RLL 30--Responsibility and Selflessness: Two Leadership Essentials

Real Life Leading #30

Responsibility and Selflessness: Two Leadership Essentials

This week, here are two more leadership principles that I learned by watching my dad operate. He wasn't perfect, but he did try to be consistent. Perhaps the most important thing he ever taught me was personal responsibility and putting others first. That's what today's blog post is about, and I hope you learn from it as I learned from him. 

Principle Five: “You are responsible for you. Own up to your actions and accept responsibility for your choices.”

One of the ways in which we show love to other people is by fulfilling our obligations to them, and Dad knew this as well as anyone I’ve ever known. He was consistent in making sure that he took responsibility for his own actions and choices, even when that led to difficult consequences.

I remember hearing a few stories of his childhood about life on the farm and how each person had certain things that they were responsible for, and it seems that this set the pattern for his entire life. As mentioned in the previous chapter, throughout his childhood Dad had certain chores that he had to complete before heading to school: feeding chickens, gathering eggs, feeding other animals, etc. After school he had homework, baseball or basketball practice depending on the season, and then more work on the farm, especially during the fall when the crops were being harvested.

Dad displayed this commitment to personal responsibility to us in many different ways, but the one that I remember the most is from after he and my mom divorced. Now, you may be thinking, “If they divorced, he didn’t exactly keep up his end of the bargain.” That depends on what you mean. As far as I have ever heard from both of my parents, the divorce was mutually agreed to, though it was Dad’s idea. From all I saw for the rest of my life, it was also about as friendly and positive as a divorce situation could be.

Youth and high school athletics is a great venue for helping kids learn about personal responsibility. I've loved being a coach for almost fifteen years.

After my parents divorced Dad moved out, and we stayed to live with Mom. However, this is where things became unusual, and this is where I really learned even more about responsibility from both parents. During the school year, Dad came to Mom’s house every morning to pick us up and take us to school; this made Mom’s schedule easier, and it also gave us the opportunity to see Dad almost every day. We typically only stayed at his new place every other weekend, but we got to see him all the time. So far as I know, Dad was never late on a child support payment, he still came to see as many of our activities as he could, and as a result of that, we children had a much easier time than others who have been through the difficulties of a divorced family.

This responsibility also extended into areas of life that are not usual for divorced couples. For example, in addition to going out of their way to make sure we got to see Dad, my parents were also very unusual in that we continued to celebrate holidays together, mainly Thanksgiving. We’d all gather at Mom’s house for a meal and then spend much of the day just sitting around and spending time with each other. This respectful relationship between divorced parents made a huge impact on me. Yet it still wasn’t the most lasting lesson; that came later.

When Dad was in his mid-sixties, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Throughout the process of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, Mom helped take care of him, as did my sister Julie. Mom and Dad had been divorced for a decade by that point, and yet Mom still helped Dad as much as she could—and because Mom had been a nurse for her entire adult life, she was a tremendous help. As Dad was getting worse, he met with my sister, my brother John, and me one afternoon with a request that I did not expect, but in hindsight I probably should have.

Dad had several different life insurance policies that he had accumulated over the course of his military and civilian careers. We had talked with him about them some, because he wanted to make sure that we knew how to go about accessing them and also to avoid any potential issues between siblings. Thankfully, there were not any of those disagreements anyway. What did occur and surprised me was that was that Dad asked us to give Mom an equal share in each of the different life insurance policies.

Again, keep in mind that my parents had been divorced for over a decade by the time of this meeting. Yes, their split had been amicable, and yes Mom had certainly helped take care of Dad over the past couple of years. But in the paperwork, the only beneficiaries named were the children. Here was Dad once again doing the unexpected by helping take care of Mom long after he had any legal reason to do so. As far as I recall, none of the children objected, and we didn’t go through the legal trouble of redoing any of the paperwork. Dad simply made his request, we agreed to see that it was done, and that was the end of the matter. Even long after divorce, and long after we were adults, Dad was still doing what he could to take care of us.

I often still experience days when I find Dad continuing to look out for me years after his death. For example, this past winter when it was freezing and frosty outside, I needed to scrape the ice off of my windshield. What I didn’t have was an ice-scraper—until I remembered that Dad had one in an old toolbox that was now in my possession. I went and got the ice-scraper, took care of the car, and said a prayer of thanks that Dad was continuing to take care of me. His lessons in responsibility certainly made an impression on me, and those lessons became even more applicable when I went through my own divorce a few years later.

