New managers sometimes ask me, “A decade into the job, what’s something you’re still continuing to learn?” My answer is, “How to be the best leader I can while staying true to who I am.”

Managers so often think of the role as being in service to something else—the mission of the organization, the goals of the team, the needs of others—that it’s easy to forget about the most important character in your management journey: you.

A leader’s responsibility is to identify the strengths of the people on their team, no matter how buried those strengths might be. I thought about that often when I was sitting down with the new team at EMP. It was tempting to weed out everyone who had a reputation as a less-than-stellar employee; eventually, some folks would need to be managed out. But first, I needed to make sure a hidden capability wasn’t lurking behind someone’s subpar performance.

Chapter 8: Breaking Rules and Building a Team

“When you ask, “Why do we do it this way?” and the only answer is “Because that’s how it’s always been done,” that rule deserves another look.

I wrapped up that first strategic planning meeting by telling the team, “The moment you start to pursue service through the lens of hospitality, you understand there’s nobility in it. We may not be saving people’s lives, but we do have the ability to make their lives better by creating a magical world they can escape to—and I see that not as an opportunity, but as a responsibility, and a reason for pride.

Sometimes the best time to promote people is before they are ready. So long as they are hungry, they will work even harder to prove that you made the right decision.