Be the Calm or Be the Storm: Leadership Lessons from a Woman at the Helm

by Sandy Yawn

know your true north.

Good leadership is also about knowing your limitations. Even when you are in charge you must be willing to listen, take direction, and partner with someone with different skill sets and experience from your own.

As leader, it’s my job to prepare everyone for what may or may not come to pass. You can never train enough. We owe it to ourselves and the people under us to continually refresh and upgrade our knowledge and abilities on the job.

Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.

The one thing you don’t do as a leader is show you’re scared. You need to instill confidence in order to get others to follow.

Your people have to trust you, but you have to build up that trust through self-possession and self-leadership, and many other things, such as serving selflessly, sharing the risks and the load, and providing them the training and the resources to get the job done.

The lesson here is that you are never entirely out of options. There is always hope. As you look around, you may not immediately see the solution in the inky, heaving waters of the crisis you are trying to manage or lead your way out of. Yet there are always resources you can pull or calls you can make to solve a problem. When you’ve paid attention, that past conversation, piece of data, or name will bubble up from the recesses of your memory and reveal itself right in your moment of greatest need. Have faith!

A friend once told me that, in times of great stress, you should “look at where your feet are.” If you take that minute and look at where your feet are and take that breath and you look up at a person, it can change everything.

base my decision off the data, not the feelings or the fears.

Gather as much information as you can, of course, but trust yourself and be decisive.

Adapt to your local conditions. Whether you find yourself in a strange land, or are interacting with a different corporate culture, try hard to see things from their point of view.

Communicate well, and often. Don’t assume that everyone’s on the same page, or that crucial information is getting properly disseminated.

Drill it in. You can never train enough.

Get the facts. Don’t react to an impression.

It’s all in your approach. Handle a problem or crisis based on full information while maintaining situational awareness.

Humble yourself to learn. The greatest leaders are always teachable.

Look at your feet. The human mind is full of chatter. We are constantly telling ourselves stories, to the point where the narrative takes over and we lose sight of the simple facts on the ground.

Model the professionalism you want to see in others. If you want to build a culture of respect, you must demonstrate what that looks like in your own behavior. Be it so they can see it.

When you lead people, it’s important to understand the human condition and realize that no one is all good or all bad.

Whatever stage of life and career you are in, surrounding yourself with people who are different from you will only strengthen your leadership skills.

You have a choice.

Create healthy habits.

I often repeat to myself this little rhyme: “I feel good, I feel fine, I feel like this all the time.”

Stop thinking about “me” and start giving back.

Include people in your circle who think differently from you. Once you’ve brought in those different perspectives, chances are you will make better decisions.

Understand the power of second chances. Leaders, you’ll never find a more dedicated team member than someone who has come out the other side of extreme hardship or fought the good fight of recovery.

Put God, or whatever you see as a power greater than yourself, first. Again, it’s not all about what you want. Recognize that you are a part of somet...

You’ve got this.

You should always encourage your people with praise).

self-leadership before leadership of others.

it’s okay to go against the current. You just have to be willing to push a little harder.

John taught me to push past the fear and trust my instincts. It’s not a matter of forgetting what you know so much as balancing your knowledge with the bigger picture of what needs to be done, charting your course with the facts in the back of your mind instead of the front, so that you can see exactly where you’re going as you forge ahead.

When you assign tasks “above their pay grade” and raise your expectations of the people you lead, they’ll jump that much higher to meet them. Giving them a higher goal gives them confidence.

When you are self-directed and self-aware, when you create the right conditions for yourself to balance out your weaknesses and play to your strengths, you can do anything.

If you want to succeed in something, be a student of that career, and always remain teachable.

the learning must be nonstop.

when someone has taught you all they can, you remain friends, but you need to recognize that it’s time to move on.

It’s possible to lead through a crisis when you’ve already done the work and acquired the ability.

You must always be willing to cultivate self-awareness long after you’ve earned those stripes if you want to achieve greatness as a leader. Self-leadership requires a deep understanding of your own weaknesses and triggers so that you can manage all those impulses that could lead you down a less productive path. It involves acknowledging and accepting where you are now and the steps you need to take to get to where you want to go.

You also need to remain humble and willing to learn from anyone, regardless of rank, in order to own the privilege of influencing and teaching others.

Surround yourself with positive influences.

Be open to mentorship.

Be a mentor. Reach back when you’ve made it to a certain level. Teach the next generation and let them stand on your shoulders.

Acquire the skills. Take the courses, get the hands-on training.

Believe in your skills. Make a quick risk assessment, but do not hesitate.

Cultivate self-awareness. Progressing on the course you’ve charted for yourself requires acknowledging where you are now. Consciously create the right conditions for your own success.

Develop self-leadership. You can’t lead others until you’ve learned the self-discipline to set your own intention and work hard toward a goal. Do all the above, then stand in the confidence of who and what you have become.

Remain tea...

Be relentless in your pursuit of learning.

Sometimes investing in people is a matter of giving them agency, entrusting them with something they’ve never done before so that they can build an appreciation of the challenge and develop an understanding of what they need to do to master the skill.