A father took his young son to the beach early one morning. The young boy could hardly contain his excitement and when his feet finally touched the sand he made the long sprint to the surf. Leaving his father behind, his little feet battled through the soft sand. The sand gradually became more steady and solid as he approached the surf. His toes were almost to the water! The anticipation and glee had almost reached their pinnacle for the boy when he stopped in his tracks as if he had run face first into a glass wall. The boy's father, still a long way back, could not make out what or why the boy had stopped.
The boy's momentary pause ended as he began to frantically bend over, stand up, and make a throwing motion at the water. He repeated this motion over and over again taking a few steps between each throw. As the father drew closer to his son's peculiar behavior, the father could see that the surf was littered with star fish that had been left on the sand as the tide washed out. There were thousands of starfish and the young boy was urgently attempting to save them all.
The father approached the boy. 'Son, you cannot save them all', he said sympathetically.
The boy paused and looked at the starfish he was holding in his hand. A brief sadness swept over the boy and then disappeared as fast as it arrived replaced by a renewed determination.
'But I can save this one, Dad!' The boy chucked it into the water and carried on his frantic way.
And guess what happened? The dad, with a smirk of admiration on his face directed at his son's determined response, began throwing starfish back in the water too. As people walked passed the boy and his father, they would stop, stay longer than would have been expected, and assist the boy in his starfish emergency action plan.
The story above is fictional, but it is one of my favorite analogies of hope, urgency, and responding to the needs at hand. Andy Stanley says, 'Don't let what you can't do for everyone stop you from doing it for the one.' I believe there is a lot of encouragement that a follower-centric leader can find in this story on the importance of being a great responder. Leaders cannot be expected to 'save every starfish' but leaders should respond to each day in a way that inspires people to go out and save more starfish. It is amazing how many times leaders underestimate the impact of their responses to inspire their team take action.
Here are five suggestions for how a leader can respond in a way that inspires their people to go out and 'save the starfish.'...
1. Stand up! When a team member has a problem that you can respond to and solve, stand up. Literally. Stand up and walk with them to the point of the solution. When someone on your team brings an issue to you and you can do something about it, stand up and get to it right away. Do not underestimate how important you can make someone feel when they bring you a request and you address it immediately by standing up from your desk and walking with them.
2. Offer a timeline. There will be some requests that you cannot respond to immediately, but you can respond. There are two things that are important when giving someone a timeline for responding to their issue. 1) Offer a timeline that is slightly longer than you believe it will take you to respond. This increases the chances that you will have the necessary time and energy to assist them and makes sure they are not disappointed. 2) Make sure that you do what you said you would do, when you said you would do it. Leaders do a lot of unintentional damage to their leadership when they don't do what they said they would do when they said they would do it no matter how good their intentions were.
3. No I can't. It is important to be realistic with requests for you to respond. There will be some requests that you simply can't respond with helpful assistance. Do not beat around the bush on these responses. Do not be rude. Be clear and kind. If the other four suggestions that are being made are true of you as a leader, you may find that telling your team, 'No, I can't', just urges them on to respond to their own problem in a healthy and responsible way.
4. Pull in some more help. It is amazing how your willingness to respond (see #1) will create a culture of others that are willing to respond. A tone of quick responses can be set by the leader and then can also be engaged by the leader. Once you as the leader have set that tone, you will be able to enlist the assistance of others to respond to the need of a team member.
5. Send the problem to a solver. Leaders often have access to resources that team members do not. It is this access that can help you quickly refer team members to other members of your organization that can solve their problems in a fraction of the time that you can. Leadership in the modern age is no longer about having all of the answers. Leadership today is more about knowing where to send people to get their answers. Leaders do not have the time to solve all of the problems and team members don't have the time to wait around for the leader to try and solve all of the problems. Things move so fast that a key leadership skill is being able to connect people with problems to people with solutions.
The little boy on the beach created his own momentum by quickly responding to problems of the starfish. That little boy is well on is way to being a great leader some day.
Keep on, keepin' on, friends!
‘Bite Down and Don’t Let Go’ is a collection of writings on being intentional about life in a way that produces great persistence. Read about it more here.
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