Last weekend, I was in an airport lounge with my husband, sipping bubbly, snacking and trying to relax prior to what was sure to be a stressful trip. Part of the stress would come from managing our overly tired three-and-a-half-year-old, who at that moment was laying full out on the ground under the table, with her feet up in the air, singing loudly in Portuguese (check out my other blog post on raising a trilingual kid and the leadership lessons I’ve learned through it here). 

    Out of nowhere, my daughter says to us “I see a bunny with chocolate”. Naturally, my husband and I both looked at each other with that quintessential look parents give one another when a small child says something fanciful and imaginative. So she tried a different tactic. Switching back to Portuguese, the language she speaks to me, she said, “Mom, there’s an Easter Bunny here.” I looked around, under the table, behind me and even out the window, but still had no idea what she was talking about. Finally, I had the idea to look where she was looking--which seems obvious, but took me quite awhile to figure out. Sure enough, when I got down on the floor and looked up at the underside of the table, what did I see but a faded and torn sticker of an Easter Bunny, surrounded by chocolate eggs. Turns out other children like to embarrass their parents by lying on airport floors too. 

THIS IS CULTURE

    It also turns out that people see completely different things when they are looking at them from different perspectives. I immediately smiled at my husband and said, “sure enough, there is a bunny with chocolate under there.” And also, “this right here, this is culture.” What do I mean by that? How many of us parents would have just stuck with the idea that the child was being fanciful? And we are nothing special, we’ve just recently been making a point of actively listening, and switching to her perspective as often as we can. 

    And so often, in the business world, we leaders are put into the same situation, aren’t we? When discussing one idea, project or new product, we take care to include many different people in the discussion. We even take care to make sure that everyone has eyes on the issue at hand. But, like with that table, we sometimes forget that each person has a slightly, or completely, different perspective than the others. 

WHAT WE TEND TO DO

In these situations, we often tend to overlook the perspectives of others, and this is human nature. We see things from our perspective, and we assume that our perspective is correct. And it is. But it’s only one perspective, one of many. Different angles, different heights, and different world views all color what we perceive when we approach a problem. It’s tempting to think that the person with the completely different perspective (often someone young or new to our organizations) is being fanciful, naïve or is just plain wrong. Oftentimes we smile inwardly and then write them off completely. 

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

What we need to do is take the time to listen fully, and to try as much as possible to consider things from the perspective of the team member who is introducing the idea. As leaders, we need to create the space for our team to speak freely, introduce ideas that may sound crazy in a given setting, but may end up changing the way that we do things, or even the very things that we believe. We need to challenge ourselves to operate from the assumption that all ideas have value and they deserve to be considered before being simply discarded. 

At the end of the day, I know my daughter felt listened to and understood. I got on the ground with her and we had a conversation about the Easter Bunny, about stickers, and about chocolate. Then we got some stickers to play with later, at her request, something that neither of us would likely have thought to do, making the travelling experience loads easier for everyone involved. 

What could a perspective shift to today for your business, for your team spirit, and for your bottom line? Can you afford not to find out? 

DANIELLA YOUNG IS AN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, CULTURE STRATEGY AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT WITH CAVNESSHR, A VIRTUAL HR COMPANY THAT IS INNOVATING HOW SMALL BUSINESSES CAN HAVE THEIR HR NEEDS MET. SHE IS A RENOWNED INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER, AND YOU CAN CHECK OUT HER TEDx TALK HERE.  SHE IS ALSO A CULT SURVIVOR, A FEMALE COMBAT VETERAN, AN ARMY WIFE AND A MOM, EACH OF WHICH HAS TAUGHT HER AS MUCH ABOUT LEADERSHIP AS THE OTHERS. 

DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE A CUSTOMIZED ROADMAP TO THE GROWTH CULTURE THAT EVERY ORGANIZATION WANTS ACHIEVE, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. WANT TO LEARN MORE? CLICK HERE TO SCHEDULE AN INTRO CALL.