Advice for Aspiring Leaders: Insights for Future Success

Here’s my advice. Learn how to think, not just how to do.

Early in my career, I thought being a good leader meant having answers. The faster the world moved, the harder I worked to stay “on top of everything”. What I learned the hard way is that speed without judgement just creates noise.

I remember running a growing team where decisions were coming thick and fast. I was busy, reactive, and constantly firefighting. The turning point came when I stopped jumping in with solutions and started slowing conversations down. Asking better questions. Forcing clarity before action. The quality of decisions improved almost overnight and so did the confidence of the team.

The leaders who will succeed in the future aren’t the ones with the most tools or the loudest opinions. They’re the ones who can cut through complexity, think clearly under pressure, and help others do the same. That skill compounds no matter how fast the world changes.

Stop chasing ‘being right’ and start obsessing over being clear. The leaders who win in the future will be the ones who create clarity fast: what matters, what good looks like, who owns what, and what we learned when it didn’t work. Clarity builds trust, and trust is the only real speed boost.

I learned this the hard way during the 2009 recession. My company took a serious hit and I had to make decisions that affected people’s livelihoods. The moments that turned things around weren’t the big speeches, they were the small, repeated behaviors: saying what was true, listening without defending, and making ownership visible. Once the team had clarity, momentum came back, even in chaos.

One Piece of Advice for Aspiring Leaders: Design Your Leadership for Endurance

If I could offer aspiring leaders one piece of advice for sustained success, it would be this: leadership that endures must be intentionally designed, not improvised. And that begins by embedding structured reflection into your leadership operating system.

Leadership today moves at relentless velocity. Decisions compound quickly. Expectations rarely pause. Without intentional reflection, even capable leaders gradually shift from strategic to reactive. Over time, that drift shows up as misalignment, decision fatigue, and unclear direction, not because of a lack of skill, but because recalibration never occurs.

I learned this through senior leadership roles where pressure was constant and the margin for error razor-thin. Early on, I treated reflection as optional, something I’d prioritize once things “settled down.” They never did. Instead, my leadership became increasingly reactive. Vision narrowed. Decision-making grew heavier. Energy declined. I wasn’t failing, but I was drifting.

The turning point came when I reframed reflection as a leadership discipline rather than a personal habit.

I began protecting time to assess present realities, test assumptions, make strategic adjustments, and plan deliberately for the future. More importantly, I committed my growth to paper. A written leadership development plan, reviewed consistently, became my strategic anchor. It gave me increased alignment, clarity and helped me monitor where my leadership was actually evolving or simply enduring.

Here’s what aspiring leaders must understand: your organization, board, and team are counting on you to perform at a high level, consistently. They rely on you to set clear vision, establish a sustainable pace, and create alignment for what’s ahead. That responsibility demands clarity, self-awareness, and disciplined leadership practices, not just hustle, responsiveness, or good intentions.

The leaders who sustain impact over time aren’t the busiest or most visible. They’re the ones who pause with intention, learn in real time, and course-correct before small drifts become major detours.

If you want your leadership to endure, and your influence to compound, build reflection into your leadership infrastructure. Everything else depends on it.

If I had to offer only one piece of advice to aspiring leaders, it would be this: Don’t focus only on driving results; learn to build people. For in the long run, people build results – not the other way around.

I’ve worked with leaders who were exceptional at execution; their teams delivered targets, solved problems quickly, and met every deadline. Everything looked high-performing on the surface. However, underneath, I often saw hesitation in voices, decision dependence on the leader, and limited ownership. The results were real, but fragile. When pressure increased or the leader stepped away, the cracks showed.

That observation shaped a belief I hold deeply today: Performance without ownership is temporary.

When professionals describe the best leaders they’ve worked with, they rarely mention authority or intelligence. They talk about leaders who listened, trusted them early, challenged them with care, and saw potential before performance. People don’t give their best because they are managed well; they do so because they feel seen.

This mirrors my own evolution. Early on, I measured impact by what I delivered. Over time, I began measuring it by what changed in others: their confidence, voice, and ownership. I realised leadership isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about creating spaces where others find theirs.

This matters even more in the future of work. Change is constant. Technology is advancing. Complexity is growing. No leader can have all the answers anymore. The leaders who will thrive are those who replace control with trust, authority with curiosity, and direction with empowerment.

Building people also requires inner work, meaning to let go of the need to be indispensable. Allowing mistakes to become learning. Trusting others with real responsibility. Leadership maturity begins with this thought: My success is not defined by how needed I am, but by how capable my people become without me.

