Leadership Notes With Girls in Tech
Tags: Confidence, Leadership, Motivation, Resilience, Girls In Tech

I was selected as one of the mentees for the Girl in Tech Mentorship Program in September 2020. A 5 month program; we were mapped to our respective mentors and prepped through leadership coursework to help navigate the world of opportunities that lay in store for us.

My mentor worked as a Tech Consultant in Germany, Right off the bat, during our first meeting, she asked me to chart a plan for myself. A Plan.

Thus, I begin working on a plan. I sat down with myself and wrote down my strengths, my pain points and my growth opportunities. I realized I had chops for certain things, some sparse life experiences, a clear outline of how my struggle trajectory had panned out and a will to keep discovering.

I tried to tie my ideas with my novice experiences with leadership and what it felt like when I was given an agency to discover things of my own accord. I went through my Girls in Tech notes and attempted connecting the dots.

Being Given Agency

I had worked in a few leadership positions during undergrad. I have been working on bringing out a tech club at my current school. I have worked as a team lead at an internship. I have been playing an instrument for close to a decade now and it has taught me a thing or two.

Scraping through some of these experiences (one of which is still a work in progress), I have some takeaways to share.

Set Realistic Expectations

There’s a thin line between going overboard with promises and sticking to realistic expectations. While it’s tempting to eat off more than what you can chew, keeping a check helps in cutting back on unnecessary workload. Both physical and mental.

Confidence is not just a buzzword

I have struggled with confidence. My imposter syndrome has stopped me in past from taking a full ownership of my role and delivering fully. I have been thankfully grappling with this rather well today. If you are good at something, be confident about delivering it. There’s nothing more to it, really.

Have a vision

Not a fancy quote I picked off of a billionaire’s book. Having a vision, no matter how small, is probably the most important thing one can do as a leader. It helps you scale up in future and it helps you maintain a steady pace in your current situation.

I was led by a brilliant guy back in undergrad in my college society. Once we were holding a seminar that we weren’t sure if anyone would attend. The guy ordered several envelopes, arranged copies of multiple personalized printed messages, stashed one in each envelope and got them delivered to the class representative of each class in every year.

The turnout was more than what we had anticipated. The seating arrangements had to be extended.

Be Resourceful

Sometimes, you will have no choice but to operate with scarce resources. Learn how to make the most of what you have got. Learn how to scrape resources when you have no leads available. What is the best python course you can avail? Go on that search spree, check out different websites, download a few cheat-sheets, figure out what’s best for you.

Be Resilient

If you want something to work and if you see potential in it, you will have to stick through. The crests and troughs will be a part of the journey. I play the violin and it has taught me a thing or two about resilience and practice. There are no two ways about it.

There’s no shame in starting small

Everyone starts small and some stay small for a longer duration of the journey. There’s no shame in small. It’s the small steps that are the most telling.

Not all self doubt is bad

I once went for a PhD interview knowing fully well I was under-prepared. I knew the course wasn’t up my street and I didn’t have enough discretion at the time to pursue it. Sometimes self-doubt helps you because it’s you painting a realistic picture in your head. If you think you need to re-evaluate something; Stop, take a breather and re-evaluate it.

Read (Fiction works too, really!)

Read about visionaries. Read about failures. Read fantasy books too! (You will learn a thing or two about leadership from Harry Potter, I bet you). Reading will open up your mind.

Having said all this, I am still charting a plan for myself. Still figuring out gaps in my skillset and still trying to execute all that I have written here. I am super thankful to Girls in Tech for helping me steer through different perspectives I can view myself in.

It’s still a work in progress.

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