Danielle Summers

When I took the first step in my career, the move from Academia to Corporate was shocking. I went from being one of the smartest people around me with nothing to prove, to one of the most naive, inexperienced and immature people in the building. Looking back I’m stunned someone took the gamble to hire me, because it was a gamble.

For the first few years of my career, I was constantly chasing that same feeling, that I was once again the smartest person in the room. I’d go out of my way to try and prove it, to take on more work, to learn more and do more with it than my peers. By the time I was 25, I was quite possibly one of the worst versions of me I’ve ever been. Quite bluntly, I was an asshole & people knew it. My attitude towards myself and my peers, as if everything was a competition, made forming working relationships exceptionally difficult which made collaboration a nightmare and people actively pulling away from me, something that ultimately hampered my mental health.

By 30, I’d taken the time to actually stop and listen and learn how to re-invent myself. I poured way more time into listening instead of talking, taking other people’s concerns, ideas and designs rather than voicing my own. I’d effectively swung from one extreme to the other over the space of a few years and I honestly found my mental health improving for it too.

One of the key lessons I learned when I shut up and listened was I had never been the smartest person in any room, even all those years ago in university I was never the smartest. There was always someone who had more knowledge or experience, someone who had better ideas, someone who understood how to execute things that were alien to me.

I’ve worked with a lot of teams and managers over the years and I’ve seen first hand many managers who – like me in my twenties – thought they were the smartest person in the room simply because they are the manager. It’s these managers I tend to not work well with. Ironic, really.

Once I took the step up to management, I made a conscious effort to ensure every person I have the privilege to lead knows – in and out – that while I may have an opinion or idea, it’s most certainly not the only way forward and I’m most certainly not the expert. I see the people I lead, the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Lead Engineers, even Senior Engineers, as my experts. These are the people that actually have their finger on the pulse of the industry. These are the people who know what “good” looks like, or what the right technologies are, or know who to talk to in order to fill in the blanks. The person who is the smartest in the room for any given conversation or discussion simply is not me, and I’m not only OK with that, I embrace that.

My job title doesn’t mean I’m the best, the smartest or the most talented at anything. To me, my job title is there to tell the world that I’m here on a mission to serve, support, guide and facilitate. I don’t crave praise, I crave the opportunity to give praise. I don’t crave power or respect, I humbly give both with no expectations in return. By not chasing that competition to be the best at any one thing, I’ve become somebody I actually like and the response I’ve had from the individuals I lead is generally positive – they enjoy working with me, they like helping me understand, they appreciate the honesty and I’ve seen them bask in the praise I give for a job well done. On the other hand, when things don’t go well, my openness and honesty with my team leads to more honest appraisals of what went wrong and why. People who are celebrated for their wins can often be reluctant to be honest when something goes wrong, but by showing that I’m wrong more than anyone else it gives everyone a sense of camaraderie and trust that failures aren’t going to be punished but used as a learning opportunity – because that is what my failures are, learning opportunities. If my failures are used in this way, the people I lead see their failures as the same and through experience we all learn together.

When we as managers stop getting hung up on the archaic “I’m the boss so do what I say” or “I’m the boss so I’m right” type mentality, we can then evolve into people that others may actually want to follow willingly into blame-free, supportive teams who can go on to reach new hights.

And as a final note, I want to send out two messages. First, to all those amazing people I worked with in my youth who had to put up with me being an asshole, I’m sincerely sorry. I’ll always try a little bit harder to make up for all those times I failed you. Second, a message back to my 20year old self. Girl, you will never be the smartest person in the room, so embrace being you and stop being a dickhead.