Leadership Lessons from Tao

Tao is being fussier than usual. In between screams and gasps for breath, he makes a faint but familiar sound.

“Did you hear that? That’s new, right?” Lisa asks.

We move closer to him, hovering over his bassinet. He makes the sound again.

“There!” Lisa turns her head towards me as she says. “Was that a cough?”

“Yea, I think so.”

It’s usually exciting when Tao does something new, but not this time. Someone in our family, whom we were with a few days ago, tested positive for COVID yesterday, putting us on high alert. We quickly learn how to use the rectal thermometer and check his temperature. It starts at 99.6—high, but not cause for panic. A few hours later, the screen flashes 100.5.

”That’s not good,” Lisa says holding the thermometer into the light.

Up until that point, I’d been doing my best to stay calm and not jump to conclusions. But I knew that anything over 100.4 can be dangerous for a newborn, so when his temperature crossed that threshold, something shifted. I went from “let’s wait and see” mode to “it’s time to act.”

I calmly asked Lisa to call the nurse advice line as I started packing what we would need for a trip to the ER. By the time the nurse picked up, I had the car ready and was mentally prepared to go. It felt like the labor night all over again.

In tough times, people need a leader who can take action without adding extra stress to the situation. However, that doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine when it’s not. People won’t trust you if they feel you’re hiding the truth or lying to yourself and others. Instead, begin by acknowledging the situation and checking in on your team. Then, clarify what needs to be done and focus on taking the first steps toward that goal. Along the way, remember to pause and check the temperature—of both your people and yourself.

Tao is 3 weeks old and has entered a new growth spurt. He’s now eating every 1-2 hours, sometimes more frequently than that. We do our best to read his hunger cues and feed him before he gets upset, but it’s tricky.

Watching your child grow is an interesting dilema. You are excited to see who they become but desperately want to hold on to who they are. He has yet to grow out of any of his baby clothes, but I imagine when he does we will feel a loss of sorts. That is until we throw a new cute outfit on him and start the countdown on the next spurt.

You probably went through your last growth spurt between ages 15 and 20 when you reached physical maturity. But what about after that? What is the last personal or professional growth spurt you went through? What were your “hunger cues” that let you and others know you were ready to grow? What energy source and support did you call upon to enable that growth? Were you successful at communicating your needs to those who could support you? Did they listen?

I believe I’m in a growth spurt now, learning this new position of being Tao’s dad.

New jobs tend to spark growth spurts, as they call upon us to apply our skills and knowledge in an unfamiliar context. If you can do everything you were hired to do by yourself in your first year on the job, you got the wrong job. You want a position that gives you opportunities to excel at the things you know how to do, but you also need opportunities to take on tasks that feel a little scary. That is, if you hope to grow.

By the sounds of Tao’s cries, he found the perfect job.

Getting a new job isn’t the only way to instigate a new growth spurt. You can create opportunities to grow in your current role if you are successfully doing what is expected of you (leaders won’t give you new responsibilities if you haven’t shown you can handle the ones you already have), identify ways you can grow that will benefit you and your organization,  communicate your needs and goals to those who can support you, and are willing to move towards what makes you uncomfortable

While Tao relies on breast milk and sleep to power his growth, I am tapping into a deep sense of purpose, a lot of coffee, and as much help from the grandparents as we can get. Lisa and I feel bad about asking for help multiple times a week, so we appreciate when they reach out to offer. It’s much easier to say yes to help than it is to ask for it.

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to pay attention to the “hunger cues” of your people. If you don’t make an effort to read those signs or if you wait for them to ask for help, you’ll likely lose folks as they look elsewhere for what they need.

It’s impossible to stay in a growth spurt, that’s why it’s called a spurt. We all need time to rest, learn our current position, and build up energy for the next.

As Tao gets older, his needs will change and so will my responsibilities. Eventually, milk will become cooked dinners and the swaddle a conversation. I promise to grow with you, Tao, and to hear your hunger cries even when they sound like angry sentences and closed body language.

Tao’s tongue tie procedure was surprisingly quick. After a few minutes examining his mouth, the pediatric dentist confirmed that his tie was serious enough to potentially cause eating and speech issues, so we agreed to the procedure and she took our baby away. No more than 5 minutes later she came back into the room with Tao peacefully sleeping in her arms. But this was far from over.

In order to prevent the scab under his tongue from healing incorrectly and reversing the procedure we have to perform a series of tongue stretches on him every 4 hours for 4 weeks. Here’s how it goes. First, I run my finger across the sides and top of his mouth. As I do so, his tongue follows my finger around and inevitably activates his gag reflect. This gets the crying started. Then I place my index fingers under his tongue, my middle fingers on his chin to hold his mouth open when he tries to bite down, and I push his tongue to the back of his mouth. As his tongue moves back it stretches the scab to elongate it. I then rub my finger across the scab to open it up, preventing it from healing in a way that would reverse the procedure. At this point, Tao’s face is bright red and his scream cuts through me.

