by Ali Parker
“I know these are tight deadlines, but if we can knock this project out of the park, I will have the leverage to expand those timelines on future products with this client,” I said.
“And how are we expected to meet those deadlines if none of us even know what changes you want to put in place?” one of the designers asked. “I’ve been with the company for a long time, and I can tell you that it took years to get this flow down to where we’re capable of producing high-quality results while still balancing our work/ life routine.”
“A lot of us have things that cannot be pushed aside just to stay late every night,” another said. “We’re all dedicated to our work, but with all due respect, it isn’t our company, and working twelve hours a day is something that’s hard for us to swallow, especially when we don’t even know our roles in all of this.”
I could feel the crowd starting to turn on me, talking angrily amongst themselves, asking questions I didn’t know how to answer, and revolting against the changes I had been implementing. I was trying to find a middle ground with everyone, but it was difficult because they didn’t trust me. I stood there at a loss, listening to the conversations happening around me. I looked over at Amanda who was sitting there looking around the room, not saying a word.
“All right,” I said, raising my voice and quieting the team. “Let’s break for lunch and try this again afterword.”
I closed my notes and rubbed my face, almost embarrassed by the lack of leadership I was showing. I knew I could do better than this. I had to because there wasn’t another option. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was just going to have to ask for help, something I wasn’t used to doing.
Chapter 10
Amanda
My butt stayed firmly planted in the conference room chair, listening to the voices shouting over one another. Elon looked like he was about to blow, and I could tell he was embarrassed by the fact that no one would latch on to his attempt at leadership. I wasn’t going to help him, though, not until he asked me to do so. He wanted to be the boss and not listen to anything I had to say, so I was going to let him do what he wanted to do. I didn’t know how he thought he could lead a team of people when he didn’t even know who they were or what their strengths and weaknesses were. He dismissed everyone to lunch and left looking completely beat. Dalton looked across the table at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Well, Mr. Handsome struggled with that one,” he said, shaking his head. “At this rate, we’ll have the new Cartier ad done in a year.”
“It’s a mess,” I scoffed. “Come on. Let’s go to lunch.”
“Yes,” he said, standing up and walking out of the conference room with me. “I just have to stop by my office and grab my wallet.”
“Amanda,” Elon said as we walked past his office.
“Yes,” I said with a sigh.
“Can I have a couple words with you?”
“Sure,” I replied.
I looked at Dalton who started to take a step forward to follow me into the office. I put one finger up to Elon and turned to Dalton. He smiled at me, knowing what I was about to say.
“Give me a few minutes to go over all of this with Mr. Truitt,” I said. “I will catch up with you downstairs in the cafeteria.”
Dalton’s smile quickly faded, and he pouted, clutching his man purse in front of him. I chuckled, patting him on the shoulder and rolling my eyes at the whole situation. He nodded and turned, putting his nose up in the air and sashaying down to the elevator. I stood there watching him, laughing to myself as he went. Seriously, without Dalton in my life, I was pretty sure I would have killed Elon by that point. I wasn’t looking forward to going into that office at all. I knew he was going to be uppity and argumentative like normal, and it was the last thing I wanted to deal with. I had told myself I would sit back and watch him go, only giving my help when he asked for it. He wanted to be the one running the show, and though I’d fought him at first, I was stepping aside and letting him do it. I turned around, straightening my face, and walked into Elon’s office, shutting the door behind me.
“Please, Amanda,” he said. “Have a seat. First, I want to apologize for the way our last meeting went. I didn’t listen to you, and you were right. I got caught up in my own ideas, forgetting that you were the one who had been running this thing from the beginning. If nothing else, I should have taken your ideas into consideration.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said with a straight face. “What can I do for you?”
“That meeting was a disaster,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I can see now that these people are completely loyal to you. I understand I haven’t been around, and my expectations that they would jump on board with my leadership, especially with the changes going on in the company and the department, were unreasonable. These people are used to a system, one that you created because you knew what worked and what didn’t.”
I just sat there staring at him, listening to him talk. It was all of the things I had already said to him, but he was just realizing them for the first time. It was more than frustrating, but at least he wasn’t attacking me for it.
“I need your help,” he said, surprising me. “I need you to help me get the team behind me. I know these people respect you, and they listen to what you have to say.”
“They do respect and trust me,” I said. “But they aren’t sheep following me wherever I want to go. They are people who respect the choices I have made for myself, for the company, and for them. They respect the fact that I have worked beside them, not above them, and that I know their strengths and their weaknesses. Part of the problem they’re having with this change is the fact they don’t know if they can live up to your expectations, expectations that are unclear.”
