Episode 876 - Lead the Shift You Are On

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello everyone and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 876. Today I want to talk about something that sounds incredibly simple yet I think a lot of leaders struggle with it. Lead the shift you are on. I come from an EMS background, so the word shift has a very literal meaning to me. You come to work, you have a crew, you have trucks, you have assignments, you have responsibilities, you have problems that are going to show up whether you are ready for them or not.

0:57 And then your shift ends, somebody else takes over, and you go home. Every workplace has a version of this. A hotel manager has tonight's guest. A restaurant manager has tonight's dinner service. A supervisor in a manufacturing plant has today's production run. A corporate manager has today's team. Every leader has a shift. And one of the easiest ways to become ineffective is to spend the shift you're currently responsible for obsessing over somebody else's shift. And I see this all the time. The night shift never does this.

1:38 Day shift always leaves us with that. The other manager doesn't hold people accountable. The last supervisor allowed this. The next shift can deal with it. And maybe all of that is true. It still doesn't change the question sitting directly in front of you. What are you going to do with the shift you are on? Because leadership doesn't happen in some perfect future version of your organization. Leadership happens today with these people, with these problems, with the resources you currently have, and with your name attached to what happens next. That's leadership. I learned a long time ago in emergency services that there's always something you can complain about. There will always be a truck somebody didn't

2:27 restock correctly. There will always be paperwork somebody didn't finish. There will always be a problem handed from one crew to another. There will always be a decision made before you arrive that you wouldn't have made. If you spend the first hour of your shift complaining about what happens during the previous 24 hours, you're now wasting part of the next 24 hours. You inherited the problem, now lead it.

2:54 That doesn't mean ignoring accountability. If something needs addressed, address it. If somebody failed to meet a standard, deal with it. If there's a recurring problem between shifts or departments, fix the system. Then get back to leading your people because your team deserves a leader who is mentally present with them.

3:13 I think some leaders become historians. They can tell you everything that went wrong yesterday. They know who caused it. They know who should have prevented it. They know which department screwed it up. They know which manager dropped the ball. Ask them what they're doing about it today, and suddenly the conversation gets quiet. Leadership isn't a history lesson. You can learn from yesterday. You cannot lead yesterday. You can prepare for tomorrow. You cannot lead tomorrow. Your leadership authority exists right now. That's why I love this phrase, lead the shift you are on. Think about a restaurant during a packed Saturday night. The dining room's full. The tickets are stacking up. Somebody called off. A table isn't happy.

4:00 The kitchen is getting buried. That manager has choices. They can complain about scheduling. They can blame the person who called off. They can talk about how much better things would be if the general manager had scheduled another service or another server or whatever. They can walk onto that floor and lead the shift they're on. Where is the pressure?

4:23 Who needs help? What decision needs made? What does the team need from me right now? That's leadership in real time. The same thing happens in a hotel. You walk into your shift and discover you're short-staffed. The rooms aren't ready. There's a line at the front desk. A guest has been waiting 20 minutes for something that should have taken five.

4:43 Nobody standing in that lobby cares about Which manager created the problem? They care whether the manager standing in front of them can solve it. That's the responsibility of leadership, and your people feel the same way. Your employees don't need an explanation every morning about why their workplace isn't perfect.

5:02 They need somebody willing to take ownership of the environment they're working in. And ownership changes the language. Instead of saying, they left this for us, you start saying, okay, Here's what we're going to do. Instead of nobody ever follows this policy, it becomes we're going to follow the policy on this shift. Instead of management never communicates, it becomes I'm going to make sure my team knows what's happening.

5:31 And instead of morale around here sucks, it becomes what can I do during these next 8, 10, 12, or 24 hours to make this team better? Now you're leading. And here's another piece of this. You don't have to fix the entire organization today. That's where leaders burn themselves out. They walk into work carrying every organizational problem on their shoulders. Staffing, budgets, turnovers, policies, culture, scheduling, training, all the drama. They think leadership means fixing everything simultaneously.

6:09 It doesn't. Sometimes great leadership is much smaller than that. Get your shift right. Make sure your people know what's expected. Make sure the standard is clear. Handle problems when they happen. Teach something. Coach somebody. Recognize good work. Leave the operation a little better than you found it, and then do it again the next time you come to work. Because when enough leaders begin leading the shift they're actually on, something interesting happens. The organization starts changing. Culture isn't created by a poster hanging in the break room. Culture is created shift by shift, conversation by conversation, decision by decision.

6:54 Your people are watching what happens during your shift. They're learning what matters by what you pay attention to. They're learning what doesn't matter by what you ignore. They're learning how serious the standards are by whether you enforce them. They're learning whether leadership can be trusted by whether you follow through and they're learning what leadership looks like by watching you. That means every shift is an opportunity. You don't need a leadership retreat. You don't need another motivational quote hanging on the wall. You don't need 12 pages of corporate jargon explaining your leadership philosophy. You just need to lead today. And there's another trap I want you to avoid. Don't spend your shift trying to prove that

7:42 you're better than the leader who came before you. That's ego. If another manager struggles, help them. If another shift has problems, work with them. If something keeps getting handed back and forth between departments, stop keeping score and solve it. Because eventually this mentality of my shift versus your shift destroys organizations.

8:06 There is only one organization, one customer, one patient. one guest, one mission. Your shift is simply the part of that mission temporarily entrusted to you, and eventually you're going to hand it to somebody else. That's another important part of this. Leave the next leader something worth inheriting. Don't hand them your unfinished problems because you ran out the clock. Don't walk past something at 4.45 because you're leaving at 5.

8:36 Don't lower the standard because your shift is almost over. Finish strong. communicate what still needs done. Set the next team up to succeed because good leadership understands that the handoff matters too. I want you to think about your next shift. Maybe your shift is literally tomorrow morning. Maybe you're running a department. Maybe you're leading a project. Maybe you're responsible for an entire company. Whatever your shift looks like, when you walk through that door, ask yourself one question.

9:07 What does this team need from me today? Not next month, not when staffing improves, not when the budget gets approved, not when the difficult employee finally leaves. Today. Because there's always going to be another excuse available. Great leaders stop waiting for perfect conditions. They take responsibility for the conditions in front of them. Your organization might have problems that are way above your pay grade. Your senior leadership might make decisions you disagree with. Another department might frustrate you.

9:43 Yesterday's shift might have left you a mess. You still own what happens while you're standing there, and when your time is over, somebody else will take your place. The question is whether they inherit the same problem you inherited or whether your leadership moved things forward. That's the standard.

10:02 Lead the people in front of you. Handle the problems in front of you. Protect the standards you're responsible for. And when that shift ends, leave the place better than you found it. That's a pretty good day's work for any leader. So your title doesn't make this shift better. Your presence does. So tomorrow, when you walk through the door, don't spend your energy talking about yesterday's problems or tomorrow's worries.

10:39 Look around. These are your people. This is your responsibility. This is your opportunity. Lead the shift. You are on. This has been the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.

10:55 For more Paul Falivalito podcasts, visit paulfalivalito.com.