The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Let them Grow Up Some More | FF25

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Inspired by the movie “Glory”. Sometimes as parents and as project managers we need to let our people face a little bit of adversity so they can come out better on the other side.

Hey everybody, welcome to Foundations Friday 25, Let Them Grow Up Some More. What does that mean? Well, I took this analogy from one of my favorite movies of all time, Glory, which is about the 54th Massachusetts, which was an all-black regiment led by a white officer, Robert Goodshaw. As you can imagine, there were some growing pains and they were training folks who were slaves and field hands and some who had picked up dead bodies,

and so pulling together this group to make them soldiers and get them ready, and Robert Good Shaw wanted to train them appropriately. And again, this is movie-based but factual as far as this regiment existing. In this one part of the movie, Shaw's friend, a free black man from the North, from in Massachusetts was going through training. He wasn't a great soldier. He was,

he was very smart guy, but not real athletic. And he was being trained by this, uh, Sergeant major, this Irish man, and they were practicing bayonet attacks. And,

uh, the Sergeant major said, attack me. Um, and Shaw's friend attacked him. The Sergeant Major took the musket away from him and hit the person with him in the face. And, of course, upsetting. He said, hey, no shame, son, get up.

And there was a problem. He didn't get up. And then there was some other scuffle that happened with Denzel Washington's character, who was such a great character in that up. And then there was some other scuffle that happened with Denzel Washington's character, who was, um, such a great character in that movie. And I probably forget his name, but so he was kind of the tough guy,

the rebel, but the rebel meaning, you know, he was used to slavery and rebelling and, but also became a leader and an inspiration on fighting back. And so can't recommend this movie enough. I don't know how many times I watched the VHS tape yes I'm that old

but after that there was an interaction where Robert Goodshaw who was a colonel in charge of the regiment called the sergeant major over and said you know the gist of it was basically were you too hard on him and the sergeant major whose iris said the boy's your friend is he

and Shaw says yes we grew up together. And the Sergeant Major says, let him grow up some more. So in this context, it was to grow up to get ready for battle, to go fight or die or kill in war. In the context that I'm talking about today, that I like to think about, let's say, start with your kids. The whole, you know, your kids need to be allowed to grow up a little bit, to tie their own shoes, to skin their knee, to wrestle with each other, to scrap a little bit, to figure out some hard things without us constantly, you know, hovering over them or doing everything for them, or they won't be as prepared. I think there's a similar line for project teams. And as project managers, we have perhaps through the projectized portion of our time together, kind of coddled or optimized or streamlined things to get a product ready. And then when we hit the real world, we face some hardships. So

sometimes it's not so bad for the team, including us as PMs to face hardship, to have difficulty, to face challenges. It can actually reveal, like we've talked about, like you all are aware out there, you can test two things and then you put 200 things out in the world and it's different because there's more variables. Well, sometimes this hardship, this us growing up some more, makes us all better. But sometimes that messaging has to be clear. Maybe not the buttstock of a bayonet to the face,

but maybe a direct message to say, hey, this is the direction we are in and this is what we will do, full stop. So sometimes we need to have that message that tells us, directly or indirectly, let's all grow up some more. I thank you all for helping grow this show. And I hope you're all having a great Foundations Friday out there. I hope you're building on whatever platform or process that you're doing. I thank you for following the show on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, all the places that podcasts

are played for visiting me on peopleprocessprogress.com. Feel free to reach out on peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com and on LinkedIn, Kevin Pennell there. Also, People Process Progress on Facebook and Instagram. Watch Glory is a fantastic movie on its own in leadership and adaptation and give and take. And on realizing that the only way for all of us to get as ready as we can to face hard things is to grow up a little bit, not be coddled as much, and go through hardships on our own or with others. But sometimes it just has to be hard for us to get better. So thank you all so much. Stay safe. Please wash those hands, and Godspeed.