One-on-one with Mary Lou Song

From being the third full-time employee at eBay to propelling and advising startups, Mary Lou Song knows leadership can influence performance. In a new Farley Center course, the serial entrepreneur will push students to explore how they want to show up as leaders.

Speaking to a group of students from Northwestern Engineering’s Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation earlier this year, serial entrepreneur Mary Lou Song noted the positive impact of leaders who leverage the cumulative knowledge of their organization to fuel results.  

The impact-driving trait was something Song — the third full-time employee at eBay, an early team member at Friendster, and an adviser to startups at her consulting firm Aspentri — had observed herself over 20 years in the entrepreneurial arena.  

“Collective genius,” Song called it.  

After the spirited discussion with students, Song — who is currently pursuing a doctorate in leadership and learning in organizations at Vanderbilt University — told Farley Center director Hayes Ferguson leadership was a topic she could talk about for days. Ferguson then invited Song to do just that. 

This winter, Song, who earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, will teach a new class at the Farley Center. The quarter-long course titled Entrepreneurial Leadership will apply current research on leadership and personality science to the world of entrepreneurship, challenging students to thoughtfully and intentionally reflect on how they might lead organizations in their own professional lives. 

Song, who previously co-taught the Farley Center NUvention: Web+Media course, discussed the importance of leadership, her plans and goals for the new course, and the key characteristics of a strong startup leader. 

Why is leadership such a valuable topic for aspiring entrepreneurs to study? 

As I saw in my career, building technology, processes, and practices is all challenging. The biggest challenge of all, however, is building a team. That’s something that requires thoughtful leadership. How do the best leaders create an environment filled with mutual respect and trust, so the team can continuously collaborate and innovate? That’s the discussion students need to be having right now, so they’re entering the world thinking about how they want to lead rather than playing from behind and reacting. 

You have your own rich experience in the startup world, but also returned to school to examine leadership through a scholarly lens. How will you bring your professional and research work into the classroom?  

Having been an entrepreneur for 20 years, I wanted to take a pause and study the role of leadership on outcomes for an organization, which led me to pursue my EdD degree at Vanderbilt University in leadership and learning in organizations. With that, I’m conducting research around team effectiveness in the fully remote environment and the pivotal role leadership plays in creating effective organizations. In the classroom, I’m going to draw upon the best parts of my career and my research to provide students with leadership theories they can apply to their real-world environments and entrepreneurial endeavors.  

What will students do in the new Entrepreneurial Leadership course? 

We’re going to look at case studies and read stories about different leaders. We’ll have guest lectures by entrepreneurs sharing their different leadership experiences. We’ll learn about various leadership theories and have honest, candid discussions about what works and what doesn’t while also doing self-assessments to get students reflecting on their own leadership styles. I’m excited to get students thinking about the many facets of leadership they’re going to need to be aware of and/or practicing in their professional lives. 

What do you hope students take away from your course? 

I really hope our students enter the world thinking about how they want to lead. I want them to have the right language and tools to be leaders, to be open to appreciating and understanding the importance of knowledge sharing, sense making, and bridge building. I want them to have leadership tools ready to use as they launch their careers as founders, CEOs, and leaders of companies. If I can get students thinking deeply about the kind of leader they want to be, then I’ll be quite happy. 

What makes a good entrepreneurial leader? 

Too often, entrepreneurs are so focused on building the technology itself and not as much on fostering a collaborative team. Yet, the social aspects of innovation — navigating differences in opinion, experiences, challenges, and conflict to create a collaborative environment in which people can thrive — is, to me, critically important. As I see it, the best leaders speak two different languages: they speak to the technical aspects of innovation as well as the social aspects of innovation. They have the ability to build teams that like to collaborate and share knowledge and, then, with that in place, inspire their teams to continuously innovate.