Someone that works people excessively hard, makes them show up 30 minutes early to be able to start work on time, calls them out for how much time they spend in the bathroom, reduces the size of toilet paper into 1/2 of what it was would be likely view as a tyrant or a nazi. On the other hand a boss that lets people show up to work whenever they want, drink alcohol in the office, doesn’t go over safety instructions could sink a company because of people getting hurt or not being able to compete with the competition in the marketplace.
So if the easy going bosses go too easy on people the nazi bosses could win out. People need personal time and a work life balance. Either extreme likely burns people out and might make it harder to find good employees and people to work with. Would it be better to arrive 5 minutes late for work than end up in an accident? Yes. If someone shows up late for work everyday is it a bad example? Yes. Should a man or woman be able to go home and live their life without interruption when they are off the clock, ideally yes. There are emergencies and those should be the exception and not the rule. Prolonged periods of exceptions can burn people out. Losing star players because they are burned out is costly. A lot of training goes into building an employee and people make connections with them. Continuous turn over is bad for morale.
If a couple people spend too much time at work, others might feel like they have to as well. Now the competition has to do the same just to compete. An entire industry burns out because we can’t all find a work life balance. The USA is competitive, the world is competitive, and everyone is trying to get their piece of the pie. People with families have less time to spend after hours working hard. Single people with nothing else going on in their life sometimes throw their life completely into their work. If you didn’t have anyone to talk to might as well make a little money with free time. This further isolates an already isolated person. It alienates those from people with families or active social lives outside of work. People with families might see that the single person is taking food off of their plate and cutting in line.
This is tough. If the people with families talked to the guy they could probably see what is missing from their life. Some people might not think they are missing anything and might want to be sharks, because they don’t truly understand the end game in that. I wanted relationships and friends. I got jaded earlier in life, and compounding problems reinforced negative stereotypes that people weren’t really my friends. Individual people fail each other in different ways. Some we see and some we don’t. People can harbor resentment for years and if we miss the signs we can lose a chance at reconciliation and a better life for us all. I was a harder worker before I had health problems. We don’t always understand until it has happened to us.
Being jaded I alternated by trying to go to bars to maximize my probabilities of meeting new friends and women and throwing myself into my work to excel and achieve more so that women might find me a more attractive mate. I seemed to hit brick walls on both sides of this equation. I tried dating sites and even Church and it seemed as though some unknown force was always stopping me.
This pushed me towards work and I started looking to get into leadership roles. When I was working for a restaurant chain I was the IT guy at the top, and didn’t have a lot of leadership in my field. I had great people to work with and learned a lot from them yet having no leadership in my field made me improvise. I worked hard but there are some problems in business that aren’t easy to understand earlier on in life. I tended to think that everyone had my best interest at heart and my way was the better way. We don’t easily understand the issues with company mergers and down turns in the economy and how tough it can get when everyone is competing to get ahead or put food on their families table. Some people’s wives will leave them when the going gets tough, who wants that to happen and at the same time who doesn’t want to stay off the streets.
I would say leadership early in life is difficult because many times wisdom comes with age and experience. To compound it other’s might feel cheated furthering the divide. When someone half your age is in charge it might seem like your life experiences didn’t matter. Finding the middle ground in all this is difficult. Stagnate at the bottom or fight to get to the top. Both have real and significant impacts on my life and the lives of others. Some seen and some unseen. Individual actions and collective actions can determine history. The individual might think it is just one job they will find another. The collective might leave them out in the cold for numerous reasons. They annoyed me, they acted in a way I didn’t like, they just weren’t popular.
Even knowing these things there is a ton of unknown variables in how things play out which doesn’t make decisions particularly easier. If you have to eliminate a project or part of a company to help the overall company succeed, is it better to know the chain reaction that will occur in everyone’s lives as a result? Sometimes the big injustices can be highlighted and the squeakiest wheel gets the grease. As time progresses those that stayed silent let the injustice fester inside. As time progresses people that might be in a better position to help don’t always know someone is still in pain or hurting. If I only knew, we had this great new project and you would have been a good fit. Two people working with the hands they were dealt, a bit oblivious to the other’s needs because they went silent or harbored resentment. Or possibly because the rest of us just were to lazy or stubborn to help them make a connection.
Pride, silence, and unforgiveness leads to a lot of problems for us all. So we owe it to each other to try and make it right for those around us. Sometimes the right words from the right person can make all the difference in the world. Sometimes it takes resources and new opportunities, distance, or different perspectives. So that person in the office that you might not think picks up on everything might be your saving grace. A lot of times it takes meeting people where they are in life, and as all of our life stories are different this could require the right words from the right person.
Some people think they know or understand and don’t, some mean well but say things in the wrong way or at the wrong time, some will stop from trying because of this kind of stuff. Some just don’t have your best interest at heart, and that reality can prevent the person from hearing the voice of reason in the room. Given all that it might be easy to give up on someone. The lost. A few out there by hell or high water refuse that notion, that’s the team I want to be on.
I realize I am not a CEO. Searching for leadership on being a leader has found me silence. One could argue it is a valuable teaching tool. I would have rather been told hey you should read this. Maybe I missed that one, never been the best reader so people like me you might have to bug more than once. With some women in life I have tried different ways in talking to them and continuously failed. Maybe there are thousands of ways and I only knew the few, maybe there were things outside of my control going on in their lives or mine.
Trying too hard makes you look like a stalker or crowding a person. Nobody likes not feeling free to make their own decisions in life. If your keep a flower in doors it can’t easily grow. Having the result of the actions I tried cause so many problems made me want to give up, and balance more to the lighter touch side. I might have over compensated and lead people to feel abandoned. So if I am trying too hard or too little I am sorry, trying to find the right balance has been difficult because I seem to constantly be in the middle of a storm.
Even if my ideals are solid, in practice and reality everything doesn’t always work out as planned. So if we don’t leave room for forgiveness and reconciliation we will lose time and problems can fester. The injustices snowball until they are problem for us all. Why we should all work together to fight a world that won’t reconcile with each other. So hopefully my position is clear my door is open for reconciliation and time is short. If I am not around to reconcile with, don’t beat yourself up over it, just please reconcile with those you can “because life’s too short to spend thinking what I could have, should have did” – Lyrics Born
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