I sat across from a young man who was older than me and tried to defuse a bomb.
We were in a conference room with three glass walls and one plaster, because open concept is an awesome venue for sensitive conversations. The board on the opaque wall boasted the multi-colored penmanship of the most recent brainstorming session between the newsroom, advertising and marketing, about an event no one would attend but everyone had very strong opinions about. The Next Steps corner said only, “Tuesday 2 pm follow-up.” Productive.
We were on the third floor. The young man’s estranged wife was on the second floor. Their shifts overlapped by less than an hour. We’d designed that. We were from management and we were here to help.
“She won’t let me see my child. I’m not gonna have it.”
I nodded. I had small children, too. It was getting dark, so I could see myself in the reflection of the glass facing the outside wall. I wanted to get home to them and watch “Power Puff Girls.” My girls called me Mojo JoJo. In those days and I was trying to like Scotch. The first took.
“I get it,” I said. “But we’ve worked out the shifts. And based on the separation terms —”
“I didn’t agree to the separation terms.”
And this is when he put a snub-nosed revolver on the table.
Managers go through a shit-ton of training. At least, they should. When a mentor boosted me from (pardon me) doer to manager, I ate up management books and training and tapes. I restored a 1966 VW Microbus camper to the dulcet tones of Zig Ziglar, telling me how to reach my goals.
Any new manager should binge this, the way some people binge “The Crown” or “True Detective” or, god help us, “Friends.” Immerse yourself in all of the pedagogy, all the theory, all the technique.
Soon, you’ll learn that there are as many ways to manage as there are to lose weight. There are systems as varied as religions - and as similar. All of them saying, “Avoid darkness. Walk toward light.”
And, at the end of that study, you learn how to be a good manager. You know how to source, produce and ship the product with the resources you’re given. You put round pegs in round holes and shave the edges off of squares - or see how squares can be disruptors. You manage down and manage up, because both are slurry - at least, in your opinion. And you live by your checklist, because that is your Bible.
But you’re not a leader.
That takes a gun on the table.
I love HGTV and the couples who crave Open Concept Homes (which is its own religion) but don’t agree that this is the best way to build a workplace where human beings are ready to dispose of a career and a few human beings because a separation has gone very south.
I looked at the pistol on the table. It looked like any revolver you’re picturing. Off balance because of the nubby, rounded chamber. Grip on the table. Barrel in the air.
And he was spinning it.
His index finger in the trigger guard. Turning it so it spun like a clock hand. While I looked at my reflection in the dark window, thinking about my wife and kids at home, thinking that this would be a shitty story to tell at the AfterLife Bar. “How did you die, Rusty?” “Well…”
I explained again why he wasn’t going to the second floor, using management speak. I mentioned that his shift was ending and he could go home now, full pay. I wondered if anyone would call me MoJo JoJo tonight.
After an endless - and, let’s face it, pointless - conversation over a laminate table with bullshit erasable-pen Next Steps on the wall, I caught the reflection of a deputy manager pass the glass behind me.
I rolled my chair back, cracked the door and said, “Hey, could you get security? I think Mr. Blank just needs to go home.”
He shook his head, ready to get gone, then saw the snub-nosed pistol. And he nodded.
Five minutes later, Mr. Blank went home without his pistol and without shooting anyone.
There’s a common trope in film about defusing a bomb. If you cut the red, you must cut the green. Black/white, blue/yellow. And so on. It helps us grasp the wiring of bombs when we can’t understand the wiring of ceiling fans. As if the former comes in handy.
But in leadership, it does.
The red wire - management - is producing TNT. Because every business is combustible. We all work in pressure cookers. We work with flammable economics. We work with uncertainty. We work with people having human moments.
The green wire - leadership - is making sure it doesn’t explode.