Blame Your Tools
There must be ten thousand things I loathe about Donald Trump, but of all of them the one which most disqualifies him from being in charge of a hot dog stand, let alone a country, is his habit of throwing his staff and advisors under the bus.
He spends most of his waking moments braying about how this Secretary or that counsel was stupid, corrupt, cowardly, or fat, neglecting to mention that he’s the one who hired them. The only way to remain in the Donald’s good graces is to be obsequious, silent, and out of sight, and the best way to do that is to keep your lips firmly on his backside.
Enough about the Donald. Let’s talk about nice things, instead.
The old adage says that a bad carpenter blames his tools. What goes without saying, of course, is that the carpenter is the one responsible for acquiring and maintaining those very tools. If the tool is not up to the job, you know who’s to blame.
Over the course of my legal career I learned a few things, the most important of which is that your law office and reputation are only as good as your team. Your partners and junior lawyers carry the name of the firm when they stand in court or meet with clients. Your paralegals and clerks are the ones who make sure every nut and every bolt is in place and tightly secured. Your receptionist is your Ambassador to the World, the point of first impression, the tone-setter for everything which goes on. Even your suppliers and your agents can make or break your reputation.
Once, when a certain lawyer found himself embarrassed by egregious errors in the court documents, he wailed on about the sloppiness and carelessness of the staffer who typed the material. The normally kindly old judge stopped him and gently but very firmly pointed out that the complaining lawyer had hired the staffer, dictated the pleadings, and reviewed them before submitting them. Hadn’t he?
The damage to that lawyer’s reputation was two-fold: not only did he produce goofy material to the court, in front of all his colleagues, but he got called out for trying to shift his own guilt to a hapless staffer. And perhaps additionally that he had hired badly.
By now readers should be fully familiar with the notion that a professional will enjoy their maximum happiness and success when they are living and working in the center of their Giftings. But this teaching has a corollary: the same is true of your colleagues and assistants.
As a professional, if you are teamed up with colleagues who are flopping about like fish out of water, dabbling in a little of this and a little of that, the reputation of your entire group is tarnished, and yours along with it.
But far more important is your attention to the people who work for you, those who help you do what you do. After all, isn’t “helping you do what you do” the only reason you hired them? Each one of your staffers and every contractor, supplier, or advisor should be considered entirely on this basis: are they enabling you to do best what you were born to do?
How do you find and keep those who are best at making you your best? It’s quite simple, really. They are professionals, too, and you are their client. The Alignment Principle says that they will do their best work when their Giftings are perfectly aligned with your Need. If that Need is to be enabled to excel at what you were born to do, then everyone you select to help you must have the Giftings to do just that.
By way of example, in my legal practice I was at my best dealing with Big Picture matters and in solving difficult problems. That done, I would get bored. And that is dangerous. So my very best staffers were people who loved finicky details and smart packaging. When we produced our work, it was not only first class in terms of innovation and solutions, it was bulletproof and it looked good. It was not “my work”, it was “our work”, and I made a point of giving glory to my amazing team, without whom I’d have looked sloppy and goofy.
The result of this was that our clients and those who sent us clients thought we were bulletproof and ten feet tall. We weren’t really, but the reputation was there, and they all kept telling their friends and their own clients that they should come to our firm. This is not to brag, but to point out the simple truth that getting lots of good clients comes directly from reputation, and reputation comes from work that not only is good, but looks good. What could be more simple and obvious?
Back to the “carpenter’s tools” analogy. My grandfather was a master carpenter back in the days before power tools. One of the things I remember best about him was his spending his Saturday mornings sharpening his saws and setting their teeth, one by one. All his tools were carefully maintained and lovingly cared for, enabling him to be masterful at his carpentry.
We need to deal with our staff and assistants with the same attitude. Assuming that you have selected people who are best at helping you do what you do best, you need to care for them and cultivate them. It goes without saying, of course, that you need to compensate them generously and give them a safe and happy work environment, but you need to do more.
You need to show them respect as professionals in their own right, leading them and mentoring them and perfecting them. Every minute and every dollar invested in your best people yield rich returns, because they enable you to be better at what you do best.
Some of us can do and be our best all on our own. Most of us can’t. Care for those who enable you to do and be your best.