From Manager to Leader (Part 2): Level-up by Leading by Example
This post contains edited excerpts from COMPOSURE: The Art of Executive Presence, available now wherever books are sold. Order your copy today!
With his youthful face, unruly hair, and bright red sneakers, Aaron Levie is an unlikely CEO figure for an enterprise IT company. Yet more than half of the Fortune 500 are customers of Box, the company Levie started from his college dorm room at age 19, alongside co-founder Dylan Smith. Levie’s career grew in tandem with the company. His professional growth is a lesson in how to transition first from individual contributor to manager — then from manager to leader.
Perhaps because he started the business as a college student, Levie approached the experience of becoming a CEO with a learner’s mindset. To compensate for his lack of business experience, he actively built a network of advisors that included luminaries such as John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, and Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric. Throughout his leadership journey at Box, Levie read extensively and remained open to learning from coaches, mentors, and advisors.
According to Karen Appleton, one of the founding team at Box, “Aaron brought his vision to life for others and continued to refine his vision over time. He learned from feedback and made adjustments after every meeting he was in.”
There’s a lot to be learned from the path Levie took as he grew his career and built his company, bringing all of his employees along for the ride and always remaining true to himself.
Instead of approaching the CEO role with uncertainty or arrogance, Levie inhabited it with his own personality from the outset.
An irrepressible sense of humor surfaces even as he speaks passionately about technology trends. He’ll wear a business suit at a public event, but pair it with red sneakers. Says Appleton, “He has mastered the art of being smart, humble, and energized at the same time.” This attitude permeates the Box corporate culture, communicating that enterprise software doesn’t have to be boring, and a successful CEO certainly doesn’t have to conform.
ICYMI: Read From Manager to Leader (Part 1): How to Step up Your Leadership ➞
In this article, Part 2 of our Manager to Leader series, we offer guidance on how to level-up your leadership. What are the key traits that Levie and other great leaders possess that make them so great at what they do? We’ll break down the importance of remaining curious, confident, and humble in your leadership so you can make sure you guide your company in the right direction and set the tone for the leaders to come.
The Accidental Executive
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: Many leaders suffer from Impostor Syndrome, believing that they are unqualified to run a company or organization. They undervalue the skills they have developed over the course of their career, and they perceive themselves as exceptions, simply falling through the cracks while being less capable and qualified than other leaders around them.
But the truth is, these leaders are far from alone. Very few are well-prepared to make the transition from manager to leader, regardless of educational background or experience. The good news? As a new leader, you’re given a pass — you’re not expected to be fully qualified or equipped to lead from the outset. You’re entitled to make mistakes and learn on the job, just like everyone who has come before you.
When Levie founded Box at 19, was he qualified or prepared to run the company it has become? Absolutely not — but he was willing to learn how. Remember that you can accelerate your success with the right advisors and mentors, easing your learning curve and guiding you through what is often a rocky start.
The Resilient Learner
The most important thing a new executive leader can bring to the role is not technical brilliance, great ideas, or sales prowess — it’s resiliency. Every leader endures setbacks and breakdowns, but the most successful learn and grow from the inevitable adversity.
The resilient leader regulates negative feedback and turns problems, challenges, mistakes and failures into future growth. As such, the most successful first-time leaders are those who approach the experience as a learning opportunity.
In her research on responses to failure, Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University identifies a “growth mindset” as a critical factor to creating resilience and success. People with a growth mindset believe they can change and grow through experience and practice. They see failures or struggles as opportunities to learn, always remaining open to coaching and feedback.
The leader with a growth mindset isn’t afraid of making mistakes, and she frequently seeks out guidance.
“One of the key things I look for in a startup executive is their competence as a learner,” says Sarah Tavel, partner at Greylock Partners. “Founders and executives who don’t possess a learning mindset get left behind by the company. Being a leader means that you have the humility to be wrong. You can’t learn unless you can admit that you don’t know something.”
These resilient leaders also build “resilience learning” into their culture by example, making it safe for others to take risks. “A lot of successful startup companies seem like overnight successes. But behind every one is a founding team that has been working day in and day out, often for years,” said Tavel. “What seems so easy from the outside requires an incredible amount of persistence and resilience. I call that grit, and that’s what I look for in the teams I fund."
Lead like a hippo
An essential piece of the transition from manager to leader is altering participation in discussions to enable your team members to maximize their contribution, engagement, and learning. In this regard, leaders do well when they emulate the hippopotamus: stay mostly underwater, with observant eyes peering above the surface. Do not draw attention to your presence. Emerge only when needed to make a decision.
An adaptive leader steps in when necessary, breaking deadlocks and moving things forward, trusting others to contribute and lead. Adaptive leadership fills the power void, but also leaves space for creativity and innovation.
This posture encourages employees to feel comfortable taking risks and trying new things. In this way, the leader maintains her “underwater hippo” posture while her team freely voices their many opinions. Effective brainstorming requires that people feel empowered to speak up and contribute to the discussion, so it is critical that the leader only step in when there is a problem or it is time to guide the conversation toward a final decision.
When you have the right people in the right roles, each accountable for their areas of responsibility, it’s a lot easier to trust the team to execute. When this is the case, your role as a leader is to be present, observant, and supportive. This stance can be challenging for a first-time leader, but it pays dividends. A strong leader becomes adept at both stepping forward to lead and stepping back to share leadership.
The power of confident humility
When you’re promoted into leadership above your peers, you are no longer one of the gang. You become the ultimate decision-maker, and your words and behavior affect those around you very differently, having greater impact on the fabric of the business itself. Whether you realize it or not, when you are at the top, you are always leading by example.
The best leaders for creative, innovative, and risk-taking environments practice confident humility.
Confidence: Employees want visionary leaders who project confidence, make decisions, and promote the vision and the business. People will hesitate to take risks or innovate when they lack confidence in their leader.
Humility: Leaders need to empower people to be creative so they can contribute to their fullest. The best leaders submerge their egos and listen to those around them, remaining curious and open to advice, input, and sharing credit with their teams.
Seth Godin, an author and marketing expert, believes that “truly perfect is becoming comfortable with your imperfections on the way to doing something remarkable.”
Takeaways for the rising leader
What’s most important in this crucial transition is being open and receptive to your own imperfections and all that you have to learn. When you look back on your early days as a leader, you’ll be shocked at how much you were able to grow as you built your team into the success that it is surely to be. Just remember along the way — always practice curiosity and humility, but trust your instinct to step in when it counts and be the leader your team needs.
ICYMI: Read From Manager to Leader (Part 1): How to Step up Your Leadership ➞
Kate Purmal is a former CEO and Technology Executive, Board Director, Business Advisor and Executive Coach. She is also a Senior Industry Research Fellow at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business and a lecturer at University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She is the author of two books: COMPOSURE: The Art of Executive Presence and THE MOONSHOT EFFECT: Disrupting Business as Usual.
This post was adapted from The Moonshot Effect, Disrupting Business as Usual by Kate Purmal and Lisa Goldman with Anne Janzer.
For more practical leadership insights, explore the COMPOSURE team’s programs for emerging and existing leaders, including Elevate LIVE, a 12-week intensive program that guides you to step into your full potential as an authentic and confident leader.
