#60: Leadership Experience with Jessica Ivins
Jessica Ivins is a veteran User Experience (UX) researcher. She leads UX research and research operations at The Predictive Index. Before joining The Predictive Index, Jessica honed her skills through a variety of roles in UX research and design. She’s dedicated much of her time to the UX community, presenting at conferences, appearing on podcasts, and writing many blog posts.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Words matter. There’s ample confusion about the difference between management and leadership. The most important definition of leadership is your own.
- Lead by example. As a leader, all eyes are on you. You’re always in control of how you comport yourself through modeling your attitudes and behaviors in any situation.
- Go for growth. A fixed mindset may be common, but it’s not the only option. A growth mindset is not only possible, it’s preferred.
From the Source
“To be a manager, you have to be given a title with management responsibilities, and at the core of your responsibility as a manager is you're responsible, responsible for retention and results.”
“A leader can be just about anybody, and as a leader, you're moving other people toward change and hopefully positive change.”
“ I think most people have the potential to be a leader, and that's the beauty of being a leader, right? And it's very fulfilling, too, right? You don't have to earn a management title. You don't have to earn a leadership title, so to speak. You can just help other people move toward positive change.”
“I do see it go the other way, too, though, where people who have pretty lofty titles are reticent or hesitant to consider themselves to be a leader, even though they'd be managing large groups of people.”
“I have a daughter and so modeling is huge for me as a parent, but it's really showing up in the career context. It's really showing up as the professional that you want to be and that can make your workplace better, that can make the people around you better, and just basically modeling that for everybody. It can start with simple things like showing up on time being a decent professional and also the harder things like handling stressful situations with professionalism.”
“People often go to their peers because it's safer to go to your peers and vent than it is to go to your boss. I think even just listening, sometimes just being a sounding board, can really help people because sometimes people just need to vent and get it out of their system and then move on.”
“I've managed a lot of perfectionists and perfectionism unfortunately often comes with a fixed mindset. So it's just been a lot of reframing.”
“When people come to you for help, they usually don't want advice. They want you to help them think things through.”
“If you know in your heart of hearts that you don't want to be a manager, then it's probably best not to do it.”
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