Park Perspective: Leadership and the audience
“Take me to your leader,” demand the Martians as they descend from their spacecraft onto your small suburban lawn. Armed with only a golf club and sun visor (you were just in the middle of perfecting your putt), you’re defenseless against their intergalactic weapons, so you agree to cooperate, but whom will you take them to? Is your leader the president? The mayor? Your pastor/imam/rabbi? Your mother?
The question can be answered in so many different ways, but what unites these leaders? Subjectivity abounds in any conversation about leadership. Here, I hope to share my train of thought on the subject.
Take me to your… audience?
Perhaps one thing needed to become a leader is to be in tune with the milieu of those one wishes to lead that one’s message resonates with the right people at the right time. “But who are the right people?” you may wonder, “and what’s the right time?” These things are clear in retrospect, but how do we take advantage in real time? Consider the discontented optimist as an ideal candidate. This individual is unhappy with some aspect of their life — perhaps their job, perhaps their government — and believes that something can be done about it. All a leader must do then is win the trust of others in providing the solution. But how does one properly build trust? This is surely dependent on the audience. Some groups may trust a leader who is self-assured, fast-acting, bold, and single-minded. Others would find the same leader overly brash and would be more likely to trust a leader who prioritized strategy and forethought over action.
My first formal experience with leadership came in my first professional job as a manager at a logistics company, Naniq. I had applied for a sourcing job at one of Naniq’s client companies, and through a twist of fate, a C-suite executive who had seen my interview selected me to fix their crumbling relationship with Naniq. Selected by the client and forced onto Naniq by threat of loss of contract, I came stumbling into my first day at the Naniq office, wholly unequipped to lead change and ignorant of anything to do with logistics. The team I was set to manage wasn’t thrilled. I sat with them that fateful first day, opened my eyes and ears, and hoped to ascertain just what exactly I was supposed to do. A few hours into the morning, one of the operators — whom I had been querying about her process as I watched her work — abruptly turned to the team manager and asked, “Is she going to sit here all day?” The manager looked me up and down, shrugged, and went back to her tasks while I scooted away to console myself at the coffee maker.
I knew my approach had to change — I hadn’t even won trust enough to be graced with the usual politeness I expected of the workplace. I made it my mission to get on the inside of this small group of specialists, and since I couldn’t do that through shared expertise, and because a strong hand was likely to force my team to recoil further, I made myself available to serve. I brought them coffee, chatted casually with them when they seemed open to it, and asked how I could help with anything they needed. After a few days, I overheard the team complaining about the dividers between their cubicles. They said they were too tall to allow collaborative conversation throughout the workday, and I finally knew how to be useful. I cajoled the facilities department into changing out their cubicles that night, and in the morning, they were welcomed with new, glass, low-walled cubes. Finally, I received my first pleasantries — even a smile or two. From that point forward, I continued to be of service, and they began to allow me into their workflow.
One day I learned about their booking system; the next I heard about problems with the client; and so it went on. By the end of my first month, I had ascertained the causes of the significant issues their client had chosen me to fix. Working tirelessly for months with a now pliable team, we won back the satisfaction of the client and renewed the once ill-fated contract for five years. Though I felt that the contract renewal was a success, I felt victorious when I went on to overhaul another Naniq contract and was again placed with the team member who had lamented my presence on my first day. As we got to work on the new account, she told the unfamiliar staff team, “Trust Ava. Her being on this team will make things better for you in the long run.” I had my first hard-won advocate.
Though I felt successful in this work, it was hardly a heroic moment by my earlier parameters — finding the right people at the right time. I was handed the people and chosen at a time of necessary change. Perhaps the trick to my experience was in fostering the discontented optimist. Discontentment abounded when I began working with the staff. The client was unhappy; the staff were aware of the issues but didn’t have the bandwidth to “fix the bike while riding it”; and the work was stale. In tapping into a small discontentment — the height of the cubicles — and proving I could fix it, I was showing the team in a minute way that I was there to take action and create positive change for them. Timing was also part of the consideration as my work was time-sensitive: We only had a few months to fix the issues before the contract would go out for RFP, so I could certainly have rushed in guns-a-blazin’ to start making changes, but I have seen this attempted, and it never seems to end well. Instead, I took my time at the beginning, getting to know my audience before jumping into change.
What if I’m not handed timing and an audience on a silver platter?
Is leading a content audience possible? Is any desire for improvement a form of discontentment? If so, perhaps a perfectly content audience could not be swayed by any attempt at leadership. Luckily for aspiring leaders, such an audience may not exist. Since the desire for improvement is all around us, perhaps the key is finding something you care about that others care about too and tapping into the community to find those discontented optimists and align yourself with them. Think, plan, then act.
Though I’ve just begun my leadership journey, I have been blessed with experiences that have added to my acumen and bolstered my confidence. I sincerely hope that your reflections on this article bring you thoughts of confidence in your own style and impress upon you how complicated yet rewarding leadership is. If there’s no bulletproof strategy, be confident in your own!
About the author
Ava Metzger is a second-year MBA candidate at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Before business school, she worked in operations, marketing, and senior leadership at a midsized logistics company in Anchorage, Alaska, her hometown. Metzger holds a bachelor’s degree in economics with minors in sociology and business administration from the University of Alaska Anchorage. This past summer, she interned as a consultant in EY’s customer group in Seattle.