 Admiring v IdolizingI was fifteen years old before I got my first pair. I had imagined myself wearing them for years. They had to be so comfortable. No way they could look that cool and not be the best. And, obviously, they would make me way better. I just knew I would be quicker, faster, and jump higher. Unfortunately, when I put my first pair of Jordan’s on, none of those things saw a significant rise. Maybe it was just me or maybe it was because they were hand-me-downs and all the magic was gone.
Even without the surge in performance, and coolness, one thing remained the same in my eyes: Michael Jordan was the best basketball player in the world, ever. It wasn’t a debate. It was a fact. At the time, it was safe to say I idolized him. I saved every magazine, read every article, watched every game. He could do no wrong in my mind. The walls of my room were covered in pictures of Jordan shooting, passing, defending, and dunking. As I’ve gotten older, the adulation has dissipated. I mean, he’s still the best basketball player of all time, but I’m no longer blinded so much by the shine that I can’t see the flaws. I can now recognize that as great as he was as a basketball player, there were plenty aspects of his life that I would never want to embody. I think that’s the case for most people. The harder we look, the more perspective we gain, the more ordinary they become. Admiring someone and idolizing someone isn’t the same thing. When we admire another person we look up to the positive aspects of the person while realizing they also possess some characteristics we don’t desire to embody. We appreciate the good while acknowledging the bad. When we idolize someone we only see the positives and blind ourselves from the negative. We attempt to turn something good into something ultimate. Why Should We Care? Idolizing someone feels harmless. It can even feel motivating. But, if we’re not careful, we’ll put our growth in someone else's hands. When we idolize a person, we stop picking and choosing what to learn from them. We take the whole package as the truth. We copy their entire life without asking whether it all fits who we are or what we believe. Eventually, every idol falls. Not because they're bad people, but because they're people. They make a bad call. They say the wrong thing. They turn out to be different up close than they looked from a distance. When our belief is built on them being perfect, that fall takes a piece of us with it. We didn't just lose respect for someone. We lost something we were building our life on. Admiration holds up better. We don't buy the whole store, we pick what we want. We can admire how one leader runs a meeting, how another handles pressure, and how another treats people. We can do that while knowing none of them has it all figured out. When one of them lets us down, we don't have to throw everything away. We keep what works and put back what doesn't. If you lead people, some of them will be tempted to lean towards idolizing rather than admiring you. It may feel good, but it's also dangerous. People who idolize you stop pushing back. They stop telling you the truth. Your blind spots grow because fewer people around you are willing to point them out. A person that admires you will still follow you, but they'll also tell you when you're doing something stupid. REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing the difference between admiring and idolizing is easy. Catching yourself in it is harder. Here's where to start.
The goal isn't to stop looking up to people. We need people to look up to. The goal is to look up with open eyes. Choose the ones that help you grow into who you're supposed to be, not into a copy of them. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!
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 The Danger of ExpectationHave you ever been on your morning commute to work and realize it’s just not going to be your day? You know the days. It starts before you ever even get in your car. You forgot to pack your lunch the night before, the pants you were going to wear are in the dirty clothes, and you can’t even find your keys. And, of course, you’re running late.
