Yesterday, our priest, Father Michael Renninger, spoke about his struggle to forgive those responsible for 9/11. He spoke about how he felt he was failing as a Christian because of this inability. He gave voice to what many of us feel about this senseless act and the countless acts of hatred that we witness in the news.
Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Not always. I came to this realization in October of 2008. That was when I started a new chapter in my career. On October 2, 2008, I left the safety and security of the corporate world for the uncertainty and anxiety of entrepreneurship. For nearly 25 years, I had been a part of an organization, a member of a team. Now I was the organization. I was the team. That was my plan. I had saved for years, and that had given me the flexibility to make this bold move. Unfortunately, my plan was developed in the fall of 2007, and it did not contemplate the economic crisis that hit rock bottom right as I was walking out the door. I had planned for some degree of economic uncertainty, but I never contemplated a crisis of that magnitude. My savings, my safety net, seemed to have developed holes overnight. My plan was on schedule and falling apart at the same time.
In any given day, how many different people are we? When that nagging issue at work jars us from our sleep and we roll out of bed, many of us jump right into problem solver mode. I often spend the first few minutes of my morning contemplating the problems and opportunities of the day ahead. As I descend the stairs, I move quickly into dad mode – helping to get the kids ready for the day ahead. For a few minutes, I step into husband mode as my wife and I discuss the matters facing the Moran household. That’s three different people, and I haven’t even started work.
For the third time in a row, I am writing about the connection between leading and teaching. Maybe it is the time of year, with another school year ending. Whatever the cause, I continue to find great leadership lessons from the teachers in my children’s lives. This time the lesson came during a cross-country horseback riding clinic my daughter, Mary Kate, was participating in. To provide some context, Mary Kate rides a horse named Blackberry. Blackberry is mischievous and a bit nuts. He’s a wonderful horse, but if he were a was a high school boy he would probably spend a fair amount of time in detention. He has developed a reputation for his bad behavior. His owner refers to his antics as “B.B.B.B.ing” (i.e., Blackberry breaking bad big time). Around the barn, they call him Crackberry.
We all know that as leaders we have a responsibility to help those we lead develop and grow. More often than not, our lessons just happen. We may have no idea that we are teaching something until the new behavior manifests itself. Last week, I had the pleasure of seeing this in action at my son’s guitar recital. His instructor primarily teaches piano, so when she arrived at the venue to find a strategic piano key broken, she was quite upset. Her students range from the very young performing for the first time to high school students ready to study music at the university level. She was uncertain whether they would be able to have the recital.