~ Woodrow Wilson
I love this time of year. Every year about this time our Chamber of Commerce unveils its new class of Leadership Jones County participants.
We have an orientation and reception, a nice dinner and then spend two days at
an off-site retreat. The purpose of these events is to break the participants
out of their comfort zone, introduce them to new perspectives, let them learn a
lot about themselves, the makeup of the community, weaknesses and opportunities
we face together and help them bond with one another as a class.
This year was extraordinarily special, as other classes have
been in the past. I really like the process because as a self proclaimed
“people watcher” I enjoy watching how the participants interact. I like to
guess their points of view and how I think they might react to something we
offer during the retreat. In addition to all the other team-building activities
we offer, we also have a personality profile done by Mississippi Power Company’s
Community Development Division. This document really gives the participants an
in depth analysis of their personality, how and why they react to certain
things and how they and others can use this information to enhance their
communication abilities.
It is always fun because before we hand out the reports, all
the participants try to guess which of four personality categories they and
their classmates fit into. Several of the personalities are strong enough that
you can guess without question, others are very surprising. As I was thinking
about this, I thought about a story I once heard about a man who thought he
knew the contents of something by its outward appearance, but he truly missed
the potential of what was on the inside. The story goes like this…
“One morning a man was out exploring caves by the seashore.
In one of the caves he found an old and dirty canvas bag with a number of
hardened clay balls. It appeared that someone had taken the time to roll up a
bunch of clay balls and then left them in the sun to bake and dry.
The clay balls didn’t look like much, but the man was
fascinated by them. He took the bag out of the cave. As he walked along the
beach he would see how far he could throw each of the clay balls into the sea.
He didn’t really give it much thought until he dropped one.
The ball had been accidentally dropped on a rock and
cracked. Inside he found a beautiful precious stone. Breaking open the
remaining clay balls he found each one contained a similar precious stone.
Fortunately for this man he had found hundreds of dollars in
the remaining 20 that were left. Unfortunately, as he later realized, he had
thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their treasure into the sea; lost
forever. He could have taken home thousands of dollars and maybe even more, not
just hundreds.”
Many of us think we have great teams; that we know the people we work with and do
business with. Are we sure? Could we be throwing away individual potential? As
leaders it is very common and easy for us to jump
to conclusions. But we must be careful of being judgmental. Judge too quickly and we might miss out on a real treasure!
It is up to us as leaders of the community to see the
individual potential in others. This leadership story demonstrates the need to
look beyond the clay and the outward appearance. To discount the individual
potential of those you lead could result in throwing away more than money.
Every leader ought to lead because they care about others.
Great leaders get their greatest satisfaction from seeing people succeed;
seeing others doing better than they believed they could, or doing things that
they didn’t realize they could do.
I want to encourage you to be involved in the success of others; to
look beyond the clay and the outward appearance; to get to know one another on
a deeper level. I guarantee if you invest your time in the success of others,
we all will grow because of it and your community will be a much better place to
live and do business!
To your success!
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* This article was originally printed in the Sunday, September 8, 2013 issue
of The Chronicle's "Planting Seeds" column.
of The Chronicle's "Planting Seeds" column.
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