When you finally make it to the car, your gas light is on and two minutes into the drive your check engine light dings. As you turn off your street, a giant box truck turns right in front of you and manages to stay a perfect 5 mph under the speed limit through town where there’s no room to pass. Jumping onto the highway, at last free from staring at the rear door of the box truck, you finally start moving at a pace you deem acceptable. That is, of course, until you are boxed in by two semis going just fast enough to keep you locked into your position. When you make your way to the fast lane, you’re greeted by the dreaded 55 mph driver oblivious to the world of cars speeding by. The final leg of the drive puts you back in town with a series of traffic lights to navigate. And, you guessed it, every single one red. I mean, what are the chances? It’s just your luck. What if I told you this entire scenario, which we play out on different platforms daily, is all a result of expectations? More than that, our own selfish expectations? Well, they are. Why Should We Care? We aren’t owed a single green light and we’ve done nothing to deserve a clear fast lane. That’s just the story we’ve told ourselves. None of it was ours to begin with. We didn't earn it and we didn't buy it. Somewhere along the way, we decided the world owes us an easy path just because we showed up. As if others should be parting the sea because we’re here. That's the slight of entitlement. It's sneaky because it doesn’t feel like entitlement from the inside. For me, it usually feels like frustration or bad luck - “of course this would happen to me”. But when we strip it down, what's really happening is we’re expecting something we never had the right to in the first place. The green light. The promotion. The day going according to plan. We didn't earn any of it, we just expected it, and when it didn't show up, we got frustrated at a world that never promised it to us. Ultimately, it’s just our selfishness finding its way out. It's us deciding we’re the exception. The world is not against us, it was never for or against us. We’re the ones who decided it owed us something. The depth of this perspective is significant. Our happiness on that drive was never determined by the lights. It was determined by what we expected from them. Two people can sit at the exact same red light. One's fuming, replaying every slight of the morning. The other's grateful, appreciating the thirty seconds to breathe. Same light. Completely different expectations. Happiness, joy, contentment are reality minus what you expected reality to be. REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing where the frustration comes from doesn't fix it by itself. Here's how you actually put it to work.
You don't own the outcome. You don't own much of anything, if you're honest about it. But you do own your expectations. Eliminate what you think you’re owed. Highlight what you’ve been given. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  On the Flip SideIt’s been about a year since I made the declaration, a considerably shorter time frame than what has passed since I first had the thought. Admittedly, it took some time to say it out loud. Fear being the primary culprit, of course. It showed its little lying, conniving head in two predictable ways.
The first fear that surfaced was a fear of what people would think. This was a guest I had become unfamiliar with. In virtually every area of my life I had gotten proficient at detaching from the approval of others. But, for whatever the reason, this endeavor resurfaced many of those uneasy feelings of insecurity, judgment, and self-consciousness. Navigating them has been interesting, and just as challenging as I remember them being. I’m beyond this struggle now, but it was real while it lasted. The second is the fear of failing. I’m still in the process of navigating this guy and I’m not sure I ever want him to go completely away. When this undertaking began, I was confident in being able to complete it. As the months, and now year, have passed I’ve questioned that belief hundreds of times. But, in true delusional fashion, I’ve never really believed I was going to fail. The days highlight the failures and make me question the likelihood of success, but I’m still confident the final outcome will be exactly what I planned from the start. The declaration started as an interest: I want to do a backflip. Then, it became a curious idea: I think I can do a backflip. And finally, the confident assertion: I’m going to do a backflip. No, I don’t have any tumbling experience. No, I’m not athletic and have never done anything that resembles a flip. No, I don’t have a reason for needing to do a backflip. Yes, I’m too old to be learning this now. Yes, I realize I could hurt myself. Yes, I was completely clueless on what all this entailed. And, no, I have not completed a backflip … yet. But, yes, I will. Why Should We Care? Backflip aside, I’ve learned a lot. I hope you can see this has been about more than a successful backflip. It's about stretching myself, challenging what I think is possible, and attempting to do something where failure is not only a possibility but a likely outcome. One of the most important things I’ve learned throughout the process is my real view on failure. Not the resulting thoughts from it, but the actual feelings I experience in the midst of failure after failure. I've had to make a decision, over and over, that a bad rep isn't a final verdict, even when I’ve wanted it to be. It's just data. It tells me what to fix. The mental progression from treating failure as a defining moment to merely information is transformational. The fear of failure lost its grip. As a leader your people are watching how you fail, not just how you win. If you flinch from it, they will begin to question the process … as they should. The second thing I’ve gained clarity on is courage. It’s no longer an absence of fear. It's moving forward while the fear is still alive and well. Courage was never waiting for fear to leave. It was moving forward regardless of fear's position. The leaders worth following just go, fear riding shotgun most of the time. The third thing, and the one I didn't expect, is how much a real coach matters. Kind of a weird realization for a lifetime coach, but here I am. A coach’s ability to give real time feedback, correct the same thing over and over, and encourage the slightest progress is powerful. Finding a good one isn’t easy. Most people will edit their feedback. Most are unwilling to give the same correction five times in a row in an effort to make you feel good. The thing is, I don’t want to feel good. I want to do a backflip. A good coach does not lose track of the end goal. REAL TALK - Action Steps Here’s a few thoughts on applying some of my backflip learnings to your leadership journey.
