Leadership and Employee Motivation: Lessons from Gary

Originally posted on Medium.

Gary was a young man in his late twenties when he became my boss. I was a new employee. My English was broken (literally), and my computer skills were questionable. So here I was in a cubicle, coding away, scared my new boss would fire me any minute. But Gary didn’t fire me, and he didn’t seem to be spooked by my broken English, so I kept coding, observing, and learning.

Gary had a way about him that was both relaxed and purposeful. He walked the floor every morning, stopping at each cubicle for a quick chat. It mainly was a friendly hello, and at the same time, he asked work questions, so we learned to be ready with that bottom line update. Gary knew what everyone was working on and had a genuine interest in each person. His style could be best described as “common sense leadership” or “it depends on leadership”; Situational Leadership wasn’t invented yet. Gary was authentic before “authentic” was in vogue. Without realizing it, I learned my most valuable leadership lessons from Gary.

Here are my two favorites.

Lesson #1: Working hard is unimportant unless you work on the right things. Learn how to determine which are not the “right things” and stop the madness!

During our first team meeting, Gary asked what we were working on. A month before his arrival, we started a project that promised to be very complex, so naturally, each of us named this project our primary focus. Gary listened carefully and asked, “Why are we doing this?” When not a single person in the room could answer, he said: “Let’s stop until I find out why.” Gary did some investigating and concluded that no one was really sponsoring this project. And just like that, he stopped it! He did not throw a fit, didn’t blame his predecessor or any of us, instead Gary spent time explaining his decision and giving us the authority to question and understand, rather than simply execute on a request. It is now expected to hear from a leader: “Don’t be an order taker — be a partner to your business.” If Gary didn’t come up with the idea of IT and business partnership, he certainly was ahead of his time in implementing it. “Why are we doing this?” became my favorite question.

The job of a leader is to understand the “why” behind every effort. Only then can we operate with clarity and vision and passionately share it with our teams.

Lesson #2: Lift them and they will thrive. Motivating employees starts with you, no HR policies needed!

How many of us parents have sent a child to school despite our gut telling us he is not one hundred percent… not obviously sick, but not well either. You get to work with this creepy feeling in your stomach, and sure enough, by 11 AM, the phone rings, and it’s the school telling you he is sick. At this moment, you feel like you’ve committed a crime, and you must leave to rescue your child immediately, even if it means losing your job as a result. That precious job you got by the grace of God! This may sound a little dramatic, but I was in that place, thinking those thoughts and feeling those feelings, ready to walk away from my job if Gary said I couldn’t leave. But more about my feelings another time.

I mustered all my courage and walked into Gary’s office. What happened next was the lesson of a lifetime. Of course, Gary didn’t have a problem with me leaving, but he didn’t just say that! He began by telling me that in the future if I needed to leave early for whatever reason, I didn’t need to ask his permission — simply notifying him would be enough. He said I was a terrific employee so offering me this flexibility was a small way he and the company could express their gratitude. Stunned and speechless, I mumbled a thank you and ran to my car. I cried all the way home, not understanding what had just happened. What happened was that without checking HR policies and giving me a raise or a bonus, Gary inspired me to work better than ever. And I did!

So the next time an employee asks you to approve their vacation time or permission to take a day off, don’t just say, “Okay.” Instead, lift them up with your genuine gratitude, attention, understanding, and support. Your words matter a lot—take it from Gary!

Hope these lessons will enrich your leadership toolkit like they did mine. Thank you, Gary!