incline at the intersection.
The next three seconds were a blur – the SUV’s wheels skidded on the slick roadway, then lifted up as the 3000 lb. vehicle hydroplaned and swerved out of control into the incoming lanes of traffic. I struggled to turn the steering wheel, only to become aware that it and I were no longer controlling the flying vehicle. I realized I was headed straight for a telephone pole that was once to my left but was now in front of me. I didn’t have time to think I was going to die. My life didn’t flash before my eyes – there wasn’t enough time. A half-second before impact, the vehicle made a quarter-circle turn as the passenger side wrapped around the telephone pole.
As the safety glass sprayed around me, the steel frame of the vehicle pushed in and around, and the passenger side safety curtain deployed, I understood three things:
1.There had been no oncoming traffic or I would have slammed my vehicle (at upwards of 90 mph) head-on into another speeding car or truck.
2.Anyone who had been sitting on the passenger side of my vehicle would have died instantly.
3.I was still alive, and unhurt, for a reason.
My vehicle was totaled. I unbuckled myself, brushed some glass pellets from my hair and walked away from the vehicle. A police officer arrived at the scene and said, “You were the driver in that wreck? You’re walking around? I don’t believe it.”
When I went to reclaim my belongings from the wreckage the next day at the junk yard, the woman behind the desk said to me, “You were in that car? And you’re alive?”
I listened and learned that I am a fallible but resilient person and that the Creator isn’t finished with me down here yet.
“I really cannot count all of the times God has saved me from my own idiocy and carelessness. I should not really be alive. To Him, my endless praise and thanks. Literally, I should have been dead or in prison a dozen times and He saved me. I don’t know why, but I am grateful.” Ben Stein, Fleeting Beauty
Amen.
So I’m writing this book to make a difference in your life and share my story with you. Every workday for over thirty years I’ve had the privilege of talking to managers about problems, usually their immediate challenges in the workplace. I’ve done a lot of listening and learning. Often, the only thing another human being wants is for someone to just listen.
One of my friends, Rich has been an in-house recruiter for Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years. He has worked for IBM, Stanley Tools and several other large, successful organizations. For a number of years he was the recruiter on my human resources team in the freight business.
A manager in one of his previous companies told him, “Every time I come into your office and tell you my problems, you always give me the right answer. And I always leave feeling so much better. Thanks.”
These were heartwarming words except Rich reports that he almost never gave the manager an answer. He just listened. No advice. No readymade solutions. He just listened intently and with empathy because this manager was baring his soul about work. Now the manager didn’t work for Rich and Rich didn’t work for the manager. They worked for the same company but not in the same department.
Along On the Journey
This book is my conversation with you along our journey. In this format we can’t be as interactive as in a face-to-face conversation but I’ve anticipated many of your workplace concerns so that we can talk. If you listen intently and with your heart as well as your mind, you can hear me listening to you. I’m not an MBA and this book isn’t my graduate thesis. It’s not filled with case studies or flowcharts. In this book I talk to you about human experience, yours, mine and many others’. It is my belief that you already have the tools to be a more successful manager. I can help you recognize and use them, as I have helped the managers with whom I’ve been privileged to work. Neither you nor I are mistake-proof managers. But we are fellow human beings, eager to do well while doing some good along the way.
What is a Best Practice?
Throughout this book I will be using this term. A best practice is a work method that has been observed and analyzed by professionals, that produces effective and efficient results consistently. In the workplace, everyone from the receptionist to the CEO uses best practices – best practices are the ways we get our work done that time and trial have shown us give the best cost effective results, easily and quickest. Most of the time, we don’t identify these methods as best practices and, significantly, we aren’t sharing them within the organization so that all of our colleagues are using them across the board. Best practices help us put our faith in motion successfully.
Being a successful manager is not unlike being a successful parent. People want to be loved but they also want to be led. Being a good parent means having patience, listening with empathy, being authentic, and helping your children find the right answers – not being paternalistic! No two parents do it the same way but when it works, it’s the best feeling in the world. And you learn something new each day!
We are all alive to make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others, especially those around us, our families, friends, colleagues, and the people we meet. Managers have the responsibility to lead in making a difference. As a manager, you have that purpose and that belonging in your workplace just like a parent has in a home. And that doesn’t mean to look down on the people who report to you – it means honoring your humble sense of your self and your reason for going to work.
This is best said by the poet David Whyte who consults and counsels managers on work as “a pilgrimage of identity,”
“Soul has to do with the way a human being belongs to their world, their work, or their human community. When there is little sense of belonging, there is little sense of soul.”
Jim Dowd, professor of organizational behavior at IMD in Lausanne Switzerland draws on Whyte’s work and reminds us that management is “not all about intellect; it’s not all about mastering data . . . It’s about bringing everything (you) have to work, so (you) can connect with others.”
You’re reading this book; you’ve made a choice to listen, connect and explore your belonging in the work world, how you look at yourself, how you treat others and how you care for your soul. This is a practical step and a leap of faith in your own humanity. You and I choose to be who we are at work. Let’s explore that choice together as we travel our paths.
Lesson:
“He who answers before listening – that is his folly and his shame.” Proverbs 18:13
Chapter Three
You are the Leader
One of my colleagues, a senior manager at a firm where I led human resources, sent the following e-mail:
“My managers and I have learned much from you over the years and our company has become a significantly more professional and effective place of business as a result of your contribution. Last night on the way home I was thinking about some of the many lessons learned from T(ony) S(haw):
1.Walk softly and carry the right-sized stick
2.Listen more, talk less
3.Fairness trumps everything
4.Ethics are not unprofitable
5.Our human resources are all we have to offer at the end of the day
6.You can always grow, and you should always do so
7.Ethical choices are not tough to discern. They are (or should be) very clear.
8.Always lead by example
9.Respect everyone
10.Assume good intent,