Because of Dad’s example, I knew that I would need to be willing to go out of my way to help make sure my children were taken care of and that their mother was taken care of, even though she and I were no longer together. My mom’s willingness to celebrate holidays with Dad, and Dad’s willingness to do the same, inspired my now blended family to also be willing to celebrate holidays together as one large group. I know, without a doubt, that I am responsible for my choices and the consequences that come with them, and that is because of the lesson Dad taught me when I was in middle school and both parents continued to teach me as I got older.

Action Step: Ask yourself what you need to take responsibility for today that you have been avoiding. Once you have figured it out, set about making things right as well as you can, even if it is uncomfortable.

Principle 6: “Others come first—always.”

At our wedding, my wife’s father Ted said something that has stuck with me every day since, and it was the way in which he defined love. He stated that, “Love is choosing someone else’s ultimate good above your own.” This definition goes well with the scriptural definition and explanations of love, and it fits perfectly with the way that Dad lived his life in service of other people. As we saw in the previous chapter, Dad was consistent in making sure that Mom and the children were looked after. This was true both in terms of looking after his family but also in being willing to help others as part of his lifestyle.

As a child, I remember showing up early and staying late to almost every school and church event, and the reason is because Dad was always one of the people helping set up before and then helping clean after these events. I wondered about that as a kid, thinking, “Why does he always get stuck doing those things?” It wasn’t until later that I realized he was volunteering to do them, in order to serve.

Dad’s most obvious willingness to serve was in his military career; when many others chose to dodge the draft by fleeing to Canada, Dad chose to serve in the Army. Having said that, Dad also had the utmost respect for those who objected to the war legally, such as the great Muhammad Ali. Though Dad chose to serve, he didn't ever judge those who chose differently. After being drafted, Dad realized he enjoyed the military, and he made a twenty-year career out of it, finally achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired. After leaving the military, he continued to serve others by teaching Sunday school classes and by working with our local Boys and Girls Club as a volunteer and later as president and a board member for our county.

This is Dad in his dress uniform, not long before his retirement. I'm grateful to all who choose to serve in our armed forces.

I can remember a couple of major examples of Dad putting my needs before his own, even after I had become an adult. Early in my teaching career, when I was still very much struggling to make ends meet, we had an automobile crisis: that is, my car had died, we could not afford a new one, and we were not sure what to do. One day, as I came home from school driving my wife’s car (leaving her stuck at home with a toddler and a new baby), I noticed a car parked in our driveway, a car I did not recognize. It was a red, four-door car, just the type of thing that would be big enough for us and still get good gas mileage.

The second thing I noticed was that it was parked facing the road; in other words, whoever drove it had backed into our driveway. And that’s when I thought of Dad since he was the only person I’ve ever met who backed into almost every single parking space. At church, at home, running errands, it didn’t matter; Dad’s saying was, “I have to back up some time, so I may as well back up first so I can just pull forward when I’m leaving.” That used to just make me exasperated, but now that I’m older, I understand it a bit more.

Back to the car in the driveway—I walked in the house, and there was Dad grinning and excited to see me. He explained that after we had talked on the phone the previous week about our car situation that he decided he would help. So he started looking in the papers for a good deal on a used car that would be big enough for my family, and when he found one, he went and bought it. Sitting in our house that day, he went on to explain that he had taken the liberty of getting the car looked at, having the oil changed, and then he drove it from his home in Alabama to our home in North Carolina, a drive of around 500 miles. “I had to make sure it ran well,” he said with a chuckle. Dad stayed with us for a couple of days, and then he took a bus all the way back home.

Again, this was part of Dad’s lifestyle in both large things and small things: put others first. Opening the door for strangers, taking care of his soldiers in Vietnam, and looking after his adult children when they get themselves into a bind were just a few of the ways he did this. Now, sometimes Dad’s attempts to help were not quite as welcome as they might have been, though they were still kindly intended. On a different visit up to North Carolina, Dad decided he would ‘help’ by rearranging everything in the kitchen. And I mean everything: pots, pans, cereal boxes, coffee, small appliances. When I came home, my wife was more than a little upset because of what she thought of as Dad’s “meddling.” She had a point, though I still mostly laugh at the memory of Dad moving things around the kitchen in order to ‘help’ us have a more organized space.

