Make Work Light
Several weeks ago on the podcast, we discussed the impact player and how to identify these leaders in your organization so you can effectively care for them.
Today, I am sharing with you an excellent example of how a person can make a big difference with one tiny decision for their team. It is actually about my husband, Chadwick, who demonstrated leadership by taking on a task usually assigned to a production assistant.
It is all about the significance of small acts of service, paying attention to your team’s needs, and finding ways to lighten the load. I hope this story will challenge you to be an impact player who steps in and sees an opportunity to make things light within your own organization.
On this episode you’ll hear…
A real-life example of leadership showing up with the impact
The importance of making work light for people around you
The significance of surrounding yourself with impact players, becoming one and acknowledging and replicating moments of making work lighter for continued success
Resources
Ready for more?
Listen in:
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** This is a raw, unedited transcript
Chaili Trentham 00:00
All right, I have an example of a way that a leader showed up with impact this week. And when I saw it, it was a moment of. That's a great example of how a person can make a big difference with one tiny decision for their team. And it's a shout out to my husband actually, Chadwick and I want to give this example to give you an idea of what it looks like to move into that impact player space. We've talked about impact players, the book written by Liz Wiseman, and the reason why we want to shift our teams into becoming impact players. And the reason why we want to be leaders who make impact is because working with them is great. And that's one of the components of impact players is that they make work light is what Liz Wiseman says, and it's not making work light, and that they take a bunch off your plate, right? It's not them coming in and scooping up your work and saving the day. It's that when you are working with these people who make a difference for the team, they just make work easier by being that and by coming alongside and collaborating really well by always having on a hat of innovative and creative thinking. And so they reinforce that culture of collaboration and inclusion. And they're high performing, but also low maintenance. And that's why they're really fun to be around and why they tend to be the people that we want to pick in a game of dodgeball, right with think about office dynamics, and office culture and group projects. Even we know who those people are that we want alongside us that we want to pick, it's because they make work like they're a joy to be around. And, and we all benefit, and do our best when we're working with these people. So think about those people that when you pick them for your team or you are collaborating with them on a project, you will also tend to do your best because when the person sitting across the table from you is choosing to give their best. And they're showing up in a way where you feel that there's equal participation and investment and aligned values. It gives you the space and opportunity to be your best in that moment, too. So these are impact players who make work right. Now my example of Chadwick quick backstory that some of you may not know about us is that we co own a production company. And when I left higher education, I was able to come alongside the production company and work a little bit more on the everyday side of the business and with the team. And then there's also seasons where I step back a little bit more. But Chad is a wonderful leader, and runs this incredible production company that tells beautiful stories for our clients. And this week, there were a couple overlapping productions. And so there was multiple teams out on different sites and are one of our key players, one of our impact players in the company, went ahead and got married and is on his honeymoon. And so Chad had to step into a role that he wouldn't normally be in on set. But because of that, he also got some really great perspective on which members of the crew were kind of doing what because he was working a little bit closer alongside some of the crew members. And so we were FaceTiming him tonight. So he's been out of town for a bit and FaceTiming after the kids have gone down and I he's like working in his hotel room doing something and holds up like a handful of walkie talkies. While we're FaceTiming. I'm like, Why do you have the walkie talkies, which use walkie talkies on set? Everyone has one. And so then he flips the camera around and shows me the lineup of all the charging stations of all the walkie talkies from the entire crew. And I'm like, what, how did you end up at that job because that's normally something that like a production assistant would do. And he said, I realized that our production assistant had an extra little thing at the end of each night after they had worked these long shoot days they were 10 or 12 hour shifts, that he had the longest drive home. And so by the time he was getting home and getting the walkie talkies on the charging docks, it was already late and then he had to do the swap out because there's not enough Doc's per walkie talkie. And he's like, and the guy needs sleep, because then he has to turn around and he has a longer drive than anyone to get to set. And he's like, and it's easy in my hotel rooms, like right nearby and so I'll take the walkie talkies, and I'll do it because I'm still in bed probably before him based on his commute. And I know that that's nothing huge. Like it's such a small act of service in the grand scheme of things, but it's an example of a lot of people. In a similar scenario, it doesn't have to be charging the walkie talkies. It can be emptying the paper shredder in the office it can be being the one who even when you have a full and high A day shows up to the meeting and asks how people are doing those examples of making work light for people around you. It's about how you're making people feel right. And in that moment of charging them walkie talkies, Chad made a production assistants day, probably because he gets a little bit extra sleep, and doesn't have to worry about rushing home to get the walkie talkies on the dock. But it also shows that Chad wasn't willing to look the other way just because it's not his job, right? Often we can have challenges in our work in in spaces across different areas of our life, both both personally and professionally. Where it's really easy to say like, that's not my problem, right? That's, that's got to be somebody else's problem. And so I'm not even going to look at it or address it. And yet, how can we be just humans? Who are paying attention to the little details of the teams around us or of the people around us? So Chad got it right with the walkie talkies. But how are you going to look at the environment that you're in as a leader and identify the places where there's a little bit extra demand or increased pressure that you can lighten that? How can you provide a little bit of lift in that scenario, because it makes it more positive, more productive. And like I said before, when you're sitting across the table from somebody who's high performing and somebody who is giving their best and create an opportunity for others to be their best they want to give to on the flip side, overtaxed teams, teams who are tired teams who are in uncertainty or in really complex situations, and they're feeling burnt out and exhausted, they tend to become even more of a burden to each other and to their leaders. And it creates this vicious cycle of kind of dragging everyone down. And so if you're on a team where that's feeling like that's the case, I still want to challenge you to be an impact player who steps in and sees opportunity to make things light. And that can be a harder situation to be in, right. But it's a culture shift. And it's a shift that once we all begin doing it and creating teams of people who are looking for opportunities to make things lighter and make things better and support one another and collaborate differently. We have opportunities to make greater impact as a team. So surround yourself with those impact players. Be one yourself and begin to call out those moments in those times when it's happening. So that you can figure out how to rinse and repeat and keep going and creating more of that for the future.