Remember my post about Jessi and servant leadership? I mentioned that I identify with more than one leadership style.

Asking me to pick just one is like asking me to pick my favorite dessert. Really? Just one?

One thing that shows up in how I lead is that I love helping people grow.

The servant leader in me wants to understand what my team needs and how I can support them. I also connect with transformational leadership: seeing possibilities, encouraging growth, and helping people build toward something they may not have imagined for themselves.

I’ve sometimes seen potential in someone before they saw it in themselves. But that comes with a question I need to keep asking: Am I helping them work toward what they want, or what I want for them?

Because those aren’t always the same thing.

First, the haircut

Last week, my son, Noah, and my youngest sister, Maribel, both had job interviews. When they told me, my brain immediately went to, “How can I help?”

As a mom, my first piece of advice to Noah was to get a haircut.

Typical mom behavior, I know.

Then we got into preparing for his interview.

Noah is studying theater and was applying for a stage manager role. It made sense for him to pursue work in his field. But his field? Different from mine.

I came from corporate leadership. I’ve interviewed people and helped others prepare for interviews. But I couldn’t assume that everything I knew would fit his situation.

Before I could help him prepare, I had some homework to do.

I needed to understand his world

I researched what a theater stage manager does before a production, during rehearsals, and during the show. Then I asked Noah about his experience stage-managing a college production.

He had experience to draw from. My job was to ask questions that helped him explain it.

I also researched the kinds of interview questions he might encounter so we could prepare with the role in mind.

Why did that matter? Because I could have gone straight into the advice I was comfortable giving. Instead, I needed to understand what his experience looked like before helping him connect it to an interview.

When we talked, Noah said:

“The workload was nuts. I didn’t realize just how much a stage manager did. It made me realize I need to lock in on my organization skills so I could balance everything I had to do.”

He shared that organization was something he’d since worked on. We identified that as an experience he could discuss: what challenged him, what he learned about himself, and what he’d worked to improve.

I didn’t need to take credit for that growth. He had already done the reflecting and started working on it.

Sometimes, helping someone develop means asking questions that help them recognize the value of what they’ve already learned.

Noah brought the experience. I brought questions and a different perspective. We both had something to contribute.

Listen before jumping into advice

There’s a lesson I associate with someone I admire, Matt: seek to understand before trying to be understood.

I first heard it from him, and it stuck with me.

Matt’s pretty great, too.

It’s a reminder I need because “How can I help?” comes naturally to me. But I have to leave room for the answer before deciding what that help should look like.

Does this person need advice? A chance to practice? Someone to ask questions? Or someone to listen while they work through their own thinking?

My enthusiasm for helping doesn’t answer those questions. Listening does.

With Noah, understanding the role helped me ask more relevant questions. His answers gave us something real to work with.

The goal was to help him explain his experience in his own words, with a clearer understanding of what he had to offer.

Seeing potential is a beginning

Preparing with Noah and Maribel reminded me how much I enjoy this part of leadership.

I love seeing possibilities in people. I love helping someone prepare for an opportunity and recognize that they have something valuable to contribute.

But telling someone, “You have so much potential,” only goes so far.

Can I explain what I see? Can I point to something they’ve done? Have I asked whether that opportunity interests them?

And if they want support, am I willing to put in the time to understand what would actually help?

That’s where encouragement becomes useful.

Do I do this perfectly? I do not.

I can get excited about what I see in someone. I need to make sure that excitement leaves room for their goals, their questions, and their perspective.

The leader gets to learn, too

This experience reminded me that I don’t have to be the expert in someone else’s field to support them. I do have to recognize the limits of what I know and be willing to learn.

For me, that meant researching, asking questions, and listening to Noah’s experience before offering guidance.

Developing others is a two-way conversation. If I’m doing all the talking, what am I missing?

Think about someone who helped you grow. What did they do that made a difference? And what could you bring from that experience into the way you support someone else?

Me? I want to keep seeing possibilities in people while making sure I ask what they see, too.

And if you have an interview coming up, I’m happy to help you prepare. The haircut advice? That might just be a mom thing.

But hey, you do you.