Congratulations! You’ve arrived. You’ve earned that nice cushy office where you can shut the door and no one can hear you listening to the greatest American Idol video ever on YouTube (or looking for a video card to send to your mom on Mother’s Day).
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Yep, the office is fantastic. But if you want to demonstrate some real leadership, toss your junk into a box and move into Downtown Cubeville.
Before I explain why I encourage you to head out into the ant farm, let’s acknowledge why cubicles are one of the most horrific inventions ever. You have no privacy. You can hear everything everyone around you says. You can smell every roadkill ’possum Lean Cuisine entrée your neighbor heats up in the microwave. You can be subjected to the scorching hellfire of your cube-mate’s space heater or the gale force winds of their oscillating fan. The lovely industrial gray or taupe of the cube walls makes you want to scream.
All that said, sometimes getting back to the cube is a good thing if you’re the boss. There are two major benefits from doing so. You’ll just have to trust me on these and give them a try sometime.
You tell your team they’re your equal
I had a great boss named Terry. When I was negotiating my job offer, I asked him if I’d be sitting in an office or a cube. This was a top-of-mind question, because I’m easily distracted and have a hard time focusing while in a cube.
He said, “You’ll definitely be in an office.”
My first day arrived. His assistant met me in the lobby, and she showed me to my brand spankin’ new office. It was awesome. Plenty of space to sprawl my crap out everywhere.
After unpacking for about an hour, I asked where Terry was. I needed to ask him some questions. His assistant guided me down Cubicle Lane. She stopped halfway down, pointed, and said, “He sits here.” I was confused. My boss sat in a cube?
Terry arrived a minute later, and I asked, “Why do you sit in a cube? I thought you’d be in an office.”
“I was. It’s your office now. I promised you’d have one, and another one won’t be ready for a few months until we reorganize the floor plan. Is that OK?”
“Um, yeah.” My head spun. How awesome was my new boss that he moved his stuff out of his office so I could have it like he promised before I accepted the job? His actions spoke volumes (and I finally really understood how my soldiers felt that time I was turning a wrench under the tank).
Terry demonstrated that it’s an equal playing field. With a simple, temporary move, he showed that his people came first. He could have made me wait the six months until the floor was reorganized, or he could take on the inconvenience himself. Doing the latter instantly cemented my loyalty to him.
You learn a lot by being in a cube
Remember the part above about no privacy and hearing everything? Guess what? Sometimes that’s a good thing.
If you’re in a cube (even temporarily), your people are more likely to pop in, ask questions, chit-chat, and generally keep you in the loop. When you’re in an office, the chances of them strolling in and chatting go down exponentially.
It’s not about you. It’s the dynamic of the open spaces of a cube. When employees walk by and ask questions, you have more opportunities to influence decisions, understand them as people, and generally be better informed.
When you hear the frustration mounting in adjacent cubes because projects are going off-track, you’re able to intervene and help sooner. If you’re in an office, you’ll likely be surprised by the project going off-track because you didn’t have the benefit of that early-warning complaining you hear in a cube.
Sure, cubicles are awful. But they’re here to stay. Maybe as a leader you can go for a spin in one (even if it’s just for a couple of months) to create a “project team cube” where everyone works. It can endear you to your team and get you back in the core flow of information.
And for those of you who think it’s easy for me because I work from a home office, you’ve never heard a boxer, a Jack Russell, and a poodle/schnauzer fight all day while you’re on a conference call.
Published June 12, 2024, in The thoughtLEADERS Brief on LinkedIn.
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