Unexpected Benefits

Miracles‍

I’ve just been part of a miraculous really unexpected counterintuitive turn of events.  By losing a trusted aide, and inviting the team in to see me pay her a heart-felt thank you and goodbye, I seemed to have inspired my team to new levels of commitment.  Let me explain.

As a boss, you really become a caricature of yourself, a one-dimensional being, hell bent on job site discipline and efficiency and quality - so you are that guy, that is the guy you project, and that is the guy that is received.  There’s not a lot of nuance to barking orders, complaining about quality, bossing people around.  There are different ways to go about it, but usually they don’t entail a whole lot of deviation from stern-ness and an all-business approach, done with variations of the sweet talk and the stick.  Sure you can shoot the shit, or bring some coffees, ask about the wife and kids, but it’s small talk and recognized by most as filler to the real lead up of the conversation - discipline, efficiency and quality.

So, by inviting 40 of my closest colleagues to an event which was actually detrimental to me, celebrating a person who really kind of left all hanging there at the end, and most importantly, giving a truly emotional speech about the difficulty of this 2 decade journey, and what not only this individual meant to me, but what the whole team meant to me - gave me the opportunity to be 3 dimensional, and on this occasion, I killed it.  I resonated.  Which was great at the moment since I was beforehand afraid of embarrassing myself beyond redemption, but turns out, was even better after, as the my words and my willingness to say them sunk in and percolated and marinated with my team, and for a moment right now and hopefully it lasts, they could really see how much I put out there, all the time, for myself, but also for them.

And it could be my imagination, but I surely feel a renewed vigor among the team, a clean up of the daily loose ends, an eye on the ball, a maturity that wasn’t there just a week ago.  So now my job is to not revert into the one dimensional boss that is an easy and comfortable lane for me, but instead, use this moment of connection to strengthen long-term the bonds that hold this top-notch team together.

It’s not the first time that I’ve been part of making lemonade out of what looked like lemons - the only difference this time is I’m the one that brought the sugar.

Another thing I'm seeing is that when a vacuum opens up in a company, especially this one with caring talented employees, people rush to fill it, making talent visible that were cloaked under the sometimes suffocated blanket of the person that left. Just the same old lesson - even success has dangerous status quo ruts you are best to avoid, if you are looking to continually maximize the potential of your business and team.

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