Leadership Is a Learned Skill: The STEM Connect Trainers on Seattle, Sessions, and the Hallway

Every fall, the calendar fills with conferences. Most hand you a badge, a schedule, and a room full of strangers. Ahead of STEM Connect 2026 in Seattle, Aaron Lee sits down with four of the trainers preparing to lead sessions there: Jim Lee, Hope Yin, Christine Lee, and Jeff Lovell. What follows is an honest conversation about getting real value out of any professional event. Jim makes the case for a career pathway you can actually see. Hope talks about what changes when leading one team becomes leading an organization. Christine explains why knowing yourself comes before leading yourself. Jeff, the self-described resident introvert, says out loud what half the room is thinking: you don't have to be awesome all the time. Show outline 00:16 Why this conference, year after year 03:46 One word for STEM Connect 10:22 Inside the sessions 16:40 Walking in and actually meeting people 21:12 The question that opens a real conversation 27:15 Beyond the sessions 31:38 Last words, and a local's guide to Seattle Takeaways 1. Talented people leave when good work goes unrecognized. Jim Lee describes watching it happen around year five, and the pattern that follows: job hopping, then company hopping, in search of a pathway nobody drew for them. 2. Christine Lee: "leadership is not a personality trait, it's a learned skill." If it's learned, it can be taught, and the absence of it is a gap rather than a verdict. 3. The strength that earned the promotion can become the constraint. Jeff Lovell puts it plainly: keep solving the problems you were good at solving, and you become the bottleneck your team has to route around. 4. Networking is a muscle, and it's fine to say so out loud. Jim, who runs the conference, admits he trains for the late-night conversations and that it never gets easy, only easier. Naming the awkwardness is what breaks it. 5. Ask the easy question first. "Where did you travel from" and "what do you do at your company" are cliches because they work. Save "what do you think is your growth opportunity" for after trust exists. 6. Plan the unprogrammed hours. Dinner with a trainer on Wednesday, one or two people you commit to following up with, and one thing you'll do differently. Attending without a plan produces a stack of business cards nobody ever contacts. STEM Connect 2026 Seattle, October 1 to 3. https://stemconnect.events/en/profess.... Leaders Rising Podcast listeners: use promo code PPLRN26 for 50% off. Connect with our guests   / coachjimlee     / hopeyanlingyin     / jeffalovell     / christine-lee-thrivecc     / aaronleeco