As we prayed through how we are to offer proper stewardship over all these processes, exercises, and tools that lead organizations down a transformation journey, we were left with a very clear conclusion, we are supposed to make it available to everyone.
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This resolve gets tested sometimes.
Understanding my own identity as a man and understanding all the gaps in my masculine journey to adulthood was a necessary, but very challenging journey. There was a natural progression of things I needed to learn, know, and understand, that I had largely missed in my matriculation from boy to man. It is the same for nearly every honest man or woman I have ever come across.
The revelation of all of this, had me doubling back to fill in gaps in my developmental journey. It also had me aggressively seeking out the wisdom of old age. It was in this season that I began to see myself as an “Inverse Abraham,” a son of many fathers. I needed and cried out for maturity, wisdom, and mentoring.
He was sort of unnerving, but in a way that made me totally comfortable. Even in this first meeting, he seemed to know more about me (or at least more of the things that really mattered) than I knew myself. He didn’t seem to need anything from me or particularly care what I thought about him. That was the unnerving part.
The fact that he cared so deeply about the deepest things about me was incredibly disruptive, but intriguing at the same time. It was as if I had stumbled into a conversation I had been desperate to have, but didn’t know I needed. The fact that I was 23 years into a successful banking career didn’t seem to faze him. He knew I was born to be a professional coach and referred to me that way in our very first meeting.
Living in San Antonio, we have had a front row seat on a selfless life expression of another sort. In an industry where arrogance, flash, and self-aggrandizement seems to be the barometer for success, Tim Duncan chose a different path. His recent retirement prompted dozens of tributes. Most of the tributes focus on his selfless play, his unassuming manner, and how much better he made everyone around him. They obviously point to the five NBA championships during his career, but the more astounding statistics are around the sustained excellence of the team through his career.
Speech helped me gain confidence, taught me to better frame up my thoughts, and gave me a place to belong. As you might imagine, as a thick-tongued boy lacking confidence, they kept chiding me to speak louder and enunciate. It wasn’t until I felt like I was almost screaming and articulating every syllable as an individual word, that they felt like I was actually speaking in an appropriate manner. Sometimes when you are not used to speaking up or having anyone care about what you have to say, you have to exaggerate in the other direction. You have to do what feels like shouting, just to be heard.
I call that “fighting your tendency.” It is a concept that seems to show up in conversations all the time. It is the simple idea that you have go against the grain of your default behavior to get decidedly different results.
We’ve observed something in the teams we work with. Once they get really clear on their desired culture (Values, Purpose and Vision), the herd starts to thin itself. The inconsistency with the now clearly defined culture makes it difficult to remain on the team. Also, the rest of the team buying into and operating under the powerfully embodied culture won’t allow others who don’t fit, to remain.
The most powerful thing about a clear vision is how precisely it illuminates the things you must do today in order to achieve that powerful future. It inspires and elicits excitement while breeding the elusive employee engagement we are all seeking.
I went to a non-fiction writing conference a couple of years ago. They took us through a series of writing prompts with the objective of getting us to declutter and simplify our thoughts. We were shown a simple photo of a weathered house in the middle of an endless field of grass and asked to describe what we saw.
The process was to have us increasingly simplify our descriptions, each time working with less words to accomplish the task. I was undaunted by the shrinking word count and just started using bigger and more elaborate words (one of the byproducts of reading a lot to escape my troubled reality as a kid). At one point the leader of the conference got so exasperated with me, that he blurted out: "Just say the damn thing!!" That phrase comes to mind often.
Our mission with our children has always been that they would be sourcing, well beyond our parenting, the love of their true Father. That they would know who they are and how loved they are because of Him. Our job as parents and employers, is to introduce them to the culture of the Kingdom and their King.
If you put it into rowing parlance, out of every ten employees at the average company, 3 are rowing forward aggressively, 5 are along for the ride, and 2 are actually trying to sink the boat! Before you summarily reject that idea, take a hard look at your team. Those that are actively engaged (30%) need to be honored, celebrated, and rewarded. Those along for the ride (52%) need a plan to help them get more actively engaged. Those actively rowing against you (18%) need to find someone else’s boat to sink. Things are difficult enough without hauling dead weight around!
Who wouldn’t be anxious? After twenty years of launching and then fathering a not-for-profit to significant maturity and impact, it was time to find a replacement. It takes incredible maturity and humility to step aside from all that you’ve created… to believe that ultimate success and long term viability of the enterprise requires another at the helm. Many founders or entrepreneurs never find the temerity of spirit to reach this point. Of the few that do, most find it difficult to actually let go.
I often get the sense, talking to some business leaders; that they believe there is someone just beyond the horizon that can do the jobs of everyone on the team better than the folks they currently have. That there is a magic pill, program, person, or thing, that will magically solve all their problems and make their dreams come true. That unicorns exist.
We’ve all heard the concept of the stage dad or mom. That parent standing just off-stage, off the court, or even outside the classroom. Their child’s success is somehow attributed to their success in life. If the little “me” can somehow make it onto that team, make it into that college, or fit into that crowd, it somehow redeems the fact that I didn’t find the same success. I think it can translate into repressed hopes, dreams, and desires of the heart as well.