Customer service is part of a leadership education

Shawna Hofer described growing up working in her family’s diner. She connected that experience with learning customer service, pursuing excellence and taking on challenges. Even difficult interactions became opportunities to understand someone and improve the experience.

Carry the habit into technical work

Her career story later included accounting, information systems and an introduction to technology risk through professional services. Read together, those experiences invite a useful reflection: understanding a system and understanding the people who depend on it can develop alongside one another.

Look for the friction people experience

Our editorial takeaway is to spend time with a person affected by a process your team owns. Ask where the process slows them down, what is unclear and what a successful outcome would look like. Then identify one improvement you can make without losing the purpose of the process.

A question to bring to your team

What did a job outside your current field teach you about serving people? Hofer’s archived account makes room for those experiences in a leadership story. The lesson a reader takes from it can be practical: listen closely enough to understand the problem before deciding what help should look like.