ISSUE #033 | THE LEADERSHIP CONTRARIAN
I watched a room full of people spend an hour telling my friend Vicki what she meant to them.
It was her 60th birthday surprise party. About sixty people packed in, most of whom had known her for years, some for decades. Kathryn and I drove a few hours to be there.
Vicki's spent the last fifteen years running a nonprofit that supports police officers and their marriages. She's written books. She lectures around the country. She started all of it after raising four kids, alongside her husband Brent, a retired officer who knows firsthand how hard that life can be. She's the kind of leader who's always pouring out by encouraging people and watching marriages get healthy and officers and their families come back to life.
Brent and their kids had put the party together. After dinner, Brent stood up with a microphone and asked everyone to introduce themselves and say how they knew Vicki. What followed was an hour of people from every season of her life, family, ministry, law enforcement, decades-old friendships and three-year-old ones telling her exactly what she'd meant to them.
On our long drive home that night, and into the next day, I found myself reflecting on the party. Something kept nagging at me: leaders pour out constantly and almost never get poured into. Why not? Leaders are human too. What was amazing to watch was that Brent and the kids hadn't just thrown a party; they had built a moment Vicki will remember forever.
That's what the Heath brothers get at in The Power of Moments. Certain moments, if you're deliberate about them, do more work than all the ordinary days around them. They lift people up. They connect. They stick.
A birthday party can be cake and small talk. Or it can be built into something people carry for years.
Brent and their kids chose the second one. They didn't wait for the room to honor Vicki on its own, they made a choice and orchestrated the evening on purpose.
This part matters: he had a hunch it might go well, but he didn't know what would come out of it. He just knew he was creating the space for something good to happen, and then trusting the people in the room to make the moment their own.
As I watched and participated, something hit me about leadership.
Leaders almost never sit on the receiving end of that kind of encouragement.
We're the ones casting the vision, pushing through the obstacles, rallying the team, absorbing the pressure so nobody else has to. Leadership is lonely. Not because people don't care, but because so much of the job is building others up, and almost none of it is designed to build you up in return.
So who builds you up? Where do you get encouraged as a leader?
As a business owner for 24 years and a coach and advisor to hundreds of other leaders, I've led for most of my adult life. Here's what I've learned: you have to find ways to be encouraged that don't depend on your own self-talk.
Let me give you two ideas. Not theories, just things I've watched work, over and over.
First: you need people who can encourage you.
Find a few other leaders, if you can, who understand the weight you're carrying. If you're a person of faith, find people who share that too. In my experience it goes a level deeper than shared war stories from the business. You need both kinds.
This fall, Kathryn and I are starting a community here in Chico for exactly this - business people of faith who want to build that kind of support into their lives instead of leaving it to chance.
Second: don't wait for someone to build the moment for you; become the person who builds it for everyone else.
Vicki didn't ask for that mic to go around the room. Brent and their kids made it happen. Why? Because Vicki and her husband practice the art of honor everywhere they go. And when you want to celebrate someone with a surprise birthday, it means you want to honor them.
In a culture of honor, you look for ways to lift up others and that's what Brent did. He assumed his wife would be honored and encouraged if she heard from the people in the room. He also assumed it would connect the strangers in that room a little more if they could hear each other talk about the person who mattered to all of them.
It's amazing how much we like people who love the same people we love and treat them well. If you love my friend, then you must be all right! It has an uncanny way of bonding a group of people together with very little effort. (This is a secret weapon you don't want to miss. Take note.)
Reflecting back on the power of moments, it turns out that birthdays, anniversaries, launch dates, the five-year mark, and any other event or opportunity you can think of to celebrate are the natural moments for the kind of public encouragement most of us never get.
Most leaders let them slide by as one more thing on the calendar.
Stop doing that. These are powerful opportunities to strengthen your team and to teach them to encourage each other. Use them and do it out loud by modeling appreciation, naming it, and telling your people. You're building a culture of encouragement and recognition on purpose.
When you do, something happens. It doesn't stay one-directional. It has a way of encouraging you right back.
What goes around comes around. It's a universal principle, like a flywheel that keeps throwing off honor and gratitude and encouragement, because that's exactly what's being put into it.
If you're a founder, a business owner, or a leader in a company, go find one other leader today and tell them what they mean to you. Be specific. Let them know somebody sees the sacrifice.
Let me go first.
Thank you. What you're building matters. It costs you more than most people will ever see. And I'm grateful you keep doing it anyway.
Until next time,
Keep learning.
Keep growing.
And God bless,
Michael Redman
Half a Bubble Out (HaBO)
Business Consulting | Leadership Coaching