NGC Experience: Kelly Parisi
What challenges were you facing going into NextGen Center’s Foundation for Effective Leadership program?
In my first year of management, I thought I always had to have the answer.
Then during the program, we learned the skill of active listening. Brian walked us through what that really meant, and I had a bell ring in my head. I realized that, wow, I don't do this right now and I really need to focus on it.
It became a key theme for me throughout the program, especially when I thought about coaching my employees to find solutions for themselves. I don't always have to provide the answer, and that's okay. Because part of my job is to be a coach and not just a manager, helping people on my team find their own way.
I think the changes I made were a little jarring for my team, at first, because they were used to being told by me, “Here's the path forward.” The Foundation program had the ancillary benefit of helping my team improve and become better at problem-solving because they are now being coached to do it for themselves in a way that they were not previously.
What does it mean to you that your employer invests in this kind of opportunity for employees?
I've never been in a company that invests in personal growth the way Adwerx does. My previous companies were focused more on output instead of growing the individual - the human. It was more about being at the office when you need to be and producing the work that you were hired to do.
Investing in a leadership development program does benefit Adwerx, but it benefits me as well and will continue to as I progress through my career. That they acknowledge that and invest in the opportunity says so much about the culture, and is one of the reasons I really enjoy working there.
What’s your own sense of being a leader versus being a manager, now that you’ve completed the program?
One of the biggest takeaways for me is the coaching mindset, and what it really means to be a coach. I didn't even recognize the need for it or my own capacity for doing it. It was unearthed several months into the program.
As a result, I learned you can be a leader without being a manager. And that was not a mindset that I had before going into the program. I always felt I have this very straightforward trajectory where I’m an individual contributor, and then I move into a manager role and then I think about leading.
But that’s not the case. You can be a leader on a team without having a direct report. It's more about the mindset of how you help people -- how you focus on the whole person. There are tangible and intangible ways that you can help anyone grow.
I learned about giving and receiving feedback and how that's a gift. I learned about the importance of building trust.
Previously, I thought about management as making sure that we get the job done, and that we're producing the right output for the company. But now it's more about building trust with my employees, making sure that they're able to come to me with issues, making sure that I'm able to give them opportunities to grow in their roles. That was a pretty big mindset shift for me that I took away from the program.
What's something that you see now, as a result of the program, that you can't unsee?
Micromanaging is something that I cannot unsee now.
I have been in situations where I observe other people doing it, and it irks me now. I have a fuller understanding of why that's not the ideal path and why it’s really not a gift to the employee that you're micromanaging. It's not helping them learn and grow and figure out what they need to be doing for themselves.
1:1 coaching is part of the Foundation for Effective Leadership Program. How was that experience for you?
I tend to be really tactical. And so one of the things that I struggled with during the program was theoretical situations -- there are not a lot of black and white answers. “If you run into XYZ, here's how you'd handle it.” For me, the coaching sessions were an important time to ask those situational questions that I experienced and struggled with, and have a very candid and direct conversation of how I could manage my way through those circumstances.
I think having a coach that is removed from the company was really helpful because I could speak candidly.
What’s your biggest takeaway from the program that you experience now?
I needed to figure out the kind of leader that I want to be, and I learned that my leadership style doesn't have to be exactly the same as the leader I report to.
In fact, we have different leadership styles -- and neither of us is right or wrong. But honing in on my own skills and understanding what is important to me and why has given me the confidence to figure that out for myself.
Why should someone learn more about NextGen and the Foundation for Effective Leadership program?
The Foundation program is an opportunity for emerging leaders to develop and hone some basic but fundamental skill sets needed to be a leader at a company. It would be beneficial for anybody that wants to take on a leadership role. And that doesn't mean you know that you have to have direct reports -- we had some people in our cohort that didn't have anybody report to them. It’s a critical opportunity to practice introspection, to learn about your values and what your vision is, and then how to frame and have those conversations with folks that you do lead.
It matters because leadership is a constantly evolving situation and it requires practice. It's not something where you take one course on or read some articles and then all of a sudden you're a leader.
Throughout your career there's going to be different situations when you have to take different parts of your leadership skills and apply them. There's a benefit to you but there's also a benefit to the people that you lead.