We know we can be great partners and teammates in good times. But what about when the tide turns and the water gets choppy?
Let me paint you a picture.
You’re standing in a small boat in choppy waters (choppy waters = COVID or other turbulence in your life). Across from you stands a colleague, a peer, your leader, a team member. It doesn’t matter who, specifically; what matters is that you’re both standing in a small boat on choppy waters, and it’s getting dicey.
To balance yourself as the waves rock the boat, you shift your weight in an infinitesimal and incrementally responsive way. Or, you choose—in that instant—a sweeping swerve and over-correct reactive kind of way.
Generally, a reactive counter is about you—you’re looking down, overtaken by your fears, needs, aloneness—you are not seeing, listening, taking in the movements of your co-pilot. You’re saving yourself.
A responsive counter is about your partnership, the both of you. You look carefully at one another, paying close attention to that other person on whom your well-being depends, and you focus in on the exact moves it will take to keep you both safely in the boat. You bob and weave in harmony to sustain your balance; your partner’s safety is your vanguard—even as the watery depths beneath you bring unpredictable swells of challenge, risk, and possibility. You’re in this together.
If your partner stays in the boat, you stay in the boat. If you stay in the boat, your partner stays in the boat.
If your untimely bout of annoyance gets the best (worst) of you and you dig your heels into that sophomoric power pose we’ve all been known to fall into, your partner is going in. And hello bottom feeders, because you’re going in about 5 seconds later, with a quick shift from a smug to a surprised look on your muddy mug.
As a leader, your ONE job is to keep people safely in the boat at all times, no matter how choppy the water. Your one job.
“I can do that,” you say. “It’s not rocket science!” you say. Here’s the twist.
We aren’t just standing in the small boat in choppy water. We are standing in it with an invisible backpack full of our own issues, worries, fears, past experiences, secret hopes, dashed dreams, and biases. We are, all of us, carrying a heavy, heavy load of crazy that you can’t see or predict as you try to keep me safe in the boat. One unknowing wrong move by you might render that backpack 200 pounds heavier to me. One unknowing right move by you might lighten my metaphorical load by such a factor as to make me easy to keep in the boat—it might even calm the choppy waters if you’ve had a hand in churning them (which, TBH, every leader has by commission or omission).
“Crap,” you say. “How the hell can I keep someone in the boat if I can’t see all that they are carrying that might impact their weight and how I accommodate it?”
You listen, leader. You pay attention. You listen some more. You learn what people want and need to feel safe. This doesn’t mean you should full-frontal ask them about the childhood fears, trauma, and secret burdens weighing down their backpacks. Definitely avoid that.
It does mean that you ask people in your care about their hopes, their aspirations, what they need to do their best work, what’s helping them, what’s in the way for them as they work to contribute and add value. In times like these, you check in frequently across a number of platforms to hear how people are, and how you and the organization might help. Learn what keeps your people and teams well-balanced in the boat, what helps them recalibrate, what makes them want to stay in the boat.
People will stand firmly shoulder to shoulder with you as a leader through the choppy waters of rapid and profound change when you are open and curious about how to best support their dreams, when you make their load lighter, and when you lead in ways that reflect your commitment keep them safe in your boat.
*Thanks to Stan Tatkin and his fantastic book, Wired for Love for the canoe in choppy water concept. If you are in a relationship, want to be in a relationship, or are related to anyone, anywhere, even distantly, you’ll want to read Stan Tatkin’s work.
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