Yesterday afternoon, a former colleague reached out to me to setup time for a phone call related to career and business advice.
This is a person I’ve built and experienced great trust in and enjoyed mutual success with. Yet when I first met him, I was just as suspicious as I tend to be with everyone else I have to work with (significant words there – “have to work with”)
One of the things about this colleague that truly endeared me to him -is his unaltering commitment to family. There were also some of the less tangible yet incredibly important parts of the human experience: Kindness, grace, and humility that I witnessed from him every single day that we worked together. I haven’t got his permission to name him here yet, so I’m not.
As a co-lead, I actually used some of his “unbeknownst to him” strengths to both build and increase cohesiveness in the team we led together. I learned so much in our team leadership together for sure, but I also learned from the points that he fought me on (somewhat rare after I learned to listen, because he was usually right). His sharing of his experiences with leadership that ran the whole gamut – we both shared our experiences of motivating team members and ideas on strategy, and I know we both grew from that! But there really was alot more – like family pictures from his trip to Germany – collaborating on decorating our desk spaces or finding ugly sweaters to make our team Covid-Christmas experience more meaningful – just real ways of being human that were sources of inspiration for the team, but also for me personally (as in – turning half-whack ideas into experiences that truly built team cohesiveness really matters!).
Nowadays companies are looking more than ever to create these “genuine” experiences- I bet we could like brainstorm together and get paid actually ;-). But what we did was create real and genuine experiences and connections with a REAL team – and I know it was successful because team members told me so (in fact, even team members that were disgruntled by internal politics let us know that they LOVED working on our team.
This prior team member reaching out to me to offer me some significance and impact in my own journey today truly meant alot to me. We ended our convo as usual -“give my love to the family”. For some reason, maybe because I’ve been doing my own thing for so long and forgot what it felt like to appreciate others’ visions, I wondered if me sharing lots of my moments with him about raising Bones might have also been impactful. I remember his wife, his kids (from pics he shared) and I feel invested. Can we all use and do that for positive outcomes?
One of the experiences that AirBnB visitors frequently mention to us personally, but don’t always include in their reviews is some sort of happiness that me and Bones (my 17-yr old going through identity struggles) bring into dinners or breakfasts they might enjoy at our table – or like debates we get into (guest included 😉 about Marvel, DC, current pop culture – and way more.
I got this feeling today that me sharing my experiences with Bones might have meant as much to him as his sharing his experiences with me. So I walk away wondering how common it must be to boost someone in the very most subtle positive ways – you don’t have to compliment someone to be positive – that are never really acknowledged.
Perhaps there’s an importance in sharing or boosting someone without recognition that has even more meaning – actually – I’m just now very certain of that!
Thank you friend, for being kind.
