How 30 Days Of Being A Leader At Work Changed Who I Was.

I walked into the office, for the first time, with the title of ‘leader.’

The office smelled of fresh paint and coffee beans. There were people all around me sitting at their desks and looking at their screens. I nervously walked over to the desk that was reserved for me. All around me was my team.

In that moment, I either had to become the leader or bail. I chose to become the leader even though I had no idea. My initial thought was that people would follow me because my title said they should. While this thinking is quite naive, I had those thoughts none the less. I thought if all else fails, they will follow me.

After meeting my team, I got a tour of the office. It was huge and modern. The other leader I’d be working with led me over into a corner of the office that had light shining through it from every angle.

I stood there for a few seconds and let the light fill my eyes with hope, curiosity and dreams of going beyond my potential.

Even though it was only a few seconds, the sunlight distracted me for what felt like a long time. I soon snapped out of it as another hand reached out to greet me. Foreign hands, of people I didn’t know, shook my hand for the rest of the week. Each hand felt slightly different but was accompanied by a very different voice — voices full of hope, curiosity and thoughts like “Who the heck is this tall blogger guy I’ve heard so much about?”

Before arriving in the office for the first time that day, I’d learned that my new boss had shared a video of me talking about my blogging passion on LinkedIn. People already thought they knew me in some small way, and like it or not, they’d somewhat formed an opinion of me already.

Mostly, those opinions seemed positive although I couldn’t delve into each of their minds and hear their thoughts to be 100% sure. I had to trust that people would give me a go.

Today, it has been 30 days since I’ve been a leader at work. It has changed me a lot and there’s a lot you can learn from this month of leadership.

These are a few of the learnings from the last 30 days:

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What it means to be insanely unselfishness.

When you only have to worry about yourself, it’s easy to be selfish.

You have lunch when you want; you talk to the customers you want to talk to; you do things that benefit your own career; you say no to requests of your time. The last 30 days has been the opposite of that for me.

I took lunch when my team had everything they needed and this time changed every day. If a team member needed me, lunch got delayed. I had to learn to put them first, above the hunger pains of my growling stomach.

If a customer wanted to scream at someone, I was it. I had to take the phone call and be abused whether I liked it or not — or whether I felt like it.

“Instead of taking part in opportunities that benefited my own career, I had to look for opportunities to benefit the careers of my team”

I got my team secondments 

I got my team changes in remuneration

I got my team holidays

I got my team opportunities to stand up

I gave credit to my team when things went well

The foundation of every day was about doing unselfish acts as much as I could because that was my job. It was a choice; it was how I survived as a leader. 

Unselfishness is how leaders earn a living and provide for their families.

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Earning respect.

I walked through the door with no respect.

This meant, as a leader, no one trusted me at the start. I had to learn ways to earn my teams respect before they would listen to me or even follow me. I had no idea what it would take to get their respect, so I experimented.

Earning respect took the form of:

• Understanding each person’s personal goals
• Finding ways to help others be leaders too
• Hiring people that my team would like to work with
• Finding problems that upset them and then solving them without being asked to
• Above all, respect was earned through listening. I had no idea about gaining their respect, so listening was the only strategy I had

Even after 30 days, I learned that it takes a lot longer to build lasting respect and have an impact on someone’s career that will change their life forever. I have a lot to learn still about respect.

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People’s personal goals.

Lots of strategies were used before I joined, to motivate my team.

In my first 30 days, finding out what my team’s individual goals were seemed to be the best way to lead. One person wanted to start a business; another person wanted to be a consultant in their field; one lady wanted to have better work-life balance; another wanted to work from home to care for their family.

I naively thought that most people would be motivated by promotions or opportunities to advance their career. I realized that many people are not in that category. Many people don’t care that much about their career because maybe they are young and want to have fun or are looking for their soul mate or are fixing their health or are happy with what they currently have.

“Knowing what motivated my team outside of work helped me figure out what they’d be happy doing at work. I matched work tasks to personal goals”

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Telling people “I got your back.”

I learned early on that many of my team didn’t feel anyone was looking out for them. Instinctively, I started saying “I got your back.”

I didn’t know why I was saying it, but it felt right.

I demonstrated through my actions that I cared about each person and then backed up these actions with the statement “I got your back.” Sometimes, I learned, people just need to know that you have their back.

Having someones back is ultimately a statement that says you care about them and will do everything you can to help them.

It’s such a simple thing to say, but I found in my first 30 days as a leader it had a significant impact on how people felt. I could see through their body language and their smile that they knew what I was trying to say even if I said it in a clumsy and amateur way being a new leader.

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Caring for people who didn’t report to me.

This was another accident.

I learned that someone in the office who didn’t report to me was battling a mental illness. I stepped in and offered to help them because it felt right. This person was nothing to do with me and that didn’t matter.

I learned as a leader that you begin to care for everybody because your job is to be a role model. Role models care for everybody, not just the people that work for them or affect how much money they earn.

Helping that person with a few simple strategies to assist with their mental illness — like seeing a professional — helped me see that I could make a difference beyond the boundaries of my own team.

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Making relationships with brand new people.

Have you ever been on a date with a stranger?

Imagine doing that twenty times every single day. That’s what it felt like to be a leader in my first 30 days. Every day meant another new face, another awkward handshake, and then the need for me to give my 30-second elevator pitch about where I came from and who I was.

The elevator pitch had to be on point because first impressions count. After about the tenth one, I got better at saying where I came from and who I was. Each pitch got better and so did my confidence.

I learned to tell total strangers what I was good at.

I learned to share vulnerable things about myself such as my battle with mental illness in order to demonstrate who I was and why I signed up for the grueling task of being a leader.

