Why do I have to be a sinner?

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. We had just finished a two day meeting with five guys who all have similar businesses to each other. I have been in the group for three years or so. This was the first meeting where we had invited a life coach, to assist or help facilitate our meeting. Out of our five members, I think the group was split with three members wanting to go forward and two members in a place of being skeptical of the value of the facilitator.


Life coaches like to talk about feelings, insecurities and deeper things, they also like to ask uncomfortable questions. Ours likened himself as an evokoteur! He tried to evoke thought in each member of our peer group, by asking questions that seemed to cut through all of the defenses and fronts we put up.

Now my friend was skeptical about the whole facilitation process and the value of it. He was, as he always is, honest in his opinions and certainly willing to speak what he was thinking.

I began to explain to him, why I thought a life coach/psychology type guy could help us and in particular help my friend. To explain what I was telling my friend, I first have to tell you about him. He is one of those guys who is always the first guy to work. I think he gets up at 4:30 am every morning. Sleeping in for him is like 6 am. After that, he can't sleep anymore and gets up and starts doing things. My friend also is one of the most organized people I know. He can access any file in his office from his phone and every file in his office is on his computer, he always has the latest certifications in our industry, etc. etc. Really he is an impressive individual.

But when we talk about employee's, he has always said you can't find any good ones where he is from. If you press him on this issue, he will admit that he is only really able to work with employee's who are self starting, organized type "A" personality types like he is. That was where I started with him, on the need to learn some of this psychology stuff that you get when ever you begin to talk to a life coach. If you build a team with only one type of block, you will get a linear result from the team. I don't have proof for this theory, only practical, subjective observation. My theory is that with a team of individuals that are all very similar, standard math will work to determine the productive output of that team. It works like this, one man will do 1 unit of work. Two men will do two units of work. Now even if you get a really good man, lets say he can do two units of work, and then you get two really good men and they can do four units of work.

But my theory on teams extends to a team of people who come together with complimentary skills and personalities. I am stealing this illustration from my coach, but it goes like this. Three guys come to a table with $1 dollars each, they work together, compliment each other, help cover the weak spots of one another, and contribute their strengths to each other. In that scenario, they each take away $3 dollars. So in the case of three complimentary people, working together as a team, they would each contribute 3 units of work. Thus the exponential result of 3 normal people, doing 9 units of work, where three individuals with exactly the same strengths who were extra ordinary and could each do 2 units of work would only be able to do 6 units of work. So in my theory, the team of normal but different types of people, connected together in a complimentary manner would do 50% more work than a team of extra ordinary individuals. This is an important concept when building a business, because normal people are always available, extraordinary people are normally your competitors.

So the question becomes how does my friend figure out how to build a complimentary team, where until now, he has only been able to build with people who are exactly like him? I think the answer lies in the need for my friend to be able to see how he too is a sinner. For great performers like my friend, this can be a very hard task to do.

The problem lies in my observation that rule keepers like my friend have simply constructed a world, with rules that they can keep. Thus the problem is, in their mind, that all of the other people in the world simply need to keep the rules better. If they could just keep the rules then there would be no problem. With this outlook on life, there is usually a lot of judgement towards other people who are different than the high functioning type "A" person. The problem with the judgement is that it is all based upon the rules that the rule keeper can keep and it completely is blind to the weaknesses that exist in a rule keeper. The needs to analyze, the need to always be right, the need to always be in control, the need to never make a mistake. These are all strengths in the rule keeper with backside weaknesses that are particularly hard to see. These weaknesses also make it almost impossible for the rule keeper to not judge and then convict others not like himself, when this happens, all chance for a complimentary team are gone.

So if a rule keeper could begin to believe that he is a sinner, with blind spots and weaknesses, with needs that only others can meet, and that all people are made this way with strengths and weaknesses, he might be able to begin to look for the strengths in people that are different than he is, he might also be able to begin to try and see the weaknesses that exist in himself. He might then be able to add frustratingly different people to himself in his organization and find that the organization functions with more strength as it functions together. He might begin to experience that an organization is at its best not when perfect work is done, but when everyone is pulling in the same direction, making mistakes, but being open about them, helping one another with solutions, not being an organization that is focused on blame, but is focused on fixing problems and getting better.

So being the sinner that we are is the first step in the process of team building. It brings one to the conclusion that all people are sinners with strengths. You begin to be less impressed by others because you know they are sinners too and you also begin to judge others less quickly. You begin to look for the strength in others and find yourself not stopping at the first weakness, because we have all been given strengths. And finally, being the sinner that you are, you begin to hate your weaknesses less. They are after all part of who you are and often why you have the strengths that you do. It begins to be a door opening to a world where you begin to be more comfortable in your skin and love yourself which then leads to loving others.