The Glide

We were walking along the river near our house earlier this week watching ducks on the water. Ashley mentioned a video she had seen of ducks swimming from an underwater camera. Below the waterline, a duck’s feet are churning like a motorboat propeller, but above the water, the duck glides effortlessly across the surface.

Turbulence above the water would slow the duck down. The surface calm is not for vanity, it’s for stability and performance. I’ve been thinking about this for a week.

People do their best work when the environment around them feels stable. Stability is not the absence of turbulence. It is the leadership discipline to manage it, and absorb it, rather than channel it to their teams. The team does not need to feel every current that runs through your organization. They need to trust the direction and feel the glide.

Good leaders keep the turbulence at bay, because teams perform better in an environment where every decision isn’t openly regarded as a “hair on fire” situation. Good leaders reserve their gripes for their bosses, not their team. As Tom Hanks’s character shares with his troops in Saving Private Ryan “I don't gripe to you. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me.”

That is worth trying to build, at home and at work. We should strive to create the situations and structures that create trust and stability and give people the best environment in which to perform without turbulence.