Dad really was one of those rare people who seemed to spend his life continually focused on other people, both at work and at home. In fact, this was so obvious to other people that, after Dad died, my stepfather Brian even said about him that he was amazed at how much Dad put other people’s needs ahead of his own. “Your dad truly showed grace, dignity, and putting others first, especially when it meant whatever was best for his children.” For my stepfather to recognize that and say that about my father made me feel good, and even more so because it confirmed what I already knew. Dad lived out the principle that others come first—always.

Action Step: Choose one situation today in which you consciously choose to put someone else first, even when that may inconvenience you.

RLL Bonus: (Guest Post for Joseph Lalonde)--3 Steps to Self-Awareness for Leaders

(Psst: If you want to read this post in its original posting place, just click on this link: http://www.jmlalonde.com/3-steps-self-awareness-leaders/)

In the midst of being put on trial for corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates uttered the famous line, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  He was well aware of the fact that, in order to truly live and lead as we ought, we first have to know who we are. As leaders, this is especially true since, by definition, we are going to influence and impact other people. If we are to do this as well as we can, we must first be aware of ourselves: strengths and weaknesses, gifts and flaws.

Self-reflection for its own sake is not necessarily bad, though it can lead to narcissism if one isn’t careful. However, self-reflection is important to leaders since we must evaluate who we are in order to become more confident in our gifts while also being willing to address our flaws. Once we’ve done that, then we can use those things in service to others. Thus, it is crucial to get a better understanding of yourself as a person and as a leader, and the process is never-ending since we will all change and develop as we grow older. Here are three quick things you can do to jump-start the process of understanding who you are so that you can then learn how to better serve those that you are leading.

Step 1: Ask yourself what it is that you resent in other people.

Do you resent when people are disrespectful? Arrogant? Condescending? Lazy? Dishonest? The reason to ask yourself this question is to see what it is that you value. If you dislike laziness in others, it is because you see the value in hard work. That’s a good thing. If you dislike it when others are disrespectful, it’s because you see the value in being respectful. Again, that’s a good thing! However, one thing to be aware of is this: often, we most dislike in others the things that we ourselves are or have been guilty of. For me, I know that I dislike it when others are condescending; and I know that this is at least in part because I have been guilty of this (especially in my classroom). So, when looking at what it is that you resent, be humble enough to ask if you are or have been guilty of the things you dislike.

Step 2: Ask yourself what you admire in other people.

What qualities do you most enjoy seeing in other people? Integrity? Self-confidence? A strong work ethic? Whatever these qualities are, surround yourself with people that have them, especially if you know that you may be lacking in certain attributes. When I first became a head coach for a high school soccer team, I was very envious of the self-confidence possessed by my assistant coach. I was young, and I was concerned with making sure everyone on the team liked me. He, on the other hand, despite being the same age as me was much more concerned with making sure the players did what they were supposed to, regardless of how they felt about him. That self-confidence is something I still admire today.

Step 3: Ask for honest critique from a few people in your close circle, and then compare their answers to what you came up with from steps 1 and 2.

Once you have begun examining yourself, be even more vulnerable (within reason) and ask a few people close to you what they see as your biggest strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Ask them to give you specific examples, if possible, of what they mean, and then be willing to address the issues that they bring up. By doing this you show vulnerability and trust to your close circle, and you are also growing as a person and leader.

Confident Humility, and all leadership, is about using your gifts and talents in the service of other people. May you grow in your understanding of yourself so that you can use what you’ve been given to serve others.

RLL 29--Controlling Emotions and Getting Work Done: Two More Keys to Leading Well

Real Life Leading #29

Controlling Emotions and Getting Word Done: Two More Keys to Leading Well

As with last week, this week I'm sharing more information from my ebook '(Extra)Ordinary Leadership', and I hope that you find the post helpful, engaging, and encouraging. Let me know what you think, and be sure to share with others and sign up to get the first chapter of my upcoming book 'Inverted Leadership', due out in June!

Principle Three: “Choose to be in a good mood every morning—you can control your emotions, or you can be controlled by them.”

As I mentioned in last week's post, Dad was not terribly keen on displaying a whole lot of emotion, and in fact, when I was young, anger was one that I remember seeing more than some others. He was also quick to laugh, and as I stated earlier, I never doubted whether Dad loved me. As I got older, I remember seeing Dad go through a number of life circumstances, both positive and negative, that affected him emotionally. Through all of those situations, what I remember most is that Dad was in control of those emotions.

