Laughing at and Learning from the Bad Times

Maybe this is just me but I go through ebbs and flows of reflection. Reflecting on where you’ve been so that you can be objective and intentional about where you’re going is crazy important but I just don’t do it every day. I will sometimes intentionally ask myself things like; What makes a good leader? What makes a person the person you want to follow? There are many days though that I just focus on doing the things that I learned or reminded myself of the last time I reflected on it. For example, months ago I was thinking about how critical quality communication is and since then it has been my primary focus at work and at home. Sometimes though, that reflection comes out of the blue when you get to connect with someone you have respect for and have built in the margin to learn from.

Recently I had the opportunity to talk with a fellow leader at work. The impromptu call started with a project update and soon turned to, for lack of better phrasing, trading horror stories of leaders of our past. He had a story about an executive who was rumored to make her direct reports cry on a daily basis. I had a tale of a manager who after seeing my state after a full hour of telling me how I couldn’t do my job looked at me and said, good. I’m glad you feel like this. Remember it and never do it again. He shared a time when he witnessed his boss get berated in the hallway at work by a higher up manager being told loudly, and in front of everyone who cared to see, that she was incompetent. We commiserated about the ‘old school’ bosses who never let you see them sweat and stepped over, or on, anyone they needed to in order to get where they wanted to be. It was interesting to hear all of the stories coming from a male perspective and feeling like we could have traded places and had such similar experiences.

Then we talked about how we coped. We laughed about my co-dependency with peanut butter and cheese. I complained that it broke my heart how snippy I was with my kids after what felt like endless days of never knowing which way was up. He one-upped me then saying he used to sit in bed at night with a glass of whiskey just to fall asleep. I hadn’t even thought about how my glass of wine while cooking and then my second glass with dinner seemed to align in timing with all of these experiences. How did these people with terrible leadership tactics end up having such an impact on us? I like to think of myself as a strong, intelligent, independent woman but I was going through cheese and peanut butter at an alarming rate and that is just the measurable coping mechanisms. Think about it, these leaders were literally driving us to drink! To be honest, that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface when I remember back to a time that my then 3-year-old told Daddy that if my friends at work weren’t being nice to me I should stop playing with them and find new friends. A glass or two of wine has nothing on a 3-year-old’s perspective on what a healthy working relationship looks like.

Then we switched the conversation. We turned to what we do now as leaders instead. He mentioned that witnessing all of the yelling and the stress of being called out on the carpet made him consistently use a softer tone and speak words of support even when correcting someone. I said that I consistently share about the mistakes I made and ones I still make to remind people we’re all human and this is how we continue to grow. He said that he would never ever say a negative word to someone in public, those corrections would be kept private. I said that I realize I have the tendency to jump to conclusions and was committed to asking the person how they were feeling and what I could do. As much as we didn’t want to have gone through what we did, we are both better leaders as a result.

He and I weren’t trying to go to solution. We weren’t trying to solve for breaking the cycle. We just knew we wanted to do better. We needed to do better for our teams that we would lead someday. We needed to do better for our kids watching us go through all of that. We needed to be better for our spouses, so they weren’t dealing with the aftermath of our struggles at work. We needed to be better for ourselves mentally, emotionally, and physically (there is only so much cheese one can eat before it becomes a physical health concern). There is a whole generation of employees who are benefitting from the mistakes of those who led us and others like us and the next generation will benefit from someone reflecting on our mistakes and unintended consequences too.

This is growth. This is personal continuous improvement. Learning from your own experiences and leveraging the experiences of others to make you a better version of yourself. We talked previously about building true connections at work (if you haven’t read it check it out here). Building in the margin to cultivate those connections can be one of the most rewarding and mutually beneficial pieces of work. Don’t skip it. It isn’t the fringe; it is what is making you who you were meant to be. I do want to point out just a couple tactical pieces to make sure that your conversation is mutually beneficial rather than going down the pitty party worm hole. First, find the themes. When you’re venting or commiserating with someone look for the common themes in what bothered you or was troublesome. Second, ask yourself, and your friend, what you’re doing or going to do differently in response to the theme. With some practice it will happen organically but do put in the practice first and make the most of your development with your connections.