Every leader has heard the advice to "read the room." But Soyoung Kang, President of eos Products, believes that that advice doesn't go far enough.
Drawing upon her experience as an architecture student before taking an unconventional path to executive leadership, she encourages leaders to move beyond reading the room and learning to "read the whole damn building." This framing helps leaders succeed because only then will they understand the interconnected systems around their roles and organizations.
Early in our careers, success means excelling within our own function. As we become more senior, our effectiveness depends less on the functional expertise that earned us those spots, and more on our ability to work within the invisible forces that shape an organization.
During a recent LEAP Essentials session on Understanding the Landscape, the second of the Virtuosi League 6 Pillars of Leadership, Soyoung challenged these leaders to think like an architect instead.
Soyoung’s perspective comes from a career spent repeatedly entering unfamiliar environments, and her guidance is steeped in the language of structure, space, and a deep curiosity about her team and the client, partner, and customer experience.
Where leaders may believe that rising in the ranks means you become the one with all the answers, Soyoung argues that expertise should give leaders the confidence to ask more and better questions.
"I think that the more senior you get, you think you're supposed to have the answers, when in reality, you're supposed to ask all the questions," she says.
Some of the best questions to start: “why?” and “why not?” Why do we do it that way? Why wouldn’t we consider a different perspective?
Curiosity builds trust. Though asking basic questions might make some feel uncomfortable, Soyoung says that admitting what she doesn’t know demonstrates humility while reinforcing what she did know. Over time, her willingness to learn alongside her team continually strengthened credibility instead of weakening it.
Trust, Soyoung explains, becomes organizational currency. Whether the goal is a successful marketing campaign, a reorg, or a new business strategy, organizations only move quickly after leaders have invested consistently in relationships, credibility, and shared understanding.
That investment becomes especially important because modern leadership is increasingly cross-functional. Many professionals are asked to work cross-functionally, but leaders have the added pressure of leading across functions. Furthermore, Soyoung acknowledges that there is never just one landscape; employees, peers, boards of directors, shareholders, and partners, a part of a sea of stakeholders.
Coalition building, Soyoung argues, is no longer optional. Change happens where work happens, and work happens across functions, not inside team or departmental silos. Having a strong idea is just one small piece of the puzzle; those ideas see the light of day and have impact because someone took the time to understand every stakeholder's motivations, build the business case from multiple perspectives, and foster enough trust that people were willing to move together.
Understanding the landscape means seeing, hearing, and understanding. Where the first pillar of leadership, Reinforce Your Foundation, asks leaders to first look within, Understanding the Landscape requires being an honest student of the environments we’re in. It’s the discipline of seeing the organization as a living system, asking better questions, and earning the trust required to help work move forward within that system.
Soyoung Kang is President at eos, a category-leading beauty and skincare company. Prior to that, served as Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at eos and held a series of executive leadership roles across CPG and retail over the course of her career. She has been named an Adweek Brand Genius, Forbes Entrepreneurial CMO, and a Business Insider Most Innovative CMO.