Until now, I’ve focused my career on being an “individual contributor.” I learned that term over Spring Break during a conversation I had with my cousin, who is a director of sales for Canada and the US for a Fortune 500 biotech corporation. It’s another way of saying “no one reports to you,” he told me, in a conversation we had about being a manager. We discussed the things he likes about being a manager, when he can develop the sales reps that work for him. We also discussed the hard conversations that need to take place between him and his team.
When I was a reporter, I was given the opportunity to apply for the city editor position at the paper I worked at. I shadowed my boss, the exiting city editor, for a day and quickly decided I liked reporting more than editing. At my previous job at a state agency website, my leaving for the MBA program at Baylor coincided with a re-organization that would have seen me supervise a team of writers.
So in short, I’ve come pretty close to having the opportunity to be a supervisor a couple of times. I wasn’t mentally prepared for the city editor gig, because I was more interested in the hands-on work of a reporter than with the higher level strategizing, coaching and managing work of being an editor, although I really enjoyed filling that role to some extent for our interns. At my last job, I think I was finally ready, but I was also ready for something new, altogether, so that one wasn’t in the cards, either.
A big reason I wanted to get an MBA was because of what I’m now learning in my organizational behavior class, which is all about management, leadership, and coaching. The more I talk about management and read about it in my classes, the more I’m convinced that I’m ready, whenever the opportunity presents itself, to take more of a leadership role. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting my hands dirty, but I’d like more of a say in strategy and I’d also like to take on the challenge of coaching and mentorship. I’ve trained a lot of people in my past two jobs, and really enjoy being the go-to guy when questions come up about handling different situations, whether at the newspaper or at the state agency website.
And so that’s been a meandering, rambling introduction to the topic I really wanted to write about in this blog, which is a regular feature in the New York Times called “Corner Office.” Every week or so, the CEO or president of a different company is interviewed about different aspects of management and leadership. I always find it fascinating to read about the different ways these successful leaders tackle hiring, how their management style has progressed, and what they’ve learned from bosses they’ve had.
As I search for a summer internship and ultimately prepare for graduation in December, it’s great to hear about what these leaders listen for in interviews and look for when hiring new employees. It’s also fun to hear the different managerial approaches they take and to see the commonalities that arise.
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