72. Five Leadership Lessons I Wished I Learned Earlier

Over my career, I’ve learned a lot about leadership. Some of it through great experiences and some (if not most) through doing things the hard way.

Many lessons weren’t things people sat me down and taught me. They were things I learned over time through leading teams, making mistakes, getting overwhelmed, building confidence, and figuring out what leadership actually looks like in real life.

In this solo episode,  I’m sharing five leadership lessons that I wish I had learned earlier because I think they would have made navigating leadership (and my career in general) feel a little easier.

I talk about:

•  Why leadership is less about having all the answers and more about creating space where people feel safe to contribute 
•  Why you can’t lead everyone the same way—and how understanding communication and strengths matters 
•  Why burnout isn’t proof that you care (and what I’ve learned about leadership and rest) 
•  Why confidence usually comes after doing the thing, not before 
•  Why self-awareness might be one of the most important leadership skills you can build

Whether you’re leading a team, stepping into leadership for the first time, or just trying to grow in how you show up for others, I hope this episode gives you something to reflect on and maybe makes your leadership journey feel a little less lonely.

Let’s keep the conversation going—connect with me on Instagram and LinkedIn, subscribe to my weekly newsletter, or reach out at hello@leadintoit.co. 

Excited to be with you!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to episode 72 of the Lead Into a Podcast. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Lead Into It. I'm your host, Sarah Grekow. And today is something that I want to share about leadership lessons. I think that over the past 16, 17-ish years in my career, I have learned a lot of leadership lessons. And sometimes it feels like these lessons are totally held close to people and they don't share them. I wish that I had learned these earlier on because I think that it would have made my career, navigating my leadership style a little bit easier along the way. And so here are just a few that I thought were good to share and would love to hear what you have learned along the way that might be lessons that I have missed. And so, lesson number one: leadership is less about having answers and knowing everything and more about creating safety for your team. There is a vibe that you want to create as a leader where it's creating that psychological safety for people to bring up ideas and solutions. And the more that you create that environment, the better people you lead will thrive in that. It's funny how early in your career, as you're entering corporate, military, whatever, you look at those individuals who are much higher rank and much higher in their career at a much uh really high title. And they're like, gosh, they must know everything. They've been through so much, they know all the things. But what happens every time you move up in a position is you are given more responsibility and you have to navigate through each of those new responsibility hurdles and have to learn how to do those things. Really, no matter what, you're never gonna have all the answers, is what I'm saying. And the people that you surround yourself with, whether it's your colleagues, your team, they're probably gonna have the answers for you. And creating the space in which they feel welcome and open to sharing that will create so much success in your career. Number two, you cannot lead everyone the same way. Every person you lead is different. You can't use Formula A for person B. It's just not gonna work. And so understanding where your skills and strengths are as a leader and where each individual's strengths are will help you so much in the long run. There might be a person that you lead that really loves direct feedback, somebody who takes feedback very well. Another person might not, but that person might be really good at managing projects. Every person has their strengths. So I just encourage you to lean into your strength as a leader and find out what your team's strengths are and lean into that. In addition to strengths, also just understanding communication preferences as well. Along the way, as you grow in your career, especially when you become a supervisor for the first time or are leading a team for the first time, you lead like you want to have been led. So whether you had that bad boss or good boss, you take and choose what characteristics of those people that you really enjoyed and kind of build your own leadership style from there. Those are usually characteristics that you appreciated as somebody who is being led. And so understanding that you like to be led in a specific way is also really important to understand. So as you grow in your career, you can realize that leadership is more than just understanding how you lead, but understanding how others prefer to be led. Lesson number three burnout is not a badge of honor. In fact, I would say it's the opposite. I remember when I was a captain in the Air Force leading a team about 2025. I was extremely overwhelmed and I was working constantly. And now looking back, I was on the verge of burnout, if not already in burnout. And I ended up leaving active duty military and going to the reserve. I thought that would be my answer. It turns out it wasn't, but you know, lesson learned in the long run. But, anyways, I