I haven’t worked for many companies. That’s not true. I’ve worked for a lot of companies. I just haven’t worked for very many bosses, because I usually was the one founding the company. After all, I always have some crazy harebrained scheme, some idea for a business. It’s not difficult to persuade people close to me to join in because I am good at sharing my vision with others. (Some call this a “reality distortion field”. I call it “effective communication of the vision in my head”.)
When I hire employees, I like to imagine that I spend more of my time listening to them instead of talking. Listening as much as possible, because I hired them to be smarter than me in their respective areas of expertise. In fact, I try to hire “t-shaped” people – people with tremendous depth of knowledge in one thing but the ability to function across a wide range of domains. Listening to them is a way of respecting their abilities.
After all, I didn’t hire them because I need an audience.
Not ever leader is like that, however. I’ve learned over the past few years that working for others can be a challenging task. Not every company listens. Not every leader has the confidence in others to set the whip down. (Or, heaven forbid, not to pick up the whip in the first place.)
I had a very bad experience working for one particular company. They were famous for their “stay in your lane” mentality. They didn’t appreciate employees having thoughts outside of their own job description. Needless to say, it wasn’t an excellent work environment.
I was pigeonholed, and the whole process was a big, long slog. I left before vesting! (It was that bad.) It just wasn’t working for me, and I didn’t have the ability to inspire others around me.
I found another role, and something miraculous happened the day I committed to something new.
For a period of nine months I was with the previous company, I had allowed myself only to look down during my daily commute, which was 23 minutes. I think my face was buried in my phone or something. But, living in Seoul, one of the most beautiful things is that you can look up and see buildings.
And when you look up high enough, you can see the sky.
When I quit, for the first time in a long time, I stared up at the sky. I saw the blue sky (yeah, plenty of gray clouds and particulate matter, to be sure) but the very act of looking up filled me with energy and joy.
Our minds and bodies are connected. I didn’t look up because I felt my spirit was being crushed. (I’m also not a smoker, so I didn’t go up for my sixteen daily trips to the roof to stare at the sky, unlike the other folks on my team.) The moment my spirit was no longer being crushed, I naturally looked up.
I didn’t even realize I’d been looking down.
I recently had a co-‘irker switch teams. He’d been particularly grouchy. When he switched teams he messaged me to say something absolutely fascinating. “The people on this team laugh. They like their jobs."
We don’t notice we’ve been looking down until we start looking up.
We don’t notice the absence of laughter until we start to laugh.
We must first realize what we are missing before we realize that we must move on.