I WENT TO TEACH ELEVEN TEENAGERS. THEY ENDED UP COACHING ME.
Fourth in a series at the intersection of values-based leadership, identity-centered growth, and the Seattle nonprofits doing the hardest work in our region.
What if the sharpest leadership coaching I received all year came from a sixteen-year-old?
Yesterday I spent the day with eleven students through the UNCF Portfolio Project's Leadership Academy, at the Douglass-Truth branch of the Seattle Public Library. Ten young women and one young man, and from the first minute they built a space honest enough to do real work in. By the afternoon, each of them had written a personalized Leadership Development Plan. Their vision. Their strengths. Where they need to grow. Their next step, in their own hand. I have sat in Fortune 100 boardrooms where leaders twice their age could not answer those four questions on the spot.
But the moment I remember didn't go the way I planned. It went better.
The Pivot
First, a word about the people behind the room. This session almost didn't have a home. The place we planned on wasn't available, and the UNCF Portfolio Project team pivoted the whole thing to the Douglass-Truth branch with real agility. Communication stayed clear, logistics held, and the students never felt the scramble. That is leadership too, the unglamorous kind that lets everyone else shine. It set the tone: we move, we adapt, we still show up.
The Exercise That Turned Around
Late in the day, I asked each student to name their Identity Gap out loud, the place where their ambition and their action don't yet line up, and the opportunity in front of them to make an impact. This is not a small ask for a teenager in a room full of peers. Every one of them volunteered.
Then we ran short on time. We had to leave the room sooner than expected, and we were only three students in. So, I did something that wasn't on my run sheet. Before the fourth student, I took the seat myself.
Because here is a truth I believe all the way down: no matter how far a leader gets, they still need their own opportunities to grow. If I ask young people to be vulnerable, the least I can do is go first, or in this case, go next.
What I Told Them
I told them my gap honestly. My stand is global. I want my work in service of humanity to reach people far beyond any room I can physically stand in. My barrier is one a lot of high performers will recognize: perfectionism. Perfection paralysis. The quiet habit of trying to build everything myself, to my own impossible standard, before I let anyone else carry it.
I told them I want to work with young people like them, all over the world. And one of them, grinning, said what my calendar has been trying to tell me for years: "You can't be on a plane every day."
The whole room laughed. Then, without being asked, they started coaching me.
What They Told Me
I took out my paper and wrote it down as fast as they said it. Three answers. Sixteen and seventeen years old.
Ambassadors. Be fully present to the one student in front of you. Impact that person completely, and they will carry it to others. I had given them an assignment that morning to tell five people about their experience. They handed it back to me as a strategy: "Leverage us." You don't scale by being everywhere. You scale through the people you've changed, who become ambassadors for the mission.
Technology. Stop trying to do it all yourself. Use the platforms. Social media, digital tools, the channels young people already live in, to expand what you offer and reach an audience you could never reach in person.
Collaboration. Find the like-minded ones. Speakers, authors, leaders around the world who carry the same message about humanity and build with them. As one student put it, you don't need to do it alone. There is power in collaboration. Community over competition, straight from a teenager who has apparently already learned what takes most of us decades.
Ambassadors. Tech. Collaboration. That is not a bad growth plan for a Fortune 100 executive. It came from three students who don't run anything yet, except, clearly, circles around my assumptions.
Try This From Your Seat
Here is the practice, and it's the one most leaders skip because it feels backwards.
Let the people you develop, develop you.
This week, sit down with someone you mentor, someone junior, someone you assume you're the one teaching. Tell them one real thing you're working on. A gap, a barrier, a place you're stuck. Then be quiet and let them coach you. Take notes. Mean it.
You will be surprised how clearly someone can see your blind spot when they aren't yet burdened by all the reasons you've decided it can't be solved. That is the whole idea behind taking off the door: the barriers between who we are and how we lead are usually invisible, and often the person best positioned to point them out is the one you walked in planning to help.
The Ask
UNCF's work in Seattle runs on partnership, and the table keeps growing. The Portfolio Project develops exactly the kind of young leaders this region will be competing to hire in ten years. Business leaders here can do more than admire it. You can mentor. You can host a Leadership Academy session at your company. You can fund a scholarship that turns potential into a graduate. You can show up.
If you want a place to start, learn about the UNCF Seattle Leadership Council and the Portfolio Project at https://uncf.org/local-offices/seattle, or reach out to me and I will connect you.
I walked into that library to help eleven students find their leadership. They spent the afternoon helping me unlock mine, and handing me a strategy to reach millions in the process. That is what healthy ambition looks like when it moves through invisible barriers instead of pretending they aren't there.
You don't have to do it alone. A room full of sixteen-year-olds told me so, and I wrote it down.
Create Possibilities, Not Excuses.
Jesse Rhodes Jr. Jesse Rhodes Jr. is a speaker, author of Leadership Unlocked: Harness the Power of Your Ambition, and strategic advisor specializing in values-based leadership. He teaches at the University of Washington Foster School of Business, serves on the UNCF Seattle Leadership Council, and chairs the board of After-School All-Stars Puget Sound. He is available for keynotes, leadership offsites, and Employee Resource Group (ERG) events. Reach him at info@jesserhodesjr.com.
