Hipsy in Leadership

As a Hipsy who grew up in a very different world, I find that life has provided me with the opportunity to see people from a very different view and perspective than the average person. Perhaps its the life experience from traveling all over the world or a skill that I’ve honed over the year to be able to read between the lines of what people are actually saying. Being a leader of people to me, means being able to actively listen to what people are saying and unlocking the true potential within the person.

Each person is different. Each person teaches me a new set of lessons. Allows me a view into their life and their way of thinking. It’s always the most curious thing for me to see into people’s minds like that. To see the way they react and try to understand why they may be the way they are. People truly fascinate me and managing people gives you such a perspective that you wouldn’t normally see if you were just interacting with someone on a person to person level.

Everyone has that person on their management journey who changes the way you see everything and perhaps even changes who you are. If you’re self aware enough, it will change you for the better. This last year has been a new challenge of leading people for me as I took on more and said yes to employees I would have never agree too before because their personalities or work style didn’t seem to align with someone that I would want on my team. I have learned so much and I know I will continue to evolve and learn more as I continue to say ‘yes’ to what the universe has put in my path.

I’ll never forget the first person who made a significant impact on my management journey. I had just started managing, and though they weren’t the first person I had ever managed, they were the person that changed everything.

I had just started out in my own department , developing it from the ground up. My first real employee had moved to another department. I didn’t have the heart to let her go, she was a good employee, just doing the wrong work and I didn’t have time to continue to fix the mistakes that they were making. After several interviews I hired my next person and the first guy I ever managed. I thought things would be easier than a girl, “less feelings and emotions” would be involved I thought. They would talk less, and we would get more work done.

I am a very private person and though I’ve learned overtime what to share with employees to be relatable, at the time I hadn’t learned how to share parts of myself with someone and instead just didn’t share anything about myself with anyone. I was there to work and I didn’t think I needed to do that to connect to my employees. It made me uncomfortable, so I never did it. It helped that we had nothing in common so the conversations were kept to the minimum. Work was all that we ever discussed, and I was extremely cold and rude when it came to discussing anything else.

I am not proud of who I was then, I had just started to become aware of who I was and what I was feeling. After living in a deep depression for 7+ years, it felt like I was slowly stirring, but not quite awake. It’s hard to manage people when you haven’t quite made peace with yourself and who you are.

Everyday was a personal struggle, every day I would wait up and ask myself what was the purpose of all this. Getting ready for the day would result in 2 crying sessions and eventually a stern talk to myself to pull myself together and get to work. I didn’t have friends at work, so I did my job and only interacted with my employee when it was about work and what he was not doing right.

We got through 3 months okay but by month 5 it started to fall apart. Our work relationship got worse and worse, and at the end of the work relationship he had managed to tell my manager, HR and half the office that I was a bipolar bitch who needed to be medicated, among other things.

I’ll never forget the day he turned in his two weeks notice and walked out the door. He said good bye to everyone in the office and then for his grande finale stopped at my desk to remind me that I did this and I was a terrible person. I never replied to him, just turned back to my computer and kept working. Staying tough at work was something I was great at. But I’ll never forget driving home that day weeping as I replayed all the things he said about me in my head. That weekend the whole situation had put me into a deep depression. I spent the weekend alone with the kids as my partner was working and ended up doing the bare minimum and spent most of my time crying in my bed feeling the waves of depression and anxiety as I thought about all he said about me. Was I really all the things this person had said about me? Life has a way of knocking you down so fucking hard that you wonder if you’ll ever get back up.

But sometimes the knock out is just what you need to wake the fuck up and realize that life is to short to just accept that you are what you are and that life is just happening to you. That weekend I woke up spiritually and mentally. I was determined to never allow someone to be able to say things like that about me again and I made a promise to myself that I would work harder on myself and reinventing the person that I was so that I would never have to look at myself in the mirror and wonder if I had failed again. I wanted my kids and my partner and the people in my life who I valued to view me as someone who was not just a great leader but an extraordinary one. My actions that allowed the situation to escalate to where it had were 100%t my fault and I had the power to change who I was and how I was acting.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it was like I was given a second chance to become self aware and to start reinventing myself into the person that people wanted to follow. A person that people looked up to and thought to themselves, “I want to be a leader like her”. So I began to read every management book I could get my hands on. I searched my soul and asked myself the difficult questions on what I could do to improve myself and evaluated everything that was said to me and consciously made the effort to change the things that I knew were right and didn’t seat right with me. I mediated more deeply, which allowed my to observe my actions and over time I recreated the leader that I was. Everyday I promised myself to show up the best version of myself, someone who I would be proud of me, someone who would look up to me.

From breaking down my walls, to forcing myself to be more appreciative to others, to changing the way that I listened and spoke to others, I began to create change within myself that started to be noticed by others. My team got bigger and I started to expand my leadership and take on more people. People started to come to be for advice and I started to become the standard of what great management should be.

Within a couple of years, I took over developing and creating the internal management training for the company I am working for and began to train our new managers and supervisors how to manage people and how to do it so that people want to work with you and consider you a great leader. I perfected each class and I solicited the help of others in the company who I thought others could learn from to teach the classes.

Year after year, I continued to show up and be the change that I wanted to see in my world by never becoming complacent in evolving and working hard at being the leader that I myself wanted to look up to. I set my standards high and I never let myself expect anything less the standard of leadership that I set for myself.

In 2022, I won our ‘Mentor of the Year Award’ and as I looked back over the long journey I had taken to get to where I am now, it amazed me how a decision to not remain who I was could propel me onto a journey to becoming the owner of a new Leadership Consulting business, Legacy of Leaders.

My time at my career has been so insightful and has taught me and continues to teach me so many valuable lessons on leadership and how to be a better leader for your people. The world needs better leaders, better people who are willing to put in the work and lead the people they manage to greatness. My goal is to be able to train others on how to be great leaders and to leave a Legacy of Leaders who train others to become great leaders.

I know I have a lot to learn, and I’ll continue to keep my standards of leadership high as I develop and create my own leadership consulting business. Starting this company and this program just felt so right in my soul, in my gut that I knew that if I didn’t take the chance on myself I would be letting my fears stand in the way of my purpose in life and I’m never one to ever let anything stand in my way.

Legacy of Leaders will be my legacy that I will leave behind for the world. Life has taught me that if you change one thing, you can change everything. Everyday is a new day to change something that has the ripple effect that can go on forever. You just have to make the decision and take the leap to make that change that can change your whole life.

Until next time…

A.A.