Newly formed relationships were what I relied on when I had no idea what to do or when the odd disaster came across my desk and I had no idea how to stop the bomb from blowing up in my face and killing everyone around me — including those who I was supposed to lead.

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Having to speak in front of an audience a lot.

I can speak in front of people — so I thought.

For the last two years, I’ve done professional public speaking through Toastmasters. This once a week practice fooled me into thinking I was great at speaking in front of audiences.

As a newly appointed leader, the challenge of speaking in front of your team who don’t know or trust you yet is much harder. Speaking once a week was easy; speaking inspiring words every day that made people want to follow me was ten times harder.

Leaders must inspire and that means you have to quickly learn how to flip the confidence switch to the ON position and say something meaningful.

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Having to make tough decisions.

It was only day two.

A close family member was in the hospital and I was told they would die soon. On the same day, I was given the most difficult client I’ve ever dealt with in my career. I had to think on my feet and make a tough decision.

One wrong move and I could kill any credibility that I had before I joined the company — partly thanks to my social media presence. Your success online is one thing, and at the same time, how you deal with a difficult decision gives people a much more real insight into your leadership ability.

To my own surprise, I managed to deal with the difficult client and see my family member before they passed away. It was a double-edged sword that didn’t end up stabbing me in the eye, and if anything, it gave me a sign that I could handle this new thing called leadership.

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Having to be optimistic when things were going bad.

There were many challenging client situations in the first few weeks.

Each of them tested my ability to be optimistic.

The biggest test, though, was when there was a terrorist attack only a few blocks down from our office. That day was especially tough. People were jumping to conclusions and the bad news TV stations were blasting through the phones of everybody in the office. The local police even SMS’d all of our phones and told us to stay inside because of the attack. Our company then emailed us all with the same advice.

Up until that day, I hadn’t watched the traditional news for a long time. On that day, I couldn’t avoid it.

Still, I was able to remain optimistic and still show compassion — partly because it was my job to. Again, instinctively this felt like the only option I had.

My new title of leader quickly showed me that I had to be optimistic despite what was going on in the outside world.

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Having to coach others when I was normally the one being coached.

Being coached by leaders has been a big part of my career to date.

In the last 30 days, I’ve had no coaching and been doing all the coaching. This is a strange reality for me. Coaching sounds easy through the eyes of Linkedin influencers who tell us we can all be leaders.

Coaching people on the spot without any training is much harder. So what did I do? I did what the people who coached me did. I copied past leaders who led me by:

• Listening as much as possible
• Sharing similar experiences and leading with vulnerability
• Not trying to have all the answers

After 30 days, it’s starting to come together.

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Finding ways to be kind.

Before I started my new gig as a leader, I read a bunch of leadership books like “Radical Candor.”

All of them said that being a leader was about being a role model more than anything else. So, I thought, what do role models do?

The answer that came to me first was “be kind to others.”

In the first week of being a leader, I saw another newbie having lunch by themselves. Halfway through a conversation with the people I was sitting with I said: “Excuse me for a second.”

My three lunch buddies looked at me funny. I walked over to the person having lunch on their own and asked them to join us. It was something small, but it was the beginnings of me understanding that kindness now had to be engrained in everything I did because that’s what role models do.

It’s also the reason why on the night of Friday Drinks, I didn’t take a beer back to my desk. Again, I had to force myself to be the role model. That was now my job whether I liked it or not.

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Having to be brave.

There were many moments in the first 30 days as a leader when I had to be brave.

One of those moments came when I met a former member of my team who had left to go and work for a competitor. We were out for a few drinks at a local bar when I was introduced to this former team member. We spoke for a while and I mentioned to them that they should think about coming back.

The next day, I asked the others leaders what they thought knowing that this was a highly controversial thing to say. To my surprise, by being brave and asking the question that plagued my mind for the weekend prior, they said it was a good idea.

This was one of many brave moments. Being brave was now the only option if I wanted to achieve true leadership status.

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Having to show up.

The next business day after I lost a close family member and had to bury them, I didn’t really feel like going to work.

I knew that my team needed me, so I showed up at work regardless. Sitting at home feeling sorry for myself didn’t feel like the right thing to do and neither did abandoning my team who were still getting to know me.

All I could do was show up and hope I didn’t burst into tears in front of everybody for no reason. This strategy worked.

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Being challenged.

There’s no real grace period as a newly appointed leader. The “I’m new excuse”expires almost as soon as you start.

By day three I was being challenged and having to back up my opinions. My opinions were still fresh and mostly feelings rather than being evidence-based. Still, the feeling of being challenged by other leaders set in quickly as being part of this new life called leadership.

I learned quickly how to deal with criticism and not be offended when I was challenged about things my team had done or not done.

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Not giving up.

“Here’s the keys to the Ferrari and I hope you don’t crash it.”

That’s the best way to describe week one of being a leader. There was no training, induction, guidance or clear idea of what success was, given to me.

I had this luxury vehicle that was capable of achieving high speeds and came with a team of human beings that depended on me. There was no rulebook on how to deal with this challenging situation, so I had to make up the rules myself. This had a high chance of failure.

After week one, I felt like giving up.

“I learned that being a leader meant that you couldn’t give up. Being strong when you have everything going against you and have no idea what to do is how you earn the title of leader”

Leadership is not meant to be easy and giving up won’t make it any easier. Giving up as a newly appointed leader will only lead to feelings of disappointment and regret. You’ll end up thinking “But what if?”

I didn’t give up as a leader in my first 30 days. I’m glad I didn’t. The first 30 days of leadership has taught me more about life and work than I’ve learned for most of my 32 years on this planet.

Giving up is not what leaders do.

I learned that the hard way.

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