Vol 5: Leading by living
Have you ever heard of Fat Bear Week? It’s an incredible, March Madness-style tournament designed to find the fattest brown bear in Katmai National Park, Alaska. It’s a showndown between once-scrawny bears who have been hard at work eating enough to sustain them through winter hibernation, and the public votes to decide the champion.
I found out about Fat Bear Week from a former co-worker, Haley. She was part of a team I managed, and she got us all hyped up to participate and vote. We had Slack threads filled with bear banter and incredibly polite trash talk. Each day she’d give us an update, and her excitement was contagious.
Fat Bear Week was just one of the many things Haley brought to the team. Sure, she was incredible at her craft and a sought-after team member, but she was also someone people wanted to be around. It wasn’t uncommon for Haley to start a meeting with a conversation about baked goods or movies. She created intentional space for people to think about their whole lives outside of their jobs. She was always up for talking about whatever was happening in your life and really cared about each person she worked with. Haley reminded all of us that we were real people with real lives outside of the technical, task-driven environment we worked in each day.
Now, some of you may hear this story and think that this is just how some people are. While that’s true, I also think Haley used this strength of her personality as a valuable skill that created dependable allies, broke through stressful tension, and made her teams more productive.
People who aren’t very fun may argue that this behavior has nothing to do with productivity, but the science would disagree with them. The book ‘Laziness Does Not Exist’ by Dr. Devon Price talks about this a bit in the context of cyberloafing. This is when people take a break from their work to poke around social media or do some online shopping. They cite several studies showing that this kind of behavior increases productivity, rather than harming it. These breaks are what our brains actually need, to be able to deal with the difficult, complex things we have to do.
No matter what kind of work you're involved in, the people you interact with each day have a lot on their minds. They are doing their best in difficult situations. When you find ways to celebrate who they are and focus on their whole lives in an environment of safety, that's an incredibly powerful leadership skill.
Real leaders: Emma Terrazas
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Each month, I ask a leader in my own life to share who they are and what leadership means to them.
Emma describes herself as a multi-passionate health coach, actor, adventure seeker and nature lover out to experience everything this human life has to offer.
Here's how Emma thinks about leadership, in her own words:
Leadership is empowering others to have the confidence to lead and trust themselves through owning and expressing your own confidence, vulnerability and truth. Creating space for people to explore their ideas and execute them and doing so with their specific gifts, starts with you showing up fully as you, and embracing everything you are. Energy is contagious... Leadership is energy.
Thanks, Emma.