WonderLeaders Breakthrough Stories
Discover the leadership breakthrough stories shared by the WonderLead community. This page allows you to find challenges that you might be facing, meet other leaders who faced them, connect, and learn from their experiences. Within this tool, we hope to support you and hold you accountable. Discover that you have agency and discover the magic of contributing to our community.
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Leading with Emotional Intelligence
EQ vs IQ
I got feedback about high IQ but low EQ: Suppressing my emotions was stopping my growth and even risking my job at the staff level. Embracing Emotional Intelligence allowed me to understand myself and connect better with others. Emotional Intelligence makes us more human and is the multiplier that transforms good engineers into exceptional technical leaders. — from
in How to develop EQ as an engineer or a manager.
Self-Awareness
If I hadn’t been self-aware, the meeting would have gone downhill from there. That day instead of reacting, I caught myself. I paused. I looked away, opened my notes app and started writing my thoughts. This allowed me to process those thoughts better. With my emotions in check, I could now think clearly: How do I get the outcome I want without escalating this further? — from
in Self-Awareness in Tech Leadership.
After returning from maternity leave, I struggled with impostor feelings and leading a high-stakes launch while in survival mode, caused my team to overwork and lose perspective. I addressed this by advocating for my team’s needs and applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to support well-being.
As a result, I regained confidence and enabled my team to deliver sustainably and successfully. — from WonderLead in Tech in Thriving: With Consistent Emotional Intelligence and Goals Alignment.
Self-Management
I became a bottleneck by taking on too much, missing deadlines and sacrificing quality. With mentorship and practice using WonderLead Framework, I learned to choose the right battles, manage priorities effectively, and use self-awareness to align goals with their values and vision, resulting in more focused and reliable leadership. — from
in How To Achieve Your Goals With Balance.
Building Trust
Early in my career, I was eager to learn but hid my questions out of fear of being exposed, creating self-doubt and isolation. To address this, I recognized my lack of trust in the team and the need for openness. As a result, I broke the cycle of anxiety and created space for learning and growth with others.
in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.
— from
By doubling down on delivering excellent work and relied on my creative problem-solving to prove myself, I built trust and eventually earned a leadership role. As a result, I learned to value both effort and results as foundations for building trust within a team. — from
in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.
As a foreigner in Japan, I faced daily challenges with a mixed Japanese–English work environment, neither of which was his first language. I hadn’t expected language learning to be a leadership tool but discovered its power when a teammate relationship offered the opportunity. By embracing empathy and improving my own communication, I learned that investing in language skills could help build trust as a leader. — from Tokyo Tech Lead in Lead with Compassion - Case Study on Overcoming Language Challenges.
Collaboration
Working at startups, I experienced poor leadership that bred distrust and unhealthy competition, making collaboration difficult. I realized I hadn’t felt empowered to speak up or help change the environment. Looking back, I saw the importance of taking initiative and communicating with managers. As a result, I learned to call out issues constructively to build healthier, more collaborative teams. — from
in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.
As a director, I faced the challenge of building trust across teams without daily interaction, especially when collaborating with a team in a different time zone. To overcome this, I fostered transparency, asked what ideal collaboration looked like, and co-created a documented strategy with recurring check-ins. As a result, trust was strengthened, alignment improved, and the partnership became a model for future cross-team collaboration. — from
in Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director.
I observed silos forming even at the team level through “Us vs. They” language and restrictive leadership practices like forbidding inter-team communication and relying on bottlenecked Single Points of Contact. To address this, I emphasized avoiding divisive language and promoting open, direct collaboration. As a result, teams can build stronger relationships, improve workflows, and become more resilient. — from
in Breaking Down Silos in Tech
Career Transitions
🔜 Coming SoonImpostor Syndrom
🔜 Coming SoonReturning from Leave
🔜 Coming Soon Meet Our WonderLeaders
This selected collection of breakthrough stories were shared in
posts, chat, and notes by , , , , and . We collaborated together to create unique posts that can help you thrive and find success in your career as a leader.You can add yours by commenting or sharing this post with a note telling your story.
