Enough Already!!!

Stop Sign at Intersection

After one of the early promotions in my career, I was working for a manager named Sally. She was a great boss. I learned an important lesson from her right from the start. I was a newly promoted manager and was looking to establish myself as a high performer in the organization. I have always had a type A personality --- definitively competitive. One of my cardinal rules across my career (and life) has been that I strive to make my “Yes always be Yes” and my “No always be No.”  I have always taken my words and commitments seriously. I would move Heaven and Earth to meet a commitment I made. No excuses. My word was my honor.

Sally put the whole personal commitment ideal to the test and taught me a life lesson in the process. I was initially a team of one in her organization. I had to build my team, but initially it was just me on my assignments. She kept giving me tasks, I mean really piling them on me. I was working all kinds of hours to keep up, pulling all-nighters if needed. Still the assignments kept coming. Sally really knew how to pile them on me.

That led to an important conversation in her office one day when I confronted her 1:1.

“Sally, you are killing me. Enough Already! I cannot keep up with all the things you are sending my way. I take my assignments and commitments seriously. I will move Heaven and Earth to meet a commitment I made, but I cannot keep up. I really need you to slow it down or I need help ……. Fast!.”

Silence …... and then a guttural laugh. Her explanation, “I wondered when you were going to come to me looking for help. I was testing you to see exactly how much you were willing to take on before you reached the point where you realized you needed help!”

I breathed slowly and easily. For the first time in my life, I realized I could not do it all by myself. We all kind of know that intellectually but often do not exactly internalize it. We live in denial.

It was a life lesson. One that many of us still need to learn at some point. After that and with a multitude of other bosses and subordinates, there were often conversations about workload, priorities, and re-prioritizing when the load became too much, or situations changed.

Many years later I had to re-learn that lesson differently.

One Saturday morning I was bicycling with friends on a local bike trail around a lake here in Dallas. It was a crowded, coolish Autumn day in DFW. Unfortunately, I was momentarily inattentive for milliseconds on my ride and had an accident. Have you ever wanted to re-live a couple of milliseconds in your life and avoid an event entirely? This was one of those. I broke both bones in both arms simultaneously. The mental image of those four bones snapping in half is a mental image that I will never forget. My friends had to get me off my bike and onto the ground because of complex fractures in both arms. My friends called the EMT’s and a quick trip to the trauma center at a local hospital followed.

I was lucky, I only broke two arms ---- cleanly. I have a cousin who was in a bike accident and ended up as a quadriplegic for the rest of his life.

My accident was life changing though. Before the accident, I was attempting to carry a whole organization (hundreds of people across the US, Philippines, and India) on my shoulders. We engaged in a complex initiative with a variety of potholes and complexity and political issues. It was not going well and I was well on my way to a stroke or heart attack due to the stress.

The accident broke the pattern. I ended up being a blessed man with only two broken arms.

The life lesson was that I learned --- the hard way ---- was how to accept help. It entailed both help for me to take care of myself and help to prepare food for me while I recovered.

The other lesson that became apparent to me was that I had built a crackerjack team. They were highly skilled and competent. They knew I was down for a while and that they needed to step up and do their jobs. Solve their own issues. Meet our commitments ----- not just my commitments. They owned them too. I was not indispensable after all. I had surrounded myself with a crackerjack team.

Funny thing. When I returned, I gave them more autonomy. I was more of a teacher coach rather than the benevolent dictator. They became more “crackerjack” as they took on more responsibilities and autonomous. We communicated better as a side benefit.

Life happens, situations change, interruptions, complications, interdependencies, and a host of other things cause us to sometime have to pause and re-plan. We are not as self-sufficient as we believe we are. It takes the proverbial village around us to provide the support, safety net, listening ear, confidant, and co-burden bearers that we each need to be successful. That is true for us at work and home and in our communities.

Be a good member of your village. You are a beneficiary of your village and need to be a contributor too. None of us lives in a village of one.