TMAI #214: Leadership: Always be Learning & Teaching.

My son returns from school and I ask him: How were the results of your math final?

He replies: I got 100 out of 100.

I pause.

He rushes to add: And, before you ask, there were no bonus questions!

I smile and say: Well done, Sweetie. And, I kiss his forehead.

Two things.

My son knows me and my expectations: You have to always try and push yourself to the max. Getting a good score is not good enough. If there are bonus points to be earned, put in the extra effort required to earn those points.

He also knows... It is not the perfect score that I care about, it is that he pushes himself in terms of learning, preparation and doing his best in the test, and to prepare enough to go for the bonus points.

If that results in a good score, that is, well, good.

If putting in his best effort yields less than a good score, that is ok. It is the effort that matters.

This has been my fundamental "leadership" strategy with both our kids: You are expected to work hard, be self-driven, and strive to do a little better than you did the last time.

In exchange, they have the freedom to manage their schedule/life. My spouse and I have never checked the status of their homework or their robotics code or hackathon project preparation. I'm never worried if my son's spending half a day playing video games.

Work hard. Always be learning. Manage your life so that the prior two are true.

(In a life-span context this "leadership" posture is a 50-year experiment. So far so good, but only time will tell if at 50 the kids are happy humans - our macro goal.)

I'd be remiss if I did not emphasize that like all children everywhere, our kids have strengths and weaknesses. They are incredibly driven and well behaved at school - and they refuse to get up on the weekends on time and only eat mushrooms with much complaining!

I'm going to use two phrases below, please allow me to define them.

A gross simplification but... There are two skills clusters required to be successful in a professional environment:

Technical skills are those that are required to produce high-quality output in a job. Ex: Data analysis, effective selling, on-time truck scheduling, smart accounting, deep knowledge of customer service drivers, SEC regulation shenanigans, etc., etc. Whatever your job technically requires you excel at - including critical thinking.

Organizational advancement skills are those that are required to more effectively function in a modern organization to achieve more influence and career advancement (MONEY!). Ex: Your office politics, changing yourself so you fit in, how to manage up layers of bosses, tips and tricks to get promoted, psychological safety, etc. etc. Elements, usually behavioral, you require to demonstrate organizational impact (or the perception of having delivered impact).

Another simplification but... Individuals usually obsess only about technical skills (they should not), leaders usually only obsess about organizational advancement skills (they should not).

Let's get back to leadership...

It might surprise you - or maybe not - that I bring the same fundamental leadership approach to work with me.

My explicit goal for the team I lead is for it to be a place where each person can be the best professional version of themselves.

For this to happen, I commit to the team that our environment will be the most intense learning experience they'll have since they left university (with the assumption that that was intense!). Intense learning is supercritical to being able to be the best version of ourselves over time.

For this to happen, I commit to being a teacher. Not the how to manage office politics and massage egos on your march upwards - though personal bruises over time have taught me that this is extremely important. Rather, the here's how to do analysis xyz better and here's what I know about effective storytelling from my experiments and proactively teaching from the small portfolios of skills I have.

For this to happen, I commit to finding hard problems for the individual and the team to solve together - that is how you learn, that is how you become the best version of yourself.

For this to happen, I commit to working hard in the trenches with them rather than dumping problems in their lap to solve and then floating around taking credit for their solutions.

For all of the above to happen, I commit to setting super high expectations for myself and doing the same for each member of the team. Just as I do for my kids.

On that note, there are two things that are different between home and work.

1. I do not roll up my sleeves and do the technical work with my kids. (An excellent philosophy of my wife about raising self-sufficient kids.)

2. At work, I choose to encourage, even gently and persistently nudge, a team peer to grow and expand seven times. After that, I stop. Firstly because I am not a parent at work :), and growth requires intrinsic motivation - if you don't have it, you don't have it, and that is absolutely ok.

As is the case with my kids, I have strengths as a leader and a lovely collection of weaknesses. Just talk to Michelle or Jennifer or Amaya or Cathy and they'll spill the beans.

To the best of my ability, my overarching philosophy at work, for me and for our team, is:

Work hard. Always be learning. Manage your life so that the prior two are true.

A provocation for you.

If you are an individual contributor...

Are you working for a leader who can teach you to strengthen your technical skills directly, or just teach you organizational advancement skills?

Are you in a constant seek mode for new challenges (in your core area but also two steps to the left/right) or comfortable and settled?

Do you actively make the work you touch better - even when it might come from someone with expertise - or just change the font / align the cells and claim improvement?

Are you managing your professional schedule/life/opportunities, or is someone doing that for you?

In each instance above, the first choice is one that would be made by someone living these values: work hard, always be learning and manage your professional life so that the prior two are true.

And, of the four question choices above the first question choice is the most critical. If you don't work for a leader-teacher, make a mental note. Then, quietly look for positions inside or outside the company where you can work for a leader-teacher - the impact on your professional life and emotional balance will be transformative.

If you are a leader...

Are you a teacher-leader, personally contributing to strengthening the technical skills of your team?

What is the distribution of your teaching time between contributing to improving organizational advancement skills vs technical skills of individuals in your team?

Are you satisfied with the personal investment - of time - in new learning related to the technical skills required for someone to be successful in your team?

(Finance. Logistics. Sales. Customer Service. Biz Dev. Innovation. Operational Excellence. Advanced Analytics. Human Resources. Whatever your team's remit is)

As leaders grow, the difficult requirements of their role drag them away from technical competence and on to organizational advancement competence.

While solving for that reality, I've discovered that the most effective leaders figure out how to invest enough time in their personal learning of the latest technical skills - because without them, they can neither imagine the best future for their teams (vision) nor be the source of effective ideas (tactics).

We are leaders & contributors.

While I've had team leadership positions the last xx years, in some meetings I'm an individual contributor and in other meetings I'm a leader-contributor.

Hence when it comes to improving my impact, I use both of the above clusters to invest in myself and, thus, my contribution to others/company.

Regardless of your title, my analysis indicates the same would be true for you.