BreezyCo. Insights: The Leadership Lesson I Didn’t Expect To Learn In Paris

On my way to a Parisian pizza shop – with pepperoni slices almost better than my favorite spot in Tuckahoe, New York – Google maps directed me through a park.

Almost immediately, I felt an urge to slow down and appreciate how beautiful everything was around me.

To my left, a fountain was surrounded by people stretched out in green lounge chair, soaking in the warmth of a surprisingly sunny early March day. To my right, just beyond the path, the Louvre stood in the distance. For a moment, everything felt perfectly still.

I am a University of Michigan Ross School student studying abroad in Paris. Our cohort, who were taking a Comparative Health Systems course, had been released early from lecture to prepare our end-of-the-week group presentations. Still, I was walking alone on this pizza hunt because two out of my four teammates were back at the hotel sick.

This meant pushing our meeting to the next day which, in a one-week program, meant losing half of our total working time. What’s worse, the presentation was coming up in two days – and the other teams were basically already done.

So yes, I was stressed.

The walk helped. But sitting in that park, being able to take it all in, gave me the chance to clear my mind and come up with a plan of attack for the one remaining work day.

LEARNING TO LEAD BY LETTING GO

Our presentation focused on a French healthcare tech startup exploring expansion into the U.S. market.

Everything about it felt unfamiliar. For me, this was a semi-new subject based on a previously-unknown company in a country with a healthcare system that was mostly foreign before the start of that week.

After reviewing the materials and prompt, a startup analysis, and strategic roadmap, I realized I had no idea where to begin.

I had an initial instinct to pull back until I was more sure of myself. The assignment’s quick turnaround and group dynamic shelved that inclination, however.

THE MOMENT I SHIFTED

When we regrouped, one of my teammates, Annie, immediately reframed how I was thinking about the situation.

Annie shared that she had spent decades working as a nurse. As a result, she had deep familiarity with the kinds of operational and strategic challenges we were analyzing. She also talked about her long-term goal of joining the C-suite at her hospital.

Then she did something critical, which was advocate for ownership. Although another teammate had already started the SWOT analysis, she made a clear case for why she should take the lead. She led with her strengths and cited her irrational love for PowerPoint (my characterization, not hers).

Annie’s passion for the subject matter stood out. In that moment, she made it clear that her contributions were simply better than mine could be in this context.

I have a natural tendency to hold on tightly in group settings, where I feel compelled to double check or make sure everything aligns with how I would do it. It’s a control instinct, rooted in wanting things to go well and being hesitant to trust in the people around me.

But here, that instinct didn’t make sense. My lack of experience in this area, combined with the limited time we had, meant holding on would hurt the team more than it would help.

So, I made a different choice. I trusted her and the rest of the team. And turns out we were better for it.

Our final presentation was cohesive and each part reflected the strengths of the person who owned it. It was a good learning experience to recognize in real time how trust and delegation can lead to better quality.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE INSTINCT TO TRUST

I’ve thought about that project a lot since returning home.

This past semester, I took Flourishing at Work and Beyond, taught by Monica Worline, the faculty director of the Center for Positive Organization at the Ross School of Business.

The course focuses on the science of employees’ independent growth in organizations and how leaders can create environments where people and teams perform at their best.

A consistent thread in that course was how high performance and effective leadership is really a team effort. In other words, we learned that organizational thriving depends on the conditions built around the people within them. And this comes from conditions that encourage psychological safety, trust, and clarity about what each person brings and why it matters.

Looking back, I now understand that my experience in Paris was the result of those conditions taking shape within our team.

The group project in Paris had given me an instinct to trust the person best positioned to lead.  Flourishing at Work gave me the framework to understand why that instinct clicked.

LOOKING THROUGH THE LENS OF A CEO

A few weeks ago, the Center for Positive Organizations hosted a leadership dialogue with Marc Rosen, CEO of Catalyst Brands (Think JCPenney) as part of its ongoing speaker series. His theme was the power of teamwork for leaders today. His core argument focused on the power of engagement.

My takeaway was that real organizational change requires everyone to engage. A critical point Rosen identified was for leadership to get the right people in place first, then get those people working together in the right way.

He told a story about stepping into a new CEO role and making it a priority to travel to every distribution center and meet with every district manager personally. He received various levels of feedback.

According to Marc, some of the most surprising feedback was how impactful his visits were to company leadership who had never been given the opportunity to interact with anyone at the executive level. Some also shared that the interaction made them believe real change was actually possible, the kind they had been waiting for.

I received and reflected on Rosen’s story differently than I believe I might have before I started the MBA. Because now I had personally experienced what happens when a leader actually shows up and trusts the people in the room with them. Things move forward more smoothly and people feel like the work matters and their contribution is real.

APPLICATION BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

The healthcare coursework gave me the framework and language to make sense of what I had felt in Paris. Recognizing my tendency to strive for independence – even when working within a team – forced me to confront my previous understanding of a leader’s role in an organization. Because being a leader and being a team member exist within the same construct.

Sometimes, the most effective way to lead is to step back and trust someone else to step forward. That is the lesson I came to business school to learn. And it’s not one that stopped developing in Paris.

During a recent conversation with my mentor, I shared an idea for a business I had always thought of as my retirement distraction. It’s a creative endeavor I plan to nurture as a hobby during my full-time work. But after looking more closely at the market, I started to question whether waiting actually made sense for the vision.

The challenge, however, is my very demanding, career as an attorney. How does one balance big law with entrepreneurship?

My mentor first suggested thinking about investing in someone else’s existing business. But recognizing how important it is for me to participate in the journey from idea to creation, he next suggested finding a partner.

As expressed, this was not the most natural path for me as a founder, but the most practical for any future startup. It also made entrepreneurship feel a little less daunting.

That’s because it requires the same practice I had embraced in Paris. Trust.

If I choose the path of trusting a partner, I will have to believe in a shared vision and another’s capabilities. The same idea of trusting in delegated ownership leading to a better outcome I experienced recently.

This idea brings me back to a lesson about effective leadership and giving up control, which has shown up repeatedly throughout my time in business school. Being a good leader strives to create the conditions for the best ideas, strongest contributions, and right people to come forward.

In Paris, that meant letting go a task I thought I needed to manage. In the Flourishing at Work course, it meant understanding why trust and psychological safety drive performance. During the conversation with my mentor, it meant considering a future that depends on trusting someone other than myself to see a plan through to fruition.

Each experience has built on the last. And together, they’ve expanded my understanding of leadership as a practice which requires self-awareness, adaptability, and maybe most of all, a willingness to trust.

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Born and raised in the city that never sleeps, Breezy has always straddled two worlds. Law and business on one side, storytelling on the other. She earned her B.A. and Master’s in Journalism from the University of North Texas before heading to Michigan for her JD/MBA. At the Law School, she served on the boards of the Student Senate, Black Law Students Association, Mock Trial, and the Organization for Public Interest Students. At Ross, she’s on the board of Business Leaders for Diverse Abilities and takes part in the Michigan Ross Leadership Endorsement Certificate programming and Zell Lurie Institute programming. Outside the classroom, Breezy is pursuing an independent study on the modern publishing industry while finishing her first novel, a story that asks what happens when AI collides with the legal world. Wondering how a JD/MBA balances casebooks and networking with world-building? She’ll be sharing the twists, turns, and behind-the-scenes of her creative process this year at substack.com/breezeedoesit.

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