Mizell Stewart III is the president and CEO of Emerging Leaders, LLC, a consulting and coaching company serving mid-level and senior executives in the U.S. and Canada. Before that, he was a senior news executive for Gannett and the USA Today Network, Managing Director and Chief Content Officer for Journal Media Group and Vice President/Content for the newspaper division of The E.W. Scripps Company. He shared what it takes to forge a path toward newsroom leadership with the Widening the Pipeline fellows. [Transcript | Video]

5 takeaways:

➀ What qualities does a good newsroom leader have? If you are open to lifting others up and helping them get better, you’re a great candidate, Stewart said. A lot of top job candidates are people who have been leaders throughout their lives, like being captain of a sports team or helping take care of siblings. Also, if you don’t always need to have the byline or get the credit, and if you can both take and give direction, you’re a good candidate. “I can’t tell you how many times people will apply for leadership roles because they want to be in charge because they want to be the final decision maker.” But everybody has to take orders and do things they might not want to do, he said.

➁ Use S-M-A-R-T-I-E to help set your goals. Is your goal specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound, inclusive and equitable? That’s what SMARTIE goals stand for. Stewart said he thinks about his goals in terms of his family and the people who are important to him. “How does that goal that I have personally benefit other people around me?” he asks himself. He also said to think of questions like “What experiences will you need to obtain so that you can be positioned for each step?” and “What relationships do you need to cultivate to best position yourself for each step?”

➂ “Media organizations are in permanent whitewater,” Stewart said, referencing the rafting concept of being in volatile currents. It’s an environment of constant change, he said. Stewart compared this work to walking a tightrope. “It’s a tightrope as it relates to the degree to which you have to navigate both, your personal life and your professional life.” Especially as people coming from an underrepresented background in newsrooms, you have to know when to speak up and when not to. “Choose your battles,” he said.

➃ Sometimes you have to step down to step up. When Stewart was the managing editor for the Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio in 2016, he was tasked with cutting 25% of the newsroom. When he was told that they didn’t cut enough initially, they then cut every senior manager. But when they came to him and asked if he would be the next editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, he decided it wasn’t what was best for him. “Long story short, I went to work at the Courier & Press in Evansville, Indiana. I’d never been to Evansville, Indiana before. The Evansville newspaper was a third the size of the Akron Beacon Journal. But it was with a different company that was at a different stage.”

➄ Top jobs have a very limited lifespan, he said. “There is a trade-off for that increased compensation,” he said. “That trade-off for that increased compensation is that that job may change, the company may change. Mergers, acquisitions, reorganization, all of those things have an effect on your longevity in that particular job. And so you have to be thoughtful about that.”

The Widening the Pipeline Fellowship is sponsored by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation, Bayer, J&J and Lenovo. NPF is solely responsible for the content.