When our doorbell rings, Stella and I respond differently.
Stella asks a sensible question such as, “Are we expecting anyone?”
I am already halfway down the hall, moving with an urgency normally reserved for smoke alarms and medical emergencies.
“It might be important,” I explain.
It rarely is.
Usually, it is someone delivering something I ordered and forgot about, a neighbour collecting a parcel or a determined individual offering to replace our windows while standing directly in front of several perfectly functional ones.
Amber suggested the doorbell for the second piece in this series because it makes us think about what deserves our attention.
Stella saw it as further evidence that I cannot leave anything unanswered.
Again, both have a point.
It makes a noise and demands your attention. What it does not establish is whether the interruption matters, whether you need to respond or whether now is a good time.
That decision is supposed to be ours.
Yet somewhere along the way, many of us began treating every interruption as an instruction.
The phone vibrates. We look.
An email arrives. We open it.
Someone sends a message beginning, “Have you got a quick minute?” We respond, despite decades of evidence that nobody asking for a quick minute has ever wanted one.
Then there are the doorbells inside our heads. A worrying thought. An awkward memory. Something somebody said three days ago. An imaginary argument in which we finally produce the perfect response, sadly several hours after the real conversation ended.
They all knock.
We keep answering.
Some time ago, I wrote about returning from a month away with Stella, celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary.
Before leaving, I had set an automatic reply explaining that when I returned, I would delete every email received during the month. If something was still important, the sender should resend it the day after I got back.
It sounded wonderfully decisive when I wrote it.
Then I returned to an overflowing inbox and had to press the delete button.
It was terrifying.
My finger hovered over it while my brain produced increasingly dramatic reasons why every email might contain something only I could resolve. A client crisis. An important decision. The one message upon which the future of KOAP, the economy and possibly civilisation depended.
Eventually, I pressed it.
The team had managed. The clients remained. Problems had been resolved, decisions had been made and life had carried on perfectly well without my constant involvement.
The only thing seriously damaged was my inflated sense of importance.
It was both reassuring and slightly offensive.
Most of what I thought might need me had not needed me at all. Anything genuinely important came back, exactly as I had asked. The rest had expired while I was away.
Workplaces are full of leaders who proudly describe themselves as “always available.” It sounds generous and committed.
It can also create the very dependency they complain about.
They answer every message, join every problem and involve themselves in every decision. Their people soon learn a simple lesson: when anything happens, ring the boss’s doorbell.
The leader then spends the day dealing with everyone else’s priorities. The work requiring thought gets pushed into the evening, and anything requiring reflection is postponed until a quieter week that has not appeared since 2007.
Their families may use different language.
The answer is not to ignore everyone, turn off the phone and disappear into a cottage without broadband, tempting though that can feel after certain meetings.
It is to create a pause between hearing the doorbell and deciding to answer it.
Does this need attention?
Does it need attention now?
Most importantly, does it need me?
The same test works for the doorbells inside our heads. A thought can be loud without being true, urgent or useful.
Being capable of solving a problem does not mean you should. Sometimes the best thing a leader can do is allow somebody else to think, decide and discover that the world continues turning without immediate intervention.
Next week, I am moving from the hallway to the kitchen and opening the recipe book, where following the instructions is not always the same as knowing what you are doing.
The doorbell has just rung while I have been writing this.
For once, I stayed where I was, quietly pleased that the blog had already changed my behaviour.
Stella looked through the window.
Apparently, it was a delivery driver holding a parcel with my name on it.
He has now left.
Stella says my sense of importance may have reduced, but my online shopping clearly has not.
