Leadership Is Translation:

I once took over a mom-and-pop storage property in the middle of nowhere after it had been purchased by a mid-sized company I was a District Manager for.
The first DM assignment there didn’t work out… so like always when something isn’t working, it became my turn. 😄

The onsite manager had lived and worked at that property for over a decade.

It was as old-school as you can get, carbon copy leases, handwritten systems, and routines that hadn’t changed in years.

When we transitioned the site to SiteLink, it was a big shift. He was willing to learn, but it was definitely “old dog, new tricks” territory.

The funny thing is, I connected with him right away. He reminded me of the people I grew up around on a farm in Kansas.

Different background than corporate, but sharp, hardworking, and deeply invested in doing a good job.

Over time, he leaned on me because I could do something important:
I could translate.
I could take what corporate was saying and explain it in a way that made sense in his world.

And I could take what he was struggling with and explain it back to leadership in terms they understood.

He wasn’t unintelligent, far from it. He just spoke a different operational language.

When I first arrived, he was close to leaving.

Instead, we worked together for another three years before he finally retired and moved into the house he’d been building.

That experience reinforced something I’ve seen over and over in operations:
Leadership is translation.

When you’re leading people from different backgrounds, rural, corporate, field, finance, ownership, you can’t deliver every message the same way.

An MBA and someone who wears overalls every day might both be excellent at their jobs, but they process information differently.

If you want alignment, you have to meet people where they are.

Same goal.

Different language.