The Cost of Control

There are too many individuals over projects, programs, and people who clearly lack leadership training and skills. Their approach is my way and no other way. They want to be involved in every aspect of the work that they are not doing. They seep into the crevices of everything like slime into carpet fibers. I strongly dislike working with people like that.

For the last three years, I have worked for myself. The joy in this is that I choose clients who are aligned with my ways of being. While working for myself, I have also continued to work in more formal settings where power trips and ladder climbing seems to be more important than doing the work.

Younger me would acquiesce to the foolery. Current me refuses to go along to get along. Many “leaders” bulldoze their way over people because they believe the people they work with will go along with whatever demands they have to keep the peace and avoid conflict.

I thought I was keeping the peace professionally and in my personal life when I would go along to get along. All I was really doing was keeping the tension, building frustration, and loosing minutes of my life that I couldn’t get back.

Conflict is okay, and it is healthy. I rather have one good blow up or difficult conversation and reach a true understanding than to keep faux peace.

To work with people like me is to know that we will knuck if you buck. We will not go along to get along. We will let you know what we are not going to allow and enforce it.

I don’t care about being liked. I don’t care about being friends with my colleagues. I care about the legacy I am leaving behind. This legacy doesn’t include entertaining time consuming tasks or doing double work for the sake of someone else’s need to have control. I find that those who try to control actually don’t control much of anything and obliterate their chances of having meaningful peer relationships that could turn into a friendship.

If you are over a project, program, or people, consider if you actually trust the people to do the job. If not, why? If so, why are you tripping and bugging them? Evaluate if your actions will put you in a situation where you will have to post a job again. Think about if the meeting could have been an email but you insisted on having it anyway, why you just would not cancel it? Consider how your actions or lack thereof are impacting the people you work with. Evaluate the tasks you are requesting other people to do. How did you introduce the task? When did you introduce the task? Do the people you work with have ample time to complete it? Will you let them do the work without 50 million inquires about the work while they are doing the work? If you did part of the work, but now that is someone else’s task, can you sit down somewhere and let the person do the task without living in the this is how we’ve historically done it? You can’t have it both ways. Last, change! If you don’t, that door will keep revolving and that talent will bless someone else.

Thank you to all the wonderful colleagues past and present who are a joy to work with and show true leadership! There are too many to name. I’m also thankful that many of you are my friends.

Also, hard side eye to those who are not wonderful colleagues. I shall not choose violence and name you…today. If you read this and you are offended, instead of sitting in your feelings use these words to be better and not bitter.