Keep failing. Ignore fear. Find a coach. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Selfish, Not Self-Centered“I need you to look at me so I know you’re listening.”
My wife’s warning is usually delivered just as I’m completely consumed in another project, too engulfed to have even the slightest awareness of my surroundings. It’s a skill I developed when the kids were little. Typically I will have been the target of her last few sentences, right before she realized I was in another world. Once eye contact is made, she starts over, astutely assuming I had no idea what she has already said. It’s a cute little cat and mouse game we have going on: she thinks I’m never paying attention, I let her think she’s right; I start paying attention, she feels validated. The dance continues. The truth is, I’m always paying attention. It just may not be the topic she is currently addressing. As a recovering busy-body, I am constantly working on something. And, one of my superpowers is the ability to block out everything going on around me and focus on whatever it is that I’m working on. It’s usually a gift, although my wife doesn’t always see it that way. I do see the selfishness of my actions. I share it less as a badge of honor and more as an admission of guilt. The positive is that while it’s selfish, it’s not self-centered. There is a difference. Both will eventually destroy you I suppose, but if forced to choose, I’d rather be the busy body. Why Should We Care? Most leadership advice treats selfish like a dirty word. An emphasis is always placed on putting others first and serving your people. Which is very true, most of the time. But if you lead anything worthwhile, there are going to be stretches where selfish is exactly what the moment requires. Head-down, locked in, temporarily unavailable to everything except the problem in front of you. Excellence requires deep levels of focus at times. A leader in the middle of a tough decision is going to become consumed to an extent. He’s going to miss some things or come off distracted. He may need a second reminder before he actually hears you. It’s selfish, but it's understandable. Everybody on the team can tell it's in service of something real. You're not distracted because you don't care about them. You're distracted because you're trying to get something done that matters. That kind of selfishness costs you a little presence, but it doesn't cost you their trust. Self-centeredness is a different animal, and it's one that will wreck a team in a hurry. Self-centered isn't about being consumed by the work, it's about being consumed by how the work makes you look. They are constantly managing their image, seeking credit. Self-centered tries to dress up as a good leader while being something completely different underneath. Once people sense that everything you do points back to you, you don't just lose their trust in that moment, you lose it in every moment that came before it. They’re forced to wonder how much of it was ever real. A leader who understands the difference between selfishness and self-centeredness gives himself permission to be selfish when the work demands it, without ever confusing that with the right to make it all about him. Isn’t it crazy how two people could be doing the exact same thing, but be viewed completely differently? Your purpose always smells. REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing the difference matters. Here's how to actually live it.
Pick your times to be selfish when your team needs you to be. Eliminate the times you’re self-centered, or you won’t have a team to lead. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! 4 Levels of Confidence Good ‘ol Honest Abe may have been honest, but he wasn’t too lucky early in his professional career.
