Category: Leadership

Getting Ahead: I Volunteer

On By Lexi EmmonsIn Getting Ahead, LeadershipLeave a comment

My grandfather was a Seabee in the Korean War. When I was eleven, we were on a long car trip together wandering dirt roads in farmland Oklahoma. He told me the one rule and phrase that got him where he wanted was, “I Volunteer”.

“Didn’t you get a lot of assignments you didn’t want though?” I asked. He smiled. “Yes, at first. I cleaned a few latrines. But I worked hard and did it well. When my commanding officers saw that I would volunteer and do the work, they started making sure I was in the path of more desirable work. I learned new things, and they paid attention to my interest.”

It seemed like an unreasonable idea to me. My curiosity got the better of me though, so I tried.

“We need someone to work the closing shift.”

I volunteer.

“We need someone to be on the escalation line.”

I volunteer.

“We need someone to take on this messy and difficult project.”

I volunteer.

The opportunities grew my experience quickly. I got to interact with decision makers and players I would have otherwise never met. I made friends, some of them lifelong. I found people who would champion me. “I volunteer” led to my first major promotion.

I cleaned my share of latrines along the way. I got taken advantage of. Other people took credit for my hard work. But on balance, “I volunteer” has paid out. It’s a bet I’ll still take today.

“We have a project that…”

I don’t need to hear the rest.

I volunteer.

How We Tell the Story

On By Lexi EmmonsIn LeadershipLeave a comment

I sat beside my six year old son in his hospital bed. It was 2 am. He was wide awake. From his perspective, the day had been a long nap followed by the euphoria of pain medication. He was hungry. Twenty-Four hours since he had anything substantial. But with digestion still on hold from the anesthesia, he was only allowed Sprite. 

My son has never been one for moderation when sugar is involved. He kept slamming back the Sprite as fast as he could get the nurses to bring it. His third glass in, the nurse slowed him down. I knew something wasn’t right. His little belly was distended. Giving him fluid had not started his system processing again as hoped. I held his hand as he went from giddy to woozy. 

And then, he erupted. I’ll spare you the worst of the details. Let’s just say I had no idea how much would fit in a six year old’s stomach. I grabbed the nearby trash can to try to hold back my little Mt. Vesuvius. It did little good. His bed, his gown, his mom… we were all victims of  pyroclastic Sprite spewing from his belly.. 

And now, finished with the event, he looked up at me. It was the briefest of moments in which the volume of questions on his face matched the volume of destruction in the room.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Are you mad?”

“Am I alright?”

All translating to the one question his six year old self needed help with.

“Mom, what story do I tell about what just happened.” 

I smiled. “Wow, you just made a Sprite Volcano!” He laughed. I laughed with him as I began cleaning him up. He mimed the performance again for the nurse who came to help. Over the next three days it was the story he recounted for everyone who visited him. Not a story of pain, or of fear, but one of Sprite everywhere.

"How we tell the story matters" Kintsugi

Things happen in life. But we don’t live in discreet objective facts. We live in the stories we tell ourselves and each other. Stories help us make the meaning. Stories help us remember what we shouldn’t forget. How we tell the story matters.

 For the challenges happening in your life right now, tell the story to yourself again. Only this time, you’re the hero. You’re the one on the journey. You’re the chosen one. You won’t believe it at first. You’ll slip back into “yeah buts” and negative self talk. That’s okay. It’s part of the story. The part where the hero loses hope. 

But now, you get that second wind. You find the deeper truth inside you. You turn the tide. This is your story. You get to tell it. The facts are the facts. But the story is everything else. 

How you tell the story matters. My son is 14 now. He works to become an adult, and to write his own stories. But still, I can smile at him and say “Sprite Volcano” and we laugh at the story again.

Success:Fail

On By Lexi EmmonsIn LeadershipLeave a comment

I’m on my longboard and for the first time, I can slow my pace by cutting hard back and forth. The graceful symbols I draw as I coast down the hill are the very essence of flow. I feel powerful. I look beautiful. I’m a 40+ year old woman. I’m not “supposed” to be able to do this.  People see what I do and ask in disbelief, “How do you do that?” 

“How” is simple. I fell down. 

You didn’t see the time I was cruising on my board, and saw the pothole. An error in my path finding, I couldn’t avoid it. It was going to stop my board. A heartbeat set aside for the recitation I learned from my falls in Roller Derby, and my long ago study of Judo. “Pads down first, let them take the blow. Tuck your head. Roll.” Now it’s time. Just like the plan, the pads take the brunt of it. The asphalt takes is cut, a little from my elbow, and a bruise to remember this moment by on my hip. I got back up.

In the pursuit of the hustle, people say you’re only as good as your last success. 
But that’s not right. Successes are great experiences. But failures are our educators. 
You are only as good as the last time you failed. 

The last time you failed a test, didn’t get backing for a project, got shut down in a meeting, bombed a presentation… these are all parts of the success you will inevitably achieve. Just as long as you keep getting back up.

It’s easy to see the success of others, even your own success as that spotlight moment. But that’s the refrain of the song, pleasant, but meaningless on its own. 

The failure isn’t when you weren’t successful. The failure is when you built the success.

