What I learned from trying to make the parking lot attendant smile

This is a story and a train of thought that starts with the parking attendant, Kamel, near my office. But as I thought about this series of interactions – it took me a lot further into the difference between grand symbolic gestures and #sustained #authentic daily behavior at several levels and in different contexts.

The Kemal Story

Spring 2018 - I started a new job this spring, actually working where I live for a change, and I needed to drive to work. I secured parking (not easy in Victoria) in an underground parking lot near my office. The parking attendant booth, like most, is at the top of the ramp in the middle of the enter and exit lanes. I drove to work for my first day, excited about the new role and firm and team. And I’m a smiling person to start with – it’s difficult for me not to smile.

So I pulled into the parkade with my little key card all smiles and excited. The window to the parking attendant booth was open, and so was my truck window so I could tap the card on the little post which is about 10 feet before the booth. So I rolled down to the booth with my vehicle window open and said good morning to the attendant. He didn’t look up, didn’t acknowledge me. But I said have a great day, noticed his badge said Kamel, and drove down to my space.

I don’t work in Victoria every day, but most days. So every day when I rolled in I would wave if the booth window was closed, I would say "good morning, Kamel" if the booth window was open. Sometimes he would look up – but not say anything nor smile nor wave back. But I would wave or say hello or good morning Kamel regardless. This went on pretty much every day for about three months.

Summer 2018 - One day when I rolled in he was in the booth with the window closed, so I waved and smiled – and he gave me a half-hearted wave! I burst out with an even bigger smile, waved a few more times and couldn’t keep the grin off my face the whole way down to my parking spot and all morning. After that, we waved or saluted each other most mornings, and I even got the odd smile back from time to time.

I took a three week vacation at the start of the summer. When I came back to work the first day, Kamel was standing outside the booth on the little middle island, near the post where you tap your card. He looked up and gave me a huge smile. Before I could say “good morning, how are you?” he said “I was worried I haven’t seen you for weeks, I thought maybe something happened to you”.

Current Day - Fast forward four more months to now, and Kamel and I chit chat most days on my way in. He’s usually done for the day by the time I leave work, so I only see him in the morning. When I got a new vehicle this fall, he wasn’t working the first morning I drove it, but when I came in the next day he said “I was going to tow that vehicle out of your spot because I thought someone stole your space”. Now, I almost always get a brilliant smile from him and we chat about the day ahead or the weekend behind us.

What does Kamel have to do with transformation and authenticity and relationships?

When I sat back in the spring and thought about why do I keep smiling and saying hello to this person who isn’t smiling or saying hello back – a part of it was a challenge. I am a happy person and I like to make other people smile and happy and I set myself a goal to see if I could get him to smile. Now – he’s one of my favourite parts of the day and our little exchanges always make my morning.

But what struck me this fall as I thought about it after having a great chat with Kamel one morning – is that I wasn’t sure I was as deliberate in my day to day and minute to minute interactions in the rest of my life at work and at home. Do I set myself an explicit challenge or a goal to sustain an effort to connect better with an individual I find it harder to communicate with at work? Not always is the honest answer. And that got me thinking that so often in organizations and in relationships, personal and professional, we over-emphasize grand gestures instead of setting ourselves goals to perform the small, consistent but meaningful things.

Example #1 employee feedback surveys.

Many organizations go all out to get people to fill them in so we can take the pulse and “know where our people are at”. Often there will be a big employee event to share the results (months and months after we asked them to do the survey because we needed to “strategize” on how best to respond to what we heard) but what they told us was mostly that they weren’t getting good or timely feedback on performance, they didn’t understand our organizational strategy and how they fit, or various flavours of that. I’m using we a broadly here as in “we leaders”.

So what did we do? We didn’t give them any feedback on the survey initial findings, we didn’t tell them what we were prioritizing, and we left all the same managers and leaders in place who they told us might not be so good, as the first point of contact looking after those employees.

The grand gesture of the survey, the grand gesture of the event, and the grand gesture that goes with the leaders unveiling the plan – often don’t mean much in the context of the daily small things that are happening that are delivering the opposite message.

Example #2 – Change Management when Transforming

I’ve worked with many clients and I’ve worked for organizations where their approach to Change Management for a major transformation of how people work or experience service, is a communications plan (often one way communication out to employees or stakeholders) and a Town Hall for employees or a Grand Unveiling Speech to stakeholders (grand gesture) and a 30 day “hyper care” support plan. If there’s too little medium term planning for how to sustain the day to day behavior and support required to back up the grand statements - it's a sub-optimal outcome.

Example #3 – Giving up too quickly on changes or initiatives at the day to day level

We also sometimes have unrealistic expectations of how/when the smaller things will deliver results – we set up a regular feedback program or a monthly session – and either participation is low or we get only negative feedback. So we stop after a few months because it’s “not working” – except that we didn’t listen or respond to the last 3 years worth of feedback that people wanted more than a once a year chance to give feedback. We might need to try for 12 months to convince people that we’re serious about listening.

Or at an individual interaction level we try to change our pattern of interacting with someone - so we take the first step and change, but the person doesn’t respond any differently when we try our new behavior/approach out. We might even stick at it for a while, but then say, well I tried, and it didn’t work.

I fall into the category of having made both of these mistakes. There’s some research and wisdom that says there needs to be 5 times as many good/consistent experiences as bad experiences (and that one bad one wipes most of the good out). Hopefully that doesn’t mean a year of interacting in a sub optimal way needs 5 years for the other person or group of people to believe you, but it definitely needs more than one try.

Example #4 – personally

I promised our crew I wouldn’t embarrass any of us as I’m a bit more open book than some of my family – but suffice to say that I have a lot of examples where I have done grand gestures at home to prove I was listening or paying attention to a request for something to change, but not really followed through on the little patterns of behavior day to day and week to week that say “I got it”. I’ve gone 36 hours without sleep and flown across the globe to make it back for a friend’s anniversary dinner or special recognition event, but chosen frequently to text versus pick up the phone and call to check in because I was too busy with some issue at work or didn't have the "energy" for a long conversation. You get the gist….

My conclusion, my practice and my question

All the grand gestures in the world don’t make up for a sub-optimal day to day experience. For that day to day experience to be positive, it has to be sustained, authentic and consistent for people to experience it as real.

This is a topic that I’m going to continue to think on, and make personal. Assessing myself as to whether I’m doing enough consistent, authentic, meaningful small things in addition to the right “grand gestures” when those are the appropriate thing. There’s a place for events and symbolic gestures for sure. But this has definitely caused me to be more mindful about my interactions both at home and at work and more explicit in setting myself goals.

I'm also going to be more direct on this topic in my work with clients. What are you doing to really invest in sustaining or seeing that all the small things day to day experiences happen that will support the major change you are trying to make? How deep are you diving to pull this through? These investments and changes matter just as much as the big transformation in changing the experience for employees, stakeholders, citizens and customers.

I’d be curious what you think about this topic. Whether you agree or disagree? And what kinds of great and not so great examples you’ve seen? And if you ever park on Broughton Street in Victoria - make sure you say hello to Kamel.