I was never afraid of Dad’s anger, because I knew that he would not take it out on me in a harmful way. I was also always very aware that few people were quicker to make a silly joke or laugh at a small jest than Dad was. No matter the circumstances, Dad was in control of his emotions, and as I got older, I saw more and more of them. Too many people equate “controlling one’s emotions” with “never displaying one’s emotions.” Those are most certainly not the same thing, and Dad seemed to know this. As with everything else, it was a display of love toward others to control his emotions: because love is more than just a feeling, love can supersede and inform one’s emotions. Dad showed this through not taking out his anger on others, through being kind in difficult situations, and by maintaining an unfailingly positive outlook on life, even when he was suffering from cancer.

Grandfather and granddaughter together--what better reason to choose to be in a good mood every morning?

There are a number of events that Dad went through in his life that could have caused emotions to run high and for those emotions to cause lasting damage to those around him. From losing his parents at a younger age than most, to fighting in the Vietnam War, to struggling with finding work after retiring from the military, Dad saw his share of difficult situations and yet maintained a positive outlook, because for Dad, having a positive outlook and attitude was simply part of his lifestyle, part of his being.

According to his own testimony before he died, Dad learned much about integrity from his mother and father. This is especially striking when one considers that Dad lost his mother, Olive Merriman Hawbaker, when he was a senior in high school. At a time when students are either gearing up for college or to enter the workforce, Dad, his older brother Joe, and their father were trying to figure out how to manage their lives while missing a key component, namely, their beloved wife and mother. Later, while Dad was in the military and stationed overseas, he got word that his father had also passed away. On top of these things, Dad had been drafted to fight in the Vietnam War just a year after he had graduated from college. During his eighteen months in Vietnam, Dad saw combat and was awarded three Bronze Star medals, along with numerous other commendations. After all of these things, it would not have been a surprise to find a surly, or at least bitter, adult. But that is not the father that I knew.

Rather than allow these negative and difficult events define him, Dad chose to look at the positive side of things. There can be no positive spin on losing one’s parents, but Dad chose to focus on the fact that his parents had taught him about hard work and integrity. Dad related stories about his father working through the winters--each winter taking apart one of the three family tractors and its engine, cleaning the pieces, and reassembling everything so the tractor would be ready to work again in the spring. He talked about his mom’s side of the family and how they were very musically gifted, going so far as to have a family band. Dad even had one of the now antique instruments that had been used by his family, as well as an old photograph proudly displaying the “Merriman Family Band.”

Instead of focusing on the horrors and challenges presented by fighting in Vietnam and the social stigma often associated with that even after retirement, Dad looked back on his time in the military fondly. He had not enlisted, but rather he was drafted during the heart of the Vietnam War, and because of his college degree he was able to go to Officer Training School. Until he was near death, he did not tell many stories of his time in Vietnam, but he did tell stories about being stationed in Germany and in Korea, about traveling to Australia and Alaska, and about the many great people with whom he served. On one occasion, he said, “I was just a farm boy who was able to serve with some really great soldiers.”

He spoke about the beautiful locations he was able to see because of the military, and he even was grateful that the military had allowed him the opportunity to pursue and complete a graduate degree, receiving his master’s degree from the University of Georgia. Because of that, he was able to teach at the college level at both the University of Pittsburgh and at Jacksonville State University. Any of these things would be amazing accomplishments, but taken altogether one realizes that he was able to do these things because he chose to focus on what he could do, rather than focusing on what he had lost, and on controlling his emotions rather than being controlled by them.

Action Step: Today, choose to focus on the positives in your world, and then see what a difference it makes when you run into negative circumstances.

Principle Four: “If there is work to do, do it—no excuses or reasons to avoid it—get it done.”

In a world that seems to always be in a hurry, it also often feels that there is never enough time to get everything done, especially for those of us who are gifted at the art of procrastination. This habit of mine was one that probably frustrated Dad the most, whether it was procrastinating in my school work, in regard to my chores, or in any other area. I believe this is because—with the exception of annually doing his taxes, which he put off until the last possible moment every year—Dad was always committed to getting done whatever needed to be done in as timely a manner as possible. This issue was treated not just as a good idea but as a personal trait without which every other trait lost a little bit of value; that is, whatever good you are capable of, the most good will be done by doing what needs to be done first.

To not fulfill one’s obligations would have been unthinkable, not even an option worthy of consideration. But the manner and timeliness with which one completed one’s tasks also mattered; procrastination was not acceptable. And perhaps the only way to worsen the habit of procrastination was to start to make excuses for why you had failed to get your work done. No matter the excuses given, they were unfailingly inadequate: the bottom line was whether or not you did what you were supposed to when you were supposed to, and anything short of that was not okay.