He failed in business. He lost his job. He ran for state legislature and lost there too. He started another business, which also failed, and it took him 17 years to pay off the debt he accrued in the process. As if that wasn’t enough, his fiancée died. Then he had a nervous breakdown. He ran for Congress and lost. Ran for Senate and lost. Ran for Vice President and lost. And, finally ran for Senate again … and lost again. Then he was elected President of the United States, held the country together through a civil war, and became one of the most respected presidents in the history of our country. Lincoln clearly had it in spades, but confidence isn’t something that oozed out of him like it did from other well-known presidents like Teddy Roosevelt or John F Kennedy. And, nothing about his previous results would lead others to think confidence was a trait Lincoln should even be gently holding. Public opinion would agree, of course. He was mocked, pushed aside, and underestimated for most of his life. It leads to an interesting question: where did the confidence to keep getting back up come from? It’s the type of steady, unwavering confidence we all aspire to have. Yet, it seems to be reserved for only the best of the best. But, it shouldn’t be. Why Should We Care? There are four levels of confidence, and where you build yours from determines whether it holds up when adversity comes calling. Level 1 — None. You don't have confidence. You either don't know what you're doing yet, or you're genuinely insecure in your ability. Everybody starts here at something. Level 2 — Results. Your confidence is based on the outcomes you get. This one's popular because it feels earned. You did the thing, you got the result, so you feel good. The problem is the order is backwards. You need confidence before you get the result, not after. So you're stuck needing the thing you don't have yet to go get the thing that would give it to you. It's a trap a lot of people live in their whole career. Notice it’s the second lowest level, yet is treated by most as the standard. Level 3 — Praise. Your confidence is based on someone else's words. A compliment, a like, a retweet, someone telling you that you're good. This one feels like a shortcut, but it puts your confidence in someone else's hands. You end up trying to appease people, including people whose opinion shouldn't carry that much weight, like those who aren't in your foxhole. Your confidence goes up and down based on whether somebody else decided to hand you a compliment today. That's dependency, not confidence. Level 4 — Conviction. Your confidence is drawn from your personal values and from trusting your ability to handle whatever comes at you. It's not tied to whether you win or lose, and it's not tied to whether anyone claps. It's earned by living in line with what you actually believe, on the days nobody's watching. It’s the by-product of consistent authenticity. Conviction is the only one that's entirely in your control. Results depend on outside factors, praise depends on somebody else's mood. But conviction depends on nothing but you showing up as the person you say you are. A confidence that's fully in your control doesn't just help you perform better in one area, it carries into every area of your life. Lincoln didn't have results or praise on his side. What he had was conviction. He had a deep sense of what he believed and a trust that he could handle whatever came next. REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing the four levels doesn't do much for you. Adjusting to building your confidence in conviction does. Here's where to start.
Level 4 confidence is precisely what you admire in the fearless strivers you watch in awe. They’ve made the choice to stop allowing other people to determine their confidence. It’s a great time for you to do the same. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  I'm the Type of PersonA few weeks ago I found myself in a large group of people at a social gathering. Admittedly, this is a situation I try hard to avoid. Nonetheless, there I was. Uncomfortable and anticipating the relief of it being over, even more so than the dread of going in the first place. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being around people, I do. I just prefer them in smaller sample sizes. And, preferably samples I pick.
In any case, I’m having a great conversation with someone I have a ton of respect for. I listened, I shared, we laughed. It was exactly what you hope every conversation is like. They’re not, but that’s the hope. As the conversation ended, we both drifted off to mingle. For me, that looked like gazing into the group of people and simply observing. People-watching is easily one of my favorite leisure time activities. As I’m watching and noticing, a conversation off to my right catches my attention. Call it eavesdropping if you’d like. It was a discussion between one person I knew well and one from out of the area that I didn’t. In a matter of seconds, the acquaintance of mine starts into a self-descriptive declaration that catches my full attention. She had been talking without a breath for the past three minutes, then grabbed a strangle hold on the conversation with a phrase that has become a major red flag for me. In an effort to validate, she begins the sentence with, “I’m the type of person who”. I’m not an expert on social behavior, but I’ve experienced very few interactions in which someone has said “I’m the type of person who” that actually is, indeed, a person who does whatever ‘thing’ they are so convinced they do. If you have to tell people the type of person you are, then there’s a real good chance you’re not. Why Should We Care? We can say whatever we want. Claim to be this or that all day long. It takes zero effort to tell someone you're hard working, loyal, disciplined, or unselfish. The proof isn’t in the words we choose. It's in the next hundred decisions we make after we say them. "I'm the type of person who" is an attempt at a shortcut. It's asking people to take our word for something instead of earning their belief through our consistent actions. And the people who lead best realize there are no shortcuts. They don't announce their personal standards. They live them so consistently that other people end up saying it for them. Every leader has a gap between what they say in the team meeting and what they actually do when things get real. But we can be sure our people are aware of and watching that gap. They're listening to our speech, they're watching our actions. If those two things don't match, we don't have a leadership problem, we have a trust problem. And a lack of trust is a big problem. The credibility that trust provides is the only thing that lets us have real influence on someone else's life. REAL TALK - Action Steps They say talk is cheap. They’re right. Here’s a few ideas to be sure you’re really the type of person you say you are.
