Hugs for Messing Up
After messing up one of the most important calls of the decade, I was certain my career was over. What happened instead was a moving example of leadership that left me in a state of awe. The large company I worked for was preparing for a transformation that impacted about twenty-thousand employees across the province and the communities they lived in. The undertaking had to be kept confidential for awhile until the plan was created and approved. The corporate announcement would follow. In the meantime, rumours started circulating.
I was asked to join the group tasked with the planning and communication needed to support the program. Watching my colleagues struggle with the uncertainty, I wasn’t sure how I felt about being on the inside. But my Senior VP asked me to help and he was a genuine and kind man who cared deeply about his people. If he needed me, I was happy to help.
We had to balance the need to prevent information from leaking before announcement day, with the desire to respect people’s need to know how and when they’d be impacted. Speculation continued to mount and in the absence of official communication people tended to make up their own, usually not so accurate, versions of the truth. I felt like a traitor to my own team because I knew something they didn’t and couldn’t divulge it. One of them said to me, “I know you’re working on something big. You’re going to Toronto more than usual. I also know you can’t tell us anything but I’m glad you’re part of it because I trust you. And I know you’ll tell us when you can.” I felt undeserving and humbled but vowed to do my best not to let them down.
In the months leading up to announcement day, we held meetings at all hours and did our best to maintain a positive outlook, healthy perspective, and some semblance of sanity. We took turns gasping for air at those moments when the enormity and impact of the undertaking sunk in. Now and then, each of us supported whichever colleague expressed the anxiety we were all feeling. Change alone was scary enough, but this one came with job loss, the imminent closure of some locations, and a great deal of uncertainty for thousands of people, many of whom were long-time colleagues and friends. Those of us on the inside knew our jobs would never be the same, if there even was a job for us when it was all over.
As announcement day approached, we did trial runs of our communication plan at least twice a day to ensure we hadn’t missed any groups and we confirmed who was going to be at each location when the announcement was released. We had contingency plans, risk registers, and spreadsheets to document every possible scenario we could imagine. The locations that were closing would hear the news first and would be attended by senior management, who would offer in-person support. One of my tasks was to stay behind at our Toronto office and coordinate the cascading set of teleconferences that would immediately follow the early morning in-person sessions. We knew as soon as one location heard the news, word would spread quickly so we needed an organized approach that respected the need for accurate timely information. The plan was to hold teleconferences to inform management at all our locations, including corporate offices, so they in turn could communicate to their teams.
The morning of the cascading calls, I was at the office at 6:30 a.m. ready to work with our Senior VP’s assistant to get the calls scheduled and meeting invites sent. We couldn’t do any of this in advance without raising questions we couldn’t answer yet. The in-person sessions with locations slated to close were completed in the early morning as planned. By mid-morning we started the broader call with leadership at all our locations and corporate offices. My Senior VP noticed the call was light on attendance and I listened with growing dread as he was met by silence when he started to call names of the managers at each location. The corporate office management team was on the call but the other locations, who were the most heavily impacted by the announcement, had been missed on the invite. With diplomacy and his typical calm demeanor, he ended the call and asked everyone to stand by for a revised invite. I was using an office two floors down and sprinted up the stairs as fast as I could to meet with his assistant so we could figure out what had gone wrong.
I was panicking and in fear of being fired or worse yet, breaking down into tears (violating my die before cry at work rule). When I reached his office, he was standing outside the door talking to his assistant in a tone that didn’t match the cadence of my racing heart. It didn’t take long to discover why a large chunk (the most impacted) of attendees hadn’t been invited to the call. There was a distinction between corporate office leadership and managers at each facility and because I hadn’t been specific, the latter were not included on the invitation’s distribution list. I was mortified and just wanted to crawl under a desk, hide my burning face, and throw up. I turned to the VP and said, “This is my fault. I am so sorry.” I didn’t think I could get more words out without crying or passing out.
This man, who was experiencing the most difficult and emotional day of his career, put his arm around my shoulders, gave me a firm one-armed hug, and said, “Now, don’t you be sorry. We will fix this.” And we did. Within minutes, we were on the call with the correct attendees.
I made it through the day without crying, passing out, or throwing up. And I retired from the same company years later, still in awe of this man and the lessons he taught me. He could have pointed the finger at me on a day when many fingers were pointed his way. Instead, he chose to comfort me for messing up and in doing so, set a lasting example of true leadership.
