Yolanda sees the other side
I was coming home from from a visit to the Center for Creative Leadership, which teaches C-levels, admirals, and strivers of all levels to lead others better by first understanding self. The approach is humanistic but entirely without fluff — every principle is backed by decades of supporting data.
Flying from Greensboro to Boston, the only good flight is on Delta — unless it’s cancelled like mine. Along with my travelmates, I scrambled onto an already-boarding two-leg flight by US Airways. I arrived in Philly and found the connecting gate to be overflowing with misery. The preceding flight to Boston had been boarded, then held on the tarmac, and then returned to the gate. The customers were variously folded, splayed and contorted in seats that were designed for the short rests of the previous era of air travel — regulated, expensive and punctual. The previous flight was defunct, and it became clear that those passengers were to be given my plane for their ride home. My mates left for the bar, and I stayed at the gate, determined to join these ragged souls on the next plane to Boston.
One US Airways employee was at the gate desk, occasionally looking around at the scene but never at any one person, and typing into his screen prodigiously. The plane arrived for boarding. Travelers shoved their way to gate door. A few customers were not passing through but were instead lingering near the desk and leering needily at the US Airways employee, whom I shall now name Sir System. Sir System was expert at the operations of the gate computer, and he was assiduous about the order of boarding. Glued tightly to Sir System’s counter was a customer whom I shall name Nigel (Nice Intelligent Guy with English Lilt). As a customer, Nigel had everything going for him. We was tidily groomed, had a pleasant face and wore a gentlemanly overcoat. Nigel was, I imagined, an ex-pat of many years, as he spoke with the perfectly diluted English accent that Americans equate with social refinement. But Nigel was not happy.
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