Leading Edge: Never Looking Back

In August of 2014, I joined the John Maxwell Team, and my life has never been the same!

Back in 2007, I was given my first official leadership role; I was chosen to be the lead instructor of one of the professional development programs offered by my employer, the Samsung Human Resources Development Center.  In this program, we had forty trainees and four instructors in addition to myself.

I was thrilled to think I was on my way to climb the corporate ladder!

However, with no leadership training, my tenure was fraught with challenges I had not anticipated.  I didn’t expect leading a team of competent instructors to be so difficult! When I left Samsung to move to a different city, I left feeling defeated and thought that maybe I wasn’t really cut out to be in leadership.

A few years later, while teaching in a professional development program at Georgetown University, I discovered that my leadership weaknesses could also negatively impact those I was training.  

• Occasionally, two trainees wouldn’t get along, and I’d find myself mediating conflict over the duration of the course.  
• Often, there would be one or two trainees who had a bad attitude – arrogant, unteachable, and argumentative – and I endured rather than invested my time with them.  Usually, there were trainees who had higher leadership skills than my own, and I felt intimidated.
• Always there were one or two trainees who simply didn’t “click” with me, and I had come to accept that there were some people who didn’t relate well to my personality and teaching style.

Sadly, these trainees often left the program unchanged.  As a lifelong learner, these experiences and observations made me hungry to learn and grow.  

In 2014, I discovered the John Maxwell Team and began a new journey of growth.

I thought I was joining to gain access to materials I could use in the training I delivered, but what I discovered was so much richer:

• Training for myself in leadership, coaching, and speaking;
• A supportive community of like-minded and like-spirited trainers, speakers, and coaches; and
• Ongoing mentorship from experienced and highly-knowledgeable professionals.

Before I joined the John Maxwell Team, I taught two trainees who were particularly difficult.  Later, as I learned more about leadership, I often wondered how things might have been different if I had had the training earlier.  

Be careful what you wish for!  A few years after joining the John Maxwell Team, I taught two others who strongly reminded me of those earlier difficult trainees.  But this time, the results were drastically different.

While those two people did not become significantly less difficult to work with, I found I was better equipped to invest my time rather than endure it.  I know they grew and improved in their communications skills because I was able to put my own training to good use, in particular the coaching skills.

Today, I am more motivated than ever to keep learning and growing, and I know I have the means to do so right here, with the John Maxwell Team.   

 

Bio:

Tasha M. Troy is an intercultural communication expert and a certified trainer and coach with the John Maxwell Team. A professional communications trainer with 20 years’ experience in language and communications education, she has worked with such organizations as The Samsung Human Resource Development Center in S. Korea and Georgetown University in Washington, DC, to equip international professionals with the communications skills needed to thrive in the globalized marketplace.  She focuses on teaching principles that can help individuals connect with anyone, whether it is across cultures, across a boardroom, or across the dining room table.