I receive a monthly newsletter from Training Wheels, an online training supply and experience company from whom I’ve purchased tons of training tools and gained loads of ideas for effective training exercises, and I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know the brilliant founder, Michelle Cummings. Her newsletters always hold insights and reminders for great trainers, coaches, and leaders, but there was a certain newsletter two years ago that really caught my attention from more than simply a training perspective. This one contained a personal story from Michelle and, in my opinion, showcased how a leadership mindset can make all the difference in the world.
The short story is that she uses and sells rubber “body parts” (brains, eyes, ears, etc.) as creative debriefing tools for training exercises. One day she needed to reorder her rubber “feet” and decided that instead of simply ordering the standard “white” color she would diversify it to include tan or brown. She had to special order 1000 of them (the minimum order) and pre-approve the color selection, but when she opened the box (now non-refundable because of the custom color), they were, in her words, “bad spray-tan orange!” And she had 1000 of them.
Most of us, me included, would have cried, but not a leader like Michelle. She decided to leverage the power of her community and posted the problem on her social media sites and asked what creative ideas they had for what she might do with them. And boy did they deliver! Here’s a few of the creative responses she received:
- The National Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society’s color is orange, and they host walks all over the country as fundraisers.
- Send them to a sports team whose jersey colors are orange and tell them to kick it into high gear!
- Put one in every order that goes out the door for the foreseeable future.
She received funny ones, too:
- Send them to ex-boyfriends and tell them, “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot.”
- Take them to a tanning parlor and give them out to walk-in customers.
She did decide to put one in every order for free until they were all gone. She added a note with the story of how they came to be and challenged each recipient to do something out of the ordinary, too! That would have been the end of it, except she started hearing back from clients about the ugly orange foot. One decided to hire her to keynote their event because of the creativity of the orange foot. A school ordered 10 of them to give out to students who demonstrated great creativity. And a teacher wrote her, saying he keeps his orange foot in his classroom, and it has been a great conversation starter with his kids. These little mistakes turned into multiple moments of joy all around the country.
All of this goodness because one leader decided not to panic, not to over-react, not to throw a useless fit but instead to find the magic and the hidden opportunities embedded in the challenge.
You can read the whole adorable and inspiring story here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1FTdfVTUe3/
This week, when life hands you lemons, don’t forget the leader that you are. Use it. Grow from it. Learn from it. Demonstrate to everyone around you what resilience, emotional control, leadership, and true creativity look like.
“Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.”
~ Lou Holtz
