Every Person Has Their Thing
and the Leader Who Sees It First

Years ago, I was sitting in a call center.

I had a computer in front of me. I answered calls. I did the work that was expected from my role.

But computers had been my hobby for a long time, so I was not only answering calls. I was also looking at the systems around me.

I noticed errors. I noticed strange logic. I noticed small things that could be improved.

And I shared those things with management.

At that time, I probably did not have good language for what I was doing. I was not thinking about architecture. I was not thinking about leadership. I was just seeing things.

And when I saw them, I could not fully ignore them.

Later, when a CRM transformation project started, my manager noticed that this was not random noise from a call center employee.

I was made Product Owner from the call center side.

I do not remember every step of how it happened. I remember the feeling more clearly than the process.

At some point, she told me that now I was going to a different office. Dzirnavu iela 105. Lattelecom HQ.

It sounds like a small logistical detail.

But for me, it was not small.

My route changed.

And with that route, something else changed too.

I felt joy. I felt pride. I felt that she had noticed me, believed in me, and moved me into conditions where I could start growing.

It was not only a project assignment.

It felt like the beginning of a path into the future.

I felt special.

Not special in the arrogant sense. More in the quiet, personal sense that maybe something I had always felt inside myself had finally become visible to someone else.

Someone had seen my thing.

I still do not have a perfect English word for it. In Russian, I would say фишка.

A person's thing.

Their natural pattern. Their way of being useful. Their strange strength. The thing that appears again and again when they are placed in the right conditions.

For many years after that, while working in projects and teams, I started noticing this in others.

Some people bring speed. Some bring trust. Some bring chaos that becomes improvisation when standard solutions stop working. Some are quiet, but reliable in a way that makes the whole system calmer.

But I also learned that this thing is not always beautiful from the outside.

Sometimes it first appears as friction.

Years later, in a project meeting, I would see someone work strangely. Slow. Resistant. My first thought was: this is a problem.

Then, after weeks, the picture changed.

Someone was not lazy. They were protecting themselves from a previous burnout.

Someone was not conservative. They were protecting earned trust.

Someone was not chaotic for no reason. Their chaos was their way of finding solutions when the official path did not work.

Someone was not simply difficult. They were in the wrong conditions.

This is why I do not fully trust first impressions in teams.

I listen to them.

But I do not fully trust them.

A first impression often tells me where the friction is. It does not always tell me what the person is.

A person's thing is not only talent. It can be strength. It can be protection. It can be a wound that became a working style.

People are not Lego bricks.

They do not always click neatly into the place where they would be most useful.

Some people hide their thing. Some do not know it themselves. Some resist when someone names it, even if the facts are there.

This was an important lesson for me.

Seeing someone's thing is not the same as reaching the person.

Sometimes there is no channel. There may be distrust. There may be dislike. The person may see themselves completely differently.

I cannot force someone to accept my view of them.

That is probably my style of leadership.

To notice. To understand. To believe. To direct. And, often, to not give up quickly.

I can give a person five chances. Ten chances. Sometimes more.

Because I know what it means when someone sees more in you than your current role shows.

My manager once did that for me.

She saw that I was not only a person answering calls. She saw that I noticed systems. She gave me a chance to stand closer to the future I wanted.

That changed my path.

So now, when I look at people, I try to remember that.

Sometimes the problem is not the person. Sometimes their thing has not yet found the right conditions.

Sometimes the leader is also part of the problem, because seeing the thing is easier than finding the right way to reach the person.

I know this about myself too.

My persistence can become too straight. I may stay with the same belief for a long time, waiting for the right moment.

There is strength in that. There is also limitation.

Sometimes I need more improvisation. More ways to find another door when the first one is closed.

But I still believe in the direction.

Because the alternative is to reduce people too quickly.

I am more interested in what happens after that first collision.

What is the pattern? What is the protection? What is the hidden strength? What condition is missing?

I do not think this is soft leadership. For me, it is practical.

A team becomes strong when different human patterns find the right place to work together.

I do not know if this is universally correct. Maybe it is just my way of seeing teams.

But after many years in projects, I cannot unsee it.

Every person has their own thing.

And sometimes leadership starts when I stop asking only whether the person fits the role.

I start asking a different question.

What is the thing in this person?

And where could it finally make sense?