This past Tuesday, we had a team meeting scheduled at Funds For Learning. The agenda was clear, the slides were ready, and the focus was forward-looking: our three-year vision, one-year objectives, and the next ninety days of execution. It was an important conversation with time-sensitive work ready to launch.
And then something unusual happened. The OKC Thunder won the NBA Finals. A victory parade was announced, and celebration swept across the city.
So, what do you do?
As leaders, we live in the tension between performance and people. Our clients count on us for precision and follow-through. Federal deadlines don’t pause for confetti. But our team—our Guides—aren’t machines. They’re human beings with passions, families, and, in this case, hometown pride.
It’s tempting to treat leadership like a scoreboard. Did we hit the goal? Meet the deadline? Close the loop? But there’s another scoreboard that matters—one made up of trust, morale, and shared resilience. You can think of it as the soulboard. It’s harder to measure, but impossible to ignore.
On Tuesday, we made a call. We delayed the meeting. Not because a parade was more important than our work, but because honoring our people is part of the work. That moment of shared humanity reinforced the very culture that helps us deliver our best results.
Great leadership isn’t about choosing between outcomes and empathy. It’s about holding both with clarity. It means staying calm under pressure and committed to purpose. It means knowing when to move forward and when to step back.
It’s a question worth considering:
When results and relationships feel at odds, what guides your decision?
At Funds For Learning, we’re working to build a team that can go the distance, one that delivers meaningful outcomes without losing sight of what makes the work matter in the first place.
