THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABLE TO BALANCE FUN AND PROFESSIONALISM
Many years ago, I was delivering frontline leadership training to an all-male group of blue-collar supervisors, and I’ll never forget one particular participant out of the thousands that I’ve worked with over the years.
He was a memorable character from the first moment he opened his mouth with a really witty and clever comment that is too rude to repeat in print. I really liked the guy, possibly because I could see so much of a younger me in him.
At the beginning of the second day of the program a month later, some of the other guys came in early and talked about how they had been on a course and how the female tutor had laid complaints about the aforementioned character. When ‘the accused’ turned up to the course he was very blasé about the allegation, and other members of the course were quick to be defensive on his behalf. When I heard the story, it sounded like the tutor had been intolerant of his boyish behaviour, and I asked to see the letter of complaint which the guy in question had on his tablet.
Once I had read the letter, I realised that there was a huge opportunity for learning. In my leadership training workshops I have “Quote Cards” on the tables, and one of my favourites is a quote by Jim Rohn that lists a number of leadership characteristics which appear to be opposite to one another and need to be held in tension in terms of appropriate timing.
One of those challenges is being able to have a degree of fun and humour with the team, whilst at the same time balancing the need to remain professional, and even having a professional distance from the team.
As much as I could understand the other participants of my workshop wanting to defend their workmate, I felt like they were robbing him of a huge learning opportunity to understand and grow in the degree to which he maintained a professional demeanour as a supervisor. It took a little while for the guy to stop shrugging off the allegation, not because he believed it was unfounded, but often bravado via humour is a way of masking vulnerability. It was clear that he needed to be vulnerable enough in the circumstance to admit that his leadership needed to go up a notch or two in terms of professionalism.
We spent about an hour as a group talking about this and really allowing this growth opportunity to sink in. At one point I said to him that our ‘World Timeline’ was delineated in terms of BC (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini- The Year of Our Lord), but that his leadership journey from this day would be delineated by “BE”, and “AE”, which I explained to him meant “Before Email” and “After Email”. I went on to say that he was about to enter a new phase of his leadership journey post this letter of complaint from the previous workshop tutor, and the next phase of his leadership would be marked by an increased conscious effort to maintain professionalism, even in ‘off task settings’ such as workshops.
He was very grateful for the input, and as a seasoned workshop facilitator, I can tell when course participants are really “getting it”. Everyone in this case could see that this guy had really taken the message to heart and that he would be conscious of his responsibility of professionalism going forward.
