"Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?” - Lao Tzu

Earlier this week, a colleague of mine and I were invited to spend some time with a group of staff who aspire to become managers. This has inspired me to share with you much of what I shared with them and to write about twice as much as usual this week.

Over lunch, we each shared our experiences in careers that lead us to management positions and some insights about working as managers. My colleague’s story provided an excellent example of how a person can make and follow a plan that leads them to achieve their career goals. He set out to serve in many different capacities in IT and to become a manager with a solid grounding in the work of those he would manage. I was fortunate to hire him as a member of our staff many years ago and to watch him develop into the wonderful manager he is today.

My story was a good counterpoint to my colleague's, as I never set out to work in IT or to become a manager! I can’t claim to have planned my course and I’m just grateful that I found my way to a career that has allowed me to provide a good living for my family. Where my colleague was the first in his family to graduate from college, my grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, and uncles were all college graduates. My sisters and I all graduated from college. While I had hoped for a career in music, and had even considered the ministry as a young man, I went to college with the original intention to earn a degree in enology, or wine making. While I could do the necessary chemistry, I didn’t enjoy that and I went on to change my major to psychology. I hoped to earn my doctorate, work as a clinical psychologist and do research.

I moved to a city where I could pursue my Master’s degree, but ran out of money before I could enter that program. Recently married for the first time, I needed to find a way to make more money than my job as a bank teller provided and I answered a newspaper ad that lead me to a job for county government as a computer operator on IBM 370-158 mainframes running VS-1. Working with punch cards and magnetic tape, I had started my career in IT. Within two years, I had taught myself to program in IBM assembler language and got a job as a programmer for a savings and loan data processing bureau.

Within a year, I was the senior programmer in my group as there were significant opportunities for advancement with this company and also some turnover as colleagues pursued new positions. This job gave me such wonderful opportunities to learn new skills and make a difference. I can remember making changes in a general ledger program that improved I/O efficiency to reduce the run time from 6 hours to less than an hour and working on conversions that saw me working straight through from 10 pm Friday to 6 am on Monday. This privately-held company was the only place I’ve worked where there was a technical career path that would allow technicians to reach a position with the company similar to that of a vice president.

After several years, my first mentor approached me about coming to work for him as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes for the company and I was excited to pursue this new opportunity. I started my work focusing on storage and migrating data from 3330 disk packs to the newer 3350 disk drives. I went on to work on many aspects of the MVS environment and this may be the best job I can remember having in my career.

After 8 ⅕ years with the company, I took a job at a local university that was migrating to a new IBM mainframe from their current Cyber environment. This gave me the opportunity to work with many additional mainframe technologies including OS/390, zOS, CICS, VTAM, VM, AIX, and VSE. I interviewed, and was hired, as a senior technician, but one week later I was asked to take on the role of supervisor for the group. While I had never had an interest in managing others, this turned out to be the first step toward my career as a manager that would start 11 years later.

After I spent time supervising mainframe systems programmers, and AIX, Solaris, and Windows server systems administrators, the Director of our department approached me to ask if I would join the management team. While I never aspired, or planned, to be a manager, this opportunity less than two years after my second marriage gave me the chance to help make a better life for my family and I gratefully accepted. Looking back, I find it interesting that every time I applied for a more responsible position in management, I failed. Every time I advanced in my career as a manager, it was because I was asked by senior leaders to take on a more responsible role! While I never wanted to be a manager, and it is not my calling, it has provided a very good living for our family.

Another key part of my development as a manager was my work with SHARE (www.share.org). This oldest of computer users groups, founded in 1955, provided me with wonderful opportunities to learn about managing people, budgets, and projects, working collaboratively with others, communicating effectively, and making well considered decisions. While my work with the data processing bureau was my favorite job, my work with colleagues as a SHARE volunteer has been the one most rewarding and satisfying part of my career in IT. My wife and I found cherished life-long friends there, too, and we’ll always be grateful for all SHARE has done for us.

After sharing the story of my career, I shared with our colleagues four of the most important lessons from my time as a manger. First, I talked with them about the importance of learning from others and of finding mentors to help us grow. I’ve had several wonderful mentors and I still think of my first mentor, Gary, often and ask myself what he would do in challenging situations.  I told them the story of my becoming a “real systems programmer”. Called in late one night to respond to a system problem, I found issues with our catalogs and worked my way through to a solution. After several steps that appeared to make things worse, I made a change that resulted in an improvement. From there, each step lead me closer to restoring normal service and I ultimately had the system running normally in time for our clients on the east coast to begin the business day.

