Today, we went to our kids’ elementary school’s “Back to School” night. As I was leaving, Isabel’s English teacher stopped me to gush about Isabel. Apparently, she took upon herself last month to
- Organize their classroom’s Chinese and English book library
- Got a few of her girlfriends to help her
- Together came up with rules for how the students can checkout books and where returns should be placed when done.
- Held an opening ceremony in class to introduce the new library and process.
Everyone loved it and it’s working well since. I was more than impressed. I didn’t share this story to brag about my own child. The reason I shared this story is to help you think about how to develop leadership skills. It’s never too late to start. What it takes is
- Passion – You need to have passion for wanting to make a difference in something. If you just want to develop leadership skills just to get promoted, you will not likely become a good leader.
- Having a vision that makes a positive impact – In Isabel’s case it was to organize the library so everyone can better enjoy finding and reading more books
- Ability to motivate others to help – You can do this as a team leader or an individual contributor. It’s not about your official title, but whether you can inspire others with your vision and know how to ask them for help
- Work together to take action – Vision without action is a daydream. It’s not enough to have a vision (a creative solution to a problem) but also you need to put in the work to execute and hopefully get a bunch of people to help you. The more people that want to help you, the bigger the problem you can solve together
- Share credit – just because you came up with the idea doesn’t mean you are the hero. The collective group who made it happen are all heroes.
The key to developing leadership skills is practice, learn, practice. You can develop leadership skills at work and in your personal life. You just need to be proactive in looking for opportunities. For example,
- Organize a school camping trip
- Volunteer to organize an office carnival
- Help your leader prep for an all hands meeting
In the last few weeks, I shared two podcasts on leadership skills
Today, I will leave you with our 3rd and final podcast in this leadership skills series – How to develop your leadership skills – 8 min. I hope you find it useful and start looking for opportunities tomorrow to practice, learn and practice to master your leadership skills
Your Comments: What is your biggest challenge in developing your leadership skills? I would love to hear it and see if I can help you.
Audio Transcription
Lei: Let’s shift to the third part then of how do you think people develop leadership skills? How do we help people now that we kind of know why you should have it, what exactly it is…well how do you develop it? What exactly is the best way to think about developing leadership skills?
Jaime: I think two things…one is understanding what resources are out there for you that can offer value. And the reason why I say that is…and I’m not just trying to plug this, but this blog did help me, right?
Lei: Yeah.
Jaime: Because there were things in there that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing right.
Lei: It’s helping; I’ve written most of the blog, it even helps me. Because when I actually am in a situation, when you can’t see clearly…I search on my own blog and I read my own words and I go, “Wow, yeah, that’s actually…I’ve got to remember that.”
Jaime: And then the second thing is the practice. What I mean are these small things can…its practicing certain things that are skills really and understanding. I didn’t even know how to write a proper email managing upwards before. And you’d be surprised, a lot of people don’t know. They think they know, but there are so many subtleties.
Lei: They haven’t seen an example.
Jaime: They haven’t seen an example.
Lei: And all the differences there could be.
Jaime: Well, exactly. And all the nuances that could go, even if it’s just a one little paragraph…it could be…you could be writing one little paragraph that is infinitely more powerful than like the four, five or a full page of detailed notes that would change the perception of what your boss has to you.
Lei: Yeah, and that’s some of the stuff we’ll get into when we talk about managing upward in a different session. I think that’s actually one of the key nuances that people understand, but don’t quite know what to do.
Jaime: So that’s what I’m pointing out…it’s the subtleties that I didn’t even know about existing when it started being brought to light. Like, “Oh wow, there is a lot to this game that I don’t know. And I don’t even see.”
Lei: I think besides practice and resources, one thing I would add to that is mindset. Because a lot of times I think if you went to an average school and you think you are a worker, you’re going to always be that. I think a mindset is you are a leader. You can be a leader. There is no limit to who you are and what you can get to. Because the limit is the thing that we place on ourselves. “Oh wait, I only did this” “I can only beat this much.” No, that’s not true. You can be as much as you want. And one of the things is you are a leader…you’re just on a path to becoming a better one. And so, in a way, when you look at your job through a different lens and say, “Today I am a team member. I am a business analyst for a product team. But you are a leader already. So in that role, how can you contribute? How can you provide perspectives that maybe your product owner doesn’t have? How can you help in a way that you’re not helping today? And those are the type of things that I think you can more tactically look at. Or if you are already a manager of people, well how are you managing those people? How are you serving them to develop them as more powerful team members? And how are you providing vision for them that could inspire them to do more?
