Leadership Lesson 3: Lazy? Think Again.
I inherited a three-person team when I joined a new organization—we’ll call them Harry, Ron, and Hermoine (HRH). Each individual was responsible for supporting four to six locations. At the time, we didn’t have a framework for what “support” meant—there were no clear expectations on either side governing:
What HRH’s responsibilities were,
How often HRH would be on site,
What (if any) projects or tasks could be delegated to HRH, or
What metrics HRH were trying to drive.
I asked each individual to list the tasks, projects, and areas of responsibility they were undertaking for each of their locations; unsurprisingly, their lists were wildly different.
At the same time, I noticed that Ron seemed to be doing substantially less work than Harry and Hermoine—Ron would arrive to the office later and leave earlier than HH, his list of tasks was substantially shorter, and he seemed to redistribute work rather than jump in and help our team complete projects or solve problems.
With my incredible powers of observation and analysis, I concluded that the problem was that Ron was lazy.
I spoke with my executive coach, and relayed my assessment that Ron was lazy. She asked me a few questions:
What makes you think Ron is lazy? (I relayed my cold, hard facts)
How do the people at his locations and HH feel about him? (They like him)
What do you know about Ron? (Very little, actually)
What does Ron enjoy doing? (I don’t know… is that important?)
It looks like Ron has been at the org for almost 10 years—what keeps him there? (I have no idea…)
You get the picture.
My coach asked me to get to know Ron better as a human—find out what he is passionate about, what keeps him at his job year after year, what he enjoys doing, what he’s good at, and what motivates him.
As it turns out, Ron was not lazy. In fact, he was spending a lot of time doing random projects for his schools when he wasn’t in the office. When I actually started getting to know Ron as a person, he shared more about his life, interests, and strengths rather than just robotically responding to tasks. Ron had a passion for facilities management, and also had a great network he had built up over the years that helped us make repairs and improvements faster at all of our locations.
Think about something you’re passionate about—something that puts you into your flow state. For me, that can be rock climbing, solving problems, or cooking. How often would someone accuse you of being lazy when you are in your flow state?
As leaders, our responsibility is to match people’s skills, talents, and interests with their roles in ways that best serve the organization. Since learning this lesson with Ron, I believe that all humans want to succeed and do good work—there might be some extenuating circumstances, but we aren’t lazy.
