I have been told I have a strong personality. From a young age, I have always been the first one to step up and take on the “leadership” role. Line leader in grade school? You better believe it. Group projects in college? Always the facilitator and organizer. Ask any consultant on this team who travels with me, they know they never have to worry about where we are going to eat or explore once we get to our next assessment together because I have already mapped it all out. It just comes naturally to me…and maybe there’s a little bit of a control freak in there.

I am the youngest team member at Vista. In fact, throughout my career in the legal industry, I have often been the youngest team member. This leads to questions about my experience and my abilities and, a lot of times, an utter lack of respect. I have grown accustomed to it. I very much have a “get stuff done” mentality. If there is a project that needs tackling, I am going to see it through, start to finish, with a strong vision and intention of what the final product will be. Right out of college, I ended up as an investigator at a PI firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. After only two years, I was put into a leadership position. I was 24 years old. My boss always believed in me and knew whatever task/project I was given, it would get done. I don’t like to let people down, and I pride myself on being dependable.

As time went on at the firm, the natural progression of moving up occurred. We went from twelve team members to thirty in just three years. I assisted in developing our intake department, moving us into a new office, hiring our first HR manager, and eventually onboarding Vista at our firm to help us continue scaling after a tragic and unexpected loss to our core leadership team. When you are in it, you don’t really realize what’s going on. You just tackle each day as it comes at you. The problem with this is that you lack intention without even realizing it. You are reacting rather than being proactive. It’s painfully easy to get swept up in the growing pains and evolution of your organization. Well-meaning emerging leaders fall prey to this on a regular basis.

Identifying Your Gaps as a Leader

Another huge problem that I encountered in the early days of my journey was that I lacked formal leadership training, and after a certain point of growth, I no longer had a mentor who could guide me. They don’t teach us how to understand ourselves or learn our personalities and how they influence our interactions with others. I am first to admit I just assumed everyone understood things the way I did and took direction/instruction as I would. I feel many of us navigate that as we grow personally and professionally.

To help me gain self-awareness, I started working with a leadership coach. The first step in that journey was letting other members in leadership at our firm anonymously survey me. They were to give 2-3 areas of strengths and areas for growth. After the feedback was received, I was to work with a coach to process and build from the information.

Here are a few things I learned:

1. Our strengths can quickly become our weaknesses.
   • I mentioned that I am a get-stuff-done type of person. While this can be great for the organization, it does not always serve you well in a leadership role. When you lack delegation abilities, you unintentionally give off the vibe that you do not trust your team and therefore, they will not trust you.
   • Providing solutions to a problem is great but it is important to do so in a proactive manner vs. reactive. When you solely focus on getting the job at hand done and you approach situations with reaction, you lose intention. Slow down and ask questions. Collaborate with your teammates and utilize everyone’s strengths to provide the solution and implement the changes needed to prevent similar problems.
2. It’s hard to improve when you have only yourself to follow.
   • Find a mentor, maybe even two.
   • A mentor likely is not someone who will be invested emotionally in the problem(s) you are experiencing and can provide an independent second opinion. This person/people will act as your sounding board in tough situations and celebrate your wins with you.
   • If you have a trusted colleague, consider them for one of your mentors. You want someone who can remind you privately, in the moment, when your strengths are becoming your weaknesses and hold you accountable for your actions. I attribute a lot of my growth during this time to my trusted colleague and her invaluable insight.
3. Invest in the dang personality assessment then work through what you learn about yourself.
   • You have to know yourself to grow yourself. After I completed my DiSC assessment alongside my team, it became incredibly clear where I thrived and where my blind spots were. I worked to understand who and more importantly what pushed my buttons. By specifically identifying and naming these triggers I was able to control my reactions to them.
   • There are no good or bad personalities. By understanding your own personality, you can show up authentically in your relationships and interactions with others while being aware that they too may perceive the situation in a different way than you. The number one mistake I was making: expecting myself from others. No two people are the same. We learn differently, we receive information differently, and overall, we perceive the world differently.
4. Routinely seek and be open to feedback.
   • This exercise was undoubtedly the worst thing I have ever gone through in my professional life. And while this particular style of feedback is not one I would ever recommend, I do believe feedback can be an incredible gift.
   • Lean into this discomfort that feedback can bring. Do you notice when you start to feel unpleasant emotions, you try to ignore them or minimize them? Typically, we do not like to be in a negative space mentally or emotionally, but it can be necessary for personal growth. We have to learn to tolerate that discomfort and explore our negative emotions to gain insight about ourselves and the world around us. When we ignore them, they can lead to bigger issues long-term.
   • Journal to manage your emotions and help you reflect on what is and is not working. Write the negatives but also the positives you encounter through your week. You may not realize it in the moment, but as you write these things, you are forced to face them and process them.
   • It is just as hard to give feedback as it is to get it. The number one rule of feedback is to ask. No one wants you to push your unsolicited thoughts or opinions on them. If you ask to offer feedback, and the person says they are not interested, then you say nothing. If you choose to receive feedback, you have to be mindful of your response. Ask questions or for examples to understand what is being shared, and always thank them.

Is discussing age still taboo? I will be 30 this year, and I feel incredibly blessed and immensely grateful for being entrusted with leadership responsibilities at this early stage of my career. I am proud of who I am and how I have grown. This journey has been a testament to my growth, self-awareness, and the open-mindedness that fuels my continuous development. I now have the opportunity to pour into our firms at Vista and use my experiences to help guide them and coach their teams. I am just getting started. Watch out, world.