Leadership and teamwork are integral parts of the Kellogg experience. Describe a recent and meaningful time you were a leader. What challenges did you face, and what did you learn?

Last year when leading an innovation project, I oversaw an analyst, Mike. To me the project seemed straightforward, taking no more than one week; we discussed the key points and reviewed the approach and timeline. I had not worked with Mike before but knew he had worked with Prophet for the past year so I assumed he’d be familiar with this type of analysis. Two days later I checked in and asked how things were progressing and was informed that things were chugging along fine. On Friday morning I asked to see the deck assuming only a few edits to go and was shocked to learn Mike was still on the first section! I immediately developed a plan to divvy up the workload to complete the project on time. We worked late that night and finished; the final product was strong, however we shouldn’t have had to cram that last day. This was my first taste of delegating as a manager and I knew I couldn’t make swooping in to save the day a habit.

On my next project with Mike I decided to take a completely different leadership approach. First, I set up time with Mike and had him talk through the client situation, identify the key questions and develop a structure for the analysis. Having done these analyses hundreds of times, I knew the answers and consciously held myself back from providing them, though it would have sped the process along greatly. Instead I constantly questioned him, leading him to think independently through the next steps. Rather than occasionally checking in, we touched base daily to review his work. The process of completing the analysis was much longer, however the final iteration of his analysis was much better and he had now learned how to approach analyses on his own. Through this process I initiated the transition of Mike’s style from being a direction follower to an independent thinker – he was always capable of this, but was never taught to approach problems this way.

The next week during a check-in with my own manager, she mentioned that she had spoken to Mike and he had excitedly told her how we used the Socratic Method to solve an analysis. She said he saw me as a mentor and was excited to learn more. I took this feedback to heart, and appreciated knowing that taking the time to teach someone was worthwhile. From this experience I learned that when leading a team, you must first understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses to function most effectively; being a leader means identifying the course of action needed to produce the best long-term results for both the project and the team.