NGC Experience: John Wall

How did you hear about NexGen Center and the Foundation for Effective Leadership program?

NextGen Center was kind of one of those things that it's been floating around in the Adwerx management culture for a while. The program is almost a rite of passage at the company. So when I was presented with the opportunity to join a cohort and go through the program myself, I jumped at the chance. 

Tell us about your professional situation and any challenges you had.

One of the core values at Adwerx is embracing growth, and there's no better way to embrace growth than to invest in your employees, making your employees more competent in their leadership abilities and giving them the tools to be good leaders.

I was a freshly-made manager and had just taken on my first report a couple of months before I started the Foundation program. I was swimming in the deep end, drinking from the firehose, and I was looking for any kind of help that I could possibly get.

I went in with the expectation of increasing my skill set or learning a couple of things that I might be able to use in my management process. But by the end of the first session, I was really amazed at how much of a mindset shift I was already beginning to have. 

I think that was only amplified throughout the process. My coach and I were working on one of the frameworks that we had learned in the main session. She said, “John, you need to remember that leadership is not about you.” And that's when everything just began to click. 

I think that was really the 90 degree turn that I needed to really start to have a better relationship with leadership.

1:1 coaching is part of the program. What was that like for you?

I'd never had a coach before. I've had leaders in my career that have been extremely helpful in guiding me towards a vision, towards having goals, and understanding my relationship with my career. 

But it's different when your leaders are also your managers. They need to also look out for the business. So having a one on one relationship with a coach with essentially no skin in the game, who was just there to help me personally grow, and give me space to work through things with no pretense... that was extremely valuable, and it was something that I didn't anticipate being as valuable as it was, but the more we chatted, the more value I took from it. 

How would you characterize the difference between being a leader and being a manager?

The main difference between leadership and management is where your investment priorities lie. So if you're more invested in hitting short term goals or if you're more invested in making sure that optics are good for someone who's a level higher than you, or you need to make sure your team is marching in step. That to me is a manager.

Whereas, if you're more invested in long term success, if you're more invested in the people who are working for you as people and not just as employees or numbers, I'd say that's when you start to get into the realm of leadership. 

Another massive takeaway from the program for me is that leadership doesn't stop when you clock out. Leadership is something that you know you can demonstrate as frequently as you're willing to put in the work.

Whether it be personal relationships, friends who are going through something or friends who just want to chat. You can demonstrate leadership in so many different capacities. You don't need a manager’s title. You don't need to be a director or VP to be a leader. You just need to have the mindset that you want to improve yourself and help improve the others around you.

With the program, you don’t come out with some magic badge saying “I'm a leader.” You focus a lot on yourself, which is something that was surprising for me. You focus a lot on yourself and on your relationship with yourself and with all the different aspects of what makes a leader. You'll probably go deeper than you thought you'd go.

It's such an important jumping off point. It's such an important way to kickstart that journey and give you the tools to start having those conversations with yourself and start having that reflective space with the questions that you should be asking yourself. It's billed as a five session program but really, those five sessions kick off what should become a lasting exercise in always trying to improve. 

What was it like doing the program remotely after the COVID-19 outbreak?

I feel like in a lot of ways we had to get to know each other in a very different way. By the end of the program I felt like I knew everyone that I was working with, despite the fact that we only saw each other on a video call for three hours every couple of weeks.

We had one session in person, but by the following session everything had kind of gone off a cliff. Brian had figured out Zoom, he'd figured out breakout rooms, and how we could still have really engaging sessions. We put together a slack group for everybody. 

Initially it seemed like it would really dampen the program but I think, in a lot of ways, it may have enriched it even more.

How does the community factor into your experience?

Another of Adwerx’s core values is leaving a positive wake: leave some sort of positivity wherever you go. There were 12 of us in the cohort. And everybody came in ready to care for everybody else, ready to respect everybody else, and ready to help everybody else.

What kind of change have you seen in yourself since completing the program?

I've already seen a change in how I interact with others, whether it be work life or personal life:  I'm trying to take a step back.

One of my one of my strengths is Individualization, as I learned through the Clifton Strengthsfinder assessment. Basically, I can see everyone has their own unique way to deal with them. But some of the ways that I was interacting with folks, whether at home, or at work, was contradictory to that. I would get defensive about things and think that my idea was the best idea and I would not take a moment and put myself in their shoes, to understand where they're coming from. 

So I decided to be more curious. I try to ask more questions to understand where they're coming from. And that has dramatically changed the way that I interact with people. I have more constructive dialogue. 

The program is a great way to start this conversation. Even now, I have Brian's voice in the back of my head, or that of different coaches that I've worked with in the back of my head. I can vividly picture folks that I've talked with throughout the program, going through a coaching model with me. Overall, we spent like 40 hours together But the impact that time had is just so much more than most of the other uses of that 40 hours. 

Why do you think someone should take the program?

If someone wants to be a leader, they need to have these conversations. They need to understand all the different aspects of what goes into leadership. It's not just being a manager, it's not just being a VP. It's not being a CEO. 

There is no better use of your time, than to have these conversations and the way that NextGen program really centers these conversations is healthy and incredibly valuable.