Why experience isn’t the answer to being a great leader.

There’s something I find a bit elitist about leadership experience - you know that feeling when someone says “oh you’ll understand after you’d had a bit more experience”.  Thanks Dave, I guess I’ll just wait then… 

It’s an impossible standard right? It’s basically saying that you’ll be a good leader once you get some experience, and until that point - I guess you just have to sit down. 

That’s a hard nope from me. Some of the most powerful ways that I’ve learnt during my leadership journey have been through methods outside of experience. Sure, I’ve learnt some pretty tough lessons through my 10 years of experience (hire slow, fire fast anyone?) BUT I’ve also been able to add incredibly powerful tools to my leadership toolkit through talking to other leaders, taking control of my own learning and running future planning sessions with myself. 

Here’s my opinion, and it can tend to be a bit polarising. Experience isn’t everything. To be a great leader, there are things that matter FAR MORE than experience. For instance, actually caring enough to WANT to be a great leader - that seems pretty important right? 

I don’t AT ALL mean to diminish the value of experience, and you will be able to learn a lot from your own experiences as they come, but in the meantime, here are my suggestions to boost your leadership skills NOW. 

Three ways to learn about leadership (that don’t involve sitting and waiting for ten years for situations to come and find you):

1. Peer sharing. 
2. Learning
3. Scenario Planning.

Our minds are so powerful, they are basically the world’s most advanced super computers. We don’t need to ‘experience’ something to be able to take learnings from it. We are adaptable and clever enough to understand a situation, think through the best ways to handle it and learn from it without having to go through it ourselves.

Peer Sharing

Fast track your leadership insights by talking to other leaders. Ideally leaders who are at different levels and stages than you so you can learn from each other. Here are some questions to ask other leaders that will help you gain insights using their experience:

• What was your most recent leadership challenge and how did you overcome it? Would you have done anything differently if you had to experience it all again?
• What do you wish you knew a year ago?
• What’s your favourite piece of leadership advice that you’ve ever received?

Don’t forget to also share your experiences! Reflect on those questions and think about how you’d answer them.

Here’s how I would answer those questions if you asked me today, you may as well start learning right now yeah?

• My most recent leadership challenge was when I had someone in my team who clearly loved the business, and their job, but they definitely did not love me. I spent months trying to make our relationship work (1:1 time, social time, advocating for them, frank conversations about it) and *spoiler alert* - this person seemed to dislike me even more. I had convinced myself that this was my problem, it was up to me to fix. I was lying awake at night replaying situations or practising my next interaction with them. Eventually this person ended up deciding to leave the business once it became clear that I wasn’t going anywhere. What I learnt after they left was INSANE. They had been talking sh*t about me to the rest of the team, to other leaders and to anyone that would listen. My team was SO HAPPY to see this person go and take the toxicity with them. My biggest learning was that I didn’t do enough, early enough. I took on the responsibility of the situation (which is good, yay to extreme ownership) but I tried to take the wrong path - my solution to ‘fix it’ was to make them happy. You can never ‘make’ a person do anything, and I had prioritised them over the rest of the team. If I was to tackle this situation again I would:
• Think about my priorities. Firstly myself and my mental health are important, then the business, and then the team. This person wasn’t good for ANY of those things.
• I would have done more due diligence within my team to understand the impact of what was happening.
• I would have thought through alternatives, rather than just becoming dedicated to one possible solution (changing their minds), I would have mapped out other options e.g. moving them to another team, moving them out of the business, putting them onto a performance improvement plan for not acting in alignment with our values of respect. 
• Ultimately, I would have moved this person out of my team as soon as possible. My team and my mental health would have been far better off and that benefits the business. Hire slow, fire fast.
• Disclaimer, this wasn’t my most recent challenge, but one where I learnt TONNES so I figured you’d find it super interesting as well.
• I wish I knew this a year ago: the impact of the pandemic on the younger generations in the workforce is so much more pronounced than I first realised and requires a drastic and quick adjustment to leadership style (more support, more flexibility, more discussions on mental health, more open forums, more opportunity for self care).
• My favourite piece of leadership advice is ‘be kind’. Kindness to yourself, the earth and others helps you make the right (or best) decision possible almost every single time.

Learning

I hope this doesn’t sound boring (i’m a huge nerd, so I froth on learning stuff) - but doing your own self paced learning can bring you amazing insights and you’re able to dive deep into topics that you feel passionate about, that fit your particular skill gaps right now or that are just super interesting.

You can try:

• Online Courses
• Books
• Podcasts
• Book Summaries (i’m a nerd, but i’m also efficient). If there’s a book I’m really interested to understand key insights from, but I’m not ready to commit to reading the whole thing, I’ll google for a book review of it. There are also websites like getabstract which provide incredible summaries of books.
• Let me toot my own horn here too plz. Check out my favourite insights from these books i’ve loved:
• 📘 Radical Candor by Kim Scott / Be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity 
• 📘 Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink 
• 📘 The Ride Of A Lifetime by Bob Iger / Lessons learned after 15 years as the CEO of Walt Disney 

Scenario Planning

This is SUCH an underrated leadership learning tool. It’s all about putting yourself through metaphorical challenges and situations, and figuring out how you’d respond. When these situations happen to you in real life, you often don’t have the time to really think through all possible options - so doing this planning when you do have time can be such a valuable resource for you. Almost like you’ve created your own “done-for-you” leadership responses.

For example:

“You have an employee who is consistently underperforming at work for the last three weeks. This is unusual for them, because they had six months of really solid, strong work. You’ve realised that you haven’t said enough to them over the last three weeks to highlight their performance so you haven’t had a proper discussion about what’s happening.”

What would you do in this situation?

Things to consider:

• What is important to you in this situation?
• What are your possible options here?
• What is the impact to your business if you do nothing?
• What information do you need to know to manage this situation? (and how much of that information do you have/don’t have).
• What are your personal values and how can you act in alignment to them in this situation?
• What are the possible outcomes of your chosen response/s? Would you be happy with them?

Do your answers change if any of this information is added to the situation? Why?

• Your employee has previously asked you for a raise.
• Your employee has a very sick partner/loved one at home.
• Your employee started working with one of your new clients three weeks ago.

 Once you have your answers, you can also bounce your thoughts with another leader or a trusted person OR you could even have these scenario planning sessions together with a group of peers.

Why don't you give some of these a whirl - and let me know how you go!

If you've made it this far, call me impressed! I LOVE that you're obsessed with growing as a leader. Are you looking for someone awesome to help you grow your leadership? 

 👋 Hi! I’m Victoria. I’ve got a pretty epic online leadership course to help entrepreneurs and leaders become "please-let-me-work-for-you" bosses and confidently command the room, inspire your team and be the epic leader you wish you'd had. You’ll be delivered incredible leadership insights and learnings to supercharge your leadership growth, you’ll have 1:1 personalised coaching with me - PLUS you’ll join a group of other interesting leaders so you can share experiences together.

Apply for the next intake here: Epic Self Leadership Program