Leadership

One of my teachers in college had a knack for trying to give us "life experience" in the classroom.  He was one of those "different" teachers who was "different" in a really good way.

Well, one day he had the class separate in half.  He sent my half to another room to tell us a story about two businessmen.  Our group was one businessman, and the other group was the other.  I don't remember the details but he basically created a conflict between our two groups.  Our group, he told us, was the innocent one.  We were very successful, had tons of clients, had worked very hard to get where we were, and the other group, the bad guys, we trying to rain on our parade.  The other "guy" just barely started with the company, but, due to his superior interpersonal skills, and what we perceived to be unfair arrangements, had made it just past our level.  Now this "new" guy was trying to take away our clients and give them to other people which was completely unfair.

Well, I don't remember the details well and it's not important.  The important thing is that the teacher went from room to room, allowing us to pass messages to one another for communication, but we had to trust the teacher to deliver our messages, exactly as we put them.  Finally, after this went on for a few days of class, we were able to convince the teacher that we wanted to meet in person and figure this whole thing out.  I still remember as my group walked back into our classroom, my friends who were in the other group were acting all mad at me.  They told me, "Wow.  Sorry your group had to be the bad guy in this case."  I thought, "What?  You guys are in the wrong!  Not our group!  What the heck?"

As our groups talked to each other, we figured out where the other was coming from.  We found out that the man who we thought was the bad guy was simply trying to get his clients back because we had, without realizing it, stolen them years before from a third party (complicated situation, hard to sum up, but you get the point).  In the end, both sides were just doing what they thought was right, and both thought they were the ones being treated badly.

Situations like this come up in life all the time.  One of the most difficult things for me to do is to continue to be nice to someone who I think is being an ungrateful jerk person.  There's a certain person who has basically made a name for himself by yelling at the people in my office and just being rude.  It's hard for me to change my thinking from wanting to punch this guy in the face, to wanting to understand why he hates us so much and feels the need to yell at us.  Maybe he just doesn't understand.  Maybe we just need to take him down to our office and show him how our system works so he realizes how unrealistic he's being sometimes. He just doesn't know.  Maybe we should just be patient and explain it to him.

Anyway, I'm highly impressed with management at Disney World.  They are some of the greatest leaders I've seen.  One called me the other day concerned about someone in our Department who he felt wasn't doing a very good job.  Instead of getting upset and giving them bad feedback right away, he contacted me and asked (making sure I could keep the conversation secret) if this CM had a reason for doing a not-so-adequate job.  And actually, he was right.  This CM was doing the best they could, but due to reasons beyond their control they just weren't able to do a tip top job that night.  I explained the situation, and the Manager gave appropriate feedback.  Instead of saying "This person was a terrible DA and we ran into all sorts of problems and they didn't get fixed in a timely manner" he was able to give much more constructive feedback understanding where the CM was coming from.

I only hope that I can be that sort of leader someday.  If and when I ever get to lead an operation.  And I'm certainly grateful that I get to have so many great leaders in my life to learn from.  Seriously, most Disney leaders I've met really have it right.