CHAPTER 13

Journey Toward Significance

I’ve discovered that as we mature and more fully embrace a journey mindset, we also find more and more opportunities to use our unique gifts, broaden our impact, and move to a higher calling of leadership. This is the journey toward significance.

It doesn’t happen when we reach a certain age or have a certain title or find ourselves in a certain income bracket. It begins when we allow it to begin by letting ourselves embrace a journey mindset that redefines our understanding of success to include significance. It happens when we make it happen and take actions based on that mindset.

This higher call of leadership is really about stewardship. That’s because it’s not about how much we have, but what we do with what we have. It’s achieving significance in our leadership experience by using what we’ve learned and earned to benefit others, not just ourselves.

The opportunities to change the lives of others and “pay it forward” are the most valuable fruits of leadership success. They provide significance to the journey and a destination worth pursuing. It’s the ultimate payoff of being a destination leader with a journey mindset.

When I made the decision to go from a success-building destination philosophy to a wealth-sharing journey mindset, my life changed dramatically for the good. I could see the impact. My success was not just for myself or the people around me. It was much broader. Everything in my life became more rewarding.

When You Have the Opportunity to Do Good

I’ve always tried to be a generous person, someone who supported worthy causes and invested in the lives of others. But a series of events beginning in 2010 reshaped my understanding of what it really means to be a “giver.” I discovered a deeper joy, as well as the practical benefits that came, when I freely gave away my time, my money, and even work in light of my passions and in support of the greater good. I didn’t really realize how much giving could change me until I unexpectedly found myself simply saying yes to my heart and making a significant donation to my alma mater.

This story begins on Facebook of all places. For many years I had made an annual donation to my alma mater, Abilene Christian University (ACU), to fund a scholarship I had established for top students majoring in public relations (PR). I was messaging on Facebook with Dr. Cheryl Bacon, the chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, about the scholarship. Our friendship went back to my days as a student when she was one of my instructors, so our messages weren’t all business. But at the end, she thanked me for the scholarship donation and noted that they were about to begin construction on a new space for their student-run advertising and PR agency.

The students had been running the agency for about two years. They worked on real projects with real clients who paid real money. But they needed a bigger, more professional office with the right equipment. This was the first time I’d heard about it, and I was blown away by the concept of the agency. Since I had built an agency of my own, I had an immediate passion for the project, and the idea of giving students real-world agency experience before they graduated was simply powerful.

I asked for more details, and as Cheryl told me about the project, I asked where they were on funding. Turns out, they were still significantly short of the amount they needed to get it across the finish line. She also told me how much it would take to get it done.

When I read that number, two thoughts popped up. First, that’s a lot of money. And second, I actually have that much money. I’ve never given that much to something all at one time, but in this case I could. I found myself wrestling with a simple question: What should I do? ACU had done so much for me and had helped paint the picture of the kind of leader I wanted to be in life. Perhaps this would be just a small down-payment on a much larger debt of gratitude I was eager to repay.

I sent her another message: “Cheryl: I’d like to give you the money you need.”

Needless to say, she was thrilled and grateful. We laughed and we cried, tears of joy for both of us. It felt good to have helped Cheryl and the students, and I trusted that many good things would come as a result.

But honestly, I didn’t think much about it after that, other than writing the check. Then a month or so later, Cheryl wrote to say how excited the students were about the project. In addition to renovating the classroom into office space, she said they were renovating the name. (The “ACU Student-Run Ad/PR Agency” wasn’t cutting it.)

After researching agencies at other schools, they decided to name it after two people. First, they picked Don Morris, the president of the university from 1940 to 1969. He had given money to build the Morris Center, the building that housed the agency. Also, his grandson had been a student in the PR program and had died of cancer in his forties. So naming it after Dr. Morris made perfect sense. They also wanted to honor someone special who had supported the agency.

“The students have met and want to name it Morris & Mitchell,” Cheryl told me via Facebook, “but only with your permission. We would like to be able to tell people that we chose Mitchell because you are an alum who models what we want our students to be professionally, and because you have helped get the agency off the ground with your gift. May we have your permission?”

I didn’t know what to say. I was no equal to Don Morris, and I hadn’t anticipated the students wanting to do this. The thought of it made me a bit uncomfortable. It is one thing to have your name on the door of an agency you actually run, but it is wholly another to have your name associated with something you had little to do with its success. Yet the more I thought about it, I was honored by their intentions and happy to lend my name if that would help the agency and the students. I began to look forward to the opening of the new office that fall as a proud alum and now a proud giver.

In October I traveled to Abilene for the grand opening, along with a number of special events Cheryl and the team had planned. It had been many years since I’d been back on campus, and I thoroughly enjoyed a trip down memory lane. I walked all over the campus. I went to my old dorm. I sat in “my” chapel seat. Everything the university had done to set me up for success and shape me as a person flooded over me like a waterfall.

I toured the agency and saw a first-class, contemporary facility. I met and spoke with the many talented students who were involved. To top it all off, the students surprised me at the ribbon-cutting with a motorcycle helmet customized with the Morris & Mitchell logo.

