Scale yourself while developing others
It’s a win-win.
I think a lot about the jobs that under-leveraged me when I was coming up.
They didn’t get my full self; and I wasn’t fully unlocked.
In this equation, no one was really winning. It was so obvious to me then. And is even more obvious to me now.
Especially when I continue to encounter these two tired tracks (after the photo of the woman who taught me I can scale anything). Maybe these two scenarios are familiar to you, too?
Track 1: “The spread-thin senior manager / executive”
They are routinely stretched so thin that their schedule is unbearable.
Despite their best attempts, they often come late and leave early in hopes of undergoing calendar mitosis (spoiler: it’s not possible to be in two places in once — it in fact causes whiplash for all involved and no one wins).
In the end, they either get a reputation for being disorganized — which isn’t exactly true — or being a bottleneck. Both are career limiters.
Track 2: “The under-invested-in junior / mid-level employee”
This person serves with passion and loyalty from the front lines. I know her well; I was her, I am her, I mentor this person most frequently in Turtle Academy.
This person has so many insightful thoughts to share thanks to being hands-on, in the trenches, doing the doing 24/7/365.
And yet, they are rarely invited to share — they are mostly just asked to schedule this, follow up on that, and take notes for the group.
And at the off chance they get some airtime, they are often cut short by cross talk or because they themselves pause to let others speak (spoiler: it’s no wonder they are critiqued for lacking strategic capability and executive presence in their annual reviews).
So what’s a Turtle to do?
I had ambition, energy, and enthusiasm. The executives had expertise. The managers had authority.
And some combination of the executives being busy and a perception it was too hard to teach [insert specialized knowledge that takes decades to learn] ended in me taking matters into my own hands.
In particular, I had two main strategies to overcome that which my managers aka labeled leaders lacked:
#1: I self-educated.
I inhaled conferences, talks, panels, meet-ups, external mentors, reading, podcasts, chances to collaborate, and make-test-learn through experimentation moments.
I wrote, I commented, I participated. I showed up. I asked questions. I failed, I got back up, I learned.
I asked for feedback and took it in like a sponge — with discernment of course — as I wanted to be the most coachable corporate athlete on the field.
I tapped deep into the roots my mom helped me plant: in the arts, nature, crafting, fairness, equity.
I still do these things daily; weekly; monthly; yearly.
- I am one of those people who is regularly up in the YouTube comments.
- I am experimenting with audio memetics on TikTok and Instagram; to know the differences, to know the power (e.g. recently, I had Iris Apfel comment on my video that leveraged one of her witticisms about fashion vs. style).
- I have finstagrams to try out corners of my mind, my voice.
- I talk with people who don’t look like me; I ask thoughtful questions; I take the time to listen.
- Which is to say nothing of the dozens of podcasts and books I consume each month (in parts, to be fair — rarely wire to wire in a single go… and that’s OK).
#2: I started my own company.
Helping take J3 from a freelance operation to a multi-million dollar agency at 24 would become another ticket to hands-on learning.
Where I lacked internal coaching, development, and talent investment in my 9 to 5s — I found it in uncomfortable spades thanks to my 5 to 9.
ps: just a year earlier, at age 23, the president of another company where I worked 9 to 5 had the misplaced confidence to tell me:
- digital strategy wasn’t really important ‘bloggers are in their parents basement, it’s the mainstream media we care about’ [months before Ben Tribett would break the George Allen / Macaca story that the Washington Post passed on — what a trip it was to serve along side Ben at NMS, as an aside to an aside];
- I would need a VP to lead whatever idea I was coming up with;
- I was too grateful and upbeat in my communications, I needed to “tone it down” [that’s a too-per-power feature not a bug, y’all]
Suggested Next Steps
To the all-star talent on the come up —whose development has not been made an explicit priority of your management— I invite you to create your own destiny with self-education, collaborations, experimentation, and possibly even starting something in your 5 to 9 slot a few times a week (if / where it could fit in your life).
To the spread-thin managers and executives, I invite you to take the following five steps lest you lose the all-stars to a company who invests in their talent — or a company that they own outright themselves.
How Managers Can Scale Themselves
The headline you really came for, the content I promised…
- Invite your team to answer: “when and where do you need me to play the role of co-executor? of fire-fighter? and when do you not?”
- If it’s of more urgency, make clear: I am stepping in for this reason. I am going to teach as I do. We are going to get through this together.
2. Create space for your team to experiment with you spending less time in these roles. What would it look like to shift your role to more advisory? to be more question-based, and less answer-led? What would the conditions need to be for you to step up and out of this planet in more places, more often?
3. Spend time understanding your own motivations: what is the gravity pulling me into execution? into fire-fighting? is it serving the end goals of all the people you want to consider — from client and team, to you and your family.
4. Create paired-learning moments where you and other seasoned team members pair with up-and-coming leaders to pass on the craft of execution and the discernment needed to fight fires. Consider a mix of:
- making explicit your decision making, talking out how you arrived at doing or not doing something;
- inviting up-and-coming leaders to listen in on calls / meetings;
- creating space to debrief after each major meeting / task and ask: “what did you observe?” “how would you have handled X” “any pointers for me, anything you would have done?”
5. Develop a clear set of tasks / projects up-and-coming leaders can grow into ‘owning’ and ‘leading’ within a reasonable period of time (3–6–9–12 months):
- First few times: Seasoned leader leads, up-and-coming leader follows. Together, you debrief. Encourage the up-and-coming leader to ask a lot of questions. Encourage them to take what they learn and make it their own.
- Next few times: Up-and-coming leader leads, seasoned leader follows. The up-and-comer has you to turn to where needed as an advisor/collaborator. Remember: you are not there to override their approach or intuition. Rather, find ways to use positive reinforcement: where are they unlocking greatness and how can you encourage it? If there are places you need to curb their approach, try to do so in the form of a question (not an answer!)
When you both feel ready: Work towards opportunities where the up-and-coming leader fully leads, you depart. You are always there in the wings as a soundboard, but from here on out you let your colleague know: “I trust your judgment and intuition. You got this.”
A colleague aptly described this last year when he said:
“If you never step back and create a gap, there will never be real space for someone to step up.”
Leslie Bradshaw is an anthropology-infused, humanities-grounded, economics-informed do leader. For those who know, you know: Leslie is a world-class unlocker of talent, teams, creativity, and impact.
She believes that it should be full S.T.E.A.M. ahead and that slow and steady wins the race. Having recently turned 40, she feels professionally secure enough to come out and say: her neurodivergence is a feature, not a bug. And is grateful to all those with divergences and differences who shine their lights so others like her may one day do the same.