What was the last thing you failed at? What was it in pursuit of? Right now it may hurt. You learned. 

Now, we have work to do. Get up. 

feeling is first…

On By Lexi EmmonsIn LeadershipLeave a comment

During a discussion with my wife about an issue at work, she dropped one of the touchstones we share. All she said was, “Feeling is first,” from a poem by E.E. Cummings.

But why am I talking about a poem in a space about leadership and customer experience?

Because you will never be a better _________ than you are a person. You can fill in that blank with any role you play. You will never be a better leader, boss, spouse, parent, coach, or teacher than you are a person. You have to invest in yourself, and in your whole person, to be the best you can be at any other role.

And I do mean a whole person. Granted, you get to define what a whole person means to you personally. But it’s pretty easy to agree that a whole person is more than just their corporate role and more than just their trade. I have met plenty of individuals who are well-steeped in the business books of their field. But their knowledge is almost entirely comprised of other people’s ideas in a limited domain. They are robbed of the cross-interactions of ideas and the synergy of different perspectives.

...although he had never sought power, he had always had it... it was a power born of excellence, not manipulation. -Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

I read and watch a lot of science fiction. To me, good sci-fi brings us face to face with a “what if”. That “what if” has helped me to be open to new ideas. While it’s hard to draw a line from a sci-fi book to a specific business initiative, it’s easy to draw the line to the perspectives I hold that shape the way I lead. I learned the power of excellence from Ender’s Game. I learned that unpredictable outcomes are a result of complex processes from Asimov’s Robot series. I don’t just know these concepts from a textbook–I feel them.

So, to be a better ______, invest in yourself. Be a better person by resisting the need to tie your specific pursuits to a business pay off. Accept that you are worth the investment in yourself. No one can prescribe what that investment in yourself looks like for you, but I can give you a few of the things that helped me.

  • Art – I am fortunate enough to live in a city with a great art museum. I make it a point to get immersed there several times a year. To be honest, much of the art I view is beyond me, but I never walk out of a gallery quite the same as I walked in. For a quick dip, check out: Google Arts and Culture
  • Literature – It’s important to read for business, but it’s important to read for you too. I alternate between the business book I’m currently reading and something to feed my person. Audiobooks are a great alternative if sitting still and reading doesn’t work for you.
  • Activity – Do something you enjoy that is active. But I’m serious, enjoy it. Many of our greatest thinkers have been advocates of long walks. Skating keeps me sane. Find your active passion.
  • Media – Watching YouTube videos gets a bad rap. While you can certainly waste time there, some of the best and most intriguing material is on Youtube. If you are not watching Crash Course, well, you should be.
  • Sleep – If you aren’t getting adequate sleep, and you can only do one thing from this list, sleep is the priority.

Strive to be the best person you can be and to continue to improve yourself. The rest will fall into place.

Assets and Allies

On By Lexi EmmonsIn LeadershipLeave a comment

It’s just you and me, let’s be honest. It’s fun to have an archenemy. Someone who is opposed to you and all that is good and just. Someone you can have a righteous cause against. Enemies make us feel alive and give us purpose. It’s important to have enemies.

But here’s the thing, no one at work is your enemy if you are a leader. Making an enemy out of a person is wasteful, and you can’t afford it. Even that person who undermines you or costs you a promotion–not your enemy. The real people you work with are not all good or evil. They have their own priorities, their own desires, their own context. I’m not saying they are saints, and they may even be a genuinely “bad person”, but that doesn’t make them your enemy. That story is too simple. Beware of simple stories.

Instead, the people you work with fall into two categories: assets and allies. Allies will spend some of their capital or resources to help you achieve what you are after. It is assumed that you’ll do the same for them, but it’s not a tit-for-tat relationship. Where to find allies, how to build them, and how to pivot with them is a separate discussion. You will have precious few in your career. Value them.

Everyone else is an asset. They have different goals both personally and professionally. They have different values and codes. They have different methods of pursuing and achieving their results. It is your job to understand each of these and use them to your advantage. When you know the intricacies, you can add a portion of their resources to your own.

Three Scenarios:

Win  / Win: This is where you want to live most of the time. You understand your own goals and your assets’  goals. You arrange things so that achieving your goal in whole or part helps them achieve their goal. This is made even more effective if the inverse is true at the same time, i.e. if your asset fails to support your goal, it will harm their own objective.

Win / Lose: This happens when your goal and your assets’ goals are mutually exclusive. If you are willing to be creative, this is rarely the case. There is almost always a way to turn a situation into a win / win. If you find yourself in win / lose often, you’ll lose your assets quickly, as this situation always strains your relationship and spends political capital. If the situation has to be a win / lose, you need to take active steps to help your assets save face and mitigate their losses. Total surrender, total defeat is indelicate. Save your assets.

Lose / Lose: In some situations, you and your assets are both going to lose. External forces have conspired against you. Much as before, this is about saving face and mitigating loss. Prioritize saving the most capital you can. Sometimes this means every person for themselves, but more often small expenditures on your part in times of crisis can accrue favors that pay off later, multiple times over.

Enemies are a luxury you can’t afford to permit yourself. Value your allies, protect your assets.