The sooner we begin the process of self-awareness, of understanding what is truly important to us, the more our path aligns with our aspirations.
At the end of the day, great leaders know what they stand for and they bring that everywhere, all the time. Into the boardroom. At home. Everywhere. Being guided principally by what we stand for, will lead us to become who we really want to be.
Don’t always pursue the job. The person you work for is as important as the job (I could argue it is more important). I learned that the opportunity to work for a great leader is one of the greatest gifts we can receive in our career. Several times I made decisions to work for a leader, rather than the “better” job. Never regretted it for a minute!
Any path we take is about reinvention – it will either happen to us, or we take the bull by the horns and make reinvention part of our journey’s DNA
It is all about empathy – How we look at ourselves, feel about ourselves, drives how we look at others, treat others.
How people respond to us is based on the vulnerability and trust we are willing to put out there. High performing teams are built on trust.
That starts with the leader. Be vulnerable, be the real you – your transparency invokes trust and that in turn generates transparency and performance from the team.
As leaders, when we look back on our journey, we find that often we pursued our career to attain that position of authority – but when we get there, we realize it is all about influence. Authority only gets you so far.
Great leaders take risks to allow their people to gain experience. A little leeway, a little slack that we give to an employee to gain experience translates into a very big impact to them. Truth is, we are taking very little risk, but the experience our employees gain is huge.
Go wide, not deep … early.
Take advantage of experiences and opportunities that come your way. Seek them out. If the company is offering an opportunity our of your comfort zone, think hard about taking it. Gaining broad experience early makes us better leaders, leaders with broader perspective.
Sometimes we get on the fast-track and it feels good. But stepping off, taking a few laterals, learning a new function, living in a different place…these are opportunities that broaden you. And that builds forever.
Often we don’t make our opportunities. ( In fact more often than not we are wrong about what makes us happy) We have to have our eyes wide open and grab the opportunities around us.
Several times in my career, I was asked to take on a position that I really was not too excited about. But I respected the people who were giving me the opportunity and every time, these were turning points n my career.
Great Leaders build great teams. They do so by hiring talent and then investing heavily in the team working together to drive results. Talent is not just experience. It includes skills and style.
When we bring a new person onto our team, we have to think about what they contribute, which gaps they fill in our goal for higher team performance.
Your team-members need to understand clearly that they have two jobs. The job you hired them for, and the job of being a constructive, productive, challenging member of your management team. It is not enough to achieve the goals in teh position you were hired into. That is half the job. The other haf is taking ownership of the team’s results.
The balance sheet is not just about profit. Think the three Ps – Profit, People, Planet. Use your leadership role to impose a socially conscious imperative.
Figure out that delivering shareholder results goes hand in hand with improving the communities where we work; understand that the products and services we sell can be targeted to have social impact, that this shared value can make your business more competitive and make the world a better place.
It is not about work/life balance. It is about balance. Our work is not separate from our life. It is a big part of it. Understand what is important to you across all dimensions. Don’t think of your life as a series of tradeoffs, but rather strive to create a life that fulfills.
In order to do all those things you want to do (the bucket list), understand that you have to make space to do so. Wishing and aspirations don’t get you anywhere.
Want to meditate? Carve out the hour in the day. Want to write a book? If you really want to, you will make the time. Make space in your life so that opportunities have room to come in.
Take time out every day to slow down, reflect. Meditate, take a walk. Spend time looking inward to know yourself better each day. And be driven in all you do by that.
Read. A lot. About everything and anything.
