“Clang!” “What the (expletive removed)! There is no way I am cleaning that again. Tell Scott I am going down to the songfest.”
The sound came from the kitchen of the mess hall and I abruptly took off in that direction slamming the door behind me as I went in.
“Excuse me? What exactly do you want Ian to tell me?” I said as I rounded the corner nearly being smashed over as he threw his apron to the ground.
Dave, one of the members of my staff glared at me. “I have had it, this is it. I am not doing anymore work. Everyone is down at the songfest except for us. I don’t care what you say Scott, Ian and I are going down there.”
My eyes at that point must have glinted with rage because he suddenly backed down and said, “Look Scott, I am not trying to be an (expletive removed), but we aren’t doing anymore work up here, its not fair of you to keep us up here while everyone else is down there having a good time.”
At this point I had had it and matching my usual pacifistic attitude, I backed down, but for some reason, I couldn’t let him walk away having disrespected me for the umpteenth time that week.
“Fine you can go … but you are still being what you said you were trying not to be.”
I had said it, and it had really done no good. My only intention of keeping them behind was so that we could clean up the dining hall so we wouldn’t waste time the next morning. To me this was not much to ask. The whole week had been like this, with the members of my staff showing me no respect whatsoever just because I was making sure that everything got done. That was my job, I was the Youth Course Director, it was my first time holding this position, it was the first year this course was to be held for the entire state of Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts, I wanted the participants to have the best experience ever, and the list goes on. Simply everything in my mind had to run perfectly.
I walked back into the dining hall to find my final staffer who I had assigned to help me in the kitchen lying across one of the tables with his boots up playing on his laptop.
“WHAT IN THE WORLD DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!!!” At that point I had had it. While the other two had walked off, at least they had been working. Tim on the other hand had simply been lying there doing absolutely nothing.
“We have work to do. Let’s go already.”
He looked up at me and merely rolled his eyes. “Nope, sorry, don’t feel like it.” he said.
I honestly couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All week, my staff had disrespected me. They had turned to the other Youth Course Director whenever I had asked them to do something and he gave me no support. The only way anything got done that week came after I had had to force people to go and do it.
At that point I broke down. I told him to go down to the songfest and I sat alone in the dining hall. Tears began to mingle with the sweat and water droplets still on my face from before. In years past, this course had been fun. I really had enjoyed my time as a staffer. In fact it meant the world to me. What I couldn’t understand was what all the other Youth Course Directors had that I didn’t. Why had they received respect from me and the other staffers? It was obvious I was doing something wrong.
It was now pitch black outside and I trudged slowly to the staff cabin, no longer wishing to join my fellow staff and participants at the songfest. I walked in and went into the room I was sharing with four other staffers and sat down on my bunk to think. Not ten seconds after I had arrived there, did I hear the slamming of the cabin door as in walked my Scoutmaster for the course. He beckoned to me, asking me to follow him outside to his truck where I soon learned that he had blown his tire out. As I helped him jack up his car and remove the tire he answered the question that I had been trying to answer all week.
“Scott, I am not trying to come down on you in anyway, but you need to learn not to micromanage. When the last Youth Course Director and I picked you for this, we knew how much it meant to you and you really have put on an amazing course, but the one thing you need to learn is that you can’t control everyone. You have to let them go ahead and do what they know they have to rather than be on their backs every step of the way. I can promise you, they can do it.”
His words hit me like a ton of bricks. It had been just that day I had stood in front of all the participants and told them that in order to be an effective leader, you must let them seek out their strengths and weaknesses and even if they fail, they learn from that failure and become assets to you later on. I hadn’t taken my own advice. My Scout masters advice didn’t end there though. I couldn’t micromanage my own life either. If I was a perfectionist on every detail, I would never accomplish anything and I would be truly miserable as my staff had been this entire week whenever I was breathing down their necks. This was just as much their course as it was mine. I had to let them run it the way they best saw fit, because then and only then each of their unique strengths would lead to the betterment of the course.
After fixing the tire to his SUV we both headed down the hill to the songfest. For the first time all week, I took a step back and watched my staff run with their program. Not only were the participants having fun, but both my staff and I were having fun. When things were looking like they were about to get out of hand, I let my staff handle it and they did so without my guidance. Had I been running the program exactly as I saw fit, I would not have experienced my first time being lifted on my back across the crowd of participants. Very simply, to be successful, a leader, a sane person, one can not micromanage every detail, because by doing so he limits the productivity and possible success for himself but more importantly can stagnate the growth of those he leads.
This is what success looked like at the end of the week.
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