At the beginning of the month I ran a day session for a finance leadership team who wanted to address their personal impact, in preparation to decide the kind of impact they wanted to have as a team. Most of those at the session were responsible for other people, but there were a few new people to the team who did not hold a management position. At the end of the session, I was heartened to hear the team leader remind everyone that just because they didn’t hold a position of leadership in the team, whenever they were working alongside another department or doing business with an outside party , they were the representatives of the team.
This got me thinking that sometimes, we might do well to stir away from the word “leadership”, which can be seen to dump the responsibility for the success of a team or organisation onto the shoulders of one or more individuals, leaving the rest with one responsibility: to follow.
Last week, with my professional voice-over hat on, I went to a small production company to record a narration. The client is quite far from me geographically (voice-over sessions tend to last one hour, so to travel far can be uneconomical), but I continue working there as they are one of my oldest clients. Recently they changed the set-up of the ground floor and now, instead of having a reception and receptionist, two project managers sit in the reception area working. I buzzed and the door opened. I signed in. I sat on the sofa. Not a word: not a “hello, your engineer will be with you shortly”, no “would you like a cup of tea”?… not a word.
I sat there for ten minutes thinking of whether this should be the last time I came to work for this client and thinking what could be the reasons for this kind of behaviour. A complete lack of awareness that your contractors are also your (internal) customers? Or was it due to a complete disengagment from the company, feeling no responsibility to be its embassador all the time? Or maybe it’s not stated as part of their job description and therefore not worth carrying out?
The most surprising part, happenned when I left. As I came back onto the ground floor to sign out, I was greeted with a big smile: “How did it go? Thanks very much for coming all this way.”
Maybe they heard me sharing my puzzlement with the engineer or maybe they had taken a break from their work. Human nature. Fascinating.
