Upon his recent retirement, Jim Coley of S&P Global posted a list of 15 career lessons learned on LinkedIn. We discuss these leadership lessons, effective management practices, and business strategy insights in Episode 044 of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons,” but for readers seeking career development and professional growth strategies, here is his full list, edited lightly for clarity and grammar:

These career lessons also speak to management philosophy, team health, employee engagement, and work-life integration, core themes for building high-performance teams and long-term career resilience.

Jim Coley

15 Career Lessons Learned in My Life

1. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Too many times, I have worked for individuals who did not follow this philosophy, and the team’s performance suffered under that management structure. Kindness and accountability are the bedrock of organizational behavior and team performance.
   
2. Invest in the personal lives of your team. This might be somewhat controversial in this day and age, but you never know what personal pressures your team is experiencing, which might lead to their underperformance. Corporate wellness for leaders isn’t optional; caring builds trust and strengthens employee engagement.
   
3. Every person will experience spurious luck in the career. But it takes skill to recognize luck, to seize it and effectively capitalize on it. Practice recognizing career luck so you can align it with your business strategy and career trajectory.
   
4. Successful recruiting in a timely manner is the number one differentiator to meeting and exceeding business targets. You cannot do it alone, and quickly recruiting and integrating new talent into your team will be your best path forward to achieving your goals and objectives. This is talent acquisition best practices in action: prioritize recruiting and integration to accelerate talent management.
   
5. When evaluating your team, learn to separate performance based on luck vs. skill. Too many times people are rewarded for outperformance related to wind in their sails whereas those facing headwinds might actually be your best performers. Recognizing true talent takes talent. Build a consistent talent evaluation rubric tied to outcomes, behaviors, and role scope.
   
6. While everyone always talks about watching your team’s mental health, equally important is their physical health. Often a significant change in the physical health in one of your teammates will be the telltale to changes in their personal health. (see rule #2). Leaders who model personal well-being create psychologically safe, high-performance teams.
   
7. Invest in your own personal well being also. No one wants to work for a burned out manager. While there will always be crunch times at work requiring above normal hours of work, learn too [that] you need downtimes to recharge. Work-life balance for managers is foundational to sustainable leadership style and team health.
8. Everyone should try at least one business start-up in their lives. Being part of a start-up teaches you humility, multi-tasking and how to handle failure, since 99.999% of these start-ups will fail no matter how well you and your partners are prepared. Bouncing back from failure but with a new set of skills will set you [up] well for the rest of your career. This startup experience delivers startup learnings that sharpen career resilience and professional mentoring opportunities.
   
9. Block times in your calendar daily for personal learning and reading. Spend time understanding the global markets affecting your company and your key clients to add relevance to your external interactions. Continuous learning fuels professional growth strategies and sharper business strategy insights.
10. Spend time practicing pitching your firm and its products and services so that you’re prepared for that 30 second C-Suite pitch that will inevitably come multiple times over your career. Over time, modify that “elevator pitch” based on the feedback you receive, and incorporate this feedback into your future pitches to make them more relevant and impactful. Finally, resist the temptation to use internal marketing lingo, often times, how a company views itself internally is totally irrelevant to external partners. Script your pitch in your clients’ view point, not your company’s marketing talking points. This builds personal brand, executive communication, and a client-centric networking strategy.
11. Invest in your network. You will be amazed how often a key contact will move in and out of your orbit over a 40+ year career. Also invest in your key contacts’ children. You…will see those young individuals coming back to assist you (or vice versa) over your career. Strategic networking underpins succession planning and long-run career development.
    
12. Constantly scenario plan succession plans for your teams. Evaluate talent top to bottom on your team often so that when the inevitable shock hits your team with an unscheduled departure, you are well prepared to respond quickly, reducing uncertainty in your teams. Use a clear succession planning framework to protect high-performance teams and continuity.
    
13. If you are a client-facing professional, travel often to make personal connections. More importantly, make sure to travel with the more junior members of your team to mentor them and help them learn how to properly interact with clients. Client travel paired with mentoring employees strengthens culture and accelerates leadership development tips in practice.
    
14. If possible financially, resist the urge to overwork when your children are 5-15 years old. During these critical years, set more time away daily to be with them [at] school, sports, church or other activities beyond just weekends. Trust me, the time you spend with them in these formable years will be invaluable, and you can always work longer later in your career to recover financially. Protect family time; sustainable careers require deliberate work-life balance.
    
15. Lastly, and probably the most controversial, lead from the front and never ask your team to do something you are not prepared to do yourself. It’s easy to sit back and let your teams experiment or guess what needs to be done. True leadership exhibits the conviction to pursue a path forward and lead their team. Sure this philosophy is fraught to lead to occasional mistakes, but successfully managers have built up political capital over time to weather those inevitable mistakes. Don’t be afraid to lead like General Patton. Leading from the front tempered by data-driven decision-making embodies effective management practices.

Listen to Jim Coley’s episode on the PathWise podcast. For a full listing of PathWise podcasts, visit this link. For additional perspective on becoming a good leader and avoiding career mistakes, explore these related guides.

Applying These Career Lessons: From Insight to Action

To operationalize these career lessons, translate each principle into team-level rituals: weekly check-ins for employee engagement, a quarterly talent evaluation to tune your leadership style, and a twice-yearly talent acquisition review to refine recruiting and integration. Align each ritual to measurable outcomes to reinforce business strategy.

Building High-Performance Teams

High-performance teams emerge when leaders connect clear goals to autonomy, mentoring employees, and transparent metrics. Pair succession planning with cross-training, and document decision-making processes so the team can execute under pressure. These practices strengthen organizational behavior and team health.

Leadership Development Tips for Managers

Create a simple leadership development plan: monthly professional mentoring sessions, targeted courses on executive communication, and a rotating “own the elevator pitch” exercise. Encourage managers to model personal well-being to normalize corporate wellness for leaders and support work-life integration.

Professional Growth Strategies for Individuals

For personal career development, implement a 90-day growth cycle: set two learning targets, refresh your networking strategy, and solicit feedback on your personal brand. Track progress against career trajectory milestones and adjust based on outcomes and client impact.

Why These Career Lessons Matter

Taken together, these career lessons offer a practical playbook for effective management practices, leadership lessons, talent management, and career resilience. Apply them consistently to elevate team performance, advance your career path, and sustain work-life balance over the long term.