I realized that my thought process around domestique started even before the Tour started in July. Netflix released a docuseries, Unchained, in June from the 2022 Tour De France. Chris and I watched it the week leading up to this year's Tour, and it helped me have a great foundation of knowledge heading into watching the Tour live. It's where my interest in domestique and the role a domestique plays on a cycling team started to get the wheels in my brain going. I highly recommend the series if you're any kind of sports lover.
So in yesterday's check-in, I talked a lot about the role of domestiques and sacrifice. Again domestique translated from French to English means servant, but in watching both the Netflix series and the Tour this year, I think a more optimistic and positive word to use would be "one who is willing to be of service." Yes, there may be those that feel they have to sacrifice their hopes and dreams first before pursuing their own; however, if we shift our perspective and mindset to that of being of service, not only to ourselves in building our knowledge, strength, strategy, etc., but that of helping our team, leader, and community, being of service is quite beautiful.
Balancing that understanding of when we are being of service and when we are sacrificing something, it's important to, I think, understand a few important things.
1) Are you being of service to one individual and/or thing/idea or to a larger goal, community, and/or idea? I.E., is there a benefit to more than one person from your service?
2) Is your sacrifice only costing you something, or does it, in fact, have an impact on others around you? And is that impact positive or negative?
I believe that we can be of service while sacrificing something, be it our time, money, food, etc., but we can also be of service and gain, in conjunction with others, a benefit. And I think that is the ultimate goal many of us have in the work we do.
However, so often, we feel like we're sacrificing ourselves, our time, our talents, our abilities, and for what? For the benefit of our boss, our company, our family, a friend, etc., and where that can be dangerous is not communicating our understanding and expectations. We may go into a new job, for example, excited and ready to get to work, prove ourselves and move up in our team, organization, etc. But without clear goals and expectations of outcome from accomplishing (or not accomplishing) those goals, there can be a lot of unclear, unknown expectations on both sides, which can make a person quickly turn from a mindset of being of service to sacrificing.
How do we set up organizations and communication practices in our personal and professional lives to help tamper the feeling of sacrifice and instead uplift that of a service mindset? For me, I've always been a fan of communication, even over communication, but the idea of course is more nuanced than that. Trust, honesty, collaboration, and more go into creating these environments, and each organization, family unit, friendship even has a unique blend of criteria to create the balance for each person to feel of service rather than that of constant sacrifice.
Back in the begining of June, I wrote about leadership in one of my coffee check-ins, and it was a rather impassioned blog, and I stick by it. The best leaders I've encountered have been those with a servant leadership mindset, and the thing that I've really wondered in my career has been, 'Why have people not always been the focus of leadership? What lead us from a mindset of people to things?' and that's whole other rabbit hole for sure, but my point is to show that how changing our perspective and mindset can not only be beneficial to ourselves. but to those around us, and while we may think it's only a small impact, it can actually be quite impactful. For instance, if there were more servant leaders and a more of servant leadership mindset in my last job, there most likely wouldn't have been layoffs, or they wouldn't have been executed as poorly as they were in the very least. And sadly, it was one of the best jobs and environments with the best service leadership mindset I'd experience in my career.
I don't want that for others. And I've mentored students and colleagues for that very reason; so others can have a better experience than what I've endured. It hasn't felt like a sacrifice to me, and the best moments from those actions have been other's recognizing me as a leader in my team and environment, even when I haven't held a "leadership"/management position. Ironically enough that also happened in my last job 😅 and while there are days when I catch my mindset leaning towards sacrifice, I try to remember the balance of servant leadership, and while I may be in a position of service right now, I'm going to continue to be a servant leader as well because I know when that balance switches, I want to the kind of leader in a leadership/management position that I've rarely experienced.
Hate to be a spoil sport, but this pic isn't actually from today - shhhhh! Working on a surprise and taking ALL the precautions! More on that later this week, but this is a pic I snapped from my weekend coffee. It's a half-caff with a combination of the tiniest last bit of oatmilk we had to froth up, with the last bit of whipped cream we had. I love the cream melting into the coffee - it's beautiful, and science! 🤓
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