Years ago I read a wonderful post by Ted Coine titled, Dear CEO: Who tells you when your baby is ugly?
The post resonated loudly, because as an employee and as a customer I have wondered… [Tweet “Do they not know, or do they not care?”]
Over the past 41 days, I’ve asked that question at an increasingly high level…
Years ago I was in a new role and at the last minute discovered that one of my “other duties as assigned” was to lead a service project at a summer camp before it opened each year.
So I made a few phone calls to invite some people to join me. One of the calls was to a young mother that I had just met. Two years later as I prepared for a move, that woman came to see me.
She emphasized the importance of that invitation and stressed that it was the spark that ignited her fire.
Prior to that call she had been thinking about changing her membership, and going somewhere else. After being invited to participate and making one personal connection with someone, she got more involved. As more time passed her sense of belonging and her ownership in the future of the organization increased.
And it all started with a personal invitation.
[Tweet “No matter what kind of organization you lead, personal invitations will ignite your growth.”]
October was a tough month.
As soon as I felt well enough to get out of the house I said yes to everyone I had been saying no to while I was sick. And although I was thrilled to see them, I tried to do too much too soon.
The good news is that October ended better than it started.
And I came home today feeling so thankful. As always, I turned on the music that would reflect my heart and speak to me. And then sat down to write. As I looked through interviews I’ve done and thoughts I’ve been noting, I stumbled across this quote from Einstein.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
I’m currently reading John Maxwell’s new book, The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. One of those laws is: “Growth doesn’t just happen.”
One of the points that John makes is that you have to be intentional and willing to invest in your growth. (With both your time and with your finances.) He tells a story of wanting to take an expensive leadership development course early in his career and having to save for months in order to do so.
[Tweet “It’s hard to improve when you have no one but yourself to follow. John Maxwell”]
His point reminded me of something a former employee said to me years after we worked together. He said that he has never worked for anyone else that has been so invested growing themselves and others. The beauty of the comment is that even when the budget for training dried up and blew away, the people I served still received great training.
One evening several summers ago, my husband and I (who don’t have children of our own) were at a playground with my six and seven-year-old niece and nephew. They took me to the highest part of a fort and told me that I was the princess, they were my guards, and that my husband was “the bad guy.” I was instructed to stay in the tower and they would protect me! In the moments that followed, my husband and I were transported back to a world we have nearly forgotten.
As I found myself savoring each second of that evening, I also found myself wondering why we don’t visit that world more often.
The entire experience made me think about the Disney Movie, Monsters, Inc., a movie about Monsters that power their world by capturing the energy in a child’s scream. Through a series of events they discover that a child’s laugh produces much more energy than a scream. …Ultimately transforming their entire world. Do you see the connection to the workplace?