I was trying to get to the point. It was the first time I felt like Elon was actually asking me for help. If I was going to help him, though, he needed to understand why the people were revolting against him. I had to be honest. It was the first time I had ever seen them act in the way they had at that meeting. They had never come at me like that, but instead of scolding them, I let them get it out. They deserved the right to be frustrated at the way Elon was stepping in. They deserved the right to have a voice in the whole thing and not be treated like worker bees going in and out of the hive to keep the queen, or king in this scenario, going.
“I understand what you’re saying,” he said. “That’s why I let them talk. I’m hearing what they are saying. I just don’t know how to answer back without hitting a brick wall. I feel that no matter what I say, they’re already up in arms.”
“Look,” I said coldly, leaning forward. “I get that for whatever reason this change had to happen in this company. I don’t understand it, and neither do they, so of course, they’re going to be as resistant if not more than I was. You cannot have the kind of team that we have and not understand who they are. We spend thousands of hours of our lives working side by side. There isn’t one section of a project that doesn’t rely upon the input from several different sectors at once. Because of that, we have to understand how each other works, know what we can expect from each other, and work as a team to get things done. This is not the business that you can do it on your own, not the way our ad management is structured.”
“So how do I do that?”
“You get to know your people,” I said. “You get to know who they are as people, how they work, what is important to them. If you know what drives them, you will be able to motivate them, which is the majority of being a leader. In order to do that, though, in order for them to be motivated by anything you say, you have to stop being the standoffish boss that you have been for years and really get to know the people who have worked for you for years.”
“Understood,” he said. “Thank you for talking to me about this. You’ve really helped me understand what I’m doing wrong and what I’ve been doing wrong for years.”
“People are simple,” I said. “It’s the processes that are complicat
ed. If you have the people on your side, though, with everyone in the right positions, matching up to their strengths and weaknesses, then those processes will move along all on their own. I haven’t had anyone slack on their part since I took this role two years ago. They all know what is expected, and they do it out of respect and enjoyment of their job, no matter what the driver in their own personal life is.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I won’t keep you from your lunch. I’ll see you when you get back.”
I nodded and stood up, not saying a thing, just walking out of the office. I shut the door behind me and shook my head, curious to see if he took anything I had to say to heart. The man was a good talker, and all in all, he was the kind of guy who could make you trust him very easily, but with this team, he was struggling. We were a group of strong-minded individuals, and we knew how the process worked and what happened when that chain of work got interrupted. I took the elevator down to the cafeteria and went through the line, grabbing my lunch.
“Hey,” I sighed, sitting down at the table with Dalton.
“Mmmm,” he said, swallowing. “Welcome back from the bear cave.”
“Thanks.” I chuckled.
“Soo, what did he want?”
“Nothing,” I said, rolling my eyes, not wanting to talk about it. “Just more talk. I can tell he’s completely at a loss.”
“Well, that’s no one’s fault but his own,” he said.
“I went to see my mom yesterday,” I said, changing the subject. “She looks good. The throw is beautiful too, thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said.
“The doctor came in and gave me the same spiel about her not getting any better,” I said. “He wants me to talk to someone. He thinks I’m holding on when it’s hopeless.”
“You do what’s right for you and your mother,” he said. “No doctor can tell you what’s in your heart. As far as talking to someone though …”
“Not you too,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t need to talk to anyone. Besides, I have you, and between our personal talks and Truitt’s constant business lectures, I’m pretty much talked out.”
“At least he talks to you,” Dalton said. “That man couldn’t rouse a crowd if he wanted to. I was waiting for the pitchforks to come out and people to start chanting during that meeting.”
“I know.” I laughed. “I had my pitchfork under the table. I was going to join them.”
“The only thing that saves that man is his hot body and that charming smile,” Dalton said, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “That boy has got it going on in the looks department. That is for damn sure. If he was some old balding fat guy, these people would have already strung him up.”
I laughed and shook my head, thinking about Elon. I had to admit, at least to myself, that he was definitely a very good-looking man. I even had a hard time not falling to his charm when he smiled at me. I could feel electricity bolting through my chest as I was sitting there. I couldn’t tell that to Dalton, though, because he would never let it go. He was constantly on the hunt for a husband, and not for himself but for me. If he knew that I thought Elon Truitt was sexy as hell, he would never shut up about it.
“Lord, there he is now,” Dalton said nodding across the room. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen him eating in the cafeteria with the help.”
I laughed, almost spitting out the drink of water I had just taken. I turned and looked over my shoulder at him standing there in his expensive suit, smiling with charm at the lady behind the counter. Dalton was right. There was definitely something about that man, something that could be nothing but dangerous for me.