My guidance is simple: listen deeply, ask better questions, give honest feedback with care, delegate thinking not just tasks, recognize effort, stay curious about your people, and keep working on yourself. Small, consistent actions build trust, and trust builds high performance.

The most important advice I give aspiring leaders is that authenticity is not just about self-expression. It is about being understood.

As a Queer leader, authenticity has always been a hot topic for me. It was not a branding choice or a leadership style. Navigating it was a survival skill. Early in my career, I learned quickly that hiding parts of myself came at a cost, but so did expressing them without context. Being “out” did not automatically mean being seen accurately. In fact, the more different I was perceived to be, the more easily my intentions, tone, or decisions were misread.

Working in senior HR roles and later as a therapist and executive coach, I noticed the same pattern across industries. Many well-intentioned leaders are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work, yet they are rarely taught how to make that self legible to others. Authenticity without clarity often leads to misunderstanding. Intentional authenticity however can build trust.

What shaped my leadership most was learning to translate who I am into how I lead. I began to name my values out loud, explain how I make decisions, and be explicit about my boundaries, especially in moments of pressure. That transparency did not dilute my authenticity. It strengthened it. My teams knew what I stood for and what to expect, which created psychological safety and consistency.

For future leaders, authenticity will matter more than ever, but not in a performative way. The leaders who flourish will be those who pair vulnerability with self-awareness. They will not just express who they are. They will help others understand them.

Authenticity becomes powerful when it is shared in a way that invites trust and shows you’re a real human. For me, as a Queer leader, that distinction made the difference between being visible and being impactful.

The advice I give aspiring leaders is this: learn to lead by interpreting the system, not just the situation. The leaders who succeed in the future are the ones who can see the incentives, pressures, and power dynamics shaping a moment, and then act with clarity instead of reacting to noise.

I learned this the hard way early in my career in community engagement and corporate responsibility. I watched a major initiative collapse even though the strategy was airtight. The failure wasn’t about the plan, it was about the ecosystem around it. We hadn’t accounted for the unspoken concerns, the informal influencers, or the community dynamics that ultimately determined whether the work would stick. That experience changed how I lead. It taught me that success isn’t about being the smartest person in the room; it’s about understanding the room well enough to move people toward a shared outcome.

This isn’t just anecdotal. Research from Edelman shows that nearly 70% of people expect leaders to engage authentically with the communities they serve, and Deloitte’s data links stakeholder trust to long term organizational resilience. In other words: leaders who can read systems, and build alignment within them, outperform those who rely solely on technical expertise.

My advice is simple: develop the discipline of seeing the complete system. Listen for the dynamics beneath the surface. Understand the incentives shaping behavior. When you can do that, you stop managing problems and start shaping outcomes, and that’s the difference between leadership that survives and leadership that scales.

Lead people, don’t try to do their jobs for them.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a co-founder is that leadership is not about carrying every task yourself. It’s about setting direction, building trust, and holding people accountable for their responsibilities. When you trust your team and clearly define ownership, you create space for both people and the business to grow. If someone consistently cannot be trusted with their role, that’s a hiring problem, not a leadership burden you should absorb.

Early on, I made the mistake of trying to do everything myself. I thought that was what being a strong leader meant. In reality, it led straight to burnout and bottlenecks. No individual can sustainably run an entire business alone. Long-term success requires capable, dedicated people who own their work and move the company forward together.

I often think of leadership like running a household. One person doesn’t do everything, the responsibility is shared. A great leader creates structure, trust, and accountability so everyone contributes, rather than pushing unfinished tasks back onto the leader’s desk to fix.

One piece of advice I’d give aspiring leaders is to focus on becoming a clarity creator, not a problem solver.

Early in my leadership journey, I believed my value came from having answers. Over time, I realized that what teams needed more was someone who could cut through noise, prioritize decisively, and align people around what actually matters next. In one organization I led, execution stalled not because of lack of talent, but because priorities kept shifting. Once we simplified goals and made trade-offs explicit, performance improved almost immediately.

What I’ve observed is that future leaders will be judged less on intelligence and more on their ability to reduce confusion in complex environments.

What this looks like in practice:

– Clearly defining what will not be worked on, not just what will

– Translating strategy into simple, repeatable priorities

– Making decisions visible so teams don’t second-guess direction

– Repeating context consistently, not assuming alignment

Leaders who can create clarity help teams move faster, stay focused, and trust the direction, even when conditions change. That skill will matter more than any technical expertise in the years ahead.

