Resilience: It's Not About Bouncing Back: How Leaders and Organizations Can Build Resilience Before Disruption Hits by Jennifer Eggers & Cynthia Barlow

Author:Jennifer Eggers & Cynthia Barlow [Eggers, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Best Seller Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-06-05T17:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Know Your Purpose: The Best Preparation For Rapid, Disruptive Change

“Purpose derives from the question of why we do what we do. A good antidote is simply to ask “Why?”

– Juan Carlos Eichholz

Ihad taken over leading the Learning Function for a large retail company and Mark was part of the existing team. I knew little about him, but it was obvious he was a hard worker. He was personable, enthusiastic, and most often the first to arrive in the office every morning and the last to leave. Mark’s job was to write training courses. He wrote facilitator guides for technical classes required by the “field.” We had deadlines to deliver new courses and in the first month I was there, Mark missed his deadline.

With all the confidence of a new boss who thought she knew a thing or two about leadership, I went to Mark and asked him how long it would take for him to deliver his work the following month. I thought he would be more apt to deliver if he set his own timeline, so I invited Mark to set his own deadlines and was pretty sure we had a solution to the problem.

Another month went by and much to my surprise, Mark missed another deadline. So, I pulled out Plan C and installed a shiny new white board in the conference room. Every team member’s projects and due dates were clearly listed for everyone to see. My hope was that the team would hold each other accountable. When Mark missed another deadline, I realized we had a more serious problem.

Mark continued to come in early and leave late but we had angry store managers who weren’t getting the training they needed, and I was getting pressure to put Mark on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). I thought long and hard before I met with him. My purpose was clear: I wanted to find out what was going on. I vowed to try my best to understand where he stood and not show my own frustration or reprimand him until I did.

I started by explaining the position I was in and how my credibility was jeopardized when we missed deadlines, and how these missed deadlines had put our team in a bad spot. I could see him working hard but could not reconcile that with what he was delivering. Worse yet, I explained that I was going to be forced to put him on a PIP, the last step before termination. Then I asked him what his thoughts were. And I stopped talking.

At first, Mark quietly looked at his shoes. I waited. He slowly lifted his head. In a whisper, he mumbled, “I can’t type.” Mark was attempting to type 80-100 pages at a time using two fingers, the old ‘hunt and peck’ method. He was embarrassed to admit it, but a $15 typing tutorial solved this problem.

Had I’d gotten angry or he hadn’t felt safe, I likely would have never understood the real issue. It was only having a clear purpose that saved the relationship and the employee.

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