The Job

The light-bulb conversation went like this.

ME: “How can I help?”

MD: “Sigh. I don’t know Paul. What I do know though is this.  I seem to spend most of my time picking people up, (good people) when they are down, reminding them of the big picture, refocussing them when they drift, reconnecting them with their accountabilities – you know just relentless restatement of where we are going and why its good for them.”

“I just don’t have time to do my job.”

ME: (In a shocked and mischievous sarcastic manner) “What? You have another job along with the one you have just described!!”

Silence.

Light bulb switches on moment. The rewarding, relentless, imperative job of correcting drift in human beings IS YOUR JOB and its pretty much full on without the other stuff.

Watching the 6 nations you will have noticed the respective Coaches in the stand constantly tracking players and the game plans. They sat there with the Mac books plotting and planning to put together the half time strategy talk to focus the teams on either coming back from behind or saying ahead and expanding the margin.

I doubt any of them were balancing finances or sorting HR issues.

OK, its an imperfect world and we have ‘jobs’ to do but are those jobs more impact-full than leading the team? That’s a day to day judgement call taken by people who take time to stop, take stock and course correct.  People drift. Goes with the human territory. Adjusting expectation to schedule that into your job would be a liberating act.

Stop doing the work – start leading the team is a reliable mantra.

Image courtesy of Matthew Wynn