In teaching you will learn
I have a penchant for hiring well. I’ve built teams whose members work collaboratively, hit goals, and foster enduring friendships. But, in all honesty, my drive to hire great talent was mainly in service of my own success. I had goals to nail. A strong team would help me.
Really, it was all about me.
Sure, I would “mentor” along the way. But it was textbook stuff: don’t micro-manage, let team members own their successes and failures, give a care or three about who they are outside of work and what is going on in their lives.
But at the end of the day, my own drive and ambition interested me most.
Until they didn’t.
There was a shift. Maybe it coincided with changes in my kids’ lives, what they needed from me as a parent. And it was subtle at first — a simple curiosity about what would happen if I re-oriented my ambition, not quite a selfless commitment to giving up my place on the totem pole.
But over the years it became clearer: it is more challenging, but ultimately joyful, to help someone else become the star. Perhaps to even help them become my future boss.
WTF? (Said my old self to my new self.) You have a mortgage, a horse, multiple tuition payments. Doesn’t the glory mean anything to you anymore?
Cue Phil Collins.
I think it was a Rolling Stone article, I’m not really sure. But I recall happening upon these pearls from the famed singer of “Sussudio:” In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.
Simultaneously I thought: Phil Collins, you’re onto something! and Well yes, duh.
There’s important nuance in that simple statement: Both parties require vulnerability and openness to possibility — neither the teacher nor the student has all the answers.
And perhaps surprisingly, when it comes to leadership and mentoring, it’s dead-on true.
Case in point: I love pitching — especially when the stakes are high. So when the agency I was working for about two years ago stood to gain a substantial piece of business, I was ready. In the Creative Director I had a great partner in crime; we’d won work together before, and all signs said we should own this.
But we also had a strategist and account director clamoring for more responsibility and visibility. Deep down, I knew I had a mentorship opportunity before me: To hand the pitch to them to lead and deliver would ultimately make the agency stronger. The CD and I agreed, I’d step to the side. I wouldn’t even be on the travel team to make the pitch.
I believe excruciating is an appropriate adjective.
Things took longer. The team became frazzled from late nights and weekends. I nudged and guided, without overly asserting myself. I’m sure I was literally sitting on my hands during some creative sessions.
But then the pieces started to come together. The energy changed from agonizing to exhilarating, as both the ideas and the team started to assert themselves. On pitch day, the team practically skipped to the airport. Without me.
Deep down, I knew I had a mentorship opportunity before me: To hand the pitch to them to lead and deliver would ultimately make the agency stronger.
Three days later the call came with the decision — not to me, but to the account director. The team prevailed. The agency had won. And the beaming smiles on the faces of the account director and strategist when they ran around the agency sharing the news made all the agony beyond worthwhile.
In that moment and since, I’ve learned that by stepping aside I’ve actually been able to step up — in a way that has a deeper resonance on an organization. Helping others shine ultimately helped the organization, and affirmed I was on a new, more deeply rewarding path.
Cut to SYP and the practice of generosity.
I’m now a contract worker at SYPartners. When I’m here, I help guide a team of incredibly talented practitioners as they deliver the goods for a new client. I go where there’s a compelling need and the ability to strengthen a skill.
It’s demanded of me a new kind of mentorship, one I’m still grappling with: Practice vulnerability and humility, to lift others.
In the past, my mentorship journey was about deciding when to say, I’ll step back at this moment, and bestow upon some deserving talent the opportunity to shine. At SYP, it’s different. I entered as a “hot shot” eager to show just what I can do (did someone mention glory?), but there have been more than a few meetings where I haven’t been sure I had much to add to the brilliance already in the room. (Talk about practicing vulnerability!) At times I wonder, What is my role here, even?
There’s no “bestowing” happening. I’m not the head honcho here. Instead, I constantly support a team, and I reconnect with what I now know to be true: It’s not about showing what I can do, but rather to show what they can do.
I gently shape and nudge along the way — sometimes by setting an example or offering context informed by decades of experience, other times by being able to drop into the work and get stuff done — so other team members can focus on key deliverables.
It’s not about showing what I can do, but rather to show what they can do.
After years of crushing it and basking in glory of my own, I now revel in the joy of inspiring team members to explore and exert their brilliance. It’s an amazing moment in my career narrative: My outlook on the work grants me the confidence that I can help the team handle whatever comes our way. It allows me to delight in my colleagues’ successes as if they were my own.
Some would call this “mentoring” — I prefer to think of it as using my leadership gifts to serve others. It’s something I’m doing on a personal level, and something I’m proud to say SYP aims to do on a scale of billions: Elevate others and improve the whole through generosity, vulnerability, and collaboration in the pursuit of greatness.
Kim Curry is a contract Principal at SYPartners. She’s at her best when she’s helping creative teams do work that wows people, breaks the rules, and inspires big things. A self-professed adrenaline junkie, Kim jumps horses to relax. And while at grad school in the Soviet Union, she wrote and published underground literature (“Samizdat”) encouraging Soviet Russian Feminism.