The entire weekend was fantastic, and many of the students tagged me in photos on Facebook. When I arrived at the Mitchell Communications Group office on Monday, I was greeted with plenty of questions about the pictures. They knew I had been to visit my alma mater, but I hadn’t mentioned anything about the gift or the student-run agency.

As I explained all that had transpired over the past few months, I relived the impact of the gift. It felt like a way to thank the school that had given me so much, personally, spiritually, and professionally. I really found myself at that school. I could never repay the school for all it did to help me get started in life. But it gave me such pleasure to be able to contribute financially and see how the students might benefit from the gift.

One of my dear friends and a key leader at the agency, Blake Woolsey, sat down in my office, looked at me, and said, “You’re different. Just the way you talk about this gift. The glow on your face. You’re different.”

And I realized she was right. I was different. The experience of giving at that level had changed me.

“It’s priceless,” I told her. “I wish I could bottle this—how good it feels to give and know you’re going to impact lives.”

“You simply found that intersection between your passion and the opportunity to give,” she said. “That’s magic.”

In the years that followed, that gift led to a string of additional financial gifts, but also in a relationship between our agency and Morris & Mitchell. We worked on projects together. Their students interned with us. I began visiting ACU more regularly and dropping in for informal chats and mentoring time with students. In 2012, I used some of the proceeds I personally received from the sale of the agency to permanently endow Morris & Mitchell’s operations, establish a new video production agency called 39 West, and fund several other new projects. One of those projects was a diversity program that helped the department maintain its prestigious national accreditation. Both 39 West and the diversity program were also partly in honor of our creative services group at Mitchell Communications and our Big Break diversity initiative.

The lesson in this is simple: when you have the opportunity to do good for others and you feel moved by the spirit, you should do it. If I had kept that money, I could have invested it. I could have spent it on something for myself. But that would never have meant as much to me as the joy of helping these students. Don’t second-guess the desire to give. When you are compelled by an overwhelming conviction to act, do it. Then stand back and watch all the good that will happen, giving you a sense of satisfaction that is worth far more than anything you could receive had you kept the money for yourself.

Igniting the Gift of Giving

The more I felt the stirrings of gratitude and satisfaction that came from making that initial gift to Abilene Christian, the more I wanted others to feel what I felt. Specifically, I wanted people at Mitchell Communications to have the opportunity to feel that way.

So one day shortly after my conversation with Blake, I walked into the office of our COO Michael Clark.

“I have this crazy idea,” I said. “I want our people to have that experience, but on our time and dime. What if we gave them money and an afternoon off to go into the community and do random acts of kindness? Is that possible?”

“Sure it is,” he said. “Absolutely, we can do it.”

We quickly put a plan in place for how we would make it happen, scheduled an afternoon to get everyone together, broke them into teams, and handed each team a stack of cash.

“Come back with nothing except a story of giving,” we told them. “Who did you help, and how did it impact you as a giver?”

They went out and found people in need: children in schools, elderly hospital patients, victims from a recent tornado, and mothers struggling to pay for their laundry or their groceries. They came back with stories that filled our office with laughter and tears.

So from my experience with Abilene Christian, something else was born: We named it “Ignite,” and it’s an annual event that lives as tangible proof of our values and our desire to give back to our communities. It’s probably my favorite day of the year at the agency.

Ironically, after I gave the larger gift to ACU, Cheryl was looking for a unique way to say thank you. She read about Ignite, and thanked me by creating a program now known as “Ready, Set, Give.” Teams of students in the journalism and mass communications department are given money to give away in the Abilene community in the same fashion as Ignite. She had no idea Ignite had been born from my giving experience with ACU. Somehow the pleasure of giving had come full circle.

Giving All the Good Stuff Away

Giving time, money, and energy to the things you’re passionate about often isn’t easy. But once you do, it leaves such a powerful feeling of significance that you never want to stop.

Some leaders hold tightly to everything they earn in life and sadly, never experience this joy. But it’s not just money to which they cling. The other thing that’s hard to pry from a leader’s hands, even a leader who is generous with money, is control. But giving this away also provides amazing returns, for a leader and for an organization.

During our second big stage of growth at Mitchell, our team had grown to around 70 people. I knew I had to step away from some of the “craftsman” work I was still doing, but I wasn’t exactly sure what stepping away looked like or how to do it. I had just established the executive committee, and I knew there was an opportunity to empower these senior leaders with some of the roles and responsibilities I had been doing for years—if I could bring myself to do it. A phrase I’d heard somewhere kept echoing in my mind . . . “Focus on what only you can do and give the rest away.”

I wrote it on the flipchart in my office and stared at it for inspiration. I thought if I looked at it long enough, somehow it would convince me that I should do it, and maybe tell me how. It didn’t speak to me. But it did inspire me to think through what that message really meant and what it would look like to live it out.

A few days later, Kate Andersen, our vice president of Creative Services at the time, noticed the phrase on the flipchart and asked me what it meant.

“Well, let me ask you a question first,” I said. “What do you think is the most operative word in that sentence? What one word is most critical?”

