I Thought the Job Was to Grow the Business. It Wasn't.

What Serving People Actually Trains You For

Since I was 15, one rule got drilled into me before anything else: the business comes first. Whatever it takes to make it run, whatever it takes to grow it. That's the job, full stop.

I carried that rule for years and thought it made me a good leader. Training a new hire, covering someone's shift, standing there listening to an employee's problem for the third time that week. I filed all of that under "part of the job." Necessary, but not the real work. The real work was pushing the business forward.

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize I had it backwards. Serving people wasn't a task on the way to the real goal. It was the foundation the real goal got built on. You don't need a title to serve someone, but serving people without a title is exactly the training ground that makes a title mean something later.

Once I saw it that way, the job didn't get easier, but it got clearer. The training session, the covered shift, the listening — none of that was overhead anymore. It was the leadership, not the tax on it.

What's one thing on your list today that you've been treating as overhead, that might actually be the real work?