Welcome to another Toolkit Tuesday! Every week, our goal is to give you a practical leadership tool to put in your toolkit.
So There I Was . . .
…listening to a client describe their morning routine and realizing I was hearing my own.
This leader likes to get in a few minutes before everyone else. Sit down, pop the earbuds in and get to work. Quiet, focused, a head start on the day. Honestly, it sounded pretty great to me. I'm wired the same way.
Then the rest of the office starts to arrive. Within a few minutes a little cluster forms. How was your night? What did you do this weekend? How did that thing go that you mentioned last week? It runs about ten minutes every morning. And every morning, sooner or later, somebody turns around and pulls my client into it.
It drove them crazy. They were already locked in. The earbuds were in. Wasn't that a clear enough sign? So the answers got shorter and the tone got a little sharp. Their body language said what their words didn't. My client walked away frustrated, and I'd bet a few of their coworkers walked away wondering what they'd done wrong.
When they told me about it, I got it. I really did. Part of me wanted to say, "Same. Keep the earbuds in." But the longer we talked, the more I started to think the most frustrating ten minutes of their morning might also be the most important.
The Challenge
A lot of us are built like my client. We'd rather get to work than talk about the weekend. Small talk can feel like a tax on the day, something standing between us and the real job.
But here's what I keep coming back to. If you want to fight for the highest possible good of the people you lead, and that includes the people you work with, not just the ones who work for you, you have to be interested in them as whole people. Not just in what they produce. People today want to know their work has purpose and that they matter as human beings, not just as a set of outputs. That's a long way from what corporate America has usually told us about work.
My client wasn't a cold person. They just saw those ten minutes as an interruption. Their coworkers saw them as the point.
The Tool: 5 Gears
What was happening in that office every morning has a name: 3rd gear. We walked through the full 5 Gears framework in an earlier Toolkit Tuesday (read it here), and we've recently zoomed in on 5th and 1st. This week it's 3rd.
My client walked in wanting 5th gear, focus mode. Earbuds in, distractions out. Nothing wrong with that. What their coworkers were doing wasn't 4th gear either, the task and meeting mode where most of the workday runs. And it wasn't 2nd gear, the deep connection you share with family and your closest friends. Nobody was asking my client to bare their soul at 8:00 in the morning.
It was 3rd gear, social mode. Light, relational time with people, no agenda and nothing to deliver. Just being together long enough to remember everyone in the room is a person.
The problem wasn't 5th gear. It was trying to stay in 5th while the whole room shifted into 3rd. You know what happens when you force a car to stay in one gear while the road changes. It grinds. That grinding was what their coworkers heard in the short answers.
And 3rd gear doesn't mean being out every night, going to every networking event or eating lunch with someone every day. It can be ten minutes. That's the gift of having names for the gears. "I'm in 5th until 9:30, catch me at the coffee pot after that" tells your team it isn't personal. "I've been stuck in 5th all week, lunch Thursday?" becomes an easy invitation. Instead of guessing from earbuds and tone of voice, people can just say what they need.
Why This Matters Now
When people feel valued and cared for, they work with more intention, more focus and more effort. They do better work, and that's better for the company. But when a leader never shifts into 3rd, people don't stop noticing. They just assume you don't care, and they start working around you instead of with you.
And with the holidays coming, the 3rd gear invitations are about to multiply. Office parties, team lunches, a little more chatter around the coffee pot. It's tempting to skip every one of them. You don't have to say yes to all of it. Just don't say no to all of it.
The Result
This isn't about squeezing more value out of people for the business. It's about helping them be at their best at work, at home, in their community and in life. The business just happens to benefit too.
A leader who makes room for even a little 3rd gear brightens their own day and, more importantly, someone else's. Skip it and you become the person the team tiptoes around. Respected maybe, but not really known.
Take Action
Shift on purpose. Pick one 3rd gear moment this week. Leave the earbuds out for the first ten minutes, ask one person how their weekend went and actually listen to the answer.
Find the right gear together. If you or your team are stuck in high gear and can't find your way down, let's grab time on the calendar and work through it together.
Closing the Loop
My client is part of that ten minute morning conversation now. And to their credit, they actually enjoy it. Not because small talk suddenly became their favorite thing, but because the people in that room enjoy having them there.
Left to my own wiring, I'd have kept the earbuds in too. But every single morning, somebody turned around and invited my client in. Even after the short answers. Even after the tone. That was never an interruption. That was a team saying, "We want you here."
So here's my question for you. Who keeps turning around to include you, and what have they been hearing back?
