Leadership Lessons from the Beach
I sit here writing my email on a beach after just witnessing a father snap on his son.
My family and I are in Lake Tahoe for vacation.
Let me set up the scene.
I am sitting on the 'beach'. This beach is not a sandy beach but rather a pebble beach.
**Side note: white sandy beaches sound great until you are still finding sand in everything weeks after your vacation. So I am now a huge fan of a rock/small smooth pebble beach.
So, I am sitting on the pebble beach reading, when a family comes to set up shop near where I am sitting.
The father and two sons start setting up a canopy-type structure to shield them from the sun.
Upon finishing setting up, they proceeded to sit and relax.
At one point, I noticed one of the boys starting to throw some of the little pebbles into the lake. There are signs everywhere that say "Do not throw rocks."
So I wait and watch in anticipation for the dad to say "Hey bud, let's not throw the rocks." But this edict never comes.
So the young boy (older enough to not get away with throwing rocks) continues to either throw these rocks as far as he can or skip them along the top of the water. The father is just hanging out sitting in his lawn chair enjoying the beautiful weather (and evidently his son's rock throwing).
A couple of minutes later an interesting thing happens. Boy #1, we will call him Tim, gets bored of throwing rocks and instead turns his attention to blowing up their flotation device.
Boy #2 we will call Aiden (cause that is what his father called him) decides that he, like Tim, wants to throw rocks.
Except there is one problem. Aiden throws two rocks and evidently, dad wakes up from his eyes-open-coma and proceeds to snap on Aiden.
Aiden's crime was that he did the exact same thing Tim did, except...well there was no except. He literally did the same thing as his brother.
However, he bore the brunt of his father's newfound hatred of rock-throwing.
This whole scene made me think of several leadership principles.
Standards and Expectations
The first leadership principle is the importance of clearly communicating your expectations and standards. This is vital to the health and culture of your organization.
How do your people know what to do, how to act, and what you expect if you don't clearly tell them?
I am going to assume that the father did not take two minutes before they started to set up to communicate to his boys the expectations and standards for the day at Lake Tahoe.
Again, assuming he didn't do that, once he saw Tim throwing rocks, he could have easily called both of his boys over and clearly and kindly laid out standards and expectations...even if it was after the fact.
Adapt
The second principle... new information (there are pebbles and not sand) requires leaders to adapt.
As things change and new information becomes available, leaders must adapt and tweak how they are doing things and what are the standards.
I would have expected the beach to be a sandy, not pebble, beach. So I totally wouldn't have expected to have to communicate standards and expectations around throwing rocks/pebbles.
But when I see the pebbles and then I see the knee-jerk reaction of not just kids but adults to toss or skip rocks, I hope I would have the awareness to communicate new standards and expectations.
Aiden and Tim's father could have said something like this, "There are people all over the place. From now on let's not throw rocks. Oh, and look, three huge signs say throwing rocks is prohibited."
Accountability
And lastly... inconsistent or lack of accountability kills a leader's influence and destroys trust.
Two kids doing the same exact thing, one 'gets away with it', the other gets raked over the coals.
Whatever your standards and expectations are, hold everyone to these standards.
Some might say "Well, I know of coaches/leaders who had two different standards in their organization...one for the stars and one for everyone else."
Jimmy Johnson talks about that with his Cowboys teams. Personally, I think Jimmy Johnson is the outlier.
Using the logic of "Well, Jimmy did it and he won two Super Bowls and a National Championship in college...so I think I'll do it" is called survivorship bias.
This is when you pick out the one or two coaches/leaders who did accountability this way...then forgetting or not being aware of how many other hundreds or thousands of coaches who were inconsistent with accountability and got fired because they lost all influence and respect in their organization.
As a leader, create elite levels of clarity of your standards and expectations, adapt when necessary, and be consistent in your accountability.
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One of my weekly disciplines is scouring the internet for articles/tweets I can learn from and/or use with those I work with. Below are two that I hope help encourage and equip you.
Article 1- How to improve
Article 2- Lucky vs Repeatable
Podcast: Jenny Rearick- Public speaking and presentation coach. Really insightful tips.
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