I wrote up my incident report and walked it to the boss's office to leave for him before going home to get some sleep. Gary often arrived early, so I wasn’t very surprised to see him sitting at his desk. I handed him my report and waited as he read it over. He was a kind, very intelligent, but taciturn Minnesotan and I was surprised when he set the report down after reading it, stood and reached out to shake my hand. He looked me in the eye and said, “Congratulations. Now you are a systems programmer.” He explained that he’d hired me knowing I had a lot to learn and that a person isn’t really a systems programmer until they’ve “brought the system to it’s knees and gotten it running again.”

Gary taught me that it is OK to hire someone expecting them to grow into the job. To be ready to see potential and to have faith in people. Gary was the one who first sent me to SHARE knowing that it would help me grow. He also taught me that one very powerful decision-making tool is working to understand what is right and then choosing the option that comes closest to that. After sharing this story, I also shared Roy Disney’s wonderful words "It's not hard to make decisions once you know what your values are."

The second important lesson I shared is the very real value and power of diversity. I've worked for women, and people of different national and ethnic backgrounds. I've worked for bosses older and younger than I am, and for gay and lesbian leaders. I’ve lead teams including many different kinds of people and I’ve learned how very valuable it is to have, and listen to, the different perspectives, ideas, and experiences they have to offer.

I told the group about my opportunity to work with an executive who had been difficult for many others to work for because she demanded the best from people and expected good data and clearly developed proposals. Ultimately, we learned from each other. I learned about many aspects of management much as we elevate our chess or tennis games when we play against a more skilled player. I think she learned from me that she could safely show her deep compassion more often and more fully. I can’t imagine how hard she had to work, and the obstacles she faced as a woman and a Latina, to reach the senior position she held when we worked together. Appearing “soft” may have been a luxury she couldn’t afford at first. I know that I saw her express her innate kindness to others more often over the years I worked for her.

I talked with the group about the importance of equality and equity, and the great value of diverse ideas, opinions, perspectives. I also emphasized that, while we have important work to do to ensure equality and equity, the real value of diversity will not be found in sameness. We want to level the playing field, but we need to retain and honor the rich diversity of the players.

The third lesson I shared is the deep importance of work/life balance. To be our best at work, we need to be whole, well-balanced people. Having learned the hard way by losing months of my life to a stress-related illness, I guess this may have been a case of “Do as I say, not as I do.” I encouraged them to try to learn this lesson sooner and better than I did! I used the story of sending a highly-skilled technician home one Thursday afternoon with instructions not to log in to work on our systems until he returned to work on Tuesday. He was taken aback and I reassured him that his work was excellent, he would be paid, and that he was a highly-valued member of our team. My concern was that he had been working long hours six and seven days a week and I feared he’d burn out. His wife had only recently had their first child and I thought it was important that he go home and have some time to reconnect with them. When we talked the next week, he thanked me and said the long weekend had really helped him get his priorities in order.

We are more than our work and I shared a favorite story of Bill Russell responding to a reporter who asked what it was like to be Bill Russell the basketball player. He said "I’m not Bill Russell the basketball player. I am Bill Russell. A man who plays basketball". This subtle, and crucial, distinction is at the heart of the lesson that having a good balance means having stronger relationships, including with yourself, and that will enrich your life more than work every will.  Also, when it is time for the hard work, your loved ones can help you through in ways that no one else can.

I finally encouraged these aspiring managers to learn how important it is to build bridges and relationships. Ultimately, work is about what we can accomplish together and professional development takes place in relationship with our colleagues. These relationships aren’t always easy, but I’ve found that it is almost always worth the effort. I shared a story about a colleague I struggled with for many years and who I have finally found a good relationship with for which I am grateful. I also shared Abraham Lincoln’s wise words "I do not like that man. I must get to know him better"

After sharing a few thoughts about what is next for me as I look forward to retirement, and answering some questions, I encouraged my colleagues to care for each other, and to help each other find what’s right, and do that. I left them with a quote from the wonderful Canadian singer-songwriter, Harry Manx, "Wisdom follows kindness and we know that for sure."