If you're building a life and a leadership style people can actually trust, it starts with closing the gap between your words and your actions. Be they type of person that doesn’t have to tell people what type of person they are. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Bright LinesI peak out from under the covers, attempting to check the time on my alarm clock while allowing the least amount of light possible into my one sliver of an eye. 4:43 AM. My alarm is set for 4:45 AM. I resist the bait. Rather than squeezing my eyes back shut for a poultry two minutes, I hop out of bed, turn off my alarm, and dive into my morning routine. It always begins with a workout.
I workout every morning with the exception of Sundays. So, if for example, I didn’t get home late the night before, I workout. If I’m tired from a really taxing day of physical labor and my hands and feet hurt, I workout. If I'm not feeling the greatest, I workout. There is no negotiation with myself on whether or not I will workout or not. The decision has been made and it won’t be made again. I agree to a rare night out with a college teammate to attend a pay per view watch party for the one and only, Mike Tyson. I mean, who can pass on a Mike Tyson fight! No less than twenty people offer me a drink. Beer, whiskey, rum, scotch, wine, champagne - you name it and they had it and wanted me to enjoy it with them. I decline. I don’t drink, never have. It’s not a noble stand or anything, just a decision I made for a variety of reasons a long time ago. Over time, the choice has only gotten more clear. When someone asks me if I want a beer, I never ask what kind they have. It’s irrelevant to the choice I’ve already made. The environment and circumstances don’t factor in either because I’ve decided I don’t drink. It’s a bright line. I wish I could say all aspects of my life are as bright as the two examples, but they are not. However, I have realized that every time I make an effort to raise my personal standards all I’m really doing is brightening the lines. Why Should We Care? Blurry lines are exhausting. Every single time you approach it, you have to make another decision. Rather than making a decision and moving on, you are forced to decide over and over and over. And every one of them costs you energy you can’t get back. A bright line decision is made once and it’s made way before the moment ever shows up. The moment has nothing left to negotiate with. It doesn't matter what mood you're in, who's buying, or how good the excuse sounds. The decision isn't up for a vote anymore. It's been settled. This is a huge deal when applied to ourselves, but the impact of it as a leader multiplies ten fold. Blurry lines make us unpredictable, and unpredictable leaders can’t build trust. Without consistency, our people are left to wonder which version of us will show up. Bright lines make us predictable. Our people don't have to guess where we stand, because we already told them. Pressure doesn’t change it. The audience doesn’t change it. The potential for a promotion doesn’t change it. We just need the courage to paint them. Bright is bold when it comes to our standards. REAL TALK - Action Steps Bright lines don't draw themselves. Here's where to start.
Start drawing a few bright lines. Not a hundred, pick one. Decide it now. A stressful moment will come looking for a negotiation. Don't give it one. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Conviction is CurrencyI’ve made several mistakes over the years in coaching. I’ve said the wrong things, called the wrong plays, and given the ball to the wrong players. I can’t even claim to have always hired the right coaches, but I do stand by one hire: Rex Brooking. Rex was incredible with our guys, brought decades of head coaching experience to our staff, and operated with a humility that perfectly illustrated what we believe competition at the highest level should look like.
