Lindsey Pollak - Becoming the boss: new rules for the next generation of leaders

To Chloe
and new leaders everywhere

T hank you first and foremost to the enthusiastic team at HarperCollins who made this book possible: Colleen Lawrie, Hollis Heimbouch, Leigh Raynor, and Renata Marchione. Thank you to my literary agent, Michelle Wolfson, for many years of encouragement and advice. (We knew wed work together someday!)

Many thanks to each of the new leaders, established leaders, and leadership experts who shared your personal experiences and insights for this book: I am so appreciative of your honesty and generosity. For assistance with research, writing, and editing, thank you to the talented Paige Arnof-Fenn, Kevin Grubb, Michelle Hainer Calcaterra, and Amy Orlov.

Thank you to everyone at my corporate partner The Hartford for a wonderful and productive relationship, especially Liam McGee, Lori High, Laura Marzi, Wendy Wojdyl, Michelle Loxton, and Kelly Carter. And thank you to the hardworking and gracious women of Emanate: Kiersten Zweibaum, Alexis Odesser, Ginny Webb, Jenna Hoops, and Kristen Massaro.

Its not easy to build a business and work mostly alone, so Im forever grateful to the professional networks that have provided community, resources, support, friendship, and cocktails at so many important moments over the last fifteen years and counting. Thank you to the leaders and members of Rotary International, TARA, The Li.st, The YEC, and the Freelancers Union.

A million thank yous to my amazing network of friends, mentors, clients, and colleagues who have supported me personally and professionally over so many years. Thank you to Amy Abrams, Laura Baird, Susan Phillips Bari, Gillian Baudo, Derek Billings, Lynn Carnegie, Jason Criss, Diane Danielson, Cher Duffield, Carol Frohlinger, Jodi Glickman, Joanne Gordon, Christine Hassler, John Hill, Natasha Hoehn, Cassandra Krause, Donna Kalajian Lagani, Mignon Lawless, Alexandra Levit, Danielle Martin, Nicole Mills, Solana Nolfo, Shreya Oswal, Mary Ellen Slayter, Cari Sommer, Trudy Steinfeld, Manisha Thakor, and Tammy Tibbetts.

Thank you to Mom, Dad, Rob, Anne, and Laura for a lifetime of love and encouragement to be true to myself. Thank you to Meredith Bernstein, the Rahos, the Goodman/Ramsays, and Vivian, Georges, and Valerie Gotlib, for your support and love. And to Etel Lima, thank you for being the most wonderful caretaker imaginable and a true member of our family.

Finally, thank you to my amazing husband, Evan, and our daughter, Chloe. There is nothing I am more grateful for than you.

E arly in my career, I worked at a start-up called WorkingWoman.com. (Never heard of it? Youll see why in a moment.) After about a year, I received my first-ever promotion and was told to hire a junior person to handle some of my workload. I chose a friendly, eager, recent college grad named Alex. It was my first experience managing someone and I was excited to become a mentor to my brand-new protg. I managed to read about ten seconds of The One Minute Manager before my employer went bankrupt, as many dot-coms did in the spring of 2001. I had been a manager for three whole weeks.

I thought my leadership career had stopped in its tracks, but I couldnt have been more wrong. During my exit meeting, along with the manila envelope containing my severance package, the head of the company handed me back the company laptop Id just relinquished and said, Keep it. Use it to go start your own business. Without any other prospects on the horizon, I took his advice.

But lets back up for a moment. How did I land at WorkingWoman.com in the first place and know what kind of business to start when I left that job? Where did my career journey really begin? Although the similarities pretty much end here, my leadership origin story begins in the very same place as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbergs: a college dorm room.

My Story

I discovered my passion as a senior in college while serving as an RA (aka resident advisor, which we called freshman counselors at my university). I loved everything about the role: advising college students on their academics, extracurriculars, career paths, and life choices, and serving as a resource for administrators, parents, and other grown-ups who wanted to understand the students I was advising. It was truly one of the best years of my life.

After college I received a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship, which sent me to grad school in Melbourne, Australia (and saved me from the huge potential mistake of applying to law school). I chose to study womens entrepreneurship based on some classes Id enjoyed in college, not realizing then that I was studying my own future. After two and a half years I received a masters degree in womens studies and returned to the United States, ready to begin an awesome career, even though I wasnt entirely sure what that career would be.

During my first job interview back home, for an HR-related position at a Fortune 500 company, the interviewer looked at my rsum and said, A masters degree in womens studies? Thatll get you nowhere.

That experience led to three months of staying under the covers in my childhood bedroom, eating frozen yogurt directly from the carton (as I described in full, rainbow-sprinkled detail in my previous book, Getting from College to Career ), and wondering if my glory days were behind me. Eventually I started meeting with people and sending out rsums. One day I met with a career coach who asked me to describe the best job Id ever had. I immediately started telling her how much I loved being an RA and wished I could do that forever.

So do that forever, she said.

Um, there are no RA jobs in the real world, I replied.

So start your own business, she advised.

As with much good advice, I completely ignored it and eventually landed the job at WorkingWoman.com.

(You already know how that turned out.)

So it wasnt until the second time someone told me to start my own business that I actually listened. After leaving WorkingWoman.com I started freelance writing on career issues and giving speeches on the only topic I knew anything about: how to be a young person figuring out what to do with your life.

Slowly but surely since then, Ive built a speaking and consulting business, providing professional development training to college students and young professionals and advising organizations on managing, and marketing to, young people. Just as I did as an RA, I spend my days guiding young people to their careers and helping the grown-ups understand the next generation. Ive delivered more than a thousand speeches and consulting engagements across several countries; blogged about workplace issues for such outlets as the Huffington Post , ABC News, and FastCompany.com; and served as an official spokesperson for companies such as LinkedIn, Levis, and The Hartforda leading insurance company whose research and leaders will appear throughout this book.

Ive worked very hard and Im proud of my list of professional accomplishments and affiliations. But running my own business hasnt been easy. Some leadership qualities like vision, confidence, and self-discipline came relatively naturally to me (I should mention I am a perfectionist, type-A, Virgo, firstborn child). But Im the first to admit that being a good people manager did not come naturally to me at all (maybe because Im a perfectionist, type-A, Virgo, firstborn child).

Over the years Ive managed dozens of part-time employees, interns, consultants, and virtual assistants, and Ive often found that people management is the hardest part of my job. Ive struggled with giving clear instructions, delegating authority, and providing feedback, among countless other leadership and management mistakes Im sure Ive made. And thats why I wanted to write this book: so you can learn from my experience and not have to suffer through the same challenges on your leadership journey. As I did with the job search process in Getting from College to Career, in this book I will share everything Ive learned about becoming the boss. That includes everything Im still learning and everything that young professionals like youthrough conversations, e-mails, social media posts, and responses to an online leadership survey I fielded while writing this bookhave told me you want to know about leadership, whether you are an entrepreneur like me or you work for someone else.