We caught up with co-founder, Heidi Daniell, to hear a personal story about Leadership.
In the summer months, Heidi often goes rock climbing with her teenage son. She is by no means an expert, in-fact a bit of a novice. Heidi and her son Alex set off to climb - a climb which turned out to be more of a challenge than she had bargained for.
Anyone who climbs will be aware that your life is in the hands of the person who has hold of the end of the rope, in this case for Heidi her teenage son! Half-way up the crag, she quickly had to go from somebody who has told her son what to do for the last 18 years, to being told what to do by him. We should say that Alex is a trained climbing instructor so Heidi’s mindset had to change to view him, not as her teenage son, but as a skilled leader. Once she made this shift and adopted an openness to change, she could start learning from him.
We thought this was a great lesson in leadership that translates to the working environment really well. We often hear about leaders being younger than certain employees they manage and how challenging that can be. With a shift in mindset and adopting an openness, you’d be surprised who you can learn from!
