In the article titled, “Let Great Leaders Pause to Give Thanks”, we talked about the importance of Great Leaders taking time to give thanks. Reflecting this past week, I realized that there were a few thank you’s that I had neglected to offer. While Great Leaders are usually the result of the wonderful examples set by other Great Leaders, it occurred to me that, sometimes, bad examples are also instrumental in the development of a Great Leader.
This realization was prompted by a short time spent at the counter of a diner I ate at while traveling. It was late Saturday morning and the diner was relatively busy. The manager was standing at the “pass out window” where the cooks would set the plates that were ready to be delivered to the patrons at the tables. His job was to organize the various meals by ticket so that the server could pick up a tray and all of the meals for that table would be on the tray. While the manager was doing this, he was constantly yelling at the cooks and berating the servers. The overall attitude of the staff was very negative and it was reflected in the service that they provided. This incident brought to mind a time when I worked as a cook in a coffee shop and the manager, we’ll call him Larry, was a crude, rude, and verbally abusive drunk. I remember watching the way he treated everyone and thinking, “I don’t ever want to be a manager like him.” Through his bad example, he made me realize the importance of treating others with courtesy and respect regardless of their position in the company’s hierarchy. Thank you, Larry, for setting that example of how NOT to treat employees.
While I’ve frequently cited the great leadership skills of my first agency manager, Ray, I also recall the behaviors and actions of several agency managers that I met who belittled their agents, questioned the agents’ potential to “ever amount to anything”, treated staff members with disdain, were deceitful, and were generally rude to everyone. One of the agents who transferred to my agency after working for one of these other managers remarked, “I learned a lot from (former manager). I learned what I don’t want to be like.” Thank you, (former manager), for showing me why agents left other agencies to work for a different manager.
Great Leaders, today and always, learn from everyone around them. On some days, they see an example of how they want to lead, an example that they want to emulate. On other days, they see, first-hand, behaviors that they want to avoid at all costs. Regardless of which day it is, Great Leaders see and learn from everything and everyone around them. For this, we should all give thanks.
Tom Hoisington is a speaker, trainer, and author whose goal is to provide leaders and potential leaders with tools that empower them to build teams that are creative and cost effective along with a clearer understanding of how personality types interact within those teams. He can be contacted at tom.hoisington@eagleoneresources.com