How to Build a Leadership Framework

When I landed my first public company VP offer, friends struggling to crack executive roles asked me, "How did you do it?" I realized their career narratives missed crucial elements. Having interviewed C-suite and VP candidates, I saw a pattern and crafted a new framework. Introducing the Triple-STAR framework, an evolution of the classic STAR method, designed specifically for leadership roles. It highlights strategic thinking, business impact, and growth potential, adding five critical components: Stakes: Why did this situation matter to the business? Status: What was your specific leadership role and scope? Reflection: What did you learn about leadership? Repetition: How did you apply those learnings to drive further impact? Relating: How does your experience map to the role you're pursuing? 🔑 Mastering Triple-STAR: Craft impactful Situations by highlighting Stakes and Status. Define clear Tasks with specific goals and challenges. Create compelling Action stories showcasing strategic decisions. Deliver Results with metrics, reflection, and relevance to the role. Why STAR Alone Isn’t Enough for Leadership Roles: STAR focuses on tactical execution but misses strategic context, business impact, and leadership growth. Triple-STAR fills these gaps. 🔍 Shortened Example Snippets: Situation + Stakes + Status: "As Director at Dropbox, I led a 20 PM team reporting to the CPO to turn around a flagship $200M product losing market share." Task + Action: "I restructured the team, recruited top ML talent, and navigated a privacy issue, pivoting to a balanced personalization approach." Result + Reflection + Repetition + Relating: "We widened our market lead, landed new logos, and boosted core engagement. I learned the importance of assessing the team before aligning on targets." Triple-STAR stories equip interviewers to advocate for you, linking your leadership journey to the role at hand. Ready to elevate your leadership storytelling? Dive into the full framework and master your narrative in the full article in the comments. Your next executive role awaits! 🌟

I received a private message asking me if I had a methodology or framework for leadership when I'm asked to solve a problem. I decided to throw this visual together and walk through my typical approach(keep in mind these are known philosophies that I have adopted and organized in a way that works best for me and my style of leadership). 1. Embrace a presumption of positive intentions as your foundation. This fosters an atmosphere of exploration through harmony and trust. 2. Prioritize active listening—a skill demanding full concentration and ongoing refinement. Listening acknowledges the perspectives of those being led but also encompasses the interpretation of non-verbal cues. Use open-ended questions as a starting point. 3. Engage in learning by delving deeper into the situation. Ask more targeted open-ended questions to gain nuanced insights. Reflective listening, pauses and summarizations aid in ensuring alignment and comprehensive understanding. 4. Analyze the situation through the lens of three categories: People, Process, and Product. In my experience issues typically involve a blend of these elements, if not all three. -People: Investigate items such as management dynamics, personnel development, navigating tough conversations, and effective training/onboarding. -Process: Assess the existence and efficacy of well-defined, replicable, and adaptable processes. Clarity and comprehensiveness in documentation are strong considerations. -Product: Evaluate your existing tools are they working for your team? 5. Now you are armed to lead with a better understanding of the situation.

One of the most impactful qualities of effective leadership is perspective. Leaders who “lead through perspective” understand two important aspects about their organization. - The unique importance of each individual part of their organization. - The way that each individual part of their organization impacts every other part of the organization. The unique challenge of communicating your perspective as a leader is that everyone 1. wants to share their perspective but 2. rarely wants to listen to your perspective the second they realize it doesn’t line up with their opinion. That highlights an important distinction here. Perspective is not the same as opinion. So how do we make sure that our decisions are rooted in perspective and not opinion? We adopt a consistent framework for decision making. My framework (as a school leader) is built on two key principles - Is my decision in alignment with our core values as an organization? - Is my decision rooted in “what is best for kids”? I make sure that everyone understands my framework for making decisions because when they are struggling to understand my perspective on an issue they will at least know the principles that guide my decision-making around that issue. Here is the other reason why having a framework for making decisions as a leader is important (and ultimately how it ties back to perspective as a leadership quality) Leaders understand that they alone assume responsibility for the consequences of their decisions. A decision designed to solve a challenge with one part of your organization inevitably always impacts other parts of the organization. Having a framework for decision-making minimizes the risk of unintended consequences from those decisions. So, as a leader, you have to be confident in your own perspective and you have to build other people’s confidence in your perspective. Because perspective is ultimately how you cut through the chaos and move your organization forward in the face of uncertainty.