30,000 feet in the air and 30 minutes out from our expected landing time, this announcement happened:
‘Due to an emergency incident, the airport has been forced to shut down and we are diverting to the south of the country.’
The pilot’s choice of words were so loaded with negative triggers that you could feel the palpable rollercoaster of negative emotions the passengers were sent into.
In a day where emergency incidents are happening more regularly, taking the shortcut of choosing lack of information and a lazy, loaded vocabulary is inexcusable.
In a day where loyalty is critical to a brand or company, not putting yourself in the shoes of customers, clients or staff is a shortcut that prevents you really knowing and matching what they want or need.
Shortcuts are prevalent at work, but they never work.
In a day where safety (physical and psychological) is recognised, monitored and supported, the shortcut of not following process or ignoring toxic team cultures becomes extremely problematic.
In a day where mental health is at the top of our agenda, not having those deeper conversations and hiding from opportunities to identify critical signals in your team becomes a shortcut that can lead to much longer term negative consequences.
In a day where innovation and collaboration is critical, not giving yourself and your team the space and opportunity to think and grow is counter intuitive.
Shortcuts never work in the long term. However in the short term they may have their uses – I ended up getting to where I needed to go, (two hours later we were finally told that the emergency incident was in fact a mere runway malfunction) but I did take the the shortcut of a large glass of wine to help relax my nerves as we made our way back to where we were meant to be!