Some days, the impulse to be petty is loud. Not dramatic, just sharp enough to cut. A quick jab in a meeting. A deliberately delayed reply. A reminder that I, too, have limits.
Here is what I have learned: Petty is not random. It is not weakness. It is a signal.
It shows up when something has gone unchecked. It rides in with frustration that has been smiled through one too many times. It gathers strength from moments of being overlooked or dismissed. It feeds on exhaustion, especially the kind of exhaustion leaders are trained to ignore.
By the time it surfaces, the damage is already done. Not from the snarky email or the passive-aggressive reply. From the weeks—or months—of silence that came before it.
So no, I do not shame the petty impulse. I listen to it. Because it usually means I missed something:
A boundary that should have been reinforced
A conversation that needed more honesty
A part of myself that is overdue for rest or recognition
Leadership is not about pretending we are above all that. It is about knowing when our energy is being pulled in the wrong direction—and pausing long enough to correct it.
Today, I choose peace. Tomorrow? If I feel the pull toward petty, I will take that as a cue to go deeper.
Because petty is a symptom. And I am not here to lead from symptoms. I am here to lead from awareness.
Where is your energy pulling you today, and what might that be trying to tell you?
Some teams are drowning in process. Others are drowning in its absence. Both are still gasping for air.
And yet, when performance dips, when turnover spikes, or when burnout hits the tipping point, leaders look at the people first. They ask who needs coaching, who is not “resilient,” or who is falling short.
But in most cases, the real problem is the system.
Not broken people. Broken design.
I have lost count of the times I have been asked to “fix” a team. Often, what they actually needed was a functional schedule. Sometimes, it was a feedback loop. Other times, a decision tree that does not require a PhD to navigate. Teams are not fragile. They are tired of working against the very systems that are supposed to support them.
Let me go back to that early leadership moment I shared in my last post.
We had a 35% abandon rate. No structured breaks. Phones ringing into the void. Frustrated customers. Burned-out staff. Turnover rising.
The common narrative would have blamed the reps. Said they were not committed. They could not handle the pressure. They needed more training. That maybe they were not a “good fit.”
But the issue was not them. It was the structure or lack of it.
Once we introduced a simple, data-informed schedule and gave the team a say in shaping it, everything shifted. Calls got answered. Morale lifted. Performance improved. Not because the people changed, but because the system did.
Here is what broken systems often sound like:
“That is just how we do it.”
“We were told we could not change this.”
“The process says…”
“We are too busy to fix that right now.”
“It is not ideal, but people get used to it.”
These phrases do not just signal dysfunction. They signal resignation. They are the sound of people adapting to failure instead of fixing it.
Meanwhile, leaders stack on more training, more tools, more pressure, hoping people will “rise to the challenge.” They will, until they cannot. Then you will call it burnout, when what really happened is systemic failure.
If your operations depend on heroics, your problem is not your team. It is your infrastructure.
If clarity is buried under complexity, your problem is not engagement. It is design.
If performance varies wildly across shifts or teams, you do not need more motivation. You need consistency.
Before you coach performance, audit design. If your team is gasping for air, the leak might be structural.
The messy truth about a 35% abandon rate, one paper report, and finding my purpose
I did not step into customer service leadership because call queues excited me. I took my first leadership role because I genuinely wanted to make things better for people – better for the customers reaching out for help, better for the frontline teams trying to provide it, and better for everyone caught in between.
I stayed because someone handed me a call report.
Early in my career, I took a job as a Member Service Manager at a regional credit union. On my very first day, my new boss dropped a bombshell: our call abandon rate was 35%. Let me say that again – 35%. Over a third of people who called us for help gave up before anyone even answered.
This was more than two decades ago. There were no chatbots, no mobile apps, and barely a functional website. If you could not get someone on the phone, your only option was to visit a branch. And if you could not do either? You simply went without help.
I spent my first day just observing. It did not take me long to pinpoint the problem: the team had no structured break or lunch schedules. People stepped away whenever they wanted, leaving phones ringing endlessly and callers frustrated enough to hang up.
The solution seemed simple, but as any seasoned leader knows, “simple” rarely means “easy.” First, I found Mary, the person on the team everyone looked up to, and asked for her perspective. When I shared my observations, she nodded knowingly and said, “That is easy to fix. If you create a schedule, I can help you sell it.”
And so, we did.
But the real magic happened the next morning. In those days, call reports were delivered on paper, by hand, a day after the calls occurred. Yet, even in that humble paper format, they were beautiful. They were filled with call arrival patterns, staffing levels, abandoned call percentages, average speed of answer, wrap-up times; all the nerdy, glorious data I never knew I needed until it was in my hands.
Using that report, I built our very first structured schedule. Mary helped champion it to the team. And we watched closely as our abandonment rates began to drop.
Over the next year, that paper report became my compass. It guided every decision, every adjustment. And slowly but surely, we transformed that staggering 35% abandon rate into something manageable. Our calls got shorter, we started upselling effectively, and our employee turnover rate dropped significantly.
That single paper report did not just fix a broken system—it ignited a passion in me for leading through service and data. From that moment forward, I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my working life.
Today, my leadership style remains rooted in the same two truths:
Customer Service leadership is servant leadership. You have to wake up every day ready to put other people first.
Data is your superpower. Every interaction, every report, and every metric is a chance to learn, to tweak, to get better.
I am still messy. I am still unpolished. But my methods, however unconventional they might be, always lead to empowered teams, actionable insights, satisfied executives, and above all, happier customers.
This is not carefully curated advice. It is just the truth from someone who has held the line when everything shifts.
Welcome to The Unpolished Leader. More stories to come.
Real leadership is not perfect. 