Destination Driftless: The Truth, How Beautiful It Is

My Servant Leadership class met recently to discuss decision-making and the important aspects of leading with a servant's heart. We make decisions every day essentially all day long. Do you ever think about your own process of deciding? How do you come about your decisions? It can seem automatic but most of us are using some variation of Truth, Consequences, Character and Fairness. Seems simple enough.

Rick Kyte, our instructor, gave an example of a debate within his household. He and his wife were deciding something for their son. They were focused on the consequences and their son was focused on the fairness of it all. Everyone walked away frustrated until Rick realized he had fallen into the decision-making trap. The trap is when you only look at your side of the argument and fail to step out of the place your discussing/arguing from (i.e. consequences) to consider other aspects of the debate. So, in this case, Rick later realized he and his wife had not gathered the facts (i.e. the Truth) on this one. Oops.

Rick went back to his son, insisted that they make some calls to his friends to get to the bottom of this debate. Once they got more information, the whole premise of their argument fell away. But his point was that it is very hard, in the heat of a discussion or in the midst of a big decision, to keep perspective. But it helps. A lot.

This class is largely focused on how one comes to be a leader, how leaders are made. In Servant Leadership, one has to look in the mirror. Tom Thibodeau, our other instructor, talks about taking a long, loving look at the Real. Knowing what is inside of you, your past, those that influenced you in the biggest way over the course of your life.