Do it once.

Since graduating from Coe College in May, I began attending college. This time at Southside Virginia Community College for their Power Line Worker Program. Some friends have joked with me that I did it all backwards - they are sort of right. Who in the world goes to 4-year university and then goes to a trade program at a community college after they already have a bachelor's degree? Well, I do, and there is a good reason for it in my opinion.

If you know me, you know that I have a dream to someday follow in my father's footsteps of being a CEO of a rural electric cooperative. You also know that my goal in that dream is to have a positive influence on the way leadership looks in our culture. One of the things I believe many leaders in our generation could better is to be in touch with the people they lead. Not just on a personal level, but more importantly be able to understand what exactly it is that they do. This is the exact reason I am doing this school. I want to be a CEO that can understand to an extent the work that the people in my organization do.

Let me be clear what I mean when I say "understand". It can be easy to be caught in the mentality that we understand others because we can see what they do. Imagine for example that you start and run your own landscaping business. Someone asks you, "What do your employees do?" The easy answer is, "Well, they landscape." and the more complicated answer is, "They mow, weed whack, sow grass seed, lay mulch, etc. etc." However, there are still likely even more tasks they do that you don't see, and don't really understand the difficulty of until you have done them. Now, to be clear, the same is also true for you as the owner - there are lots of tasks you have/do that the employees you have hired do not understand. They don't know what they are and the tasks they do know of, they don't truly understand the difficulty/complexity of them. When I think of truly understanding someone's job, I think of being able to directly relate my own experiences to theirs.

When I am a CEO someday, I want to be able to lead with the understanding of not only what work is being done, but how difficult the work is that the linemen are doing, the brain power it takes to execute effectively, the exhaustion that comes with the work, and whatever else there is to learn about it that I may not have realized yet. Imagine how much better your workplace would be if everyone REALLY understood the difficulty and importance of the work everyone in the organization is doing. Whether it is mentally, physically, or emotionally exhausting, understanding one another's situations makes it that much easier to empathize with the challenges others face, as well as make decisions that truly positively impact them.

Understanding of others in the workplace is, in my opinion, the key to a healthy workplace culture. When people understand what others do, they are able to empathize with them and past frustrations that were once interpersonal blaming factors now become relationship building factors that help individuals bond over the difficulty of their work.

Before you judge others in your workplace for their work, do it once.