I’m doing my best to connect with the deeper message of this experience, but it’s hard. I know this discomfort is temporary and in his best interest. I could try to write about how without consistent follow through, our best intentions to change can lead us right back to where we started. But the truth is I’m not yet ready to tell this story. And that’s the best lesson I can gather from this at the moment.

Emotional scabs take time to heal. It can be therapeutic to dig deeper into our experiences to discover what they teach us and how they change us, and empowering to share what we uncover with others, but becoming ready to do so can take time. Trying to rush the healing process can be harmful for you and others. As a leader, you must take care of yourself before you can support others. Take the time and seek the support you need. And encourage your teammates to do the same when they are going through difficult times.

As Tao’s scab heals, so will the one on my heart. Eventually we’ll both be able to talk about it.

Lisa’s plan was to have an unmedicated birth and that’s exactly what she did. 24 hours of labor, a 2-hour delivery, a few nurses and doctors that really pushed for Pitocin in the early stages, and the lower back pain from contractions wasn’t enough to throw her off course, but it got close.

Looking back on the experience, Lisa said she might have given in to the nurses recommendation to manage the labor if it wasn’t for our doula, Julie. It wasn’t just the body positions Julie suggested to help Lisa manage the pain and move the labor forward, or the words of encouragement that helped her tap into her inner warrior, it was the presence of someone we trusted who had been through a version of this before. Someone we had an established relationship with, who was less emotionally involved, who understood how to best communicate with us, and who put our interest first.

Like all good coaches, Julie never told Lisa what to do. Instead, she asked questions to make sure Lisa had the information she needed to make her own decision and feel in control of the situation. For Lisa, looking to Julie was looking at a version of herself that wasn’t tied up in the pain or uncertainty of the situation. And while I tried to be as helpful as possible, there were times when I was too emotionally involved to be the calm and comforting presence Lisa needed.

As someone who has benefited from having a professional coach myself, I highly recommend it for anyone who feels stuck or unsure how to move forward. Your colleagues and supervisor are great resources, but like me in the labor room, they might be too close to your situation to be a truly impartial sounding board. Just don’t go into the experience expecting your coach to tell you what to do. Pitocin or no Pitocin, that has to be your call.

Tao has his days and nights mixed up. The theory is that while in the womb, Lisa walking around during the day rocks him to sleep. And at night, the stillness and quiet wakes him up. He did kick the most in the quiet hours.

Now that he is with us, he spends most of the day sleeping and a majority of the night fussing. Visitors come over and rave about how peaceful he is. Lisa and I look at each other and smirk, quietly knowing what they don’t. That at night, our little angel becomes a milk monster.

“It just takes some time for him to unlearn those patterns,” the doctor tells us in our check in.

As a learning designer, I dig deeper. “What can we be doing to signal this change for him? How can we help him with this transition?”

“Try taking a walk in the morning and a bath at night,” the doctor suggests.

We often talk about what we need to learn and do to achieve our goals. It’s less common that we talk about what we need to unlearn or stop doing. In my experience, those conversations only come up when a habit, idea, or way of doing something becomes detrimental to us. In this sense, we see unlearning as a last resort and not a first step in the learning process.

Tao is reminding me that learning is as much about letting go as it is about taking in.

If you want to learn to be better at saying no at work, you have to let go of the desire to always please people. If you want to become a better public speaker, you have to unlearn the verbal crutches (the “umm”s and the “like”s) that you use to fill silence. If you want to learn a new language, you have to let go of the desire to look smart. That’s why children are so quick to learn a language. They aren’t worried about what people think of them when they begin repeating sounds.

When working towards a goal, be as intentional about what you need to unlearn as what you need to learn. Keep an eye out for a tendency to avoid doing the difficult thing. Most of the time, we would rather find ways around unlearning and letting go, because even our unhealthy habits provide comfort. Change is scary but if it’s what you are working towards you don’t have to wait for time to facilitate your unlearning. Create healthy cues that you can integrate into your daily routine. For Tao, it’s a walk in the morning. For you, it might be filling up your water cup anytime you feel an urge. Understand that while avoiding unlearning might feel safer in the moment, there’s a good chance doing so is standing in the way of you achieving your goals. And if it’s not healthy and productive for you, there’s a good chance you are keeping mommy and daddy up at night, metaphorically speaking.

Sometime, Tao fights me when I try to change his diaper. He swings his arms, kicks his feet, screams from the debts of his soul, and even pees on me in self defense. Usually, this dance we play is part sad and part humorous to me.