He also owned a Chick-fil-A restaurant. If I ever had a doubt based on his other qualifications, the free chicken sandwiches on game days completely erased it. Even if I would’ve wanted to, mutiny by the players would’ve ensued had we ever chosen to part ways with Coach Brooking! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Chick-fil-A is one of the most powerful leadership models in the world either. Thanks to founder Truett Cathy and his unwavering commitment to his core values, Chick-fil-A is the gold standard of culture. When Cathy opened his first small diner outside Atlanta, he worked long hours, seven days a week. The Dwarf Grill was the name of his first endeavor, but something about the seven day grind pulled on him. So when he opened his first Chick-fil-A in 1967, he made a decision that made no business sense at all. He would be closed on Sundays, forever. God’s chicken was born. Everyone told him he was crazy. Sunday was one of the busiest shopping days of the week and every restaurant would be full while his would sit empty. The warnings never stopped. Stay open, you're leaving money on the table, he was told over and over. Cathy never budged. Not when the company grew into thousands of locations. Not when it became the second-largest quick-service chicken chain in the country. Not when the math started saying the closed door was worth well over a billion dollars a year in lost sales. Cathy wanted his employees to have a day for rest, for family, and for worship. That was the value. And once he was clear on the value, the decision was never a decision again. It just was. That's what real conviction looks like. It squashes negotiation. Why Should We Care? We tend to admire conviction like it's a personality trait. Some people just have it and some people don't. That's a convenient story, but it isn't true. Conviction isn't something we’re born with. It's a byproduct. It shows up automatically once we’re clear about what we value most. Conviction is simply clarity. The people we call the most convicted aren't the most stubborn or the most confident. They're the ones who did the work of figuring out what they actually value, ahead of time, before the situation that calls it to the carpet shows up. Cathy didn't discover his conviction when the criticism started to fly. He already knew what he valued. The pressure just revealed it. Most of us want the conviction without doing the work of defining the values underneath it. So when the critical moment comes, when staying open on Sunday would make us millions, we fold. Not because we're weak, but because we never actually decided. You cannot borrow conviction in the moment. You have to build it in advance, out of values you've already settled on. What you value most is what you'll be convicted about most. Everything else is negotiable, and that's not a flaw. You can't hold the line on everything, so you'd better know exactly which lines are yours. REAL TALK - Action Steps Conviction feels like a mystery until you realize it's actually a discipline. Here's where to start building it.
Get as clear on your values as you possibly can and you won't have to manufacture conviction. It'll already be there, just waiting on you to use it. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  Chase the WhoIt always ends the same way.
You spend days deliberating the perfect destination, make all the arrangements to see the most amazing sites, and make reservations for the very best evening meals. The sunsets are gorgeous and the dinners, to die for. However, those memories soon fade and we are left with the most significant factor of a great vacation: who we spend it with. You start a new season, full of hope and promise. You settle on the perfect offensive system and agonize over all the details of the best defensive packages for your team. The plan is in place and the team executes on it, or they don’t, and you win some and you lose some. As the season nears a close, reality becomes starkly clear: the most memorable part of the last five months was never the results of the game, but who you shared the struggle with. You buy a new house and begin planning for the move. You make arrangements for renovations at the new place and begin packing at the old place. As you remove the pictures from the walls, you have flashes of emotion as you recall the moments each captured. You smile a little, tear up a little. But, once again, reality settles you: it’s never about the house you live in, but the people you share it with. It always ends the same way. Wouldn’t it do us well to mind that from the start? Why Should We Care? We live in a world consumed with measurable results. It’s what gets rewarded so it’s what gets chased. The luxurious vacation destination. The win total. The square footage. Those things are easy to point to as markers of success. Who you're with is often an afterthought as we pursue. This is the trap for leaders especially. We build systems. We chase the records. We obsess over the plans. All of it matters, but none of it matters the most. Your people won't remember the exact defense you ran or the numbers on the best deal you closed. They'll remember whether you knew their name, whether you noticed when they were struggling, whether you were someone worth being led by. The results fade much faster than the relationships do. The who is never as urgent as it should be. The people around you rarely announce a deadline, so they get pushed to whatever time is left over. And the time left over is usually nothing. We treat the who like it will always be there, but it won’t. People move, drift, and eventually they're gone too. We don't get an unlimited number of hours with the people who matter most, we just live like we do. Since our time is finite and our relationships are the most valuable things we have, wouldn’t it make sense to prioritize both? REAL TALK - Action Steps Knowing the who matters is easy. Living like it does takes intention. Here's where to start.
