Filming “Desperate Housewives” was a key moment in Eva Longoria’s career.
The soap opera star further cemented her place in Hollywood during eight seasons as Wisteria Lane’s Gabrielle Solis before pursuing a career as a director, producer and entrepreneur.
During her time on the set of the ABC comedy-drama, Longoria learned some crucial lessons about her career. After working with dozens of directors on “Desperate Housewives,” Longoria told CNBC Make It that she was able to discover leadership qualities she admired and others she didn’t want to emulate.
An idea that she refused to adopt: the director is always right.
“I find that’s not the case,” says Longoria, 51, adding that the lesson has served him beyond Hollywood.
Filmmaking and entrepreneurship are about collaboration, she says, which includes hiring and consulting people smarter than you, hearing from people who have had similar experiences — whether successful or unsuccessful — and learning from them.
“So that [idea] “Go it alone and only you can do it” is not true,” Longoria says. “There is a village of brains that you should tap into. ”
Longoria, who has a new partnership with tech device company Lenovo that advises small business owners, says mentoring has played an important role in her growth as a director and leader. She says some of her best mentors are people she has never met or is not close with personally.
“One thing I’ve learned is: You don’t even have to know your mentor” to learn from them, Longoria says, adding that finding someone you admire and studying their work, reading their books or listening to their interviews can be a form of mentoring.
“I love Martin Scorsese as a filmmaker and I’ve never met him,” she says. “I love Oprah and everything she’s done. I’ve met her, but I don’t know her [well]but she was a mentor to me.”
Seeking and getting the most out of mentoring comes down to being resourceful, Longoria says, which is one of the main qualities she looks for when hiring or partnering with people.
“I like people who understand” and are willing to “do what it takes to get to the final solution,” she says. That doesn’t mean knowing how to do everything, she says, but at least knowing what questions to ask and who to turn to for an answer.
Resourcefulness means “more than [being] Harvard or Ivy League educated,” she adds. “Do you have the ability to understand it?”
Meanwhile, one of the worst qualities that raises a red flag for Longoria is assuming he knows the answer without doing the work to make sure it’s right.
“Presumptions are a very dangerous thing, and so we really need to clarify [and] ask the questions” with humility, she said. “Don’t be afraid to [tell] people: I don’t know. I really don’t know that. Can you explain to me how this works? »
These lessons have served Longoria well in her career in Hollywood and beyond: In addition to being an award-winning actress and director, she co-owns two soccer teams, co-founded the alcohol brand Casa Del Sol Tequila, authored a cookbook, and founded her own philanthropy to address the lack of economic opportunity for Latinas.
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