Why Leader Stew?

Ice cream shoppe

I created this blog because I wish something similar existed when I started looking to develop my leadership skills and approach. As I earned more responsibility and was given more authority, it mattered to me that I remain trustworthy, reliable, thoughtful, impactful, and ethical. I read loads of books, listened to podcasts, enrolled in training courses, attended conferences, and modeled myself after others I admired. I gravitated to stuff claiming that the best leaders achieve incredible outcomes through humility, authenticity, and mutual respect. It all sounded perfectly matched to my values, so I gobbled up every bit and charted my path!

Now that I’ve got some experience behind me, I see that the nuances inherent in human interactions left some pretty big gaps in all that guidance. This blog aims to explore those nuances.

Lessons from an Ice Cream Shop

After being told I was a “natural leader” early, I always believed I was destined for it. My first big lesson involved an illusive topic: How to lead highly effective teams. It was that kind of training you get through osmosis - just by being on a great little league team or in a talented high school band. In my case, it was one of my first summer jobs.

I was working at a busy ice cream shop in a little tourist town in New Hampshire. One memory plays in my mind like a movie - a bird’s-eye view of the closing activities every night. After the doors were locked, whoever was closest to the boom box would put in a CD – I remember a lot of Tracy Chapman and 10,000 Maniacs - and they set the volume as loud as it would go. With that cue, the closing list came out, and we all jumped in to clean and restock. Nobody assigned tasks. Nobody checked the quality. Nobody slacked off. The list was our guide - our collective goal. When anyone had a question or concern, they voiced it and got it resolved, not through hierarchy and authority but through collaboration. It was fluid and fast and incredibly effective.

I can’t speak for how others felt, but I was motivated in part because I felt accountable to everyone in that store. That included the people I was working alongside at closing and those who would come in the next morning to open. We didn’t cut corners because we didn’t want someone else to get stuck making it right. There was an energy that constantly hummed and fueled us. It was like an unspoken motto, “Work hard and don’t take yourself too seriously!”

It’s so cliché to say this, but mop handles really do make excellent microphones, and cleaning to a soundtrack is just better! It’s a wonderful memory, and even though some days weren’t quite that perfect, many were. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that experience was foundational to how I choose to lead. Now, are you ready for the kicker?

The owner of that shop was only 18 years old, and everyone working there was between the ages of 16 and 18.

It's almost unbelievable, right? Yet it seemed so normal at the time. I've thought a lot about what made it all work so well when conventional wisdom suggests teenagers—and people in general—need more structure, process, and oversight. What I've learned since then is that this wasn't a fluke. But that's a story for another post. For now, let's get back to why this matters for this blog.

Why Leader Stew?

I decided to create this blog and selected this title after recognizing that while aspiring leaders, with their coaches and mentors, focus enormous energy on developing skills like delivering feedback, active listening, creating vision and strategy, leveraging decision frameworks, and on and on and on – while all that skill building is happening, we start believing that becoming a good leader comes from being a good student of leadership skills, but it doesn’t. The skills help sometimes, but in every situation, there are a bunch of variables beyond our line of sight that impact outcomes without our knowledge. The skills people bring are certainly part of it, but so too are the ways each person makes sense of the situation, including their assumptions, biases, and previous experience.

Good leadership involves more than skills. It involves the capacity to accept that there are bits you can’t see or control. It requires us to figure out how to create environments that don't hold others back from contributing what the situation actually calls for, even when that's something we never would have thought to ask for. The best leaders I’ve worked with can do this, but they are rare.

I wrote this blog to share the unconventional ideas and experiences that have shaped how I think about leadership—the stuff that doesn't make it into most leadership books. As a reader of this blog, I invite you to stop trying to perfect your leadership recipes and start making room for what's actually simmering. What variables are you missing or taking for granted? What would you discover if you looked beyond the ingredients you think you're adding?

This is where the real conversation begins. Not with me telling you what leadership should look like, but with all of us asking better questions about what we're actually seeing and accepting that there are some things we just can't see. Because if there's one thing I've learned, it's that some of the most potent ingredients are the ones we can’t see.