Ideasabound

At WPP, one of the most junior people on my team taught me something I still use today. She had a gift for visual thinking. Where I would write a long explanation, she would sketch it out, and even the most complex idea suddenly felt simple. I tended toward complex, almost academic approaches. She pointed out how I could make my ideas easier to grasp. That made me better at helping her with her work, and it made the work we delivered for others clearer too. I was her manager. But in that moment, she was leading me. I've only taken one leadership course in my life. Most of what I know came from moments like that. In every job and situation, I noticed what made great leadership and tried to build it into my own way of working. Along the way, I came to see a real difference between a manager and a leader. "Manager" is the word business uses most. To me, managing is about pulling people along to hit goals: checking off tasks, making sure everyone ...