top of page
Search

It was “Bring your dad to school day”, and my kid told his teacher that his dad was in Prison

Updated: Nov 27, 2023



I’ve spent more time in jails and prisons than most. Fortunately, I was never a resident there, yet I always did find a bit of humor in my kids telling people that their dad was in prison. It was certainly a good conversation starter, or a conversation stopper in some cases.


An Unexpected Career Pivot


At one point in my career, I led the largest division of a multi-billion company that provided healthcare to inmates in jails and prisons. At the time, it was a career move that as a 15-year Certified Public Accountant put me deep in the throes of Operations and (sometimes) the crosshairs of media scrutiny. Talk about stepping outside of my comfort zone. I was expecting a Shawshank Redemption-like experience with Morgan Freeman narrating my story, but it was something vastly different and not near as entertaining.


As an executive, I often say the role taught me how to balance the dynamics between economics and patient care by ensuring the absolute highest quality of care for the lowest possible cost. But the reality is it taught me much more about leadership.


I was out of my element. I knew very little about Operations. I had 4,000 healthcare professionals in my Division that covered domestic and international locations, a CEO and a Board of Directors to report to, and my people were looking to me for answers and decisions. And frankly, most of them knew more about Operations than I did.


I was also highly sensitive to the Peter principle: the concept that people in a corporate hierarchy tend to rise to a level of respective incompetence. In other words, you continually get promoted for good performance until you rise to a level where you can’t perform anymore because your skill set no longer translates. It’s a real thing, and I had seen it much more frequently over the years as my career advanced. I had been promoted progressively throughout my career, but this was a whole new dimension.


The Lesson


In full transparency, I was on a high after this promotion. I’m human, so subconsciously I felt like I had in some way finally “made it.” A huge salary bump. Company stock. A big title. A jubilant announcement across the company. An influx of emails and calls saying “congratulations” and “well deserved.” Pats on the back while walking the halls of the office. It was enough to distract me from reality for at least a week, maybe two. But that unsettling feeling didn’t go away. And once normalcy started to settle in and the celebrations subsided, I actually had to perform in the role, and successfully I might add.


My first client meeting was horrible. I had over prepared out of an abundance of caution. I studied and memorized all of the historical data and metrics. I knew the details of our plan for execution and change management. I would personally take ownership of ongoing communication with the client to keep them abreast of status. I felt like it was seamless and I was ready for anything they could possibly throw at me. And logically speaking, they were already a client and I sure as hell wasn’t trying to sell them anything new. I was ready to hit my first home run, or at least a damn single to get on base.


So where did it go wrong? I had studied all of the data, the 250+ page contract, our detailed plan, and the current state of services being delivered. But, I hadn’t studied the people on our side, or on theirs. One of our former employees was a relative of my client, and had filed a rather large employment lawsuit against my company. My client had a military and law enforcement background, which for one particular individual and for reasons unbeknownst to me translated into a strong disdain for privately held companies. And finally, another individual didn’t like people with an accounting or finance background. We were referred to as the “money people.”


Within five minutes of the start of our meeting, my client explicitly said that I was not liked or respected in this leadership role overseeing their contract, and went even further to say that my predecessor was more fit for the role and was the type of person they desired to oversee their contract. Wow. My ego hit a pothole the size of the Grand Canyon and totally deflated. You could hear the air seeping out. It was a total shit show. And it was not the last meeting that went sideways on me.


Clearly I had a lot of learning to do. My obvious error leading up to that fateful meeting was doing hours of homework on this client alone and in a silo. My team had most of the answers that I needed, but I had failed to ask them. Why? My ego had gotten in the way. I was put in this role to do a job, and my illogical thought process was more focused on people’s perception of me. Subconsciously I didn’t want them to think that I didn’t have the answers, because in my piddly little mind they would then question why I was put in the role to begin with. Absolutely stupid. But lesson learned.


Course Correction


So what was my response to this debacle and to this particular leadership role? Humility. Demonstrating humility empowers your people. It builds teams. It builds leaders. It builds trust and loyalty. And it increases managerial effectiveness. This is universally applicable, and remains true in just about any work setting. A recent study by Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business published in the journal Personnel Psychology reaffirmed this notion.


When is the last time you showed humility at work that led to positive results? I’ll tell you what I did in my particular situation.


I changed the way I spoke to people. I put them in the driver’s seat of significant conversations with clients. When I would visit my teams at facilities and walk through our operations, I would start conversations with things like “…Educate me on…” or “Teach me what you’re looking for when…” It was an indirect way of telling them they knew more than me, but that I wanted to learn from them. This was empowering to them and formed leaders.


I would specifically ask what I could do to help them in their quest for operational excellence. And in some cases, when their request was reasonable, I would pick up the phone right then and make it happen. I demonstrated that I was loyal to them by taking action, and that I relied on them to do the same. We were a team, cohesiveness was an absolute must and a level of humility was at its foundation. This built trust and loyalty.


Flip the Script and Leave Your Legacy


No one has all the answers. The “fake it ’til you make it” mantra is a thing of the past. My teams were accustomed to the big exec coming in with all their stature, barking out orders, and treating them as employee number 462. I flipped that model upside down, and it motivated them. That was clearly palpable and I could see it.


So before stepping into a room to pound your chest because you have a new title, know that your title doesn’t mean shit to that employee who’s working a second job to make ends meet and put food on the table for his/her kids. Or the one who’s going through a divorce. Or the one who has an abusive husband. Or the one who is going to school at night to climb the corporate ladder.


Treat your people with kindness and show some humility. Impacting people’s lives for the better will leave a legacy long after someone replaces you in that role. Titles are temporary and will soon be forgotten, but how you treat people will be remembered forever.

8 views0 comments

Comentários


bottom of page