The Followers

Even with the best of equipment, through the easiest terrain, and in ideal weather conditions, it’s hard work. And then there’s the people you encounter while you’re doing it.  They’re a whole ‘nother unpredictable variable. Be that as it may, there are teams of people, who do this work every day. 

Long distance pipeline crews travel the country installing, repairing, and upgrading underground pipelines. Beyond the periodic above-ground fixtures necessary to make a pipeline function, their work is buried and out of sight.  The water, gas, sewage, and other substances transmitted, make life more convenient, safer, healthier, and affordable. Their pipelines may be all but invisible, but the impact of these teams and their work certainly isn’t.

The team she was on, was borderline dysfunctional. She was considering asking for a transfer. Just before she did, they asked her to become the foreperson. The current foreperson’s performance reviews were barely adequate, and she knew that. She was also aware of the team culture; it wasn’t good. She had some thoughts about how to change it, so she agreed to take the position.

She decided against any abrupt changes, and instead focused on improving the team culture slowly, yet purposefully. Instead of announcing anything, she began making little adjustments to how the team functioned and cared for itself.  She was also going to lead by example, which wasn’t going to be any real change for her. On that team, she was the person people came to and relied on. Although she was not told specifically, she assumed that was why the position had been offered to her. She would later find out that it was. 

As a supervisor, she had access to the team’s personnel records. Quietly, she got a list of everyone’s birthday. Whether the team was working close to their hometown or half way across the country, every birthday was greeted with a card. In time, the team decided to eat dinner together on those days. 

On a cold January evening, after a particularly difficult day, she and the crew in her truck stopped to change a tire for an older couple stranded along the side of the road. Later that month, one of the backhoe operators, got a box of brownies that he shared with the team. A lady along the path of the line they were laying gave them to him. The day before, with two swipes of his machine, he removed two small stumps at the end of her driveway. She had been trying to chip away at them for more than a year. 

That spring she had sandwich-board style signs made to sit along the section of pipeline on which they were working.  They read: “Pardon us for any inconvenience, while we make permanent improvements.”  Those signs sent a message to the communities in which they worked.  They also sent a message to the team!

For the first year, the company left her and her team alone. Early in the second year, a crew manager for the company came for what he called “a week-long visit.” She was a bit anxious about the review.  She told the team that there would be a visit, and that it should be business as usual.

He arrived on Monday morning in work clothes. He sat with the team for the morning meeting, during which she outlined the work for the day and the week. When the meeting ended, he went out with the team and went to work.  He did the same thing each of the next three days. At the end of the workday on Thursday, he asked to meet with her Friday morning at 6:00 AM for breakfast. Having had little one-on-one interaction with him during the week, she was a little uneasy.

When they met, he shared that he had enjoyed his time in the field with her team. He told her that he had learned a lot, and was pleased with what he had experienced. He said, the company made the right choice naming her the team’s foreperson. She had been concerned throughout the week that he spent almost no time with her, even though she was told this was a performance review of her.  He cleared that up with his final comments.

He told her that he didn’t need to spend a lot of time with her to see if she was providing the type of leadership the team needed, and frankly, the kind of leadership the team wanted. He concluded by saying, “You see, I’ve worked on these crews for thirty-three years, and long ago I realized something. Leadership, genuinely real leadership, is best measured in the personal will, committed motivation, and empathetic engagement of the followers. Please keep up the good work!”