The Tribe Gathering - Sunday Mindset For The Week Ahead

“The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more” - Jonas Salk

Rewards - a thing given in recognition of one's service, effort, or achievement.

“Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity” - Charles Ives

Awards - an official payment, compensation, or prize to (someone).

We’ve all felt the desire to win. We’ve coveted the ring, trophy, medal, banner, or crown. This is human nature. As we reflect on what it is that truly motivates us to lead and to be better today than we were yesterday, and what it is that motivates us to be better tomorrow than we are today, we must ask ourselves what IT is that fuels our motivation. As a servant leader, that motivation must be found in the faces, hearts, and souls of those that surround us.

Awards, sadly, have many flaws. While there’s nothing wrong with being proud of accomplishments, we should view these two starkly different prizes as the juxtaposition that they are. Awards succumb to the following downfalls:

• Degenerate, break, gather dust, and fall apart

• Clutter up rooms and end up in boxes

• Letterman jackets become obsolete and too small

• Rings stop fitting and lose their sparkle

A servant leader’s rewards have a heartbeat and live a life that can deliver immense pride. They positively impact and lead others even after they “graduate” from our “programs.” They become the future leaders of communities, school boards, families, and our society. Then they raise up their replacements. They carry on as if they still wear the captain’s band. Having long since turned theirs in or packed it away in an attic, yet never forgetting what it means and who they are. Imprinted in their hearts and synapses of their minds, are the reasons for serving others. Rewards can also take on new shapes as they grow and age. These new rewards manifest as:

• Graduation invitations

• Wedding & baby shower invitations

• Birthday cards & personal notes

• Community involvement

• Pictures and posts of mission trips and servanthood being lived out

• Conversations, smiles, hugs, and tears of joy.

• They’re the ones that used to wear cleats for you and then line the foyer of the church and make up half the crowd at your wife’s funeral.

  Maybe it’s my age, or maybe it’s the level of stress this year has possessed. Either way, my fuel tank was running low this week. That is, until our team went together to cheer on our high school’s Special Olympics Soccer Team. After a morning of cheering, running games, and delivering high fives, we were hungry. While at lunch, I became the student. Here are the lessons imparted upon me during our meal.

  3 Things I Learned While Having Lunch with 41 Teenage Girls

• Your people LOVE it when you acknowledge that you love them, and they will reciprocate it.

  When a stranger asked me, how many of these are your daughters?” And one of my players replies, “41 of us.” You can’t imagine how loved I felt.

• “Trophies” pale in comparison to the importance of relationships.

  No one. Not one person, mentioned winning a state title. They were consumed with the conversation of each other’s lives.

• When you take the time to see them, and value them as people, they see you for all that you are and not just your role as coach/manager.

  While seated amongst them, they asked me about my son’s, daughters’, and wife’s lives as well as my own. They genuinely asked how I was doing, and how my year has been. Not one sport question was asked.

If you lead as a servant first, you will find that, as you near the end of your career, your heart is much fuller than your trophy case, and that is your definition of success. You’ll also discover that, because you served and taught service first, the wins may come to you, but the true reward is the fact that your trophy case is full of pictures, birthday cards, wedding invitations, and some medals as well. These rewards are a reflection of the amazing lives & memories of those players, and that those precious “rewards” you coached or led have left you with a smile on your face that shines brighter than any ring ever could.

To all of my ladies & gentlemen that I’ve coached or am coaching,

Everyday, every hour, every minute, every second- PLAY BEAUTIFUL

Leaders,

Lead with love this week. Be a servant first. Be blessed.

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