The First Lesson

“It’s the most perfect day to start any job... The most marvelous day that was ever invented. Why, there is absolutely nothing a man can’t do. Tomorrow.”

- David Browne, The Andy Griffith Show (Season 2, Episode 6)

The First Lesson

When I talk about leadership, I’m not talking about vague platitudes but hard-earned lessons forged through trial and error. This post is about the first real lesson I learned in leadership, one that came early in my career.

I had just been promoted to my first supervisory position. I was a hard worker, that’s why I got the job, but I had no real experience leading others. And for my first employee, I drew a doozy. To keep him anonymous, we’ll call him “David Browne.”

I trained David and showed him the ropes, but his effort was minimal. At the time, I couldn’t understand why. It turns out we had competing and conflicting goals. I wanted to mold him into a great employee; he wanted to do as little as possible. I believed my enthusiasm would rub off. It didn’t.

Then, along came Shannon Chandler. Shannon was everything David wasn’t: hardworking, eager to learn, and what we call “raised right.” He picked things up quickly and made my job easier. Any time David slacked off, I sent Shannon over to fix it. You could hear me calling his name across the building: “Shannon Chandler!” He became my go-to guy, my crutch.

Until one day, I called for Shannon, and he wasn’t there. He had quit. Just like that, I was left alone with David Browne, and I had learned my first lesson.

I’d made a classic managerial mistake: leaning too hard on the high performer while avoiding the hard work of coaching the underperformer. It’s the path of least resistance—and it’s wrong.

 The easiest thing to do in this world is to get a hard worker to work hard; the most difficult is to get a lazy person to care. But that’s the job. Relying too heavily on the Shannons of the world teaches them that effort leads to exploitation while letting the Davids skate by rewards laziness.

The real work of leadership is creating a culture where excellence is expected, rewarded, and shared, where everyone pulls their weight. “A Peer Pressure of Excellence.” This was my first and hardest lesson, and one I’ve never forgotten.

“The world is full of darkness and wickedness, and there are two ways to deal with it. The first way is easy but wrong: accept the evil of the world and become a part of it. The second way is right but much, much harder: resist the evil and find others who are good, and help them endure.”

- The Holy Seer, Arabian Nights