A short first-person leadership reflection in which the speaker recounts advice from someone named Jehansib: instead of judging team members only by output, managers should recognize the input—effort and hard work—of underperforming people and show genuine care. The insight changed the speaker’s management approach toward more people-first leadership.
Chapters
The first time I was leading people, it was really, really hard. I had a high standard, and given that amount of pressure, I was always extra nice to people who were high performing. And I was quite brutal in those early days for people who were not performing. And I remember you had come up to me and you asked me something because you knew how much I cared about people, and yet I was showing up in a way which was not really authentic and not really in service. And Jehansib, you said that to me, and it stayed with me my whole life. And you said, hey, if you have somebody on your team that is not performing well versus somebody who's performing really well, who do you think is working harder? Do you work hard when you're not doing well or when it's easy for you? It completely changed my perspective, because here I was judging the output, but I was not judging and not taking account the input. And these people were, like, killing themselves day in, day out, trying to rise to the challenge. And here I was not necessarily showing them that I deeply cared. I appreciated the inputs. I was just upset about the output not being there. And it changed the way I manage people. And it's been the biggest gift you've given me.
