Being a Boss vs Being a Leader

Most adults, hopefully, have had at least one great mentor. That one person that you report to, who motivates you, develops you and keeps you engaged to your job. You feel that your contributions matter, you feel supported and this encourages you to do the best you can, every day. You have some bad days of course, but overall you are excited every morning, you find yourself thinking of action plans and coming up with awesome ideas while you are driving to a friend’s birthday party on a Saturday night.

Most of us also have had a boss who lacks leadership skills, lacks people skills, wants to tell everyone what to do but is not present and does not teach. Who looks down on others and who feels as a superior human being because they are at a higher position. I can remember one particular boss I had several years ago who was exactly that way. I’m going to call her Naomie. It was my first experience as a shift manager on the call center floor and it meant so much to me to be great at it. To show that I was the right person for the job. I had started this career path by accident as a customer service rep back in 2006 it was meant to be a temporary job and well… there I was 7 years later having climbed up several positions and having found a passion for customer service and team management.

It was so frustrating and so hurtful when no matter how great my teams were doing, how happy the client was with me, how motivated the leaders and team members who reporting to me were, still she acted like I was the worst.

She would also yell at my team members or sometimes humiliate them. One time I was having a meeting with Naomie and one of my team members interrupted us politely because she had a question that was pretty urgent, the client was on the line they needed something in particular that she was not empowered to decide on. I answered her question, it took less than 2 minutes and my boss was outraged. She turned to my team member, that person was a supervisor of customer service reps, and she said something along the lines of: How dare you interrupt managers when they are speaking. Don’t ever speak to us unless we are speaking to you. The message was something like… you are only a supervisor and you should never interrupt managers. In turn, this scandalized me and I spoke out and let the supervisor know that she and her team (who took care of our customers) were my top priority and that I would always be available to help them at any time. I had to hear Naomie that time run her mouth for several minutes about how I should never disagree with her. You see, I am a nerd but I am also never afraid to speak out for myself or anyone I feel that needs me to speak out for them.

I was used to being a perfectionist at work and always wanting to be a top team player and a top leader. Partly because I cared about my team members and hitting goals but mostly because of my ego.

I was good at it, I had already learned and figured out many things about leadership. How to keep team members on top of their game. I had learned some important facts about life, about work, about people, about relationships, about real empathy from the training of Manos Sin Fronteras, organization that I had been a member of since my teen years!

In leadership, finding what motivates each person is an awesome first step. Always personalize the coaching and developing of team members depending on what you know about their personal life, their background, their dreams, their career path etc. How do you learn these things about them? Well, you have to care.

Every year I learned new things and I evolved as a person and as a leader. I knew I could help people reach their goals and I could help them believe in themselves. I loved it, loved that role. Some of these kids sometimes met their goals after thinking it was impossible. For a lot of them, even if they were not making a career out of customer service, it was their first job, their first experience in the real world. The means to an end… a good paying job that could help them be independent while going to the university or a means to support their family for others.

When Naomie came into my life everything changed. I tried to stay positive and I remember going over and over it in my head. “It’s not personal” “This is a test, the universe is testing me, I must Ace this test”, “I can do this, I am strong, I am awesome, I am good at my job, I am great at my job” But still I would cry the entire way to work on many mornings and sometimes I would cry on the way back as well. I questioned myself, doubted myself, tried harder but I was miserable.

In the end she was a great teacher, the best one yet. She was so horrible that she taught me to be strong and to have faith in myself and to keep going. Sayings like “this too shall pass” songs like Bob Marley’s Three little Birds, Dori’s “just keep swimming” you always hear and read these things; every little thing’s gonna be alright. It's very different when you live it. When you honestly believe that this shall pass. That this is up to you, that you control your life if you control your reactions. When I was being bullied by N I always reminded myself of who I was. **Soy estrella del universo, semilla de la Enseñanza, soy ser de luz. I am being tested and I will Ace this. So always keep going, tears and all. **

It’s not about your boss’s leadership skills or where they fall on the list. Do they have more traits from the boss list or from the leader list? She would make my life miserable until I started listening to myself. When I stopped being a hypocrite and started living by what I had been preaching. Going back to Jardinera’s letters, discussing and analyzing that this was a test and that every obstacle in our lives is there to teach us a lesson. My family, close friends and even my team motivated me and I reminded myself that I was about doing my best for them, for my team to serve them and of course, by doing that I would be helping myself. Seeing their faces light up every time they felt appreciated, valued, encouraged I thanked them for their wonderful efforts etc. Our performance kept getting better and better and I reminded myself not to complain not to complain, just keep going. I also learned that when you are working with people, you are serving them. In my culture, there is a negative connotation to the word “server” however, I believe this is the secret. In a leadership position you have an enormous responsibility towards the people you are supporting. Each one of them, with their circumstances is counting on you and because of that you have the responsibility to serve them. And by that I mean **take the time to listen to them, take the time to honestly share with them your knowledge, your experience a word of encouragement, a kind word, a thank you. Be humble and never think of yourself superior to them. **

What I learned from that experience is, it doesn’t matter if they are a boss or they are a leader. It matters how I react to it. It matters that I learn. Every great obstacle in your life is your teacher, buddha says. As my teacher I love her and I thank her. I am grateful to the universe for placing her in my path though it was one of the toughest years of my life work-wise it showed me how lucky I am, how much I have to be grateful for. It showed me not only to believe in myself and to keep going it also showed me that I was there to serve. To serve my team members, to help them, not to make myself look good but because they were put in my path for a reason as well and I want to be there to guide them and to lead by example. Most importantly, when I was going through all of that I always always could count on someone from my family or a close friend to listen to me and to let me vent and to let me cry. **I learned to cherish what I had. **

It has been now 12 years since I started working in the customer service business. I have made many mistakes and I’m sure that some of the people who have reported to me have taught be more of a boss and less of a leader. I want to think that the majority of them think of me most as a leader but what really matters is that we are intentional. That we are grateful every day for having a job and for having the opportunity to guide and to help and to serve other people. A small action can have a large consequence. There are challenges, sometimes we fail, but if we learned something then we can keep going and that’s what matters.