Here’s something most people who know me wouldn’t guess. I’m afraid of flying. ✈️

Which is a problem, because I’ve spent my life on planes. Ten and twelve hour flights, most months, for years. And like a lot of the driven, perfectionist people I work with, my fear comes down to one thing. I like control. Or at least the comforting illusion of it.

So somewhere along the way I figured out a trick. I started talking to the crew. If I knew their names, heard a little about their lives, watched them be calm and ordinary, I calmed down. I’ll be honest, it started as a slightly selfish thing. It made me feel safer.

These days I bring them small gifts. Swedish chocolate, which is the best in the world, and I don’t care what the Swiss think.* A mini candle. Something from wherever I’m flying out of. It’s a lovely way to start a conversation, and over the years some of those turned into real friendships. People I visit now. People who show me around their cities.

The funny part is I once worked as a flight attendant myself, briefly, during my years around the Mediterranean before law school. Not because I’d conquered the fear. Because I was dating a pilot. We’ll leave that for another fun post.😆

The habit spread far beyond planes, though. Hotel staff, cashiers, the post office, the security officers at the airport, the people in line behind me. And the things I’ve learned this way are extraordinary.

A baker in a tiny town in Cyprus gave me his recipe for flaounes. A ranch owner I met at a little Mom and Pop restaurant invited me to ride on his land. A Sami man in a grocery store line invited me to a reindeer marking. All of it came from asking a real question and actually wanting the answer.

It works the same way inside a company. The people at the edges see everything, and almost nobody with a title asks them. The assistant knows who’s really running the meeting and who’s just talking. The security guard knows who’s kind when no one important is watching.

I’ve walked into organizations and learned more from the person at the front desk in five minutes than from an hour with the leadership team. The leaders weren’t hiding anything. They’d just stopped being curious about the parts of their own company that don’t look important.

The leaders I trust most are still asking the front desk how things really are, long after they stopped having to.

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* For the record, Sweden and Switzerland is not the same thing, nor is Swede and Swiss...just saying y'all...🙄