Deal with the Snake
It was late one Friday afternoon at the hotel I was managing. Front desk and housekeeping departments were ready to go for the weekend. All of the hotel's restaurants were prepared for guests and customers. No worrisome banquet event orders needed work or troubleshooting, and I was looking forward to the weekend. So I thought I'd do one last walk around the hotel, talk to the team and then head home.
And then it happened-because, something like this always has to happen late on a Friday afternoon in a hotel when you're ready to go home for the weekend!
I was walking through one of the public spaces, and a man walked past me. I greeted him and kept walking, but something felt off. I stopped and turned around to look at the man as he continued. I did a double take to make sure I was seeing the situation correctly. The man had a three-foot-long snake coiled around his neck. At almost this same time, it was as if the man sensed that I was now watching, and he picked up the pace, found one of the public washrooms, and locked himself in it.
These kinds of situations are the ones that make being a leader a challenge—the situations where you can't not do anything. For example, I couldn't just mention to the front desk, "oh by the way; a strange man just locked himself into a bathroom with a three-foot-long snake wrapped around his neck. Have a great weekend, bye!" Or worse, not mention anything at all and hope for the best.
I also could not just delegate this task to the restaurant supervisor. It had to be me. I had to deal with the snake. For the record, I don't like snakes at all. I believe they all want to bite my face.
Yes…I believe this Snake wanted to bite my face
I'm not the first person who should be giving lessons on leadership.-but one of the lessons I've learned about leadership is that being a leader means you have to be the one that deals with the "snake". That snake may be confronting a rude customer who's made it their business to bully someone on your team. On the other hand, it may be following through on a progressive discipline process with a member of your team that you predict won't go well. Any situation that will only get worse if it's not addressed is the snake.
Love your team enough to deal with the awful, the awkward, and the occasionally frightening situations that will inevitably pop up. Never leave your team to deal with these situations on their own. Take a deep breath, calm yourself and deal with that hissing reptile with sharp teeth!