Do you hold hostage your best efforts, or do you lead where you are planted?

I can still remember when I first read Robin Sharma's blog "Lead where you are planted".  I was immediately impacted by his words.   I not only related to what he said personally, but I had a few employees at the time that were going through a similar mental struggle, and taking his perspective was eye opening and helped all of us adjust our mindset.

"All too often, we wait until ideal conditions appear before we show up at our best. We promise to display more initiative once we get the promotion, become a superb teammate once we get the raise and do world-class work once we receive the applause. But true leadership is about doing your absolute best under imperfect conditions. And leading where you are planted. "

- Robin Sharma

Think about that quote for a second.   Have you been in a situation where you have waited for things to be ideal before you move forward?   Are you holding hostage your best efforts because you haven't gotten that promotion you deserved?  Did you wait to start that diet until Monday or the new month?   Are you going to start going to the gym after New Year's?    Do you have situations where you will only do the work if you receive recognition?   Truth is, although all of those questions may not have fit your situation, we all do things for recognition.   There are a number of things we do that we should just do because it's the right thing to do, not because you're going to be recognized for it.

I remember working at a job where we were regularly bringing on new hires, but we did not really have a departmental on-boarding process.   We did not batch our hires, so we would spend multiple days with new hires getting them familiar with our systems, office environment, organizational hierarchy, functional specifications, ect... Inevitably, a new hire would end up learning a number of things on the job that they could have learned on day one, delaying their ability to have a more immediate impact.    Having recently networked with a peer at another organization in town, she told me about what they did for on-boarding, and I saw that as the perfect solution for our group.   Rather than wait for someone else to take the initiative, I compiled all the information that was most important to our new hires into a single document and after a few reviews with my peers and my director we had a document to use for future new hire on-boarding.   Now, within a half day, we could sit down and walk through the document with a new individual; it included organizational structure, team definitions, expectations, tips and best practices,  map of conference room, escalation information, and even a glossary of terms.  The new person could keep the document as a reference, and they immediately became better day one than they would have been in the old process.    I didn't do this for recognition; I did this because there was a need, and someone needed to step up and fill that need.    It wasn't my job, it wasn't something that I was going to be measured against, I just wanted to improve the inefficiencies we had developed.   It was purely the right thing to do.   At the end of the day, it freed up current resources, gave a better on-boarding experience to our new hire, and allowed all of us the ability to focus our time on more valuable items for the organization.

"Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."  

- CS Lewis

As leaders, we can find ourselves in a number of different situations.   Everything we do, every action we take is a way for us to make a difference.   Robin's point about leading where you are planted helped solidify a belief I had always had but never expressed well.   He stated:

All work is a platform to express creative potential, offer value and make a unique contribution. But we each face a choice each day as we walk out into the world: we can play a victim or we can step up to leadership.  

- Robin Sharma

As leaders, do not allow things to be beneath you.  No task or activity that is done by someone in your organization is menial.   No matter how high in the organizational chart or how low on the organizational chart you may find yourself, you are still a leader at your core and still have the ability to impact someone's experience.  Robin in his blog talks about a bathroom attendant, but lets think of a real world experiences you may have had.  Do you remember that flight where the flight attendant greeted with you with a smile, radiated customer service throughout the flight, and wished you well on your way out?   That flight attendant was leading where they were planted.   Their job isn't to be the CEO of the company or to fly the plane, it's to make your customer experience excellent and your journey in the skies as safe as possible.   The simple act of greeting you with a smile, and wishing you well on a way out, is just one way to lead by example.  The flight attendant could have been a victim, complaining about the schedule, about the destination, or about other passengers, but instead they choose to step up to leadership in the area they were planted.  Take the role you've been asked to do, and excel in it, make it the best that you can be.

"Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better do better" 

- Maya Angelou

When all said and done, leading where you are planted is about doing your best in whatever position / role you are asked to do and not making that effort to greatness conditional.   We all have the ability to make a large difference in the world, if we all just start to lead where we are planted.