Lindy Tentinger is the President of VGM Forbin, a digital marketing and technology company.
As a leader, it is probably not often, if ever, that you have someone tell you to “go find some darkness.” Darkness, however, is exactly what I want to find as a leader, mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend. Darkness is where we get to the core and to the truth. There is feedback in the truth. There is opportunity in the truth. There is relationship building in the truth. There is help in the truth.
We spend a lot of our time as leaders with people—team members, coworkers, customers, vendor partners. I always tell my leadership team that they can never go wrong spending time with their people or our customers because today, more than ever, our people need us.
People are messy. Your customers’ lives are messy. We are messy. There is not enough time in the day to handle all the “messy” across the board in both our professional and personal lives. Messy, though, is where the magic happens. Finding the darkness and listening to someone has a lasting impact not only on their work but on the many other roles they play in life.
According to Gallup, stress in the workplace is increasing globally, which can contribute to physical and mental health problems, as well as lower productivity. Gallup also found that stress is higher amongst younger individuals (our future leaders) and those who work in a remote-exclusive or some sort of hybrid work environment. Stress isn’t just a result of working too much or having too much on one’s plate. Stress can also stem from feelings of isolation, fears of the unknown in the world, a lack of clarity or financial pressure, to name a few.
If our team members are more stressed, our customers are likely also more stressed. Imagine the impact you could have in a customer’s life by approaching the relationship with empathy and compassion and meeting them where they are, not where you are. Will you find some darkness there? Most definitely. No matter what business we are in, people are people and have the same intrinsic needs. We don’t want to be judged, mistreated, hated or betrayed. We want to be seen, heard, accepted and valued.
David Noble and Carol Kauffman, long-time executive consultants, published a book this year, Real-Time Leadership. In their book, there is one question you can ask yourself as a leader when deciding how to show up for people and how to approach a decision in real time: Who do I want to be right now? What I love about this question is the last part. It is not who I want to be in general, or next year or in my career, but right now.
Darkness isn’t something we like to talk about. It is usually something we’d all rather avoid. We see it every day on social media. The highlight reels are certainly better than the messy stuff. Finding darkness does not mean you must immediately get another degree in psychology and it isn’t about being someone’s therapist. It is about showing up. Asking questions. And sometimes doing nothing more than listening. You never know what lasting impact your presence might have.
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