Nobody told me. Of course.

I’m in the business of grooming leaders. It’s what I love and I’m damn good at it.

When I’d started with Orangetheory Fitness, I’d been newly hired, had a few calls and completed my paperwork. Then I was told that my boss man was headed on vacation for the next week to ten days and he’s shared a link to what was known as our intranet. This intranet was one of the most difficult things to navigate. To search something, you had to be specific. And what did I know?! You don’t know what you don’t know, until you know it. And I was about to find it all out. By myself.

My mission was to learn as much as I could about the operations, the vision, the values and the processes. And I’d have to do this by reading. On my computer. This wasn’t my ideal scenario but again, I was undeterred.

By the time their vacation had ended, I’d created manuals, play books, files, cheat sheets and created all kinds of training documents for when I’d be training new team members. BossMan was impressed. I actually think he was more impressed that I’d found so much stuff on our intranet because it was truly a nightmare to course. Admittedly, I had been beaten by our intranet more than once; but I was in for the war, not the battle.

Since then, we’ve hired and trained so many people and nothing brings me more joy and satisfaction than seeing a part time person join the team and work to become a full time manager. Or someone wanting to do something for some fun money and making it their career. It’s freaking epic. Just as rewarding are those people that started with me nearly five years ago and are still with me today. That speaks volumes.

Am I perfect? Absofuckinglutely not. I’m perfectly flawed. I’m ok with it.

Some of the leaders I’ve trained haven’t made it. That’s ok. Things happen and dynamics change. Sometimes the work is harder than you thought or the price of success is too high. It’s all ok. I certainly would rather someone move on if it’s not the right fit than to stay on and suffer; that does none of us any good. But what gets me riled up is when I hear, “nobody told me.”

Wait. What?

This is common upon all levels of employment and even personal I’ve found. Nobody told you. Huh. And the fact that you’re ok saying that out loud and accepting zero responsibility is the first red flag.

Nobody told me either, but I figured it out.

In the days of Google, Duck Duck Go, Safari, whatever your search engine, there’s billions of pieces of information at your fingertips. Let’s not pretend this is new information.

In Orangetheory Fitness we have evolved from the intranet and have a much better, broader, easier domain filled with info. We also have a video based university of training tools, a weekly newsletter, Facebook groups, access to all management through an email system. And yet, somehow it’s my fault that you’re lacking because ‘nobody told you’. Got it.

Icebox Cryotherapy has a very sophisticated system of learning also with a library full of videos, tutorials, scripts…same as above. Group chats, zoom calls, Facebook groups. It’s all there, but yet, it seems to be too challenging to want to self improve. Why is that?

Why is it seemingly more acceptable to admit that you’ve done nothing to help yourself?

How have we evolved here? How to do we improve?

Where has our self awareness gone….what happened to pride?