Andrew Baisley

You need to do more than just seek feedback - you need to learn how to hear it, process it and then act on it. If you ask for feedback, but then argue its validity or do nothing about it, you will undermine your own integrity. Build a practice of approaching feedback with curiosity. Ask probing questions to understand root causes and seek examples. Be open minded about what you hear, knowing that it's not a critical reflection of you as a person, but one of the keys to unlocking the next stages of your career.

Humans are relatively bad at subjectively assessing their own strengths and value. I'm currently advising a startup founder who is thinking about selling his business and returning to corporate, but in another industry. They are worried about how they might compare to someone who has more years of experience in that industry. One thing that has helped is to take a step back and imagine yourself in the position of the hiring manager for a senior role. Would you rather hire someone that has a bit of relevant experience and checks the boxes or would you rather hire someone who has really been in the trenches and grew a business to millions in ARR? There's a place for both, but really fantastic managers would hire the latter.

New leaders often confuse "leading by example" with micromanaging. When leading by example, it's important to start with a team that has value alignment and has a clear understanding of the teams' goals and priorities. From there, your job as a leader is to help unblock the process. For some of your team members, this can be very hands on. For others, it might be entirely hands off. The example you're setting is one of trust and accountability that people on your team are capable of making good decisions, while you stand back ready to support them as needed.

In my experience introvert leaders often have an advantage over extrovert leaders. How? Introvert leaders gain authority through authenticity, deep, strategic planning and exceptional listening skills. Extrovert leaders often gain their authority through dominating conversations, increasing their own visibility and by naturally demanding attention. Think about who you would rather follow across your career? It's not to say that both cannot operate with high integrity and both certainly need to find ways to manage their strengths and weaknesses, but being an introvert is an advantage to leadership in my opinion.

Everyone has something to learn and someone else to teach. As a mentee, the moment you learn something new share it with your network. You can be sure there's someone else ready to learn what you have to teach.

Many years ago at Facebook, our California-based product managers would test products in the Australia market and, when successful, call the product "ready for APAC." This wasn't intentionally misleading, it was just a result of relatively young PMs with limited life experience. If you're facing the same, consider, like we did, organizing a market visit. Sales people should not be the only ones with field experience. Bring your engineers to places like India, Vietnam, Thailand, etc, challenge their understanding of the typical customer and broaden their worldview. After doing that we pretty quickly stopped using Australia as a proxy for APAC.