think a couple years ago, especially before COVID, there was a lot of talk about like hustle hard, hustle in your career. And now we've kind of taken a step back and like realized that maybe hustling so hard isn't the best approach. When it comes to being a leader, I was taught like, be there before your boss gets in, leave after your boss leaves. Now I don't think that's the case anymore. Or I hope it's not anyway. If you're as a leader answering emails in the middle of the night, one, you're not setting a tone well for your team because now the expectation has been set to where they feel like they need to answer emails in the middle of the night. But then also, like that isn't saying you're doing your job well and you're dedicated to your job. What that's saying is actually you're not managing your time well. And so if that's a consistent thing that you're doing, that's going to lean to burnout. And that's the perception that you're portraying for your team. The other thing about burnout is when you're getting close to it, that is exhaustion. That is, you aren't on your game. You don't have the ability to make good decisions, your patience becomes less, your understanding and clarity become less. There's so many things that lead into why rest is important. Just because you are really productive or sending out a lot of emails or attending a lot of meetings doesn't mean that you're a good leader. That doesn't mean you're getting a lot of stuff done either. That just means that you're attending a lot of meetings and sending out a lot of emails. Sometimes that's not sustainable. So it's understanding yourself, understanding what brings you energy, what are the best forms of rest for you, and then tying that in to prevent burnout. And then setting the tone for your team so that they also don't get burnt out. Number four, confidence is built through action, not before it. So this is something that I've had to learn over the course of my career multiple times. I continue to learn it. It is something that just continues to get emphasized to me. There's a saying, or a lot of people refer to it as imposter syndrome. I think it's this kind of statement where it's like you get confidence through doing the action. And as a leader, you are in so many situations where you have to move through it before you have the confidence in doing it itself. Whether that's leading a meeting for the first time, giving your first feedback, having that hard conversation with that employee who might not be doing their job well. There's so many moments where it's not until you finish that action that your confidence is built. And that's important to recognize. So when you're looking to do the thing that you're scared to do or nervous to do, and you're like, I just need to be confident to do it. Sometimes it's the opposite. Doing it will bring you the confidence for doing it again in the future. So when I was talking earlier about all those leaders that you think have it or know it all because they're high up in their ladder or in rank, they probably had to go through the experiences and build the confidence along the way. So don't think that once you get a specific promotion, get that specific rank, that all the confidence is just going to be instilled in you immediately. It's actually through the actions that helps create that confidence. The last one I think is the most important thing that I've learned and it is that leadership without self-awareness just eventually becomes control. And the more self-aware that you become, the better leader you will be. And that's an important lesson to learn because we have preferences, we have desires, we have goals. And as you continue to grow in your leadership journey, you have the responsibility of others' growth upon you. And there's a lot of times where you have moments of frustration, of annoyance. I would say probably over half the time that those appear, it is because of something internal to you versus something wrong with the other person. And so the more that you understand yourself and have that self-awareness of what's actually going on for you personally, it'll create leadership growth in yourself. And you'll be able to be a much better leader for others if you understand how that's affecting you. And so I encourage you, as you grow as a leader, to understand like, what are those moments of frustration? What are those moments of annoyance? Is that a them issue or is it a me issue? And if I'm annoyed by something they're doing, is what they're doing actually wrong? Or am I just annoyed by it because it's not the way I would do it? Having the self-awareness is going to be so critical to your growth. And so those are just some of the leadership lessons I've learned over the course of time. I hope that sharing these lessons with you has helped create some clarity or an understanding that maybe you didn't have before, or maybe it just emphasized something that you already knew. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you shared that with a friend or left a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify that really helps the show gain visibility. And if you found this useful, somebody else might find this useful and they might just be having a hard time finding it. So those reviews are key to helping other people find the show. If you have any questions about me, the show, my company, lead into it, feel free to go to leadintoit.co. That's leadintoit.co. You can find all the information there. But until next time.