Caught not taught
Raise your actions to the standard of your beliefs.
At a dinner recently, a guy about to have his first child asked a group of more seasoned parents, “what is your number one parenting lesson?”
As great wisdom was being gleaned from the parents, one man didn’t share a principle but rather an action.
“Every morning at 5:00 am, my kids know where I will be, what I will be doing.” His first action of the day was time alone with God, some may call it meditation.
Interesting angle. The kids caught versus being taught.
We spend so much time determining what needs to be taught, but maybe the best lesson comes from a life lived by what you believe.
Consider the culture at a new company. Time is spent on the mission, the vision, and the values, that will dictate the culture of the new company. The mission, vision, and values of the company are words on a paper, meaningless unless the people live the mission, vision, and values.
If you want to create culture, actions have to match the beliefs. Being held to the standard of others creates culture. Being convicted by what you see drives change in behavior.
Think about any principle that you hear, like having a work, life balance or putting family first or working with excellence. If the leader teaching the principle doesn’t live it, the lesson is meaningless. In fact, even worse. The principles become fodder for cynicism, even detrimental to the company or team or family. Principles becomes something you sell versus the culture.
Nick Saban talked about the difficulty of creating culture in the world of NIL. You have to have people that remain on the team through the years that will teach the new players the culture through their actions.
In companies, on teams, in marriages, actions drive culture or closeness or relationships or service. Not principles, but actions. If you want someone to change, what if you change first?
Someone told me recently, “it isn’t how much you know about God but what you do with what you know.”
Convicting. But with grace, I get to start fresh today.
Lead with actions, not lessons.