I do not have any memories of this being required in a way that caused resentment, and as I reread the preceding paragraphs, I feel it is important to make that clear, because I could see how they might come across in a way that implied a type of authoritarianism or even a tyranny in how Dad related to us, and so I want to make clear that this was not the case. He expected us to get done what was required of us, and he expected us to do so within a proper time frame, and failure to do so always carried consequences. I believe this is a result of various aspects of Dad’s life experiences, from growing up on a farm in rural Illinois to serving in the military for much of his adult life including seeing time in combat and overseas, all of which are situations that required him to get things done well and on time.

Last year's state championship game ended in a 4-0 loss for us. Some days at work are better than others, but choosing to celebrate the good (rather than be angry at our loss) is one way to make sure that it was still an enjoyable evening.

One of the things I most remember about Dad is that he was always telling me to get done with the difficult tasks first, or to accomplish a task in such a way that the more difficult aspects were taken care of first, thus making the entire task easier. For example, when loading a dishwasher, Dad always started loading from the back, so that as the dishwasher racks got full, he did not have to reach over the dishes already put in there before he could put more in. When carrying a series of items from one place to another (e.g. when unloading a moving truck), he always made the new stack of items at the farthest point in the unloading area, so that instead of each trip getting a little longer, each subsequent trip was actually a little shorter. When working on a multi-step project such as writing a paper or putting together a presentation for school, he encouraged me to do all of the difficult research first before I began to do anything else, so that I would not have to break the flow of the work to go do more research.

All of these habits have served me well in my adult life, as they were so impressed upon me that I continue to follow them. In my job as a teacher, I assign many tests which require the students to write essays. Due to the size of my classes, this means that I often end up with upwards of one hundred essays to grade for a single test. Knowing how wearisome that task can become, before I grade the essays, I take a few moments to look through them, arranging them in order from the longest essays to the shortest, so that when I am growing tired or frustrated or simply weary of grading, it is encouraging to know that the task will grow easier all the while. By the time I am nearly through, I have gotten to the shortest and thus often the easiest essays to grade, rather than grading these first and leaving myself with the longest and often the most difficult and complex essays to grade at the end.

This principle also held true when Dad would have us help out at school or church events, which often required us to set up many folding chairs and collapsible tables for banquets, church dinners, award ceremonies, and the like. Wherever the chairs and tables were stored, he would always encourage us to begin setting up the tables at the far end so that every table after that required a bit less carrying and thus a bit less time; same with the chairs. Then when it was time to break these things back down, we would again start at the back, so that as the task neared completion, the task also became easier due to the decreased distance. This may seem like a small thing, but I have continued to see its benefits in many areas of my life, from helping my daughters with school projects to taking care of things around a soccer field.

Dad grew up on a small family farm in a small town in Illinois called Paw Paw. When I first visited there as a child in the 1980s, the population was under 900 people, and the population was still under 900 when I visited there again in the summer of 2016. The local public school was the only high school in town, and it graduated classes of twelve to fifteen people most years. There were few paved roads, little in the way of public entertainment venues, one gas station, and a general store. The town was, however, full of very friendly and very hard-working people, many of whom are part of my extended family. Most people in town lived on or worked for the local farms or in the local mill/processing center. Thus Dad grew up surrounded by people for whom hard work was a natural way of life and not even something to be remarked upon.

As a child, I remember disliking the chores my parents required me to do: occasional vacuuming, washing dishes, cutting the yard, washing cars, doing laundry, cleaning my room, and other usual chores suburban children have to do. However, as I got older and heard bits and pieces about Dad’s childhood, I began to understand that, despite the seemingly-facetious nature in which he told stories about “Waking up at 4am to feed the chickens and milk the cows before heading to school,” there was a large element of truth in them. He really did have to get up and do those chores long before the sun came up, and he really did have other chores to accomplish when he got home after a day of school and then baseball or basketball practice. And as I learned those things, I began to be more and more grateful for my own relatively comfortable and easy lifestyle.

As a result of learning about Dad’s past, I also began to see that Dad’s habits of hard work were not things relegated to the past: rather, the habits he learned from growing up on a farm had prepared him to continue to work hard as an adult, both in the military and after retirement.

Action Step: Take the hardest task you have to complete today, and get it done first so that the rest of the day is easier.