Working to Be a Leader

My first job in life was to be a “good girl.”  The youngest of nine children born near Watts in what would later be called South Central Los Angeles, I very early in my life also took on the job of “good follower.”  I took my jobs seriously.  After enrolling at the University of California at Berkeley, I took my jobs less seriously.  Buried inside me was the ambition to teach, write, and work on a large playing field.  Working to find the leader in me took a circuitous and challenging path.

During my career working to be a leader, I’ve started small businesses, been an officer in a ten-person corporation, given the title of Director of Marketing at a global hotel reservations firm, worked as a temporary secretary at a white shoe Wall Street investment bank, and entered as a consultant on a charge line at a behemoth of over 50,000 employees spread out over 38 countries and numerous cultures.

I have heard leaders say, “it’s my way or the highway,” “let’s talk about the best way to complete this project,” “stay until you finish so that the proposal is on my desk when I come in tomorrow at 8:00 a.m.,” “call Air France and tell them to hold the Concorde for me.”

I have learned iterations of email systems since sending my first message via COMET at the Computer Corporation of America in 1982; wrote an Outlook User’s Guide and trained the Marketing & Communications Department at Merrill Lynch’s corporate headquarters in 1997 on their new productivity tools; and read, “Leigh is so informative and patient; I sure hope we can stay in touch with her,” after teaching the Chairman Emeritus of a Wall Street firm how to communicate electronically in 1999.  I doubt he knows that in 2001, I presented a series of “Lunch ‘n’ Learns” for company employees and, in 2002, was retained as an Executive Coach for a two-strike leader.

I have been passed over for someone less talented, reprimanded for taking the initiative while ignoring managerial channels, written up and off for insubordination by stating the obvious about a new technology project cost millions which would produce no bottom line results for the users.

I received letters of praise from parents of my sixth grade students who applauded me for being a teacher who finally “got” their children in 1980; and recently read in emails, “It was a pleasure being in your class,” from students in my “Employee Development and Training” class in the Human Resources track of the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business, part of Baruch College, one of the largest and most diverse schools in the nation.

I have been fired for political reasons, downsized for lack of beauty and youth, mutually agreed to leave when personalities clashed, quit jobs when I was bored or there wasn’t the opportunity for me to be challenged at the company.

I began my social welfare practicum in my senior year at Berkeley working at Alameda County Human Services in Oakland, surrounded by stacks and stacks of case folders that made me realize I didn’t have what it took to make a difference in people’s lives in that setting.  In addition to being a consultant and coach since 1999 at a social service agency, I manage the design of a complex database to track the details of client’s lives and train social workers to retrieve the data from their hand held devices when they are in the field.

I presented, “Family Leave:  A Mid-Career Choice to Reflect,” for the NYC Chapter of the Employee Assistance Professional Association-Women’s Issues Committee and afterward the Advertising Director of PINK Magazine, impressed by my handouts, told me, “You should write for our publication targeted to professional women;” then got assignments to interview top women for PINK’s monthly e-newsletter after which I was recruited by the publisher of Shattered Magazine to be Editor of Spy Glass, their global e-newsletter.

Top executives in major U.S. cities—plus small towns from Paducah, Kentucky, to Tortola, British Virgin Islands—call me “coach” when the engage my services to talk about how to be better leaders, team players, communicators, and more effective contributors at the workplace.  A small church in New Orleans put out a call after Hurricane Katrina that they wanted help to address what was to be done “Inside the Walls” before they decided their future path in the city that America forgot; a call that I answered by volunteering to present in-person workshops and provide ongoing telephone coaching and advisory services; a call that drew on what I knew from experience to be the patience, attention to detail, and constant hope that went into rebuilding lives and fulfilling dreams.

In 1987, I gathered together $500 from my near-bankrupt public relations business in Boston, packed up and slung on my back all the possessions I would use to start over, and ran away to New York City, determined to find out how to be a better leader, understand the intricacies of business, improve my emotional intelligence, and make meaningful contributions to the world.  I worked, worked hard to understand and process what I learned as a temporary secretary sitting at the right hands of the gods of Wall Street, as a gatekeeper to a former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and as a keen observer of office culture.  I worked so that one day I could translate what I learned to those in need of workplace intelligence.

In 2000, I started Leadership Training Room to help leaders level the playing field of obstacles to optimum performance and career advancement. 

I have a fulfilling career.  I have a good life.  I am still working to be a leader.