What to Watch Out For

• Stay in the real world. Trust the details you notice. You are such an avid reader and researcher you can sometimes be intrigued and even swayed by other people’s theories. While some of these theories may be sound, always rely on your own real-world learning as your guide.

• Know that things will not always work out as you had hoped. A new young talent whom you championed will struggle. A new idea that you introduced and supported will fail to take hold. Be resilient and keep confident in your process, namely, that in most cases experimentation and delegation lead to progress.

• Teachers can sometimes come across as know-it-alls, so guard your credibility. This means a) keep doing your real-world research so that you always have on hand two or three recent examples of what you’ve seen and the sense you’ve made of it; and b) learn to be comfortable saying, “I don’t know and I will get back to you with the answer as soon as I can.” Never pretend to know what you don’t.

• It will be hard for you to thrive without an audience, even if your audience is a readership rather than a group of people you actually know. So seek out your audience of learners and resist the temptation to get yourself promoted too far away from them.

• When you join a new team, the learner aspect of you will do battle with the teacher aspect. The teacher aspect will immediately see people who could improve and ideas that could be spread. Hold this teacher aspect in check. You can’t simply waltz into a new setting and proffer advice and wisdom—well, you can, but it will be badly received. So in the learner-teacher battle, let the learner win. Ask your questions, take notes, be known for listening, and your wisdom will be more appreciated and more readily adopted.