Man/Woman down? Man/Woman up!
"Improvise, adapt, overcome..." Clint Eastwood as Gunny Highway in the movie, Heartbreak Ridge and a US Marine Corps mantra
Along with my leadership offerings, I've taken on a new business as its owner and president. It is a wonderful opportunity to build and lead a team of men and women, include their families, and manage a business in an ever-changing environment - a leadership laboratory if you will, where I can practice all of those things I preach through book writing, speaking and coaching.
I could not have asked for a better week 1. It's as if someone scripted it to challenge my team and I. I'm proud of how we responded. It was not a perfect week. We are not polishing any trophies. We all know there is more mountain to climb but, as Friday has arrived, we find ourselves at a ledge where we can catch our breath, look back, and learn from a week of adventure. It began with a van stuck in a ditch during a winter storm and ended with a teammate testing positive for COVID. Sandwiched in between we battled bank and insurance bureaucracies, forgot passwords, and hit some brick walls in our automated business applications. And of course, me, leading at the speed of light (future blog) doing a few things I should have empowered others to do. War is hell!
I felt like I was back in the Army in a Situational Training Exercise (STX). In these exercises a team would be given a mission and a piece of terrain to navigate. Along the way, scripted challenges would present themselves and the team would have to react. STXs were designed to harden us for a future battlefield. Evaluators would step in right at the peak of confusion and fictitiously kill a leader. Man/Woman down! What now?
My team is small - 5 people, so when one is gone, we have to adapt and overcome. Our customers do not care that we are down one teammate, nor should they. Here are the lessons.
Build a team, a family, not a collection of workers or employees who complete tasks, get paid, and leave at 5pm.
Set a tone of love, empathy, challenge, and trust. People don't care what you know, they want to know that you care. After that is established - lead!
Direct them to achieve excellence (challenge) and give them the resources and guidance (support) they need to succeed. I can teach you how to do this.
Over-communicate. In situations where the team is new this is essential.
The show must go on. With a van stuck in a ditch, cooler heads prevailed. We still delivered our products to the customer - we just had a longer walk.
Next man/woman up! Prioritize what needs to be done and shift people toward essential tasks. Sometimes the quarterback has to run the ball.
I could go on and of course I am talking about resilience. Never once did anyone say, "what should we do now?" We reacted under one of our values - teamwork, kept focus on our enduring priority - serving our customer, and persevered. Somewhat unconsciously, we practiced Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg's 7 C's of resilience - Competence, Confidence, Connection, Character, Contribution, Coping and Control.
We are all concerned about our teammate Tommy who tested positive for COVID and, in his absence, we will man/woman up and keep climbing that hill. TGIF!
Make it Personal!
Rob
Rob Campbell