Tag: leadership

For serving them is truly serving yourself.

We are all a part of a much bigger purpose. 

Take a moment and reflect on just how many are involved in this event. 

Despite that fact, we are all just bit players, none more important than the other.  Each role that we play in this worldly act can have a tremendous impact on those all around us.   Appreciating and honoring our role in the grand production called “life” and how our performance can help or harm those around us is the true essence of humility. 

Humility is the trait that allows those that serve to lead to raise the level of those around them, by genuinely making it all about them. This is not as easy as it sounds.  This requires letting go – a surrendering of a portion of your self  – so that others may rise to their potential.  It means that you might have to learn to do without something you cherish, so that those around you can have it for themselves. 

“Humility is to make a right estimate of oneself.”

Charles H. Spurgeon

Ultimately, humility is one of the most powerful building blocks of a servant approach to leadership. It establishes a lasting and powerful connection between individuals. And it is through that sustaining linkage, that a powerful bond is not just born, but grown.

A true leader not only understands but embraces the importance and value of those around him.  Everyone has a role to play, and none should be diminished in order to raise another.  Those that need raising cannot be brought up due to whim or fairness. That elevation needs to be earned, and the effort genuinely recognized. 

When it comes to humility, as Pastor Spurgeon offered, much is made of “making the right estimate of oneself”.  What is making the right estimate of one-self?  Does it mean that you should not have confidence in your abilities?  That you should try any less?  That you are not worthy?

No, on the contrary.  It simply means that you recognize your role and that without others – with their varying abilities and talents – you cannot fulfill your true potential.

Thinking of them more never means you think less of yourself.

For serving them is truly serving yourself.

“Team Together”

“Standing at Hoop Camp watching my boys scrimmage. I overhear the coach in the huddle say “team” and the players say “together”. Makes my heart ache but at the same time fill full. If that’s possible😕‪#‎teamtogetherforever‬ — at Homestead High School (Mequon, Wisconsin). – Kira Chekouras Testin

Sometimes, an individual will come along that is the embodiment of a message. 

Living a life – as conveyed through their thoughts, words and deeds – that is meant to share and teach some essential and lasting truths. 

And individuals of that magnitude possess mass.  And it is the specific gravity of them and their purpose that inevitably draws others toward them.  

Like Coach Chekouras.

Both he, and what he still stands for – resonates.  

Perhaps this is what Kira felt today at basketball camp.  

….“cause Coach was there.  

His message  was certainly still reverberating through those coaches and campers.

Now someone once said that “every act creates a ripple with no logical end”.  

A statement, I believe, is  intended to describe the impact good – from a single point of contact – can exert on the world around it.

So just imagine the good of this individual.  An impact of lasting resonance yet today. 

Through not just one, but now, generational points of contact.  

Years, and years and years apart. 

Ripple, upon ripple,  upon ripple, upon ripple.    

Coach lived that message.  And even today, he yet lives within it.

Remaining to this day, its embodiment.  

Just ask those campers.  

For it resonates within all of them.  

“Team Together”. 

(Coach Chekouras entered eternal life in 2006. I came across his daughter’s reaction to the players response at a Hoops Camp, and shared this initially in 2015. I came across it and thought it worthy of a re-share.)

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Rippling

When intention fully employed and acted upon intersects with an unflinching level of intensely personal investment, the result can be exponential.  The product of you becoming a positive force multiplier.  

An entity ever rippling outward.

You see, nothing we ever do in life exists in a vacuum. Your thoughts, words and actions convey your precise intention and personal investment to the public in every venture you pursue.  Things that you hold dear are revealed to all each step you take to achieve it.  Everything is seen, heard and felt by all of those around you.   

The positive force of your choice, action and effort has the potential to be multiplied when those who witness that change in you then choose to embark upon a similar course and make it their very own.  

That being said, when you push beyond physical limitations, imagined boundaries of comfort and personal obstacles, others will be led to do the same. 

When you exert the mental acuity needed to eliminate distractions, have a short memory when it comes to mistakes and you can “be” totally  present, others will witness those outcomes and choose to travel right down that same path along with you. 

By stripping yourself of limitations imposed by selfish interests, the constraints of ego and moving beyond “me” to unleash a positive and lasting energy that can only be found in “we”, you will articulate a selflessness meant to be embraced and emulated by all. 

Display the courage to give up yourself so that others may become the best version of themselves? Then all will be raised up  – as well as you – in the process.

And finally, when you love your teammates and those around you enough to make them the center of your universe, you  will be an exemplar of faith in them. An avenue to return your love of them with the same depth and  commitment back to you.

So as you embark on the next step of your quest to become what you were intended to be, appreciate the positive force multiplier that lies within each one of you. 

Understand how intention and investment cannot exist in a vacuum. 

And that the impact of the intersection of your intentional action and your limitless investment therein is seen, heard and felt across all of your universe.

An entity rippling ever outward.