What Will Your People Remember?
Everyone you meet has something to teach you if you’re humble enough to learn. Some of these lessons can be hard skills and others can be soft. Some of the instruction will be obvious and some will seep into your brain silently and quietly without your knowledge.
Early in my career, I was seeking out people who could help me with technical skills in analytics, customer research or product positioning. Later, I turned to leaders and mentors to teach me how to effectively prioritize or dissect and navigate corporate matrices so I could be more effective and make a big impact. Unlike some of these more technical or hard skills, I’ve found that lessons in leadership are in the air, and we absorb the knowledge and wisdom with each breath. This is why it’s so important to work for different types of leaders in your career.
I picked up one of the most valuable leadership lessons in my career while I was on Chanda Beppu’s team, first as a Group Manager and later (briefly) as a Director. Chanda taught me - really she showed me - that ‘people often forget what you say or do, but almost always remember how you make them feel’.
Recent research at UC Berkeley has found there are 27 feelings / emotions we often experience in our lives -
Admiration
Adoration
Aesthetic appreciation
Amusement
Awe
Awkwardness
Boredom
Calmness
Craving
Disgust
Empathetic pain
Entrancement
Envy
Excitement
Fear
Horror
Interest
Joy
Nostalgia
Romance
Sadness
Satisfaction
Sexual desire
Sympathy
Triumph
Chanda’s leadership magic was that in the course of working together for ~5 years, she consistently made me, and many others, feel joy, interest, excitement, calmness, triumph and admiration because she saw me, she heard me and she trusted me, and that was better than any career achievement or reward. I wasn’t afraid or anxious while on her team.
Although I can’t remember specific quotes or actions she took, I have a strong memory of how she made me feel, and I know her deliberate and intentional brand of leadership cultivated an environment that lifted me (and others) up and kept me coming back to Starbucks for 6 years.
Nearly 1 year into my second rotation as Director, leading a team of 9, I am working to shift from being a leader who focuses his time on teaching hard and soft skills to being a leader who creates an environment where people feel more of the positive emotions listed above and fewer of the negative. I am in a constant state of ‘becoming’ as a leader. I have not arrived and some days I slip and stumble, but I get up and work to do better on the next swing, always taking inspiration from leaders like Chanda and many others.