It always ends the same way. Might as well start that way too. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!  More HoneyMy self-appointed counselor listens intently while offering little more than a slow, subtle side to side head shake. But it’s her pursed lips and squinting eyes that prematurely reveal her disdain and upcoming advice.
Although she’s provided it to me hundreds of times by this point in my life, she is incapable of refraining from sharing it yet again. As is typically the case, she offers it bluntly, “You know, Brook, you catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.” The warning has long echoed in my head, even though in the moment it races from ear to ear like an Indy car in its final lap. I give it no more thought than a hidden eye roll can offer and I carry on my conversation doubling down on my anger towards the stupidity of the villain in my story. I’m venting. She’s listening, patiently, as mothers do. She knows how this plays out. I’ll eventually heed her advice, choosing kindness and understanding over revenge and judgment. But, not right now. Right now, I’m all vinegar. Brenda Cupps, a saint in sinners clothing. Grace is her superpower. Understanding and patience, her gifts. I’d like to say it’s how she’s always been, but I’ve heard a few too many stories to the contrary. She, no doubt, had a hotside in her younger years. And, I suppose it’s likely more work than she lets on to tamper it so consistently. But, for a large majority of the time that I’ve known my mother, she’s always been a master at choosing honey over vinegar. Even though she has claimed to be forty-nine years old for the last twenty five years, I suspect life has seasoned her quite significantly. She has the admirable ability to consistently focus on others instead of herself, see abundance rather than scarcity, and extend grace to people who don’t even know they need it. Though she’s never presented it as a leadership lesson, it’s been one of the most impactful ones in my life. Sometimes all we need to do is pay attention. Why Should We Care? Fear is nothing more than focus turned inward. Our own frustration. Our own embarrassment. Our own needs. Vinegar, likewise, always starts with us. Righteous anger that we try to disguise as self-protection. Brenda Cupps doesn’t operate from that place, which is exactly why grace comes so easily for her. She is never concerned with managing her own image. It's really more simple than we make it. Scarcity thinking says there's not enough grace, patience, or benefit of the doubt to go around, so you better protect your share. Abundance thinking says grace costs you nothing and there's more than enough to give away. From here we realize kindness isn’t a limited resource. We can hand it out like we’ve got a warehouse full of it. Anyone can. Eventually we begin to understand it’s a choice, not a quota. As leaders, it would benefit us all to acknowledge that the people who need grace the most rarely ask for it. They don't hold up a sign. Instead, they mismanage relationships, snap at strangers, or show up late without explanation. It's easy to assume they know exactly what they're doing and just don't care. But the person acting worst is usually hurting the most, and they're often the last one to see it in themselves. This is where curiosity is so critical. It’s the doorway to empathy. We can't extend grace to someone until you get curious enough to wonder what's actually going on with them. REAL TALK - Action Steps Grace isn't a personality trait some people are born with and others aren't. It's a discipline, and here's where to start building it.
Brenda Cupps does not consider herself a leadership expert or claim to know everything about leading other people. But she does live the most important side of it, one honey-over-vinegar moment at a time. Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here! |
About bcI'm a teacher, coach, and parent seeking excellence while defining success on my own terms. Archives
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