By Leigh Ann Hubbard

Are you a nice person?

I’m not.

I know this because I cannot stand long plane talk. Nice people like to talk to people on planes. Nice people certainly don’t mind when other people are talking loudly near them — not even involving them — but WON’T SHUT UP and then recline their seats into those nice people’s laps.

I’m not nice.

So on my second flight of a 12-hour trip across the country, when this dude sat in front of me and immediately started yammering, asking his female seatmate, “Where are you headed? … Is that your final destination?” I thought, “None of your business.”

The worst.

“I’m glad I didn’t sit next to him,” I thought. But his seatmate was talkative like him. Well, she’s a nice person.

He violently reclined his seat into my lap.

After his nap, at the end of the flight, he started chatting again. Of course.

“My wife died two months ago,” he said.

Oh.

Welp.

Yeah … that’s … a good reason to need a friendly ear. Face palm.

His 60-something seatmate said she’d experienced death in her life too, and she didn’t miss a beat continuing the conversation.

When the plane landed and everyone got up, she gave him a hug.

For pete’s sake, I’m a terrible person.

But funny … this wasn’t about me.

“I’m glad I didn’t sit next to him,” I thought again. “I wasn’t supposed to.”

Leading From the Background

If you’re like me — the world’s worst — you tend to think of yourself as a main character. But it turns out, sometimes our role is to NOT be somewhere. Our “right place, right time” means we’re backstage, watching or supporting someone else as they do what they were meant to do. Weird.

This extends to leadership too. Some of the best leaders understand that they’re not always supposed to be front-and-center — that one of their most important roles is to support staff members.

At a certain nonprofit I know of, everyone involved with it said they were there because of the executive director — because she was a rock star.

But she was given no tangible support to back up that verbal praise. She was suffering, burned-out, on the verge of quitting.

The board was seen as “the boss,” and the boss often said no. Once they changed that narrative and treated her like the main character she was — allocating proper salary and staffing, hiring a coach for her, respecting her leadership — she found renewed purpose.

Most of that support came about from simply listening to her. People will often tell you what they need. You just have to listen — and then get determined to make it happen.

Once you realize that your ideal role in a certain moment is to be part of someone else’s journey, you realize what a privilege that is. It’s a productive thing, for both you and your organization, to help someone shine.