If you don’t actually like managing people, don’t lead.

That may sound blunt, but it’s the most honest advice I can give to aspiring leaders. Leadership isn’t about influence without proximity or authority without responsibility. At its core, leadership means being willing to engage with people, their emotions, their growth, their friction, and sometimes their disappointment. If that part feels uncomfortable or draining, it’s worth pausing before stepping into a role that will require it every day.

What I’ve learned through experience is that effective leadership starts with self-awareness. If you aren’t aware of your triggers, your vulnerabilities, or the areas where you tend to overcompensate or withdraw, those blind spots will show up in how you lead. Getting familiar with them, and being willing to name them out loud, does two important things. It neutralizes tension in the room, and it signals that honesty is safe here. When leaders are able to acknowledge their own gaps, it creates psychological safety. People stop guessing, stop posturing, and start trusting. That trust becomes the foundation for real accountability, not performative alignment.

I’ve also learned the importance of defining non-negotiables early. What behaviors do you expect from yourself as a leader? What standards will you protect, even under pressure? Leadership without clear non-negotiables tends to drift, and drift is where trust erodes. The best leaders are the ones who are willing to look inward, speak honestly, and build environments where people can do the same.

Leadership is a journey through different levels of leadership. And what I mean by that is that you don’t just go from zero to the head of a company all at once. Even when you’re an entrepreneur, or even when you start your own business, you have different iterations of what that looks like. Initially, you might have been a manager of people. You may then be a manager of managers. You then might be a manager of directors. And the reality is, and the advice is that you can’t manage each level the same way. As a leader, you have to learn how to adjust to the audience that you’re managing. And with that comes a real understanding of how people work, think, and react to the level of advice and management. A good leader has empathy, which requires accountability. They’re someone who really drives people to want to invest their time to grow with you as a leader.

I’m now the CEO of an organization that has over 100 people. We started in an attic with only my business partner and me. We hired some individuals to start doing work and offering services, and started having to manage from that perspective, and then had to have managers of those people. And each moment, I had to change and adjust my own approach of how to communicate effectively with those individuals and how to continue to nurture the buy-in from them.

Aspiring leaders in today’s world are bombarded by noise, by an oversaturation of visibility and demand. The way that humanity is communicating, showing up, and interpreting the world is evolving, and future success will depend on a leader’s ability to sort through the noise, to disregard the fake-urgent and focus on the real needs. In high-stakes, emotionally complex environments, future leaders will need more than outdated archetypes of loud charisma. This will take an intentional choice to embrace strategic stillness—a deliberate moment that allows reactive thoughts to subside and critical thinking to sort out the valuable elements. It’s something I learned out of necessity, out of repetition, long before I had language to name it, and it’s helped me to make impactful decisions despite the information overload.

One piece of advice I would give to aspiring leaders who want to be successful in the future is this: learn to understand people beyond their resumes… really learn what makes them thrive.

Early in my career, I saw how often strong performers were promoted into roles that didn’t align with their strength; and how quickly that misalignment led to burnout, disengagement, or turnover. It wasn’t about capability, it was about fit.

Great leaders of the future will be those who can spot potential, understand how people are wired, and align them with roles where they can grow and succeed. That ability to hire and develop based on job fit is what will separate good leaders from truly transformative ones.

Sit at the feet of giants before trying to become one. I’ve observed that the leaders who create the most sustainable impact aren’t the ones who rush into visibility or authority. They learn by watching, listening, and being in close proximity to people who have already walked the path.

In my work and lived experience, the most formative growth has come from observing how seasoned leaders regulate themselves under pressure, make decisions, and communicate with clarity and steadiness rather than urgency.

When we allow ourselves to sit at the feet of giants, we develop depth, humility, and judgment. Those qualities compound over time and become the foundation for leadership that feels grounded, ethical, and genuinely influential.

Build relationships that outlast your current role.

When you move to a new position, the people you worked with should genuinely miss having you around. That’s the goal. Not just delivering results – but being someone others want on their team again.

Here’s why this matters: as you grow in your career, your former colleagues become your real network. They follow you to new projects. They recommend you when opportunities come up. They tell others “I worked with that person – they’re great.” They give you honest feedback when your new title makes others hesitant to speak up.

I’ve seen this pattern repeatedly. The leaders who build lasting success aren’t just good at managing up – they’re remembered fondly by the people who worked alongside them and under them. Those relationships compound over time.

The opposite is painful to watch. Someone climbs fast but leaves a trail of burned bridges. Eventually they’re surrounded by people who agree with everything they say – not out of respect, but because nobody wants to deal with them. They lose touch with reality.

