Great post and inspiring story. Some of the best advice anyone can take is “find a sensei” or mentor or coach or whatever helps you get out of your own way. Without one, it’s taken me a lot longer to keep out of my own way.

You can manage processes, but not people: you can only lead them.

Have a great year.

Like you, I was a bit directionless when I started high school. I felt like I had a lot of ability in some areas but no real goals or passions. There were challenges at home as well.

My mentor was a high school math teacher who invested a lot of her time and energy into helping me do more with myself. There have been numerous times where things were still a struggle, but she gave me enough of a belief in myself to persevere.

I was very lucky in my career to have had several great leaders. Some were while I was in the Army, some were while I was in the Marine Corps and I had some at Amazon.com. I am lucky to have one here at KP also. The qualities that all of these folks had were common among all of them. They cared about me and my development, they continually acted in a consistent manner, they did not put their careers before anyone else, and they made sure that folks below them knew who they were by making their presence known. They didn’t just walk around telling people what to do (although that is appropriate at times) but they also encouraged their people and showed a genuine interest in what they were doing.

Leadership is also an attitude. You have to “own” your role as a leader. It is too easy to say that you are a leader but not do the actions that show it. True leaders are very rare in the world we live in.

I wish you the best in your endeavor and your quest to become a leader. It is a very worthy goal and one that I have no doubt you will achieve.

james

There are no hard and fast rules for leadership (otherwise, everyone could just pick up a book and we’d have a bunch of great leaders instead of a slew of merely competent managers). Leadership is an ongoing discovery process that is different for everyone. However, lessons can most definitely be learned from mentors and from past leaders.

One of the best classes I took in business school was on leaders and leadership. We read the biography of a different leader each week and discussed them. The main takeaway is that different styles work for different people for different situations. Learning how these people managed their strengths and weaknesses in different situations is most valuable for discovering your own strengths and weaknesses when in comes to the challenges of leadership.

I would highly recommend reading biographies, especially those outside your domain (so don’t just run out and only read Jeff Bezos biography, for example, though it’s probably a good one). In that class, we read: Giannini (Bank of America), Watson (IBM), Colin Powell, Robert Moses (NYC), Shackleton (South Pole explorer), Sony, Rockefeller and Graham (Washington Post), among others. I’ve since picked up more.

Anyways, just my two cents. If you don’t necessarily have strong personal role models or mentors, you can always pick and choose the best that history has to offer!

I did really well in High School…until my senior year. One of my teachers really challenged me and gave me some of the worst grades I had ever earned. I deserved them. It turns out that my previous teachers were just too easy on me. Not this teacher. He sat me down and explained to me that his job is to help me grow and the only way people grow is if they are challenged, and challenge usually means some growing pains too. I didn’t get it then, but 20 years later I am now so thankful to that teacher. He showed me that breezing through life brings very little job, but growth means pain but also much joy.