Replace Insecurity with Curiosity for Healthier & More Productive Collaboration
The day after Thanksgiving a semi-truck rolls in to Austin, Texas with over 500 Christmas items - including about 50 trees ranging in height from 5 to 13 feet.
And I've got a problem.
We need to get all of this greenery organized before our pop-up shop opens in 36 hours and the hired Santa shows up along with families, excited kids, and holiday shoppers.
My girlfriend has a holiday greenery business called Gracious Garlands. Every Christmas season she ships in Frasier fir trees, white pine garlands, boxwood wreaths, Leyland cypress garlands, and magnolia swags straight from the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. It's absolutely magical and I love helping out every year.
For the 2019 season I got promoted to run the whole show in Texas while runs the Nashville operation up in Tennessee. And I still have a problem...
I can't leave these trees laying on their sides - we need to stand them as soon as possible for a few reasons:
So they don't have bedhead from laying on one side
We don't have space in the tent for them to remain on their sides; we have wreaths to sort
Customers need to get a good look at the tree standing up before they're going to make a purchase
We need some sort of a tree corral where we can organize the trees by sizes and stand them all upright. This thing needs to be sturdy - like sturdy enough to bear the weight of 10-12 trees weighing from 50 to 100+ pounds each leaning up against it.
I have a few ideas about how to get this done and am sharing my plan of using plywood and two-by-fours with members of our team. All of the sudden, a young man from the hill country speaks up and changes the course of our Christmas operation forever:
"Yeah, boss, you're not gonna want to do that. Plywood'll cost you too much and be heavy as hell. Give me your credit card and I'll run with a few of these fellas up to the Home Depot for some T-posts and baling wire. We'll get you set up right."
At that moment a ray of sun shines into our tent and we all step back a few feet. Weston spits some of his dip onto the floor and reaches out for my credit card with absolute confidence as Lynyrd Skynyrd somehow plays in the background. All at once he embodies the essence of Santa Clause, Thor, Brad Pitt from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Joseph, the father of Jesus.
I'm a control freak, but thankfully not as stupid as I sometimes seem. I turn over the project to Weston and get on with the rest of the work.
Not four hours later, our trees are upright and secure.
Weston proves to be the MVP over the next 10 days as we spread Christmas cheer to our customers in Austin. He's got the truck, the tools, some handy friends he recruited to join the team, and more importantly, he knows how to fix things and improvise on the fly. He had to make an hour commute from Marble Falls each morning, and we gladly paid his mileage.
Although everything ended up working out just fine thanks to Weston's skillset, what happened under the surface is a different story. When he spoke up and said my plan could be better, my feelings got hurt.
I put a lot of thought into the plywood corrals and didn't take kindly to Weston telling me it wasn't the best idea in front of the rest of the team.
You see, I have this pesky default mindset about being questioned; anytime someone questions a decision I've made or a direction I'm headed I assume they think I'm stupid, misinformed, lacking competence, or they just want to piss me off.
Years of insecurity has programmed a story into my brain that the world is out to get me - so anytime someone asks a question I arm myself for battle. It wasn't until I worked for a manager who was endlessly curious did I realize my insecure mindset might seem permanent to me, but I could swap it out if I wanted. This manager, when questioned, got excited about the possibility of uncovering a better direction or getting the chance to share more about their vision.
What a fantastic swap: Curiosity for Insecurity.
I'm learning to see questions and criticism from others as an indication someone wants to participate in the work, offer a unique gift, and perhaps take ownership of a current challenge.
Sure, sometimes people just want to criticize so they can criticize - and there is a special place in hell for folks like that - but for many, a question or critique is often their attempt to say, "I care about what we're doing. I've got a different perspective to share if you're willing to loosen your grip."
For many of us right now we're probably wishing for the days we could all be under one roof trying to figure out how to do something together in person. Although collaboration looks differently right now, creating teams where it’s safe to offer divergent viewpoints hasn't been cancelled.
As we're attempting to be just as productive in virtual settings, we might benefit from the lessons Weston taught me:
A process can and should (almost) always be improved
Sometimes it's worth trashing your plan publicly to demonstrate trust for your team
Investing your team means letting them own parts of the strategy and take risks
Creating culture where people share feedback freely is more important than your ideas being validated
Always ask: "What do I really want?" - and the answer is rarely to be right
People come alive when you let them tap into their super powers
The last few months I've returned to this simple truth: I love control, but I need community - and I can only choose one. Which will it be? Control or community?
Which gets the job done? Control or community?
Insecurity or curiosity?
Even if you don't like asking for help I hope you, like me, can remember we were created to live and work alongside one another. The thing we're building together really isn't the point - it's the process by which we do the work that really matters.