Jaime: Yeah, I absolutely think…I absolutely believe…it’s not even think. It is absolutely a fact that you’ve seen great leaders come out of schools you never even heard of.
Lei: Absolutely.
Jaime: My school included.
Lei: Seventy-five percent of CEOs out there, not from top 20 schools. Well, not even from school…they quit.
Lei: Yeah, for sure.
Jaime: Especially in this environment of the startup world, right?
Lei: Absolutely.
Jaime: That has had companies that have had exponential growth.
Lei: So, leaders that never finished college.
Jaime: They never finished college; I mean they’re very famous ones too. So, it’s…and then you have the ones from schools you’ve never even heard of…like University of Waterloo. I never heard of that. And one of the top leaders who are a VC now, who owns part of the Gold State Warriors, was from that school and you never even heard of him.
You can’t even pronounce his name; most people can’t even pronounce his name. It’s kind of funny, but extraordinary leader. And he’s gotten results.
Lei: So I think where you’re saying anybody can do it.
Jaime: Anyone can absolutely do it.
Lei: And it starts today. So I would say that is super important because then it gives you different mindset altogether about what is possible.
Jaime: Yeah. And just for me as an example, I had no idea what I was going to do for work until the age of 28. And when I reached 28, then I realized that I can’t go back to school for this because there was no school teaching this, that was the first.
Lei: The online marketing.
Jaime: Yeah.
Lei: Because it just came out.
Jaime: It just came out. And then the second thing was there was just no one giving me the time to teach, so I had to learn it myself. But you can just do it, you can just figure it out and definitely some people…I always thought that I was just going to be a 9-5 guy.
Go to work, live an average life, this and that, but some breaks went my way and some people took some interest and coached me and it completely changed…like 180 degrees…my life.
Lei: But you had a spark of passion for something.
Jaime: Correct.
Lei: I think you inspired people…it isn’t just you were lucky and other people took you under their wings. And if another person isn’t lucky and meet people.
Jaime: Well, you make your own luck too, right?
Lei: Right. You had a certain commitment and interest in how you were going to build your intellectual capacity, how you were going to contribute to the world. In this case it was online marketing. You were so passionate for it that…I know you told me this story.
You didn’t…you are a marketing major, but because it wasn’t taught in school, you stood in front of this guy’s work for a month, asking him to teach you, just what is online marketing? What is this? And he said, “No” for the first month. And that takes effort
Jaime: Well we eventually went into business together because I bothered him so much.
Lei: Exactly. But what I’m saying is that it does take your own initiative, and that actually in itself is leadership skills. That comes from…at the very, very basic level…it’s initiative. It’s actually taking initiative of something that isn’t given to you; you’re not responding to an order…you’re doing something on your own because of something that you care about.
And that fundamentally…if you just follow that basic principle and do that, in any job, at any level today…then you’re already a leader, just on your way to becoming a better one.
Jaime: Well, what was interesting was people would ask me, “Why are you doing that? Why do you keep waiting?” Like he wouldn’t even show up to work sometimes and I was waiting there and the person would come out and tell me that, you know…I was looking…I was disappointed and I would just walk away and say, “Okay, I’ll come back the next day.” But, what it was was…
Lei: That’s amazing.
Jaime: I would do it because I felt it was such a liberating feeling for me to realize what I wanted to do. And I said I will try to learn this any way possible. And the reason why I bring that up is because it is a liberating feeling. You don’t mind…in my opinion…you won’t mind trying to learn it. If you’re passionate about it, you’re going to do those extra things that…because what it comes down to is what are you going to do that others aren’t willing to do?
Lei: And I think there’s going to be a whole different session we should have with you about how to find your passion.
Jaime: Yes.
Lei: Because you and I are very different on how we found our passions. But I think I would like to conclude this session. Thank you very much for joining me.
Jaime: Thanks a lot.
Lei: I hope this was helpful.
Jaime: It’s enormously helpful to me.
Everybody possesses the skills to become a leader but not everyone has the willpower to pursue leadership. I agree with the article, that the development of leadership skills requires practice and thus a lot of self motivation. Organisations need to think about how they encourage their people to grow and become the leaders of tomorrow.