But I’ve found that when I’m short on sleep, patience can escape me and I can forget to put myself in his crab-print onesie. I find myself wanting to force things, which only makes him fight (and perhaps pee) harder. I stand over him thinking “come onnnn just let me help you!” and forget that he is looking up feeling “cold, scary, danger, help.”

The more I learn this dance, the more I understand the rhythm. You have to move with equal parts intention and love. It’s best for everyone if it’s done quickly, but not at a pace that makes it seem rushed and out of control. And sometimes you have to stop leading and learn to follow. Let him move his limbs to his own beat for a minute, and then pick the dance back up where you left off.

If you feel like someone is getting in the way of you helping them, consider if your actions are as helpful as your thoughts. It’s much easier to think “let me help you” then it is to actually help. And remember, a leader who doesn’t know how and when to follow is not the best dance partner.

It’s 3 AM and I’m bent over the kitchen countertop sucking up breastmilk with a syringe and pouring it into a small measuring container. I’m not planning on salvaging the milk, I just want to know how much of a screwup I actually am. According to the container, I’m about 4 milliliters worth. This is the closest I’ve ever been to crying over spilled milk.

Tao was born with a tongue tie that makes breastfeeding difficult for him. We have an appointment to get the tie removed next week, but for now he has to do his best to latch and suck without full movement of his tongue. As a result, he has lost weight faster than he should the first week. “I feel like we’re living paycheck to paycheck,” she says as she passes over a container holding 15 milliliters of breastmilk, just enough for his next feeding. Well, 11 millimeters now.

The next time you think of telling someone not to cry over spilled milk, pause to consider what that “milk” might mean to them. It might be bigger than coffee and cereal.

Think of the stressors in your life like rocks at the edge of a calm body of water. The water is your emotional state, the rocks are stressors in your life, and the ripples they create when thrown in are the emotional and physical tole of those stressors. When smaller rocks are thrown into your water, you are able to return to calm more easily as the ripples they create don’t stretch out as far. But larger rocks create waves that can linger and cause damage.

What are your small rocks? How about your large ones? What do you do to bring yourself back to calm when stressors come into your life?

It’s important to remember what might be a small rock for you could be a large rock for someone else. Talk to your teammates about what causes stress in the workplace and make time to check in with each other to understand what’s going on outside of work that might be creating ripples.

We’ve been parents for two hours and I’m already exhausted. After 24 hours of unmedicated labor, 2 hours of actively pushing, and a few golden hours of meeting our son, Tao, for the first time, we were moved to the parental care room on the floor above. When the door shut for the first time our family sank into the silence of the room the way your head falls into a pillow after a long day. But the peace and quiet was short lived.

Nurses, doctors, and students started coming in and out, a cycle that would repeat every couple hours for the next two days. At one point, a photographer came into the room offering family photos, something neither my mental state nor my hair was ready for. The constant check ins and guidance made sleep impossible, but I was glad to be walking this tight rope with them as our safety net.

Despite the hours of e-learning modules, in-person classes, articles, books, and endless advice from friends and family, I still still riddled with doubt. My lack of confidence in the task at hand, a new stack of reading materials on the nightstand, and the mental fog from supporting Lisa over the last day left me disoriented. I can’t imagine how she feels.

“Wait, how do you hold the bottle again?” I ask Lisa while struggling to get him to eat.

“What’s the best way to support his head when burping him?” I wonder while attempting to hold him over my should, pat his back, and prevent his head from flopping around, a task that seems to require three hands.

“Can a swaddle be too tight?” I whisper into the darkness while getting him ready for bed. “I can’t believe the nurses don’t walk us through how to do these thing. This doesn’t feel like a trial and error type of situation,” I say while pressing my ear to his nose to make sure he is still breathing. The stakes feel so high.

I made a few mistakes during these two days but nothing that we couldn’t course correct with a little help. I found that the support I needed was there, I just had to push the button and ask. We did have one nurse who seemed reluctant to answer questions and made us feel guilty for not knowing everything, but the others made up for her lack of empathy and set the tone for our first few days on the job. While clocking in for the first time was scary, and learning by doing was overwhelming at first, we were grateful for the opportunity to practice being Tao’s parents in a safe space without people hovering over us at all times.

While self-paced materials and check-ins are an important part of the orientation process, people also need the opportunity to contribute to meaningful tasks from the beginning. Doing so instills trust, helps them learn how to collaborate with their teammates, and gives them a chance to introduce themselves through their work. But what kind of tasks are right for a new colleague? Real ones.

Avoid the urge to micromanage and instead focus on establishing the psychological safety that invites them to seek support when they need it. You can do this by encouraging them to ask questions, clarifying the best communications channels, and celebrating their curiosity and vulnerability when they do so.

Your new teammate might feed Tao too quickly at first, or attempt to burp him a little too long, but if given the chance to practice and timely feedback they will learn not just what to do but how to do it.