There is a great saying somebody once taught me:“Everybody wants to have your job until it’s time to do your job.” And sometimes, I think to myself, I sure would like to give it to them just for a minute.
Being the leader of multiple organizations and a self-described “grower of people,” weeks like this sometimes give me a need to have a drama release-valve that I can pull and let all of the crap I get to put up with go up into smoke.
While I truly enjoy what I get to do and most of the time enjoy the people I do it with, sometimes it can be a daunting task to deal with day-in and day-out. Some of my favorites from this week are:
- Nobody Wants to Work Together – We construct teams at my company who work in tandem on accounts and specific projects. It’s great to have layers and layers of people who can back each other up, catch mistakes and relieve the burden. But every so often (and this week is no exception), the teams start fighting over workload, who entered a project wrong, who took too long to complete a task, even who wore too much cologne to work. The thing I wish they all could understand is without the work – nobody in the organization including myself gets a paycheck. So you might as well do it, do it the best you can and enjoy it.
- I Deserve More Than I Get to Do – I luckily had a great mentor at my first job out of college. David Martin gave me a great start, a great platform to learn from and the ability to create upward mobility for myself. I was hired to be a sales assistant but quickly found a way to help out in so many ways that I was selling myself (which had been my goal). But one day, when they came around and said none of the sales staff helped go pick up the mail from the post office a few miles away and that our day should be Tuesday and John Paul should be chosen to go get the mail, I didn’t say a damn word. I put a smile on my face, got in the company pick-up truck and drove through downtown Birmingham to the post office to get the mail. Or, there’s the time all the woman in the office were going to a wedding shower for one of the owner’s daughters. They were upset because none of the guys wanted to answer the phone. So, I raised my hand, volunteered and happily answered the phones for two hours on a Friday. Sure, the other guys laughed at me, but I didn’t care. I made the owners happy and showed my true willingness to help the company. Today, it sure is different. Everybody around me it seems thinks a little higher of themselves than they actually are (at least on a week like this one), and they expect everything to be done for them instead of going out and having to do it themselves. “I deserve” is a very scary thought to have go into your mind and one that I am lucky very rarely enters mine.
- That’s Not Really My Fault – Sure, the materials you are taking to a meeting halfway across the country are wrong, and even though I put them together for you, let me tell you why it’s not really my fault. I understand that nobody is perfect but when you make a mistake you will always win favor with me or a person like me if you own the mistake instead of making an excuse. People who learn how to own their mistakes can have tremendous careers in an organization like mine.
Sometimes, when traveling hundreds of miles a day at 500 miles per hour, you get tired. You become exhausted. Your mind is trying to still work but it’s impossible to focus. To me, that is my driver. That is what pushes me to continue and try to increase momentum even when you have a decreasing energy level.
It’s times like these where I think of another one of my favorite quotes I learned: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there.”