Your reputation isn’t shaped by your boss. It’s shaped by everyone else. And they talk.

So invest in those relationships now. When you eventually move on, make sure people are sad to see you go.

The best advice I can give to aspiring leaders to be successful in the future is really one thing: act as if you’re already the leader you want to be. Observe leaders who you admire as if they were a case study. What do they do well? How do they present wins to the executive team? How do they interact with the team and clients? One of the most powerful ways to become a strong leader is by practicing leadership before the title arrives. Your habits, communication, and the way you show up should reflect where you’re going—not where you are today. As an executive coach, one of the top challenges people come to me with is wanting to get promoted and grow in their career, but what I see, time and time again, are people working hard and getting good outcomes thinking that is enough. It never is. A key element of leadership development is investing in relationships because leadership is less about authority and more about influence. To go from invisible to indispensable, you need three key things: visibility across the organization and in the impact of your work, influence rooted in strong relationships and leadership presence grounded in credibility and authenticity.

Aspiring leaders seeking to be successful in the future need to be adept at both identifying and focusing on their priorities. In one’s early career, it is important to focus on skill and knowledge development. This is a time to be open to new experiences and to learn and build one’s capacity for future opportunities. When taking on a leadership role, it is important to focus one’s energy on activities that drive the priorities forward.

Successful leaders are strategic and they take time to understand the priorities of the organization and then set clear goals for their team that align with those priorities. Leaders are presented with new ideas and opportunities every day. Some ideas are exciting and may generate a great deal of energy and enthusiasm. By looking at each new opportunity through the lens of how it will drive the priorities forward, leaders are able to focus their attention and energy on those ideas most aligned with the goals of the business. It can be hard to say “No,” or “Not now,” to a new opportunity, and the leader will not achieve their goals if their energy is split in too many different ways.

Leaders are presented with shiny new objects or new things to learn and explore every day, even more so in our rapidly changing AI-influenced world. The most successful leaders are able to make decisions by continuously checking back with the priorities. Successful leaders continue to learn and grow, and their learning and development is informed by their goals and objectives.

If you want to succeed as a leader in the future, invest in cultural intelligence for yourself and your team. This is not optional advice.

Cultural intelligence makes effective collaboration and communication easier by acting as a bridge builder. Developing this skill will enable you to create the conditions for high-performing, inclusive teams that work well across borders, backgrounds, and belief systems.

Treat cultural intelligence like a muscle that you train regularly.

The more you practise it, the stronger it becomes. This strength shows up when you work in multigenerational environments, navigate hybrid teams, and collaborate across different cultural contexts.

With cultural intelligence, you and your team can leverage a competitive advantage.

It helps you bridge differences that might otherwise slow you down. You learn how to decode the unspoken norms that shape how people communicate, make decisions, and show respect.

When someone on your team interprets silence as agreement, whilst another sees it as disagreement, cultural intelligence helps you navigate that gap.

When generational differences create tension over feedback styles or work preferences, you turn that tension into productive dialogue.

You stop viewing diverse perspectives as sources of conflict and start seeing them as fuel for innovation. This shift changes everything about how your team performs and how you lead them.

Aspiring leaders must learn to pivot in this fast-paced business environment. This means always having a backup plan and always reviewing how changes in technology, recruiting, and other business environment factors can create challenges as well as opportunities.

Within our business, we have seen changes in technology with the advent of A.I., the rise of remote work, and the use of tools like Teams and Zoom for sales and training worldwide.

If I had to give aspiring leaders one piece of advice, it would be this: stay humble and create space to listen — especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Listen more than you talk. And regularly ask your team for feedback on how you’re showing up as a leader.

It sounds simple, but it’s rare.

In my work as a Chief People Officer and Board Advisor, I’ve seen extraordinarily talented leaders stall — not because they lacked intelligence or drive — but because they didn’t make it psychologically safe for their teams to tell them the truth. Over time, candor disappears. Feedback gets filtered. Innovation slows. And blind spots widen.

The most effective leaders I’ve worked with actively invite feedback. They ask questions like, “What am I not seeing?” or “Where am I making your work harder?” And more importantly, they don’t punish honesty. They reward it.

Humility isn’t weakness. It’s a performance advantage.

When leaders create environments where people feel safe to challenge ideas, raise risks early, and offer candid input, execution improves. Customer relationships strengthen. Sustainable growth becomes possible.

The future belongs to leaders who can learn faster than the environment changes. And that starts by listening.