What kind of leader do you want to be?
Reflections on leadership — and 4 steps to find out what kind of leader you want to be
Before we get started, a note of caution: by no means do I want to imply with this article that I am an expert in leadership.
Quite the contrary, my leadership journey has only just started— at least in the corporate world.
What motivated me to write about leadership is that I personally value the perspective of someone bringing a pair of fresh eyes on a topic. That’s why I decided to share some reflections on my experiences in leadership.
It started out as just writing down my thoughts and unintentionally ended up in an exercise that consisted of four distinct steps:
- Reflecting on past experiences
- Identifying current challenges
- Describing my role models
- Defining my inner leadership compass
I will now take you through these 4 steps and hopefully, it inspires you to figure out what kind of leader you want to be. If not, then I hope you’ll simply enjoy reading about my thoughts and experiences with leadership.
Let’s dive in.
It’s never too early to start
My first real experience being a leader was probably in high school. Out of pure curiosity, I signed up to be the chairwoman of the student organization in my last year of high school — leading a team of 6 students with whom we planned various events and initiatives throughout the year.
The highlight of this year was organizing the annual high school dance party as the head of the organizing committee. We sold 600+ tickets and were managing a budget of over 20'000 CHF. The team involved in this organization was 30 volunteers strong — all high school students. The event was a full success and I had learned many important leadership lessons early on.
I am sparing you the pictures from 2011 — really no one wants to be visually reminded of their high school years
In 2014, when I had finished my bachelor's degree, I embarked on another volunteering leadership journey by organizing my sports association’s bi-annual evening program which attracts 700+ visitors over a whole weekend.
As the head of the organizing committee, I needed to make sure 50+ volunteers were informed about tasks, responsibilities, and overall strategy. The planning started one year before the actual event and we developed everything from the idea, strategy, program, marketing, videos, and much more. I learned a whole bunch of skills for life on this project — and I was physically and mentally pushed to my limits.
Additionally, at the event itself, I was leading through the evening as a moderator which was probably the most challenging and at the same time most rewarding public speaking gig I ever did. I discovered — even though I was nervous as hell —that I liked public speaking.
For both of these experiences, I was able to build on a foundation that others had laid in the years before, which was extremely helpful. I could take what was there for the things that worked well and explore new ideas where there was room for improvement and experimentation.
I was able to grow and learn in a safe environment with great responsibility and impact. These experiences have shaped me forever and have shown me early on that I enjoyed being in a leadership role. Looking back, it was also a lot of fun mostly due to the people involved — in both cases I benefited from a truly fantastic team.
What I learned from these experiences…
- realizing that leadership is hard but rewarding work
- involving the right people and asking the right questions
- taking quick decisions and finding solutions when things go wrong
- the importance of effective communication
…all in the context of event organization, of course.
No one is born a master
When I look back on these past experiences, it’s no surprise that I am somehow magically drawn towards opportunities where I can manage or lead a project or team. In more recent times, I have become a co-managing director of a growing non-profit organization, and I also run my own small yoga and acroyoga business in my free time.
At work, I am excited about managing complex projects that involve cross-functional collaborations, as well as leading and implementing process improvements for the team.
My more recent experiences with leadership however have also revealed plenty of shortcomings and failures. So here are my top 3 challenges when it comes to leadership that I am currently struggling with — not necessarily with resolutions, just describing what I am experiencing and how I am trying to make sense of it:
1. Delegating — even if it means a temporary decrease in quality
This one is almost too obvious. I tend to have pretty high standards for the work that I do and I apply these same standards to others when I ask them to take over a task. When these standards are not met, it is often due to my ineffective communication resulting in a lack of trust going forward. But that’s totally on me — not on others.
It happened already more than once that I handed over a task to someone — assuming that it is obvious what to expect as a result — only to learn that it was obvious just to me. Communicating not only the task but also the expectated result does not only help the person doing it, but it also helps me being able to let go, trust and be more at ease.
It also makes it easier to give feedback in case the communicated expectations are not fullfiled as they don’t come as a surprise. All in all, I have found that it is a much more sustainable process to include expectations, but I am still struggling to consistently follow through with it — and sometimes end up doing it myself instead.
2. Taking decisions — even if not everyone is happy with it (yet)
The belief that a solution I present has to please everyone involved, is one that is deeply rooted and that I have identified as a limiting factor in my growth as a leader. I am actively working on letting go of the idea that I can always make it work perfectly for everyone involved.
