The weight put on Captain Crab’s shoulder. Leading by an example.

The story we all have heard when young goes like this.

There lived a crab family in a peaceful beach of an island. A father crab was not happy that crabs walk sideways, thus he told his kids. “Kids, it is not elegant to walk sideways and I want you to walk straight!” The little crabs tried but they couldn’t. Looking at the situation, the father crab approached to his kids to correct them, walking “sideways”.

As I started leading a team and also being a father, one big challenge I tend to find has been how to speak with my deeds, not just by my words. There tend to be gaps though. In some cases, it is because those tasks are applied mostly to my team members, not to a manager. Thus even if I had a genuine intention to demonstrate with my own examples, it is somewhat challenging to have a buy-in as my team members may say “You don’t know how hard it is, or you don’t know how tedious this can be.” In other cases, it also is possible that the guideline applies to all (including myself) yet I somehow think I have a right to be exempted. Then it really gets critical that your words have no meaning. Guideline on safety or integrity issues are of this case.

In (North-east) Asia, there are several things that are considered (though much weaker these days) as indicators of how kids are properly educated in a family. Among those, handwriting and using chopsticks are two of those that I found I needed to pay more attention to my son, as I felt I myself didn’t do properly when I was young. Thus I corrected my boy in almost all my family meals and also checking his handwriting in his school notes. I suppose my boy wouldn’t have enjoyed such scoldings, but he had been okay until recently. However, now the (seemingly) friendly correction comes back to me, as his correction on me, “Daddy, you aren’t supposed to hold chopsticks like that…”, along with “Daddy, I appreciate you wrote your comments on my note but I can’t read them (with somewhat revengeful smile...)”. Though it might have been a bit late, now I realize more clearly that my son watches more on what I do, rather than passively hearing what I say. 

One of top management persons in my company once said to senior leaders of the company on safety in a very clear manner. “If you walk up stairs without holding handrails or walk typing on smartphone, you are actually saying to the organization it is okay to violate safety guideline. What you do is basically setting the expectation among employees in the company.”

Then how do we deal with the dilemma?

First, I think we managers (Captain Crabs) must remind ourselves constantly what the team members follow is not my words but my deeds. Hundreds of integrity sessions cannot match with a corporate culture that everyone, particularly leaders actually live by their words.

Second, I suppose we also need to be honest on our mistakes and failures. My relationship with my son whom I tended to reprimand a lot on mistakes in his early days and who now catches a lot of my mistakes on the similar occasions, got much better when I started saying, “I am sorry, son. I made a mistake.” Then we try (although not always easy) to reset the starting point for an improvement. Honest recognition restores trust. 

Being a leader is a weighty responsibility. Yet, I am grateful the weight actually gives me more serious opportunity to improve in a candid manner. I would like to say, "Go, Captain Crabs!"