When you really mess up on a primary responsibility, what do you lean on?
I didn’t do my job
I was crouched in the hack, preparing to throw my curling rock. This was a high pressure shot. My team had been playing in this tournament for a week, and at this point, the loser of this game would be out. We had been playing in this game for 2.5 hours already, and we wound up in a tie. So here I was starting an ‘extra end.’ With the disadvantage of not having last rock, our slim odds of winning relied on me putting my rock, in a good spot.
I knew I had to deal with adrenaline. And I thought I had adjusted. But after I let the rock go, we all watched it glide down the sheet and stop a foot too far.
There were 15 more rocks to go! But in that moment, I deeply felt that I had let the team down. I hadn’t done my job, and I had actually made it harder for us to achieve our goal.
I felt so bad that I checked out
Adrenaline drained out of me.
I struggled to focus on throwing my second rock. I silently went through the motions for the next 15 minutes, living in my head and dreading the final outcome.
Then no one scored, which is extremely rare.
Then I unexpectedly got a second chance
I was shocked. Incredibly, I literally had a second chance.
It’s fascinating how momentum shifts in sports, and how the unexpected can refresh players. I was jolted out of my head and I re-engaged with my teammates.
They reminded me that my contribution was more than just my first throw.
Every effort I put in to sweeping, noticing details, and sharing information – all of it – was also part of my job and had real impact. It wasn’t just the one element that was being recorded for statistics.
In that extra extra end, we tapped into every way we could to support each other and won the game!
Our impact is more than what is measured
We each want to do our primary job really well.
With all of the KPIs (key performance indicators) and grading systems around us, we can easily get totally consumed in it. But we need to remember and lean into all of the amazing, secondary ways that we make a positive impact on the shared goal.
An exercise for engagement
Here’s an exercise to help you strengthen your engagement muscle:
- Today, jot down the parts of your job that are being measured. (ex. sales numbers, billable hours, or profit ratios)
- Then, list other opportunities in your role to make a positive impact. (ex. helping a colleague with their webinar, connecting someone with a question to someone with an answer, or noticing and acknowledging good work)
- Every day this week, deliberately try a new way of making a secondary impact.
- At the end of the week, notice any difference in the strength of your work that is being measured.
