Some Insights I'd Tell My Younger Self About Leadership

What would I tell my younger self at the point I was starting my leadership journey? 🤔👣

That's the topic of today's Hacking Academia video 🎥 – I like to do the more philosophical ones on a Friday afternoon! 🧘‍♂️🌤️

I, like most people, am a "leader in learning" 📚 – it never stops. That said, it's been a pretty packed 15 years of learnings, mistakes, insights and tips from others 💡, and this is a small fraction of what I think I would tell my younger self about what I've learnt about leadership... so far.

Things like:

🔥 that it's simultaneously one of the most fulfilling but also most challenging things you can do

📅 it's not just about enacting the "grand visions" – a lot of leadership is about turning up, even at those toughest times

🧭 that, perhaps moreso than most other things, it's a continuous learning journey: what you learnt as an individual contributor only has limited transferability to leading a group, and then as that group grows in scale, you need to learn lots more at each stage

🤝 interdependence – you will increasingly rely on those around you, as they will on you – anything where you're the critical cog for everything is not a recipe for successful leadership

🪟 transparency and consultation – both are important, but are constrained due to realities in many situations. I've grown to particularly be a fan of transparency – not everyone will agree, but everyone should understand the grounds under which decisions were made

💔 self-care and empathy "limits": you cannot afford to completely and utterly dedicate your emotional self to every challenge going on – you will break – and you serve no-one if you're a wreck yourself. This can be especially difficult transition for small group leaders who are used to completely pitching in to the utmost extent to look after their (very small) number of members

⚠️ beware the "always right" trope, but you do need to be mostly right, as often as possible. If you're continuously screwing up, it's possibly a sign that you're out of your depth and need to step back and pick up some more skills and experience

🛠️ authentic technical experience: no experience at all, or a deep tech expert in the area you're leading? I'm in the middle on this one: you want to have, or deliberately acquire, at least some deep technical knowledge in the area

⚖️ bad management negates good leadership – and often you don't have the luxury of separating the two

🌬️ the increasing role and importance of soft influence

👟 "take a step in their shoes": leading is a great way to generate understanding of and empathy for those who lead you

🌈 the tricky balancing act between optimism and reality

Hope you enjoy it – feel free to share what you would tell your younger self about leadership! 😊

💻 YouTube link: https://youtu.be/EVcck_ouEsQ

Thanks to Sean Di Lizio for the candid photo! 📸

#Leadership #HackingAcademia #management #softskills