AMA Leadership Answer - Can you share a story about an early days leadership lightbulb moment?

I've had a lot of lightbulb moments as I've been going through my leadership journey, most of them subtle learnings the built up over time. At the beginning, I thought the promotion was about me and my career. My job was to manage tasks across the team. Thats how I saw it at the beginning.

So the first lightbulb moment all those years ago, was that you can't manage everyone the same. I had strict documented HR processes in my first role for general line management and career development that you used for each employee (we're talking 2001...ish). You considered those policies to be "how you line manage people". Some people responded to them, some didn't but those that didn't were frowned upon as either being flippant or not ambitious.

When I got my next leadership role, I read the teams objectives that my boss has set them before my appointment. They were all the same. From the uninformed targets such as "zero defects for product x" to "do a presentation on product y" - assuming everyone would be comfortable doping presentations. So I scrapped them all, and worked with each person to set objectives specific to each person.

For other big light bulb moments, please read my article on my 6 leadership mistakes that made me a better leader