Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: You May Not Notice It Until It Is Not There
Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. When we see or hear or experience something from which we can learn, it is that example and experience that often helps us remember the lesson. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. And so I am sharing examples of circumstances and stories that I have experienced in my everyday life that illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those stories, and it is an important reminder that there are things that you will not notice until they are no longer there.
I saw this illustrated recently when I had to get hearing aids. At my wife’s request, my doctor sent me to an audiologist to have my hearing checked, who determined that I was experiencing age-related hearing loss, and that if I would wear hearing aids, I would minimize the risk of damage to my hearing. At first, when I started wearing them, I could tell that they were there, because I could hear and feel that they were. Surprisingly to me, I could tell that I was hearing better (which was proof that I needed them), but because they were new, I could also hear echoing and background noises while my brain adjusted to the new and improved data that I was taking in with these devices.
After wearing them for a few weeks, I began to notice them less and less as my ears and my brain acclimated to wearing them. I reached the point of getting ready for bed and forgetting to take them out because I was no longer realizing that they were even there. At that stage, what was more noticeable to me was what happened when I took them out. Because I had adjusted to wearing them, before I took them out for the night, I could no longer tell that they were there, but once I removed them, it became obvious that they were not in.
That experience is a great picture that you tend to get used to things, eventually to the point that you only notice them when they are no longer there. They become something that you no longer notice or no longer question. It may be a process or tradition that is always done, without any thought about why it’s done. It’s just what you do without thinking about it. It may be something that’s part of a regular routine that you no longer pay attention to or think about, like how you brush your teeth or which leg you put into your pants first. Again, it’s just something you do without giving it a thought. But then it stops, or it goes away, and all of a sudden you notice it. But that didn’t happen until it was gone.
With that in mind, it is a good idea to consider a couple of questions about the processes, people, and pieces of your organization:
- Is it important enough that you need to remind yourself periodically? Knowing that you will begin to not notice it, and if it is important to you and your organization, you may need a periodic reminder to bring it back to the forefront of your awareness. This is true of the people you rely on as well as the routines and processes that are a normal part of what you do.
- Does it need attention so that it does not go away? If the loss of this, whether it’s a person or a process, will have a negative effect, you ought to consider what you need to do to give it the attention it needs before it (or he or she) goes away.
This is the lesson on leadership from this little thing in life, from having to get hearing aids as part of my aging process. Like white noise, there are things that you don’t notice until they’re gone. They have become normal and routine, and your brain relegates them to the background so it can give attention to other things. But then it goes away, and you become aware of what you are missing, and sometimes, that’s not good. So, periodically, make sure you attend to those things that you no longer notice, so that you don’t lose what you need before it’s too late.
