We just talked about, Building, Building What? and Growing, Growing Who? My conclusion was that building great buildings requires great people; people of great character, courage, perseverance, faith, prayer, and leadership. All are topics in my book, Growing and Building. But building buildings or taking on any other large project involves people and many times it requires lots of people that come from many different persuasions with many different motivations, doubts, and even fears that may cause them to respond in sometimes predictable, but sometimes surprising ways that may not endear themselves as part of your orchestra. Ways that are not always in consonance with what you believe are the notes on your sheet of music. This has led me to the expression I quite often convey: If it wasn’t for people it would be easy. But my conclusion has also always been: If it wasn’t for people it wouldn’t be worth anything. This perspective always seems to take me back to the subject of leadership; leading who for what reasons?
Exercising leadership at its most fundamental level is about making people responsible for the work at hand. It is about influencing people to move in a particular direction or to take particular actions, to play the notes on the agreed upon sheet of music. It is about taking on the hurts, concerns, cares, and dreams of people and then returning all those uncertainties to them in a way that allows them to accomplish the tasks at hand, to complete the mission, to build great buildings. But my view is that because people are worth something (not just something, but a whole lot of something), that they are created in God’s image; this business of exercising leadership to build those buildings, to climb those mountains, to play beautiful music takes on an eternal perspective. It becomes not just building the building or successfully completing that mission, but it is about making an eternal deposit in people along the way that may well change their lives forever. This has been one of my basic premises of exercising leadership; investing in the lives of people so that they become more like Him.
This and related topics are all part of Growing and Building, my story through the journey of growing an organization to build not only buildings, but to build great people so they become more like Him.
