It's so EASY for you...

A recurring theme across my working life has been the comment, "It's easy for you..." I recall when I first moved to Sydney, I was helping my housemate prepare for a job interview; he became frustrated and said, "It's easy for you; it's so much harder for me."

In his mind, I always nailed every interview; I got all the offers; I had all the confidence. Nothing could have been further from the truth. At the time, I had a sales job that I was failing at, and I was very close to being fired. I was interviewing like mad but getting nowhere. It definitely was NOT easy for me. What I did was take a good, hard look in the mirror and realise that I was doing a job for which I had no training, no relevant experience, and no mentorship or guidance. I WAS failing, and my prospects of ever succeeding were pretty grim.

As luck would have it, I stumbled across a brilliant HR leader who had seen this problem happen again and again in their sales team. He had created a program he called "Sales Associates", under which he hired people just like me, paired them with a successful senior staff member and included ongoing training and development.

It was a salary decrease, a title demotion and a risk for me. It was not an easy decision to make, but I am super glad I made it. Those few years gave me the opportunity to learn so much that I likely never would have found time for otherwise. But it was NOT EASY for me. On my lower salary, I found it hard to pay my rent for some months. I had to skip and save a lot. I was embarrassed. So at first, I didn't want anyone to know it was hard because I didn't want to seem weak or appear to be failing. I never projected anything but success and confidence despite the reality. Over time, I've tried to find a more balanced approach.

I have a thing about trying to project positive energy into the world. I want to share happiness, I want to talk about success, not dwell on failure. I don't think that's necessarily always the right thing. Lately, I am trying to be more transparent about my failures. When I push for a big change, when I try for a promotion or when I am leading a project that fails, I try to share these as well. Believe me, there are PLENTY of these to share. If you hate me, I don't want to show any weakness or talk about my failings. But if you're part of my team, I think it's essential that we share our failures AND our successes.

It's definitely NOT easy. When you are open and transparent, you invite the whole world to watch on as you fall flat on your face. AND, some of them LOVE watching you fail. They snicker and laugh and enjoy the spectacle. BUT, I have found that more often than not, there's a group that appreciates your transparency, has great empathy and is waiting to help pick you up, dust you off and get you back on track. No matter how many haters there are, these people are the ones that I remember.

I was away for a planning meeting this week, and the same comment came up again, "It's easy for you." It's easy for you to change your organisational structure, it's easy for you to spend money, it's easy for you to find time to exercise. I promise you, NONE of these things are easy. It's a battle, and the only way to get them done is HARD WORK. It's a long, complicated process of internal selling to create a different organisational structure than the standard company template; it takes a LOT of justification. It's the same when it comes to asking for funding. There's a business case to write, ROI to present, and stakeholders to manage. Finding time in an insanely busy schedule for fitness? Honestly, I fail at this one more than any other. I promise you, it's NOT easy for me, but it's worth the work.

I missed my workouts this week. Our team #TuesdayRunningMeeting didn't happen because I was locked away in interstate planning meetings. I came home with a cold. Sore-headed, congested and achey, I didn't want to get up at 5AM and do my weekly cardio. BUT I did it anyway. It hurt like hell, I did it in the afternoon humidity and having a cold made it ten times worse.

Please don't tell me "It's easy" because it really, truly is not.