Back in the day growing up in western Pennsylvania winters were actually pretty white. Snow was something we lived with during those months on a daily basis and even managed to have school with no delays! As I have mentioned before, I grew up in the country with our home almost completely surrounded by pasture fields and on a hill. With our home being relatively secluded from the main road, it meant we had a long driveway leading up to the entrance. Now in those days, most driveways were not paved, so therefore our driveway was a mixture of dirt, gravel and mud. This mixture always made for very interesting times when there was significant snow accumulation and we had to navigate the driveway. Also, my father was not a big believer in four wheel drive vehicles due to the expense and quite frankly I feel he truly enjoyed the challenge of attempting to move rear wheel drive vehicles up and down the driveway in those conditions.

It was always fascinating to see how folks attempted to navigate our driveway in the snow. There, of course, were no cell phones back then, so when we knew visitors would be coming to the house, my sister and I would sit at the picture window at the front of the house to watch people attempt the ascent. It was always a little scary to see how people attempted to scale our driveway. Some, like my father, would treat it as a drag race and attempt to accumulate as much speed as they could on the flat part to hopefully build enough inertia to carry them to the top. Others would try to go slow and creep their car up the driveway. Those folks usually stopped halfway and ended up in a ditch or slid off the hill into the lower part of our yard which always proved to be entertaining as a child watching from the window. Lastly, some people chose to park their car at the bottom of the driveway and simply walk not wanting to endure the imminent risk of getting stuck or sliding off the driveway. Our driveway was difficult to traverse on a normal day, but what made it monumentally more challenging was the snow. Each individual had their own method to overcome the snowy situation and in the end I got to see and spend time with friends and loved ones once they reached the top.

Leadership takeaways:

1. Each challenge requires a different path, meaning in some cases you just need to power through, like my dad did in just hitting the gas and speeding to the top.
2. Other challenges require us to settle in, adapt to the new environment and slowly find ways to overcome. Much like parking at the bottom of the driveway and slowly and methodically scaling the hill on foot.
3. The most important takeaway is in either case you cannot stop, otherwise you will get stuck in a “ditch” of confusion, frustration, disappointment and even resentment which is a very dangerous place to be in.