Booking Desperate Housewives was a seminal moment in Eva Longoria’s career.
The soap opera star further cemented his place in Hollywood as Gabriel Solis on Wisteria Lane for eight seasons before pursuing a career as a director, producer and entrepreneur.
While on the set of the ABC drama, Longoria learned an important career lesson. Longoria, who worked with dozens of directors on Desperate Housewives, told CNBC Make It that she learned about the leadership qualities she admired and those she didn’t want to emulate.
One idea she refused to embrace is that the director is always right.
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Longoria, 51, said, adding that the lesson was useful beyond Hollywood.
She says filmmaking and entrepreneurship are all about collaboration, including hiring and consulting with people who are smarter than you, and listening to and learning from others who have had similar experiences, whether successful or not.
“So the idea that, ‘If you just work hard, you’re the only one who can make it happen,’ is not true,” Longoria says. “You have a village of brains to tap into.”
Longoria, who has a new partnership with Lenovo, a high-tech equipment company that advises small business owners, says mentoring has played a big role in her growth as a board member and a leader. She says some of her best mentors are people she has never met or is not personally close to.
“One of the things I learned is that you don’t even have to know your mentor” to learn from them, Longoria said, adding that finding someone you admire and studying their work, reading their books or listening to their interviews can be a form of mentorship.
“I love Martin Scorsese as a director, but I’ve never met him,” she says. “I love Oprah and everything she’s done for me. I’ve met her, but I don’t know her very well, but she’s been a mentor to me.”
According to Longoria, resourcefulness is key when seeking out and making the most of mentorship, which is one of the most important qualities she looks for when hiring or partnering with someone.
“I love people who get it” and are willing to “do whatever it takes to get to the final solution,” she says. That doesn’t mean knowing how to do everything, she says, but it does mean at least knowing what questions to ask and who to work with to get answers.
Resourceful, she added, means “more than a Harvard or Ivy League education.” “Are you capable of understanding that?”
On the other hand, one of the worst qualities that raises red flags for Longoria is assuming you know the answer without doing the work to make sure it’s correct.
“Assumptions can be very dangerous, so you have to be really clear (and) ask questions,” she humbly says. “Don’t be afraid (to tell) people. I don’t know it. I’m not very familiar with it. Can you explain how it works?”
These lessons have helped Ms. Longoria in her career in Hollywood and beyond. In addition to being an award-winning actor and director, she is a co-owner of two soccer teams, co-founded the liquor brand Casa del Sol Tequila, is a cookbook author, and founded her own philanthropy to address the lack of economic opportunity for Latina women.
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