I also realized that taking maybe unpopular but important decisions is much easier for me when I am under pressure. I believe this has to do with the fact that in stressful situations, this limiting belief of having to please everyone simply doesn’t have enough time to bubble up to the surface.
3. Listen to my intuition — even if I do not have all the facts to back it up
I also struggle to voice my opinion if it is not backed up by hard facts. There are situations of course where hard facts are required, but especially in my work in product design, there sometimes is not enough data to back up a decision. Sometimes, you have to listen to your gut and even create something completely new. And be okay with validating the solution afterward through testing.
Intuition is a weird thing for me that I can unlock fairly easily outside of my day job. But at work, I often feel that I cannot fully trust my intuition — even though I found that it is often quite accurate. I hope that this is just a matter of practice and gaining more confidence in my intuition.
3. Witnessing leadership
But now enough of me… let’s focus on some truly amazing leaders. In order to figure out what kind of leader I want to be, I was also thinking about role models. I’d like to share here with you here three leaders in software engineering that I look up to from a distance — and why.
#1 Sarah Drasner
Sarah is a Director of Engineering at Google and undoubtedly one of the most respected (and funniest) voices in tech (Twitter). I have enjoyed multiple of her online courses about design and software engineering topics and I am deeply impressed by the way she shows up as a professional — and as a human being.
Sarah’s leadership qualities that I admire:
- effective communication and presentation skills
- not being afraid to call out what needs to be said
- doing everything with a sense of humor and lightness
- being vulnerable, approachable and humble
#2 Gergely Orosz
Gergely is a former Engineering Manager at Uber and successfully publishes a blog called The Pragmatic Engineer. He has an incredible sense of capturing interesting and intriguing topics that people in our industry care about. In his analysis and writing, he never settles for scratching on the surface but goes so deep that it almost hurts. Through his blog, I have gained a whole new understanding of some of the mechanisms in my work environment.
Gergely’s leadership qualities that I admire:
- delivering surprising and thought provoking results
- sensing the right timing for a particular topic or question
- active listening and not making any assumptions
- connecting the dots and creating new insights
#3 Jack Dangermond
Jack is the co-founder and CEO of Esri, the company that I am working at since 5+ years. Since 1969 and together with his wife Laura, he has been leading the company — which is still privately owned — to great success. In 2018, I had the honor to meet him personally when he visited our R&D office in Zurich, and it was a profound experience to witness his leadership style.
Jack’s leadership qualities that I admire:
- asking important questions and truly caring about others
- recalling every little detail and make others feel seen
- staying on top of things and keeping the big picture in mind
- compassionate communication style at eye-level
There are many other leaders that I could have mentioned here, but these three have had the biggest impact on me in recent years and they have changed how I perceive and think about leadership.
I don’t know if people ask themselves what kind of leader they want to be before they become or are recognized as a leader — or if this happens more organically. I somehow deeply feel that I want to understand and make a conscious decision about what kind of leader I want to be. But please challenge my belief if you experience this differently.
What kind of leader do you want to be?
Based on the qualities of leaders that inspire me, my current challenges and my reflections on past leadership experiences, I have set my inner leadership compass to the following direction:
I aspire to be a leader…
- who is respected and delivers meaningful results
- who is compassionate and cares about others
- who is supportive and assumes nothing
- who is determined and stands up for others
- who is articulate and communicates effectively
I intend to refine, extend and adjust this compass whenever needed, but it shall serve me as a guideline in order to evolve into the kind of leader that I want to be — for myself and for others.
As a next step, I want to work out how I can strengthen all of the above qualities with concrete actions and continued self-development. I feel extremely fortunate that I am in multiple set-ups now where I can acquire leadership skills and explore different ways to achieve these qualities. And hey, if you happen to be working with me in any of these set-ups, I’d be extremely happy to hear your feedback.
4 steps to find out what kind of leader you want to be
Now it’s your turn. Take this little exercise to define what kind of leader you want to be. It’s as simple as that:
- Step 1 — Reflecting on past experiences
Write down your past leadership experiences and lessons learned. - Step 2 — Identifying current challenges
Define your 3 biggest challenges in leadership today. - Step 3 — Describing your role models
Choose 3 role models and write down their leadership qualities. - Step 4 — Defining your inner leadership compass
Set the direction of the kind of leader you aspire to be.
Let me know what the outcome was for you when you did the exercise and if it helped you as much as it helped me. I’d love to learn about and from you. Thanks for reading along.
P.S. This exercise evolved organically from writing down my thoughts and relfections — if it resembles any method from anywhere, then that was unintentional and I honestly apologize for it. These 4 steps just seemed natural to me in my thought process.
