Be the Duck: The Career Skill Nobody Talks About

What has your career journey looked like?

My career has been less of a straight line and more a series of opportunities where I kept saying yes before I felt fully ready. My career has been less of a straight line and more a series of opportunities where I kept saying yes before I felt fully ready.

I started in hospitality, drawn to the idea that you could take care of employees and customers at the same time. My first big jump came in 2018, helping open and scale a series of high-end co-working spaces in Atlanta. We grew from two locations to nearly ten, and I eventually moved from operations into the recruiting and HR team, overseeing hiring across all U.S. and Canada operations.

Now, I lead people and talent across a portfolio of five industrial services companies. I’m involved in everything from recruiting to leadership structure to succession planning. I love building systems and teams that can scale without losing the human side of the business.

Your career has spanned many industries. What has that taught you?

Every company has its own language, its own pressure points, its own relationship dynamics. Early on, I moved too fast and tried to prove impact almost immediately. Now I've learned that listening is one of the most strategic things you can do as a leader. Before you change a process or solve a problem, you need to understand what motivates the leadership, where trust already exists, where friction lives, and what history people are carrying into the room.

The other takeaway: adaptability matters more than expertise alone. You can have deep expertise, but if you can't adapt to what the organization actually needs, it won't take you far. In high-growth environments, the people who succeed are usually the ones who can stay calm through ambiguity and keep moving. People have compared me to a duck. Calm on the surface, feet moving underneath, always trying to figure things out.

How would you describe your ideal team player?

Someone who combines humility with ownership. The best team players don't wait to be managed at every step, but they also don't operate with ego. There's a balance between being confident and competent without acting like you already know everything. They communicate clearly, follow through, and care about the people around them. They understand that consistency matters more than occasional heroics. When you get that combination right, something kind of magical happens.

What does that look like in practice for someone trying to build those qualities?

Ask good questions, and don't wait to be told what to do. Come to your manager and say: “I noticed this was a pain point. I put together a possible solution. I'm not married to it, but what do you think?” That's humble ownership. You're taking initiative without having every step spelled out.

Being highly communicative helps too. If your company has one-on-ones, use them to flag what you're working on and what you're doing to push it forward. Being solutions-oriented, communicative, and proactive will go further than most people realize.

What's the most common mistake you see new team members make?

You have to be able to let go of what worked at your past company to adapt to what's working at your new company. If the phrase "at my last company, we did it this way" is coming out of your mouth constantly, you're not adapting. Every company has its own rhythm, relationships, and operational realities. Your past experience matters, but the people who make the biggest long-term impact are the ones who spend time understanding the environment first, and then thoughtfully improve it later.

If you’re doing this, then you can ask the stupid questions early on, lean on the team, and learn how the business ticks before trying to reinvent it.

Tell me about a hire that went really well.

My best hire wasn't the flashiest candidate on paper, and honestly, wasn't the best interviewer in the process. But they were consistent throughout every single step. Consistent in how they communicated, in what they knew and what they didn't, in their follow-through, in how they showed up as a teammate. They gave specific examples of accountability and ownership, not just polished talking points.

What that taught me is that long-term success often comes down to behavior patterns, not a polished resume. Candidates leave clues. How do they talk about their former teams? Do they take accountability for mistakes? Can they handle ambiguity? A more recent hire comes to mind, too. Younger, less experienced, but completely honest about what he didn't know. He'd say, "No, I haven't done that," and then turn it into a story about how he learned something similar from scratch and ran with it. He had humility with ownership. He's been with us less than a year, and he's already showing up big.

Sometimes the right hire is the person who creates stability on the team, not the one who creates the most excitement in the interview room.

What's the hardest part of hiring?

Balancing speed with quality. When you're scaling aggressively, operations need support yesterday, but every bad hire has downstream effects, and the cultural cost is almost always more expensive than waiting a few more weeks for the right person. The trick is: how fast can you move without lowering your standard?

For us, that meant building a structured process. Clearer scorecards, better calibration among leaders, stronger shared definition of what "great" actually looks like. And then real 30/60/90-day reviews after hire, not just as onboarding checkpoints, but as a chance to ask: did we hire who we thought we hired? Did we ask the right questions? Did we set clear enough expectations? We're human too, and the process helps us stay honest about that.

What's the biggest challenge on the leadership side?

Leading through change. In fast-growth environments, priorities shift constantly. Structures evolve. Expectations evolve. Most people don't struggle with hard work. They struggle with uncertainty. I've learned that leadership during those periods requires over-communication. People can handle difficult decisions far better when they're not also handling confusion. If they understand the why, they can move forward.

The other challenge I’ve had to face is that not everyone grows at the same pace as the business. Part of leadership is recognizing who can adapt with the organization and who may no longer be aligned with where it's heading. Those are tough conversations, but the best leaders have them.

What do you recommend for someone navigating ambiguity from the bottom up, especially if their manager isn't a strong communicator?

This is a lesson I come back to a lot: positive feedback goes horizontal, negative feedback goes upward. If something feels unclear or hard, prioritize taking that to your manager. Don't spread it sideways to teammates. If you've heard others on the team are feeling the same way, bring it up: "I've noticed some people seem uncertain about this. How can I help?" Leaders are people too, and they're often carrying pressure you can't see. Leading yourself well is how you lead upward.

If you take negative feedback sideways and only positivity upward, you create misalignment with your manager and a culture that feels dishonest. Nobody wants to walk into that room.

If someone reading this takes away one thing, what do you want it to be?

Stop focusing so much on how to land the next opportunity, and focus on becoming the kind of person you want to bring into that room. Skills matter, but long-term career growth is tied to trust. Ask yourself: Can people rely on me? Can I communicate well under pressure? Can I handle feedback? Can I solve problems without creating new ones?

The people who keep growing are usually the ones others trust with complexity. If you want to take that next step, those are the things to build. And when you're ready to make a move, your references will reflect it, your network will feel it, and ideally, the opportunity you want may already exist where you are.

Thank you so much for sharing, Maggie.

If you'd like to connect with Maggie or learn more about her work, find her on LinkedIn here.