Extraordinary
I’ve been blessed to have many extraordinary moments in my business career – in every job, at every location, with every boss, and with widely varying teams. The best of my bosses had an uncanny knack of recognizing extraordinary efforts being given by ordinary people, thus making those ordinary people, extraordinary in their own rights. The best of the teams had an even more uncanny ability to recognize their ordinariness and by working together achieved extraordinary results. But the best of the best in both cases recognized the extraordinary nature of very ordinary acts and by excelling at those ordinary acts, extraordinary success occurred!
It’s so easy today to be caught up in the awe of impossible feats being achieved by superstars on a team. Even worse, it’s very typical today that those superstars who achieve their sometimes accidental moments of fame ride that celebration to great reward and incredible near term advancement. But buried behind every one of those superstars are very ordinary people that went to extraordinary levels for that obviously overwhelming event to occur.
The best of the best see beyond the superstars and realize that the extraordinary nature of their otherwise very ordinary team is equally as important to success as any of the superstars. The best of the best bring into focus the contributions of all those other ordinary people on their team doing extraordinary things and raise those extraordinarily ordinary people to an equally applauded level.
Unfortunately, we live in a pedestal seeking and pedestal watching world, and the pedestals that we have created have only enough room for one or maybe two of our self-defined (and sometimes self-ordained) pedestal deserving people. And while those on the pedestal bask in the glory of the adulation and receive an overwhelming amount of praise for their pedestal achieving accomplishments, the truly extraordinary yet very ordinary team that through their efforts provided the steps for that pedestal topping performance of the superstar are already back at work providing very ordinary yet extraordinary support to the next spectacular moment that will yield another pedestal topping performance!
The best of the best recognize the heroics of the superstars and yet build a pedestal big enough to allow all of those extraordinarily ordinary team members to share momentarily in that special moment, because the best of the best know that those ordinary yet extraordinary members of their team don’t work to be on that pedestal, but work to deliver extraordinary support to the journey to get to that pedestal!
I’m very thankful for those extraordinarily ordinary people that I’ve been blessed to know on every team in every job at every place I’ve ever worked! They won’t want it, but they certainly deserve a tremendous amount of the glory!