I want to start by asking a question: Do your employees show up enthusiastically to work?

They should.

It took me a while to understand that concept. Work can be challenging; in fact, it can really suck at times. Every job has something unsavory about it. There’s always going to be a task or role that you enjoy doing much less than others. Finding a job that you enjoy every aspect of is hard. I would even go so far as to say that it’s downright impossible for most people.

Yet, as a leader, you should still strive to build the conditions in which your employees show up to work enthusiastically! I actually learned this lesson early in my leadership journey.

I was leading a team of four, operating as a hunter-killer javelin team during a training exercise on Camp Pendleton. We were playing the bad guys on this mission, helping another unit prepare for deployment as they completed their final training mission. My team’s mission was simple: harass the unit as if I were a team of insurgents. We had two javelin systems, which is used to launch missiles at tanks or any other armored vehicles. Obviously, this was a training scenario, so we had no live ammunition.

The entire training mission was set to last 3-5 days, depending on how well the unit ‘destroyed’ the actors playing insurgents. On day 1, we walked 20 miles. On day 2, we walked about 15. Luckily, we got to rest on day 3 while we waited for them to move toward us in our concealed position. We spent night 3 harassing the enemy as they tried to make their way toward the final objective. Then they passed us in the morning on day 4. They were about 3 miles away from their final objective, moving swiftly in their vehicles.

My hunter-killer team had one javelin and two people left, including me. The enemy had ‘destroyed’ the others. Once you were ‘destroyed,’ you could start to move back to the staging area. I was also ready to head back to our staging area and wrap things up a little early. The enemy had already passed us, and there wasn’t much more for us to do. In fact, I was thinking about how great it would be to take a shower and get some food.

That’s when I heard my radio go off.

“Hey hunter-killer team, we need you to traverse the ridgeline, link up with the machine gun squad in your AO (area of operations), and set up a support by fire position on top of the firebreak to help defend the final objective.”

I turned around and said three words to my team—the one remaining member of my team: EMBRACE THE SUCK.

They heard the message, they packed their gear, I packed my gear, and we started moving to meet our machine gun squad. I met their leader, my peer, John Glomba. We looked at each other, smiled, and said EMBRACE THE SUCK at the same time.

Our now-team of six (John brought 3 plus himself) made its way up the firebreaks and started looking for a position to set our support by fire for the defense of the final objective.

This lesson didn’t crystallize for me until a little while later. I looked back on my time in the military and realized I had a lot of fun in some really awful, shitty conditions. It wasn’t the work that excited us as much as the opportunity to overcome challenges and share in the misery together. We genuinely wanted to be traversing the firebreaks with our team. It was later on that I realized how powerful the phrase EMBRACE THE SUCK really is. You’re doing this regardless of whether you like it or want to do it, so you might as well embrace the challenge and make it an enjoyable experience.

The same thing applies to work. You can either enjoy the time you spend working or not. Some tasks suck, but when you embrace the work, it becomes easier to build bonds and create an actual team capable of helping everyone embrace the suck and overcome challenges. You don’t want to tolerate any aspect of your job; you want to embrace it and make it into an experience that you look back on fondly.

More importantly, as leaders, we need to help create the conditions for our team to embrace their role and enjoy the work they do each day. You can use this as the starting point for your own team. There’s no formula for generating enthusiasm, but it starts with embracing every aspect of the role and creating excitement around challenges and difficult tasks.

Until next time,

Rick

P.S. I’d love to hear from you directly if you have any tips for generating enthusiasm. Hit reply and let me know!