What I learned from one of the most challenging weeks of my career

This is the story of one of the most challenging weeks of my career so far—and the biggest leadership lesson that came along with it.

It happened about a month ago.

It was a Monday. My teammate of thirteen years, Rachel, had traveled to my home in Houston the day before so that she could join me for a busy week on the road: Four in-person speaking events, three different cities, and three flights within four days.

On Monday evening, we were scheduled to fly to Memphis, TN, for a big event the next day. As we rode to the airport, we checked to make sure our flight was on time. We saw that our inbound plane was behind schedule, but so far, our flight hadn’t been delayed.?

This was just three days after the global tech meltdown, and with all the flight cancellations it had caused, I started to get worried. There were no other flight options that night, so our choices were to either hang out at the airport and hope that our flight would get us to Memphis eventually, or find a different way to get there.

We were riding to the airport with Jamal, an amazing gentleman who has been driving me in Houston for years. I asked him if he or someone from his car service company would be up for driving us to Memphis that night if push came to shove and our flight got canceled. He generously said yes, and we joked that we hoped it wouldn’t come to that.?

Well, 30 minutes later, it did.

Shortly after Jamal dropped us off, we got the news that our flight was delayed and now wouldn’t reach Memphis until 2:30 a.m.—which was the best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario was waiting all night at the airport only to have the flight get canceled with no way to make it to my event on time. I did the math: If we went by car instead, we would make it to Memphis around 5 a.m. It certainly wasn’t ideal, but it would get us there.

I knew I had to make a game time decision as a leader, so I did: I told Rachel we would get there by car.

Shortly after that, our hero Jamal was back at the airport to pick us up. Rachel and I changed into our pajamas in the airport bathroom and embarked on a NINE-hour car ride to Memphis.

By golly, Jamal got us there. We pulled into our hotel at 5:15 in the morning and had a couple of hours to rest before my event.

The rest of that day was a whirlwind. Have you ever been so tired that you feel so awake? I was on that level. We went to the event, I gave it my all, and it couldn’t have gone better. Plus, our client was blown away that we had ridden overnight to make sure we could be there.

You might be imagining that the story ends here . . . but after that, the week only got more challenging.

The next day, we were still in Memphis, and I was scheduled to do a virtual event from my hotel room. When I went to bed Tuesday night, the internet was working great, but on Wednesday morning, I turned on my computer and realized, oh no, I can’t connect to Wi-Fi.

The hotel staff told me the internet was down because of a firewall issue. They had been working on it for several hours already because they knew I had an event, and while they were hoping to have it fixed in time, they couldn’t guarantee that it would be. It was out of their control. (My favorite detail? The hotel’s Wi-Fi name was “StayOnline.” The irony!)

I had another game time decision to make: Use my Wi-Fi hotspot, which would have been risky; scramble to find another location for the session; or reschedule.?

I decided to call my client so that we could make the decision together. Luckily, I’d been working with this client for a long time, so when I called and explained the situation, they gave me grace. They lovingly said they would prefer to have me at my best, so we rescheduled the event.?

I was really bummed that I had to let them down. Two hundred people were supposed to be there. (I was even more bummed when the internet came back 15 minutes after the session was originally supposed to start.)

You might be thinking, That’s got to be it—this week can’t get worse!

It did.

On Thursday evening, it was finally time for me to fly home. We were in Chicago by then for our last event together that week, and Rachel decided to stay an extra night so she could have some fun in the city. I just wanted to be home in my own bed, and because flights had been so dicey with the outage, I booked two flights home. I figured that when I got to the airport, I would see which one had the best chance of going out.

Well, I chose the worst one. There was a maintenance issue, and I didn’t end up getting home until after midnight.

And then, when I got home, one of our carbon monoxide detectors kept going off. I happened to be home alone that night, and my first thought was that I was being poisoned and needed to evacuate. I called my husband, and he said that the sound meant the battery needed to be replaced. By the time he talked me through how to disconnect it, it was after 2 a.m.

It was a rough week, and I thought it was finally behind me . . .?

. . . until Monday came around again. Little did I know that I was about to face a travel disaster even worse than the ones the week before.

Read the rest on my blog ??