The work nobody sees

A few weeks ago, I spent an hour with David Shapiro. He runs the YMCA of Greater Boston. Before that, he spent 10 years as CEO of MENTOR, the umbrella organization for the national mentoring movement.

Three things he said have stayed with me. It took me a while to realize they were all getting at the same thing.

Effort vs. Delivery

“Communication is the Grand Canyon between effort and delivery.”

I’ve been repeating that line ever since. Someone puts their head down and works on something hard. They go quiet. Weeks later, they surface, and the room has already decided they weren’t delivering.

Then comes the resentment: I’ve been working so hard. Why didn’t anybody notice?

Nobody could notice.

David told me he used to hate weekly reports. Do all the work, then write up all the work. It felt like two jobs. He doesn’t see it that way anymore.

Doing the work and talking about the work are both the work.

That made me rethink how easily we separate the two. If nobody knows why something is stalled, what changed, or why it turned out to be harder than expected, they only know that nothing arrived. The work may be happening. They just can’t see it. When in doubt, reach out. 

Us vs. Them

David told me about taking the national CEO role at MENTOR. He’d spent years on the local side critiquing “national,” and he thought that history might earn him some goodwill.

“I thought the clock was going to restart when I got to national,” he said. “And they were just like, ‘Old national sucked, and now you’re new national.’”

Years of broken promises and underperformance had taught people to protect themselves. Not from him, exactly. From the seat he was now occupying.

“The way we protect our hearts and our hopes is by deciding to find fault in those other people,” he told me. “I became the ‘other people.’”

I keep coming back to that. David had credibility and relationships. But the people looking at him had a history, too. The institution outlasts the individual. You can inherit disappointment you didn’t create and mistrust you don’t think you’ve earned.

What stayed with me was how David responded. He didn’t defend his record or remind anyone whose side he used to be on.

“It’s frustrating that I’m on step one when I thought I was on step four. But I guess that’s where I was at.”

And then: “It usually reminds me that my predecessors weren’t idiots. They were trying, and this was hard.”

That last part caught me. Sometimes the difficulty you inherit tells you something about the work, not just the people who came before you.

Hopeful vs. Right

Near the end of our conversation, David said something that seemed like a change of subject.

Most evenings, when he walks out of the Y, he passes teenagers playing ping pong with a couple in their 80s. Nobody arranged that pairing.

“I’d rather be hopeful than right,” he said.

He wasn’t saying we should ignore what’s wrong. He knows there’s a whole economy built on attention and outrage. His point was about how much of it we need to take in once we already know what’s happening.

“I’m not sure I need my eighth story about corruption and grift. I’m pretty aware that there’s corruption and grift happening. I don’t know why the eighth one is helping me.”

I keep thinking about those teenagers and that couple in their 80s. That’s happening, too. That’s also part of the picture. You just have to look harder for it, and you’ll likely find it to be a more productive guidepost.

True vs. Visible

It took me a while to understand why these three parts of our conversation had stayed with me.

The work can be happening and still be invisible. You can walk into a role with years of goodwill and still be seen first as the institution you represent. And something hopeful can be happening right in front of you and go unnoticed if you never look in its direction.

At first, I thought David was talking about communication, trust, and hope. Now I think he was also talking about what gets seen.

What do people see when they look at the work? What history do they see when they look at you? And what are you choosing to see yourself?

Doing good work doesn’t mean people understand the work. Good intentions don’t erase the history you inherit. And paying attention to what’s wrong doesn’t mean you have to give it all of your attention.

There’s often a gap between what’s true and what’s visible.

I left our conversation thinking about the responsibility leaders have for that gap: what they make visible to others and what they choose to notice themselves.

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This an edition of the Full Picture Leadership series, where I talk with experienced leaders about the hidden dynamics behind high-stakes moments, so you can recognize them faster in your own work. You can connect with David Shapiro and me on LinkedIn.

If someone you know is making a strong case that nobody's hearing, send this their way.