Pressing through!

I started training for a half-marathon two and a half months ago.  While training I have often experienced running out of breath.  It causes a panic in me where I start to gasp for air.  I breath louder with moaning sounds emanating from my body.  My son's who are younger than me will say things like, Dad, you really breath loud!  The panic can grow to where I convince myself that I must stop running or I will die.  I want to return to the well known activity called walking.  I understand walking.  I know what it will feel like, I know how my body will respond to it.  Because I know this, I want it.  I want to return to that known place where I will no longer have reason to panic.



The strange thing about this panic with my breathing and gasping and moaning for air is that if I relax, breath normally, continue to run, I find that I actually don't die.  WOW!  I thought I was going to die if I didn't stop and it was really just a mental game in my head.  That can't be true.  There must be an article I can find in google about how this will cause me to die a young death if I don't stop.  That its bad for my health to press through.  But I have found if I relax and simply continue to breath that I can continue to run.  Now certainly others can run faster than me and there is a limit with what my physiology can support with pace and effort.  But most of my panic was something that was just in my head.

My point is the anxiety of running out of air with its gasping and moaning has more to do with the unfamiliarity of running than with the actual running out of air.  As I press through the anxiety and into the unknown, I find I actually don't run out of air, I just feel different when I run than when I walk.

I find the same thing is true with Grace.  I can believe that Jesus is crazy about me and loves everything about me and that his love has nothing to do with my actions and everything to do with his actions and love.  I hear that and get it and attempt to believe it.  I venture off into life with this new information and new feelings and new relationship with God and it feels good.  But then the inevitable  happens.  I fail.  Something happens, I feel anxiety and my sin becomes what walking is to me when I am gasping for air.  I lash out with anger, I justify myself, I .........  Then in this new place of anxiety, I want something more than Grace, something that I know.  Grace was supposed to work, but here I am again.  I guess I need some law too, an accountability partner, a few rules that I will put up on my mirror to remind me what I should do.  I want what I know and I know the law.

But what if Grace is the answer?  What if all I need to do is relax, and keep going.  I messed up.  So what?  I thought this grace thing was based on God and not me.  So I get back up, and keep going.  That's what Grace does for us, it keeps us going.  But we run the risk of running away from Grace when it doesn't feel right.  What if it doesn't feel right, because we have never felt it before?  What if we find we won't die if we keep going?

I hope I keep going and I hope you do to.

Introduction to Lead Like a Sinner

I recently read a quote by Confucius.  He said to become a leader you must first become a human.

As humans we seem to have a sense of right and wrong within us best described in my experience by  C.S. Lewis in his book, Mere Christianity. With this sense of right and wrong we all have this idea of what's acceptable behavior for a person.  With that assumption of what acceptable behavior is, we also have this universal feeling of shame, where we know we do not meet our own standard.

The Bible makes interesting claims on standards.  It says that if we decide we must keep one of the standards, we are then required to keep them all.  You can see this in Galatians where Paul says that if any man accepts circumcision, he is required to keep the whole law, and not only that but he will fall from God's grace and be severed from Christ.

So when we decide any particular rule is of such a priority that we judge others who do not keep it as bad and those who do keep it as better, that small act will lead each of us to a place where we will have to keep all of our standards and God will no longer gift us with His unconditional acceptance and grace because we are in a sense no longer relying on it, but now relying on our law keeping.  This is the place that leads all of us to know we fail and fall short of our owns standards.  And in that failing we all experience shame.

My book is about how a leader can create a place where shame does not disqualify members from being connected to the team.  And with in the creation of this space, a team will be able to function at a higher level, giving results that will be hard to quantify the why or how, but none the less there will be better results that are visible and significant.

Welcome to the concept of leading like a sinner.  A concept of creating a culture that will draw people together and draw them up to a higher place.  I hope you will be able to grasp the power of this simple principle and put it to use in powerful ways in your life.  I know I am going to enjoy telling you the stories that have led me to this concept.

Empathy and atomic energy!

I just watched a video by an artist who defined empathy as the collapsing of two perspectives into one.  I was so excited by this concept, because as we give grace to another, part of the mechanics of giving grace is sharing how a person's experience is similar to an experience that you have had.  You accept them and let them know that they are not alone in their experience.

For instance, a person might share about the shame they felt because of an act that they did.  Recently, I had a person share with me about failing  and the shame it caused them to feel.  As I shared with them a similar experience that I had, we gained a connection with one another.  I also think he went away with more energy because of that connection.  Energy to change a behavior, knowing that this act, this failure did not define him, but was simply a blip, a momentary slip that he could get back up and keep moving towards dreams that he hoped for.  The connection gave him more energy for his dreams, so that he could continue.

So in particle physics and quantum mechanics, when you have two hydrogen's combine to form one helium, you have atomic fusion and some of the energy that went into holding those two hydrogen's together, is no longer needed to hold the new helium together and its released.  It is what powers a hydrogen atomic bomb.  I was so excited when I made this connection.  Two completely different systems that behave the same.  One a system of atomic quantum mechanics and the other a system of human behavior.

Both where two collapse into one and both where energy is release.  The similarity makes me smile when I think of my faith in God, who created everything.

