Everyone has the space to be a leader

Everyone, on every team, in every context, has the capacity and space to be a leader.  I want to share my most formative experience in this direction; one that changed the how for me and my work forever.  I have worn a lot of different hats in my career as I am sure many others have as well.  In many of those roles, as an individual contributor, you feel the pressure of delivering without sufficient control.  You feel like you are always cooking in someone else’s kitchen looking to make the best of it but not quite at peace because if it was your kitchen you’d have the layout, tools and resources exactly as you like.  I felt this multiple times in my career and it is a frustrating spot to be in.  I am going to tell a story of how I saw my way out of this to a different perspective and way of working.  I want to say up front this is not a universal tale that will apply to all (nothing does, every circumstance is unique).  I do think the main ideas apply and can help frame thinking if not actions for a great many.

Years ago, I was the new kid in a new role.  I had been successful in a series of roles and now was looking to plant a flag in some fresh ground so the company I had joined could start to actually use the mountains of data they generated to make real decisions.  I was excited at the challenge and the impact I knew the work would make.  This is the kind of green field “builders” talk of all the time.  It was so exciting and a bit intimidating as well- as all good opportunities are!  I was put into an architect role, and in this role the assumption was very much a working/doing architect.  Here is the thing I realized as I worked to connect with the business and understand what was most needed.  No one knew how to even conceptualize what working differently looked like.  The work-arounds, gaps and painful processes had been so normalized into the culture it just became, “what we do here”.  Dissatisfaction is the only driver of real change and the lack of a “better way” kept people content; the company was successful so why rock the boat?  I was not getting resistance, just a lack of enthusiasm for why the work was needed.

On top of the cultural apathy I had a distinct lack of direction from leadership.  This was also not due to lack of support or buy-in- instead it was a simple lack of understanding on what was needed and how to get there.  Leadership and even my direct boss really didn’t have concrete direction for me because all this was new.  This left me in a bind.  I wanted to build things and help folks work differently and I was conscious of “staying in my lane” and not overstepping my authority such as it was.  I think ICs face this daily; they have some definition of scope and the question is how to make an impact from within that scope.  A solid leader is a partner in making  that happen and we all know that is not always available so without that support it can feel a bit defeating.

One Friday afternoon a lightbulb popped in my head.  I was there to do a job and part of why I was there was to show the broader org the way- to help them see a different way to work and to give them tools to make that possible.  I was not there to simply wrangle data and build reports.  Doing this was going to require me to step up as an educator, architect, report builder and whatever else was needed to make this idea a reality.  The list pictured here was written when I decided all this was not going to happen by magic.  I was going to need to step in and take up space, do what I felt was necessary and help the broader team understand why.  The items on the list are not significant - they represent my thinking through some logical next steps the very next morning (yes, a Saturday…) when I was so energized I had to dig in and move the ball forward then and there.  While the tasks are small in the grand scheme of things- the list itself is everything.  It is a pivot to a new way of thinking.  I could see the solution and knew the tools, people and technology that would be needed to get there.  I had shifted my strategy and my thinking about why I was there; my “why” became to show where we were going, why it was important to go there and how to get it done.  For the first time in my career I was stepping up to lead in a holistic way.  I couldn’t wait for explicit (role-based) authority.  The fact is the Leadership had put me where they felt I was best able to execute and deliver value.  How to do that was mine to figure out.  Rather than relying on my role to pull people in line with what I was doing I relied on passion, transparent communication and a string of positive results to influence the direction of the overall org.

I have kept this little list on my desk ever since as a reminder that in most instances it comes down to trusting yourself and your instincts to make that decision, choose a direction, do the work, invest in that employee or even to know when to say “no”.  The list was an afterthought for months.  You never see how important these things are at the time.  I found it when I was cleaning out my desk for a move to a new office but that’s a story for another day.