Readtime: 3 minutes
I sent my leather jacket to a man called Uncle Dave, by registered post, to his home address in East London.
It’s a black leather biker jacket I bought from AllSaints in 2014. Over the years it had faded to a sort of brown, and I wanted it black again.
It turns out there’s almost nobody in London who provides that service. I found one website, which looked like it could have been made 20 years ago, and sent a message through it.
A guy emailed back. Yes, they could do it, it would be £150, and I should post the jacket to ‘Uncle Dave’, who’d sort it out. I wouldn’t pay until the work was done, but I’d have to pay before it came back.
I did wonder whether the business model was collecting nice leather goods and never sending them back.
A few days later Uncle Dave sent me some photos. The jacket looked amazing, so I paid, and it arrived at my flat the next day. Back to black, and looking new. (He did a belt for me as well, for an extra £20.)
I’m way more pleased about the whole experience than I can fully explain. My wife has told me to stop talking about it. But now I’m writing this newsletter about it.
I think a lot of it is that I didn’t want a new jacket. A new one would have been about £400, and it wouldn’t have fitted like this one does, which has had 12 years to mould to me. I also had it relined a couple of years ago, so there was a history of repairing it.
Faded, but it fitted
Over the last 12 years, the jacket faded in a way everyone could see, but it got better in a way only I could feel.
The fade is what you see from a bit of a distance. The fit is what you feel inside it.
I read a lot of stakeholder feedback for my executive coaching clients, and the people above someone and the people below them often describe a different person.
One of my clients had been told by her boss that she was a bit low energy. Her team’s feedback was that she was the reason they stayed.
She was the same person, but with a ‘fade’ seen from above and a ‘fit’ felt from below.
From where you sit
The more senior you get, the further you sit from the fit.
You see someone in a leadership meeting, a town hall or a quarterly review. From there, you might see something equivalent to a fade. But the people working alongside them every day are the ones who feel whether they fit or not.
There are a few things that can cause this, and most of them are good.
1. They say less in your meetings, because they sort things out before they reach you, so there’s less to report. Or because they’ve handed presenting at the meeting to their team, which is good development, but it also means you see less of them in action.
2. They push back on you. From the top it can feel like friction. From below it feels like protection, because they’re the reason the team isn’t rebuilding the plan every time a new idea comes down.
3. Nothing goes wrong on their patch. No news can read as not much happening, when it can just be the function of a smooth-running team.
4. They’re steady rather than energetic. They don’t ride the highs and lows of each initiative. Their team values their calm approach, but from where you sit it can look like low energy.
Most of their fit never reaches you, because it’s working.
Polished first
I’d never have sent the jacket if I’d judged things solely on the website. It was the email communication that followed that sealed the deal.
The people who fit best aren’t always the most polished at presenting themselves, maybe because they’ve been putting that effort into their work instead.
So next to everything else that reaches you, they can look more faded than their actual work is.
That’s even more true when you’re thinking about replacing someone. An external candidate has probably spent days getting ready for an hour with you. The person you already have turns up as they normally are.
You end up comparing someone’s best hour with someone else’s ordinary Tuesday.
Before you decide
There are plenty of places in London that will sell you a new leather jacket. I could only find one that would restore an old one.
Organisations are similar. Replacing someone comes with a process, a budget and recruiters. Finding out whether the person actually needs replacing has much less set up around it.
And if most of what you’ve seen is the fade, the thing that’s faded might be your view of them, rather than it actually being them.
One question helps. If they left tomorrow, what would their replacement take three years to learn?
Like a new jacket, the replacement would probably cost more, and fit worse for a good while.
Who on your team have you started to think of as a bit faded, and have you been close enough to know how well they fit?
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
P.S. I’m writing a book – Outsized Leadership: How to Make a Bigger Impact with Less Effort. Follow along behind the scenes and get exclusive launch bonuses here: https://www.outsizedleadership.com/