One consistent theme I’ve observed in the most effective leaders I’ve worked with is the ability to leave behind past events once no longer relevant. They use the past to learn, but they don’t spend significant time or energy focusing on or talking about past people, events, old processes, etc. The go-forward plan of action and belief in the future is often much more relevant and important to the team and so prioritizing their time and focus here is more effective.

Conversely, some of the more junior or less effective leaders I’ve worked with often spend a considerable amount of time discussing prior events, team members, or old and now outdated ways of doing things. They get a bit stuck in the past and struggle to move on.

Let’s say you have an executive who oversees a function (e.g., marketing) and their success requires a close working relationship with a leader in another function (e.g., production). The marketing leader depends on sufficient advance warning on new products coming off the line to prepare the appropriate brand content to support a launch. Well, say the production supervisor is notorious for dropping the ball on communicating with marketing and often leaves them in a panic, and then that production supervisor is terminated. Fast forward six months: an effective marketing executive will have moved on and re-established a better working relationship and process with the new production supervisor. An ineffective marketing executive will continue to discuss the problems caused by the old production supervisor, distrust the function, and struggle to establish a better working relationship with the new production supervisor.

Typing this out, it seems straightforward. And yet, I’ve seen examples of folks getting stuck many times over the years. Better to focus ahead.

The other day, I was in the final stretch of a run and coming North up the street near my home. Coming South towards me were three ~12-year-olds riding scooters, spread horizontally across the sidewalk. As I was coming towards them, I was expecting one would make way for me to pass. But they didn’t and because there were cars parked along the street on one side and a building on the other, I had to awkwardly squeeze myself between a car and the sidewalk to avoid hitting one of them. And I kind of got the sense these kids were aware of the situation and purposefully not moving out of the way because they thought it was funny. Naturally, my first thought was “what a bunch of little pricks” and I briefly fantasized about having just barreled through them. Fortunately, it was only a fleeting immature and petty thought. I was then thinking if I had acted on that impulse, how pathetic a grown man would look in that situation. Because even if those kids were being little shits, adults are held to a higher standard, and rightfully so.

It reminded me of a situation at Avanti that happened many years ago, when we first started using Microsoft Teams. There was an employee who routinely posted snarky, sarcastic, and ‘know-it-all’ responses in public channels. Mostly in response to other people asking for help or clarification on product related topics. He was older and had significant subject matter expertise and was working in an individual contributor role. It would have been apparent to anyone reading that he was being a jerk. His Manager, who was a newly minted and first-time manager, started posting public and snarky retorts in reply. And even though the Manager was clearly in the right, by mirroring the employee’s poor behaviour, it reflected even more poorly on him than his employee. It reflected poorly because we expect more from our leaders. We hold them to a higher bar. And that feels appropriate; a leader should be held to higher standards.