When you spend most of your career leading, it’s hard to go back to following. But the truth is, it’s not an either/or proposition. I wonder. Is it even possible to be a good leader if you’re not also a good follower?

I’ve spent a lot of years leading teams in corporations. And, I’ve had the opportunity to work for different types of leaders. But some of the most valuable things I know about leadership, I learned “dancing backwards in high heels”.

It all started with a different kind of to “To Do” list.

One afternoon in 2005, I was sitting in my office feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, and, honestly, quite angry! An IT Project Manager in a multi-million dollar corporation, the very large whiteboard in my office was filled with workflow diagrams, resource and equipment requirements, a roughed-in project timeline, and an issues list. My team and I had just completed an estimate for a very large data warehouse project. And that afternoon the VP of our division had thrown it back at me without discussion or explanation, demanding that I reduce the cost estimate by at least 50% “before I went home that night”. Of course, no requirements could be eliminated or scaled back.

I sat there staring at my whiteboard, and fuming (not for the first time) over the fact that this VP had no appreciation for my skills and no respect for the expertise of my team. All he wanted was a dollar figure that would please his boss, the CEO.

It was late in the day. Some of the team had already gone home. The work on my whiteboard represented a couple of weeks of research and analysis by experienced professionals. I wasn’t about to call them back in. They’d done a good job. And, for what our VP was asking, we may as well have thrown darts at a dartboard. What was I to do? Continue reading “Five Things Tango Taught Me About Leadership” →