Chapter 11
Elon
I had gone down to the cafeteria to try to show my face where everyone else congregated. People stared at me from across the room and then went back to whatever conversations they had. I had gotten my food, and not wanting to be that guy, I took my lunch back up to the conference room. It was probably the first time since I’d opened the cafeteria in the building that I had eaten any of the food from it. I had to admit, it was better than some of the two-hundred-dollar plates of food I got from the fancy restaurants. It was their place, though, the place the employees went to take a break and be away from the management like myself. I wasn’t one of them. I could tell that as soon as I walked into the cafeteria, and I felt like that needed to be something that changed.
Amanda had been their immediate boss for a while, and they looked at her as one of them. I needed to take cues from her in order to get myself involved in everything. I looked out the window of the conference room, watching everyone trickling back to their desks after finishing their lunches. They would be coming back to the meeting soon, and they would expect things to go differently from how it had started. I stood up and walked over to the glass, watching the pit. Everyone looked down, stressed out from the amount of change that was happening around them. I could tell they felt like they were out of their element, and it was the same feeling I had.
Any other time, I would have walked away, seeing that my presence there was doing nothing but hindering the situation, but I didn’t have that choice this time. I had to show the board I was capable of running this company from the ground floor up. In order to do that, I had to make these people work with me, not just work for me. I didn’t want to be the person who caused our entire ad department to fall apart because I needed to be a part of it. Walking away would be repeating what I had done over and over again, which was exactly what had gotten me in the position I was in at that exact moment. Pushing them away would only sink the project and get me kicked right out of my position as CEO. There had to be something I could do to move the process along, something that would change how these people felt.
I went back to my seat and sat there staring down at the ad file. There was so much work to be done that I couldn’t afford to be wasting time on the nonsense that was happening. At the same time, if I didn’t stop and fix that problem, it would only get worse, and the ad would be lost.
What I needed to do was drop the file for the day and do something to lighten the mood, to show the people that I was just a normal guy like anyone else. I needed an idea that would spark their interest and allow them to put their guard down and start to like me as a person. Amanda said that I had to get to know them, to understand them, and I felt that it was a two-way street. I could know them all I wanted, but if they didn’t like me, they would never loosen up enough to start trusting me inside their circle. Any changes I made at that moment would be immediately disregarded because they weren’t willing to see past their anger toward me. It was completely natural, and I didn’t blame them for that at all. If I wanted it to work, though, I had to be the one to change it.
I closed the file and put it back into my bag and sat there, thinking back to the old days. When I had first opened the company, I’d handpicked the people who’d worked for me. Not only that, I worked right along beside them and not just for necessity but because I took the time to get to know them, opened up to them, and immediately gained their trust. They were able to trust me and move through the projects with ease because they knew I was there to help them with any part of the project. I was willing to get my hands dirty on the job and not chicken out because it seemed impossible or hard to do. I was the guy who saw the potential in everything, and because of that, when they reached a roadblock, they pushed through it. If I could see the potential, so could they.
I opened my laptop and did some research as people started to file in and take their seats. I took notes down on a piece of paper and asked one of the employees to get me some plain white paper and a bunch of pens. She looked at me strangely but shrugged her shoulders and headed out to the pit to grab them. When everyone was in the room and seated, I closed my laptop and stood up, ready to actually address them.
“Welcome back,” I said, taking off my jacket, rolling up my sleeves and loosening my tie. “I want to first start out by apologizing for com
ing into this like a bull, not thinking past the project or the ad. What I want everyone to do is take your ad folders and put them on the floor under your chairs.”
Everyone looked at me strangely but put their files under their chairs. I glanced over at Amanda who had furrowed her brow in confusion. I took the stack of paper and pens and walked around handing them out to everyone.
“We’re not going to talk about the ad today,” I said. “We aren’t even going to have a whisper about the ad today. Today, I want to get to know you, you get to know me, and maybe even get to know each other better than you already do. We’re going to play some games. Does everyone like games?”
“Yeah,” a couple of people said, as the rest of them began to relax their shoulders.
“Good. I like games too.” I smiled. “The first one we’re going to do is called Truth or Lie. You write down four sentences, three of them being some interesting truths about you and your life. The fourth will be a lie, not a crazy lie that is obvious but something that we have to really think about. Put the lie somewhere in those four sentences. Everyone ready? Okay, go.”
I took out the pen and started writing, glancing up at everyone else who was doing the same thing. When I was done writing, I motioned to my secretary to come in and whispered to her to order donuts, coffee, and whatever else she thought would be good for the meeting. I sat there and waited for everyone to be finished. When all the pens were down, I leaned back in my chair.
“Okay, who wants to go first?” I said, looking around. “Dalton, how about you start us off?”
“It would be my pleasure,” he said, making me chuckle. “Here are my four sentences. I own two hundred and fifteen pairs of shoes. I get my hair done every three weeks, including a keratin treatment. I have dated a woman before for six months. I went to Cabo for spring break last year.”