Drive and Initiative

Daniel Pink has written a book titled Drive.  It is about a powerful motivation that comes from intrinsic energy that lies within a person.  In the book he makes a compelling case for how this drive has been show to disappear when in the presence of extrinsic motivation.  To offer incentives for a behavior, actually will give you less of the behavior than had you not offered the incentive.

This week I was in a pilot project, called transformational leading.  With in this course, we want to help people experience leadership that transforms.  One of our assignments will be to coach someone and in this assignment, we got to see coaching modeled for us where the coach was asking questions, but not ever giving advice.  This was so that the course of action would be those formulated by the person being coached, he would own them, because they came from him and since he was the initiator of the action, he would also be the owner of the action.  The coach talked about the battle for initiative and how important it was to not take the initiative from the person you are trying to help.  To take their initiative would be like steeling power from them that they needed for the battle.  Its very similar to if you have ever been nagged about something, how the nagging actually made you want to do the action even less than you did before the nagging.

Advice does this.  It takes the initiative away from the person.  So I am seeing the intersection of several large concepts and these always intrigue me.

The law    vs.    freedom
Incentive   vs.    intrinsic motivation
Advice      vs.    initiative

So to me, the law, incentive and advice all seem to be similar agents in human behavior.  Freedom, intrinsic motivation and personal initiative all seem to be similar energies that come from within the divine part of a created being.

Where am I going?

I have this interesting question, "where am I going"?  Not like am I going to go to heaven, am I going to go home tonight, but more like, where will I be in ten years?  Will the house I am in be the one I stay in until I go to a retirement home?  Will I always work at QuesTec till I sell it?  Will I ever be involved in something else?  What might God put on my plate and call me to do?  I knew 30 years ago that I wanted to own a business.  It took me half of that time to have enough experience and courage to pursue it.  Once I took the plunge, four years in, it seemed like a really bad idea.  Now that its fifteen years later, I cringe at the thought of not having done it.  The stresses that I have had to go through in growing my company have caused me to grow and change in their presence.  To think of living life as I used to be vs. living life like I am today, causes me to shiver with fear that I might not get to be who I am had I not take those risks fifteen years ago.

So since life is so different for me today than it was fifteen years ago, I am now not so concerned with where I am going, only concerned that I continue to dream about new places and continue in this adventure of life ready to take new risks when the opportunities present themselves.

How to win in business?

I have a simple idea.  To be successful, at anything, you have to go in the same direction for a long time.  So to win in business you have to be in business for a long time.

To stay in business for a long time, you need to keep a team together for a long time too!

That's where it gets dicey.  In our culture, to stay married for a long time is only a 50/50 proposition.  This has been true within my extended family, so how in the world do you accomplish this with people who aren't even tied to one another with a commitment.

How do you have an enduring team?  How do they handle the rough spots.  The friction that occurs when people are together for a long time.  How do they deal with peoples imperfections?  After all no one's perfect, and if no one is perfect, then everyone will offend each other sometime.

I think I know one answer.  It's my answer, and its probably not the only one, but my answer has been by humility.  I think other people's answers could be a great exciting idea.  A new technology that is growing so much that opportunity abounds.  But I started a business installing toilets!  People had been installing toilets for over a hundred years when I showed up and thought, maybe I can do this better.  What arrogance on my part to think I could improve on what others had been competing to do for a hundred years.  But that is exactly what I did.

I found that a team of people is really hard to have.  But everyone else I was competing with, also had this same hard problem.  They had to use people too.  And that is where I found the opportunity.  The opportunity to have a team working together well starts with leading with humility!

So what is humility?  That's a great question.

Duality

There is a saying that I recently learned and like.

Consider the power of the AND verses the tyranny of the OR!

The word AND indicates two things.  Not either or, but both.  And if it is both, then it is two things at the same time, thus duality.

Duality exists all the time.  People are wonderful, loved by God and sinners.  God is sovereign and man has responsibility.  We are no longer under the law, but if we break the law, with out fail, the law will break us.  We cannot be sinless, but by faith we cannot disobey God because of freedom.

There all all of these things that are AND.  In Galatians, it says I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me......AND the life I live in the FLESH, I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and died for me.

So as I consider how to live, how to lead, how to love, I think the system that we build in our mind has to include the duality of life.  God knows the end, yet it matters what we do, because if we don't do it, whatever it is, it won't happen.  So God knows, AND we matter.

We are holy, righteous and blameless before God AND we are sinners.  I other words, we are saints who sin.

I find in my work settings, that when someone talks about leadership, they often leave this little duality part out.  The part that you can't lead perfectly.  That you can do nothing without mixed motives.  That our selfishness is always present.  And yet, we can lead in powerful ways, trusting our creator to cause who we are to be sufficient for our purpose on earth.  It is a spiritual life, and one with great adventure.  But this understanding of duality is what will anchor our lives with the humility that we will need to be successful.

I have a saying, you cannot be humble without being humiliated.  Leaders cannot be successful leading with competence and strength.  They do not have enough of it and yet our culture and all of mankind for all of history continues to look for a man that does.  It is why the USA has been so prosperous, we recognized that all people are corrupt and the only government that can survive must have checks and balances to offset this duality that exists in all people.  Our founding fathers were not looking for a good king.  They were wanting people to have to struggle to get along.