Learning from Other Leaders' Experience: Why You Don't Have to Test Everything Yourself

linnearader
Jul 29
5 min read

Last December, I sat through a conference presentation on permitting and solar farms. I'm not in the permit department. I'm not in engineering. At the time, that presentation meant absolutely nothing to me.

But the people presenting had lived it. They'd hit every wall you can hit, chased down every regulation, and dealt with every frustrated landowner and township board along the way. They were generous enough to share what they'd learned, mistakes included. So I listened anyway, even though nothing about my job that day involved permits or solar farms.

The Meeting That (At First) Meant Nothing to Me

Fast forward six months. Solar farm permitting came up at my own Road Commission, completely out of nowhere as far as I was concerned. Suddenly that presentation meant everything.

I referenced the speakers. I pulled my notes. I requested the slides. I connected the right people together, the ones at our Road Commission who actually needed this information with the people who already had answers. We didn't have to figure it out from scratch. We didn't have to make the same calls, hit the same walls, or learn the same lessons the hard way. We relied on people who had already tested every situation and already found the best way through it.

Here's what strikes me most about that one. If I had decided that presentation wasn't relevant to me and used that time to check email instead, my Road Commission would have started that solar farm conversation from zero. Instead we started somewhere near the finish line, because I'd been willing to sit through something that didn't seem to apply. We didn't have to figure it out ourselves. We relied on others who had already tested it, and that's the whole point of learning from other leaders' experience instead of insisting on your own trial and error.

"We didn't have to figure it out ourselves. We relied on others who had already tested it."

That's the part nobody tells you about learning from others. It rarely arrives labeled "you'll need this later." It just shows up, and you either paid attention or you didn't.

The Insurance Proposal I'm Still Proud Of

Here's another one. At a different meeting, a group of us were talking about the never ending rise of health insurance costs, layered on top of the State of Michigan's rate limits for public employers. The math didn't work. Employees couldn't afford what the State said they had to pay. That's a recipe for retention problems, hiring problems, and a benefits package that satisfies nobody, no matter how good our intentions were.

In that conversation, I picked up a piece of outside the box thinking from a few colleagues. Nothing that handed me a finished answer on a silver platter. Just an angle I hadn't considered, a different way of structuring things that I wouldn't have landed on sitting alone at my desk.

I brought it home and did my own digging. I called our auditor. I called our lawyer. I checked every detail against our own numbers, our own employee population, our own budget realities. What came out the other side was an insurance proposal that actually works, for our agency and for our employees. I'm genuinely proud of it. And I'll be honest with you, I don't think I would have landed on that solution without those conversations first. It took the outside idea and my own homework, together, to get somewhere good.

What Learning from Other Leaders' Experience Actually Looks Like

Lean in, listen, absorb what's going on around you.

None of this happens by accident. A few things I've learned about turning other people's experience into something useful for you.

Show up even when it doesn't seem relevant yet. The permitting presentation didn't apply to me until it suddenly did. You rarely know in advance which conversation is going to matter six months from now, so the safest bet is to pay attention more often than feels necessary.

Take real notes, not just mental ones. I could reference those solar farm speakers because I had something written down. A name, a topic, a rough sense of what they covered. That's often all you need later to go back and ask for more.

Follow up on the loose thread. An idea from a conversation is rarely a finished plan. The insurance proposal took a phone call to our auditor and our lawyer before it became something real. The good idea gets you started. The follow up is what makes it usable.

Give yourself permission to disagree. Not everything you hear will fit. That's fine. You're not obligated to use an idea just because someone smart shared it with you.

Taking It In Like a Sponge

I hear a lot of ideas I don't end up using. Some I don't agree with. Some wouldn't fit how we run things even if I loved them. My goal isn't to adopt everything I hear. It's to take it all in like a sponge and see what soaks in.

Here's an example. I once sat in on a conversation about a software program. Well outside our price point, and it required every employee to carry a computer, which isn't realistic for our team. Easy to tune out, right? Nothing about it applied to us. But even when the whole idea won't work for you, there's usually something useful in the process, and that turned out to be true here too.

"Even when the whole idea won't work for you, there's usually something useful in the process."

Except the process behind it was worth paying attention to. How they tied their existing information together. How they made something more efficient without starting over. We couldn't buy their solution, but we could steal their thinking. That's what listening even when it doesn't seem to apply gets you.

This Isn't Just a Work Thing

Think about how your friends and family find deals or sales on things they need. There's an entire industry of influencers built around exactly that. Somebody already found the good deal, tested the product, made the mistake, so you don't have to.

Parenting works the same way. I listen to how other parents handle things with their kids, and I learn from it. Not because I'm copying their playbook exactly, but because somebody out there has already faced the exact situation I'm facing, and they're usually willing to tell me what worked.

Why do we act like we have to figure everything out on our own? We don't. We never have to. The information is out there, sitting in conversations, presentations, and casual comments, most of it free for the taking. All it costs is your attention.

I think part of the resistance is pride. There's a version of leadership that tells you that you're supposed to have the answers, that reaching for someone else's experience is somehow a shortcut you shouldn't need. I don't buy that anymore. The leaders I respect most aren't the ones who never ask. They're the ones who ask constantly and still make the final call their own.

So here's my challenge for you this week. The next time you're in a meeting, a conversation, or even just catching up with a friend, and something comes up that doesn't seem to apply to you right now, listen anyway. You might be building the exact notes you'll need six months from now.

As always, carry social kindness with you everywhere you go. The world needs you and your positive mindset!