The hardest part of leadership is remembering the person
Creating change became familiar. Remembering the person in front of me, while carrying my own pressure, is still a practice.
A couple of years ago, I would have given a different answer.
Ask me what was hardest about being a manager and leader, and I would have said creating lasting change in a new team. Getting people moving in the same direction. Helping something work differently, and keeping it working that way.
Having done that several times, I feel more comfortable with it now. There is a recipe I recognise in my own experience. I know where to begin, and I have something to draw on when the work becomes difficult. It no longer feels like the hardest part.
My answer now is remembering that behind every employee is a person, especially when I am under pressure myself.
That sounds simple enough to say. The difficulty is remembering it when somebody has been unproductive for a minute or two and my thoughts are already crowded with everything that still needs doing.
When a small pause starts to feel large
I am thinking about the next thing, then the thing after that. There is work to complete, and it needs to be done correctly. While one task is happening, part of my attention has already moved ahead.
From inside that pressure, somebody else's brief pause can feel much larger than it is. I can feel the impulse to react sharply before I have stopped to ask what I am actually responding to.
I am responsible for the work. I care whether it gets done. But I also have to notice how much of my reaction belongs to what is happening in front of me, and how much belongs to everything else I am carrying.
The unfinished work is real. So is the responsibility I feel for it. Taking that seriously also means being honest about the size of the moment in front of me. If I treat every small pause as though it contains everything that could go wrong, I am asking one moment to bear far more than it can tell me.
A minute or two tells me very little about a person. A down day is a down day. I need to be careful about allowing either to become a verdict on their attitude, their effort, or who they are.
This is where leadership feels difficult to me now: in the distance between feeling that impatience and deciding what to do with it.
The breath is part of the work
What helps me is taking a breath or a quick moment. I try to put myself in their shoes. I think about being their age, about first starting work, about what mattered to me then.
That memory does not tell me exactly what another person is thinking. Their experience belongs to them. It does, though, help me remember that my current view of the work is not the only view in the room.
I have had time to become familiar with responsibilities that were once new. I cannot assume somebody else has reached the same point, or sees the same chain of tasks I am thinking about.
Even when they do understand the work, they are still entitled to be human while doing it. I want to keep that in view without needing a special explanation for every ordinary moment.
Taking a breath does not finish the job. I may still need to address something. But it gives me a chance to approach the actual issue rather than speak from the full weight of my own frustration.
Care has to include the whole team
Remembering the person does not remove the responsibility to be fair to everyone else. Other people are doing the work too. Their effort matters, and so does what they are being asked to carry.
If something needs correcting, I want to be clear about it. If a standard matters, I need to explain it and follow through. Avoiding a difficult conversation because I want to feel kind would not be much help to the person who needs clarity, or to the team around them.
What I am trying to separate is the need to deal with the work from the urge to discharge my pressure onto somebody else. A clear expectation should be able to stand on its own. It should not need my impatience to make it important.
I also do not want dignity to depend on somebody telling me a private story. They should not have to disclose a crisis before I can accept that a brief pause is not the whole measure of their contribution.
There will be things I do not know. I can leave room for that while still asking for what the work requires.
Experience does not settle this for me
I have noticed how easily the person can slip out of the picture in conversations about getting work done. I recognise that risk in other managers, and I recognise it in myself. I cannot know everything another leader is carrying either.
Having more experience has made some parts of management feel easier. It has not given me a permanent exemption from impatience. Familiarity with the job can leave me expecting something to be obvious simply because it is obvious to me now.
I want experience to help me remember more, including what it was like before I had that experience. The first days of work belong in that understanding too. So do the things that mattered outside it.
Remembering what mattered to me then also brings back a useful limit: I cannot expect another person to live inside my priorities. They can take their responsibilities seriously without spending every moment thinking about the next thing in exactly the way I do. I need to make expectations clear enough to share, rather than assume my own sense of urgency has already explained them.
The answer I used to give was about changing a team. The answer I give now asks something more immediate of me. Can I come back from the work I am anticipating to the person who is actually here?
There will be another moment when my attention is several tasks ahead and a minute feels longer than it is. I will have to catch that in myself again. Take the breath. Remember starting out. Then decide what this moment actually needs from me.
Dorian Hartwood
One world. One love. One Earth. Together in balance and harmony.