Ideas in the Wild: Jawad Ahsan On How Leaders Can Reach The Next Level
Jawad Ahsan had the skills, experience, and ambition to make a leap in his career — and yet, early on, his progress had stagnated. He’d had some success, but not as much as he’d envisioned, but he was unsure the best way to reach that next level.
When he decided to stop letting others chart his course, and instead began to pursue his own North Star, it transformed his career. Jawad wrote What They Didn’t Tell Me to translate the feedback he got and the lessons he learned along the way into actionable advice for leaders at every level. I recently caught up with Jawad to learn more about his journey with the book.
What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment you realized these ideas needed to get out there?
I’ve been fortunate to have some terrific mentors in my career and am passionate about paying these lessons forward and leadership development in general. Over the years, I’ve shared these thoughts in various formats — email, blog posts, but mostly through presentations.
After one presentation to a larger group, I was floored by how many people followed up with me and shared that my messages really landed with them. They echoed the same sentiment I had been hearing for a while — that I should think about writing a book.
Initially I had sketched out a book based on themes, but as I sat back and looked at the bigger picture, I realized it worked better as a time-sequenced narrative. So the book reads more like a story or a memoir, with the leadership lessons building on each other.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned going through the journey you share in the book?
There are lots of things that you can coach someone on, but there are a few traits that are uncoachable. I’ve learned that integrity, accountability, a collaborative disposition and a positive outlook are traits that you simply can’t coach into someone. These traits have been central characteristics of the teams that I build, because collectively they serve as a heuristic for trust.
I know that if the teams I build embody these traits, I can trust them and empower them by getting out of their way and letting them fly.
If the early part of my career was defined by how I reacted and responded to what happened to me, the later part was defined by whom I surrounded myself with. The people I worked for, with, and hired on my teams have been the single most important factors by far in terms of my career turning out the way it has. The further you advance in your career, the more important it is that you learn how to lead and drive change through influencing. Anyone can give you a title, but will people follow you because they want to or because they have to?
Building relationships and coalitions are therefore among the most important things that you can do. However good you are at any given task, however skilled you are, or however smart you are is irrelevant in the grand scheme if you are unable to build and maintain high-performing teams. There is no higher-performing team than the one that is able to continue to perform at a high level in the face of adversity, and does so because they want you to succeed as a leader.
How will you apply this lesson in your life moving forward?
A couple of ways. First, I spend around half of my time on people-centered matters — development and feedback discussions, reviews, interviews, team building etc. I personally interview every person hired into my organization at Axon, regardless of seniority. It’s important to me to know that everyone we hire shares the same values, and that my employees know that everyone coming in was held to the same standard that they were.
It’s also super important to me to build a sense of camaraderie. We spend so much time working together that it’s important we also enjoy each other’s company.
Second, I work hard at empowering my teams. I want them to take risks, and part of that means providing them with air cover when they fail. More importantly, it means highlighting and trumpeting their achievements, both internally and externally. I work to give them visibility to the rest of the executive team at Axon, and occasionally to our Board or our investors.
I also advocate for them when it comes to their compensation and development. I tend to be generous with equity grants, and I believe in the value of tangible perks and rewards. I’ve also brought in a performance coach to work with my team and augment their learnings on the job, and am looking at a nutritionist and fitness coach as well. We’ve got a relatively young team and a lot left to accomplish, and want to avoid burnout.
It’s hard to find great talent that meets my criteria and is also fun to work with, so when I find those folks I want them to be well taken care of, challenged and fulfilled.
