It's been a while since I posted, but I've been working hard in the background to think about what I want Leadership101 to look like. I believe emphatically that most leadership content fails because it's too abstract. That is, it's difficult to connect to real life. This week's newsletter will attempt to address that. I'd love your feedback on it.
At some point recently, you were very good at your job, good enough that now you manage a team.
And then, quietly, something shifted. The skills that made you good — the expertise, the instinct to get in and fix things, the ability to just deliver — turned out to be only loosely related to what was now being asked of you. Leading people is not a more senior version of doing the work. It's a different job entirely. Unfortunately, as I've written about previously, most people find this out after the promotion, not before.
That's what this newsletter is about.
I've been thinking carefully about who reads it. Not in the abstract — but specifically. The people who open it on a Tuesday morning somewhere in the middle of figuring this out, who could use one clear idea rather than another reading list. It's very challenging to take something that you've read that somebody did somewhere and apply it to your own situation. The process of learning a concept, reflecting on how you can use it and applying it in your own world is a crucial process. Effective intelligence is defined as taking knowledge that you have and applying it in the real world towards a problem for which there is no playbook. It's an essential life skill and something I believe all successful people are good at.
So, rather than general thoughts or lessons, I wanted to do something different. I've created five personas from different walks of life. While they have different roles, the challenges that they face are common. My intention with these five individuals is to share stories and scenarios that they face, draw out the lessons from them, and help you apply them in the real world. I want to stress that they are entirely fictional and have not been created with anyone in mind.
Let's meet them.
Marcus is an AVP at a global investment bank. He was the most prepared person in every room for three years. His promotion felt earned — because it was. What nobody told him is that being brilliant at the job and helping six other people be brilliant at the job are entirely different skills.
Nia is a team leader in local government, managing a team of nine doing genuinely difficult work for people who have very little. She cares more than almost anyone in the building, and that care is still her greatest strength. What she's discovering is that it also makes it harder to hold boundaries, make difficult calls, and lead her team rather than simply carry them.
Jamie is the creative director of a twelve-person design studio who never planned to become a manager — the studio just grew until the role found them. They still think of themselves as a maker, and every day in management feels like time away from the work they love. The hardest thing Jamie is learning is that getting great work out of other people is a different creative challenge than doing it yourself.
Dan is an operations manager brought in from outside to modernise a family manufacturing firm that has been running the same way for three generations. He has the title, the remit, and the track record. What he didn't expect is that authority on paper and authority in practice are two very different things — he's learning that family brings a completely different dynamic to business.
Rosa is a programme manager at a mental health charity, leading a team of eight who came into the work for exactly the same reason she did. The problem is that shared values are a starting point, not a substitute for direction. She's learning that getting people who each care deeply, and each show it differently, to pull together is its own distinct kind of leadership challenge.
You probably recognise one of them. Maybe more than one. Hopefully some of the characteristics chime with your own role. If that's the case it might be worthwhile following along on their journey, And looking at how the lessons they learn can be applied in your world, as you develop and hone your effective intelligence.
Each time I publish, this newsletter will take one idea — something that separates leaders who grow into the role from those who stay stuck — and runs it through the reality of people like these. No frameworks for the sake of frameworks. No advice that only works in a business school case study. Just the stuff that actually matters when you're in the middle of it.
I would love your feedback on these stories and on this concept, good or bad, to help me develop it. I want you to be a better leader for reading this newsletter. Your feedback will really help me do that.
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Ben Stark
Founder, Leadership101