From I to We: The Leadership Mindset Shift
A conversation with Summer Xiao, Deputy CIO of the City of Houston
For those who love to read, this blog post summarizes Episode 55 of the Data Culture Podcast; that being said, we definitely recommend listening to the episode!
The Individualist Trap
Summer Xiao’s leadership philosophy was shaped by systems that rewarded individual performance above all else. Growing up in China, test scores were posted publicly and students were ranked. When she moved to the US in fifth grade and encountered her first group project, the reaction was visceral: “I can’t control what these people do.”
That instinct followed her into consulting, where it was reinforced by design. Utilization rates were tracked daily. Billable hours determined your worth. At one firm, a policy limiting non-billable training hours meant consultants were reluctant to help struggling teammates as they literally couldn’t afford to. The message in her formative years was clear: take care of yourself first.
People are a product of their environments, therefore you have to very intentionally design a culture where collaboration is encouraged. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t, and theThe result is leaders who arrive at senior roles still running on individual-contributor instincts, wondering why they can’t scale.
Five Shifts from “I” to “We”
Summer frames her leadership evolution around five concrete mindset shifts. Each one challenged a deeply held assumption about what it means to be good at your job.
1. From Doer to Facilitator
The shift: Stop being the person with all the answers. “I don’t have solutions,” Summer now jokes with her team. “I just have problems.”
In practice, this means replacing directives with questions, often obvious ones. When a high-performing PM was stressed about missing schedule items, Summer didn’t help fix the schedule. She coached her to walk into the team sync and ask: Do we know what’s missing? How do we get these on the schedule? Why aren’t they there already?
The insight is counterintuitive: a facilitator’s most powerful tool is the question everyone thinks is too basic to ask. It creates space. And occasionally, someone surfaces a solution better than what the leader would have prescribed.
2. From Self-Evaluation to Team Performance
Summer’s mindset shift: performance isn’t measured by what you accomplish personally, it’s reflected in what your team can accomplish without you.
Summer connects this to the “Brent effect” from The Phoenix Project: the indispensable hero who solves every problem but whose very indispensability makes the system fragile. “The smarter one person gets, the dumber the whole system gets.”
The uncomfortable question: next time you receive personal kudos for saving a project, ask whether it would have been better if your team hadn’t needed saving.
This reframing also changes where professional satisfaction comes from:
Before: Pride in personal output, solving a hard problem, delivering a great presentation
After: Joy in watching direct reports lead meetings, grow skills, and handle escalations independently
The honest version: “I feel a lot more secure knowing our team has the skill set to be successful and I’m not gonna get escalations”
Both positive and defensive motivations are valid. Summer thinks leaders should be honest about which ones drive them.
3. From Sole Ownership to Shared Responsibility
Her growth and subsequent mindset shift: The success or failure of any initiative doesn’t depend on one person.
This insight came during a crisis, what Summer calls a “crybaby project.” She’d done everything right and it was still falling apart. Driving to work barely breathing from stress, she called her mentor. His response: “Summer, the success or failure of this project is not going to depend on you alone.”
The relief was immediate and physical. He reminded her to lean on the team, go back to PM basics, and trust capable people to step up. She identified a core group of four or five high-confidence individuals on the fifty-person team, rallied them, and pulled the project back from the brink.
The practical takeaway she now gives to overachieving perfectionists on her team: when you’re losing sleep over a project, pause. Breathe. Ask yourself whether you’re carrying weight that belongs to the group.
4. From Symptom Treatment to Root Cause Analysis
Summer’s reframe: People problems deserve the same diagnostic rigor as technical problems.
When a server goes down, no competent team skips the root cause analysis. But when a team member consistently underperforms, leaders default to symptom management, more reminders, more check-ins, more structure. Summer had a team leader who chronically fell behind on administrative tasks despite months of follow-ups. The breakthrough came from one question: why? His answer was disarmingly honest: he’d gotten too comfortable. One conversation addressing the root cause accomplished what months of reminders hadn’t.
The more personal version: Summer couldn’t give feedback to her team despite coaching, preparation techniques, and frameworks. Nothing worked until her boss gave her direct feedback and she noticed her own intense emotional reaction… shame, disappointment, fear. The root cause wasn’t a skill gap. It was that she experienced feedback as an inherently negative act and was projecting that onto others.
The pattern: Stop prescribing treatments. Find the root cause. The diagnosis won’t make the problem vanish, but it transforms your approach from surface-level technique to actual change.
5. From Spotlight to Stage Builder
New perspective: Leadership isn’t performing on stage, it’s making sure the production happens.
As an individual contributor, you play one role. As a leader, your job is ensuring the actor has a script, the sound person has equipment, the costume designers have supplies, and the whole production has a stage and an audience. Most days you’re not the one performing, and you shouldn’t want to be, because you may not know how to run the sound board.
Summer credits a friend who introduced herself as “a stage maker” for crystallizing this idea. Her proudest moment wasn’t delivering a keynote, it was assembling the panel and creating conditions for others to shine.
The beauty of this metaphor is that it absorbs imperfection. Not every show is flawless. “It’s not gonna be perfect, but showtime’s here. Let’s go.”
Questions to Sit With
Summer closes with three challenges for any leader at any level:
Are you building a team that thrives without you, or one that depends on you too much?
Do the people on your team have the skill sets they need, and what are you doing to position them for success?
Are you playing the right role in your own leadership journey?
The thread connecting all five shifts is a single, difficult transition: moving from “I” to “we.” As Summer’s journey illustrates, that move is never complete. It’s a practice, not a destination. The show goes on, and you keep learning your part.
This blog post is based on a conversation between Sid Atkinson and Summer Xiao on the Data Culture Podcast. At the time of recording, Summer Xiao was the Deputy CIO of the City of Houston, overseeing Enterprise Applications and the Project Management Office. Connect with her on LinkedIn by searching “Summer Xiao Houston.”