3 Leadership Lessons from Leading and Contributing to Growing Organizations

Teams are the backbone of successful organizations whether they are in their infancy or are established. My sophomore year of college I was elected to the executive board of Phi Gamma Nu, a professional development organization at The Fisher College of Business. PGN was young and growing at a rapid pace, our team was focused on building the foundation and framework for the future of the organization. The executive board all had specific areas of responsibility based on their position but what made us successful was collaborating as a team to accomplish goals. We created a high performing cross functional team that broke the traditional roles and responsibilities. Together, we collaborated to define the mission, vision, values of the organization, implement technology such as Slack, and create a personalized recruitment strategy to grow the organization. Without the team making cohesive decisions, backed by each other, the organization would not have thrived during a completely virtual year of programming or have grown to nearly one hundred members. 

This might seem counterintuitive but as a leader you should listen more than you speak - it is about your people not you. Leaders should listen for discovery and connection. Listening for discovery allows a leader to understand what is going on in your team or organization. Listening for connection is a key to building empathy and trust. These two types of listening are critical to understanding the needs of your team. My experience building an ambassador team for the Dean’s Leadership Academy at Fisher, listening was at the forefront. Co-creator, Shaden Elwazani, and myself were focused on listening for discovery to learn about the needs and experiences of the program. Listening for connection came into play when we were recruiting ambassadors to join the team. We listened with the intent of connection to create trust among prospective ambassadors as we built out the team. At the end of the day, listening is a key to truly understanding your people enabling you to be a successful leader. 

Likely, at some point in your life or career you have been told to develop your weaknesses. This might have been your dribbling skills in youth soccer or programming skills at your first job out of college, however I challenge this idea of working on developing your weaknesses. Instead, I urge you to focus your strengths and build a team that has skill sets that complement your strengths. In my case, I joined a startup company, The Elite Leadership Alliance, during my final year of college as a content editor and creator. My strength is leadership knowledge and content creation. The leader of the organization engaged me to lead the content development for the platform not social media marketing, administrative tasks, or selling the product. There are team members that those are their strengths and that is the role on the team they play. At the end of the day, a team built on strengths goes farther together.