Your Current Role Is Preparing You for Your Next One
How valuable experiences shaped my leadership journey before I ever held the title.
Experience Doesn't Always Come With a Title
Early in my career, I sometimes wondered whether I had enough experience to be in the rooms I was entering. I was young, taking on increasing levels of responsibility, and often working alongside people who had been in their professions much longer than I had.
Over time, I realized I was asking myself the wrong question.
Experience is not measured only by the number of years you have worked or the titles you have held. Some of the most valuable leadership experience I gained happened long before I became a director. In fact, when I think about the skills I use most often today, many of them were developed while I was a volunteer youth sports coach.
At the time, I certainly wasn't thinking, "This is preparing me to become a director." I was thinking about getting kids to practice, making sure we had equipment, communicating with parents, preparing for games, and creating an environment where every player felt like they belonged.
Looking back, I was learning leadership.
Budgeting Is Really About Priorities
A youth sports team rarely has unlimited resources. There are uniforms, equipment, tournament fees, supplies, and countless unexpected needs.
I learned quickly that budgeting wasn't simply about how much money we had. It was about deciding what mattered most.
What did the team truly need? Where could we stretch our resources? What could wait? How could we give our players the best possible experience with what we had available?
Those are the same questions leaders ask when managing organizational budgets today—just with more zeroes attached.
Planning Means Preparing and Then Adapting
Anyone who has coached youth sports knows that even the best plan rarely survives exactly as written.
A player doesn't show up. The field changes. Equipment is missing. Someone gets hurt. The weather doesn't cooperate.
You still have a game to play.
Coaching taught me to plan carefully without becoming so attached to a plan that I couldn't adjust when circumstances changed. That lesson has followed me throughout my career.
Leadership requires preparation, but it also requires adaptability. Sometimes the most important skill in the room is being able to say, "This isn't working. What can we do instead?"
Communication Is Not One-Size-Fits-All
As a coach, I had to communicate with players, parents, other coaches, officials, and volunteers. Each required something different from me.
One player might respond to direct instruction. Another might need encouragement. A parent might need additional context. A disagreement with another coach might require me to listen before responding.
I began learning that communication isn't simply about delivering information. It is about understanding your audience, listening, building trust, and making sure people understand not only what needs to happen, but why.
Years later, those same skills are essential when communicating with employees, residents, community partners, elected officials, and colleagues.
The audience changed. The fundamental skill did not.
Leadership Isn't Doing Everything Yourself
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons coaching taught me was that individual talent only gets a team so far.
You can have incredibly talented players and still lose if they don't communicate, trust one another, and understand their roles.
Organizations aren't very different.
Being a leader doesn't mean being the person who has every answer or does everything herself. It means recognizing people's strengths, giving them opportunities to contribute, establishing expectations, and creating an environment where everyone understands how their work contributes to something larger.
It also means taking responsibility when things don't go according to plan.
A coach can't celebrate with the team when they win and blame the players when they lose. Leadership requires accountability in both moments.
Don't Discount the Experience You're Gaining Right Now
I think this lesson is especially important for young professionals.
We sometimes look at job descriptions and focus on what we haven't done yet. We see requirements like "budget management," "project coordination," "stakeholder engagement," "team leadership," or "conflict resolution" and assume those skills only count if we developed them while holding a particular title.
But experience doesn't work that way.
Maybe you managed the budget for a volunteer organization. Maybe you coordinated schedules for a community event. Maybe your first customer-service job taught you how to de-escalate difficult situations. Maybe coaching taught you how to motivate people. Maybe a part-time position taught you how an organization actually functions on the front line.
Those experiences count.
The important question is not simply, "What was my title?"
Ask yourself: What responsibility was I trusted with? What problem did I solve? What did I learn? And how can I apply that lesson somewhere else?
I still have plenty to learn. I hope I always will.
But one of the advantages of becoming a leader relatively young has been recognizing that learning doesn't begin when someone gives you a leadership title. Every position, volunteer opportunity, difficult conversation, successful project, mistake, and unexpected challenge can teach you something that you will carry into the next room.
I didn't become a leader the day I became a director.
I had been practicing leadership for years.
I just didn't know what to call it yet.