She looked at it, reading silently to herself: Focus on what only you can do and give the rest away.

“I don’t know,” she said after a few seconds. “Maybe you or focus.”

“Nope,” I said. “The operative word is only. If you take the word only out, what does it say? Focus on what you can do and give the rest of it away. So what can you do in the business? Well, if you ask me that question, I’ll say everything.”

For most entrepreneurial leaders, that’s the case. They can do everything, because they have, by choice or necessity, done everything. There was a time when I had done everything. I handled the billing, managed the payroll, swept the floors, and locked the doors. I had won and managed every single client we worked with in the early years. And part of me still wanted to be involved in everything.

Then I added, “Well, I’m still trying to commit to this. I want to jump in and do all these things that I know I can do. I want to come over there and help you run Creative. Should I be doing that? Absolutely not.”

The larger an organization grows, the more it needs and depends on specialists rather than generalists. As a leader, you may know how to do lots of things, but that doesn’t mean you need to regularly do them all. So what things should you do? The things only you can do and that bring the greatest value to the business.

When you become a specialist, you have a defined role. There are tasks that only your role or that only you in that role can and should do. Those things are unique to you, your talents, your capabilities, your expertise, your knowledge, your experience, and your credentials. But you can’t do those things and everything else you’ve always done. The same is true for leaders.

“So what do you give away?” Kate said.

“All of the good stuff,” I said with a smile. “Power, authority, credit, recognition, relationships, information, resources, knowledge, you name it. And that’s the challenge. That’s why so many leaders hit the wall at this point and can’t push through. They can’t give away the good stuff.”

Making the conscious commitment to focus on what only I could do and give the rest away seemed good in theory. But I also thought I’d committed to a decision that would send me to the unemployment line. I remember sitting at my desk and thinking, “Well, I don’t have a job anymore; I just gave my job away. All these things that I was so busy doing, that I was great at, and that made me feel so good about myself—I just gave it all away. There’s nothing terribly meaningful left for me to do.”

So I pulled out a notepad and pen and started jotting things down—things only I could do—not because I was the only person qualified but because they were unique to my role as CEO or because I was, indeed, uniquely qualified.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for my list to grow.

I had never really written a detailed growth plan for the company. I was always too busy managing the growth we had. Maybe I could develop a three-year growth plan, I thought. Managing and reacting to growth is not a growth plan. So I decided to flesh out some future opportunities we could proactively pursue.

I also thought about our finances. I was involved in all things related to money for the company, whether it was coming in or going out, of course, but I didn’t have a deep understanding of true finance. I wasn’t a classically trained business management professional. I didn’t have an MBA. I would look at the numbers when they came through, and I would ask our CPA and controller questions from time to time. But I was never really very strategic about finance, because I was limited in my knowledge. So I decided to make that year my “year of finance.” I committed to learning everything I could about finance so that I could make more informed and strategic decisions for the company.

When you begin to make a list of the things that only you can do by design and by definition of your role and your abilities, it becomes very empowering. You realize there are certain assets you bring to the organization that are incredibly valuable.

By the end of the week I had 14 items on my list. I remember having the following realization, when I looked at the list: “This is the job of a CEO. It’s the job of the coach, not the quarterback.” When I was willing to give up the ball and become the coach, the new list of what I needed to work on was a mile long, with the potential to make a far greater impact on our company.

I realized this was a normal part of our transition. It was part of my growth professionally and our growth as a company. I knew the time had come to lift my head from the desk, look through the turn to see what was coming, and figure out where we were going and how we could get there. I needed to work more on the business and less in the business. I needed to release many of my other responsibilities to the leaders around me.

This was huge for me. I think it’s one of the most important moments of growth any leader can go through. It requires a leap of faith, because it challenges you to give up a lot of the things you’re good at. But it allows you to develop your talents and abilities as a leader, as well as the leaders around you. You take yourself to that mystical “next level” of leadership because you are willing to become a learner again and take on new tasks, goals, and responsibilities.

When you give up all the good stuff, the payoff is twofold. Your team gets better and you get new, really good stuff. You become a master craftsman at different crafts. You discover, as I did, that you’re much more valuable to the organization when you become a passionate expert in the role you’re most needed. All the stuff you gave away becomes a valuable gift to the people around you.

Seeing Others as Whole Persons

When I talk about finding significance in your journey, the obvious examples revolve around giving away things that it takes a great deal of time to earn. Most of us aren’t born wealthy. We have to earn money so we can give it away. Most of us aren’t born into the role of a high-level leader. We have to earn that mantle so we can give it away.

But the heart of what I’m really talking about when it comes to significance truly has less to do with money and titles than it has to do with serving others. Because no matter where we are or how much money we have, we always can find ways to serve the needs of others. The only thing you need to share your wealth is to share yourself.

One of the most powerful examples I know of is found in the story of my friends Kent and Amber Brantly. Kent is a doctor and Amber is a nurse, both very respected professions in the U.S. culture. You might expect such a couple to earn a good income, live in a nice home, drive nice cars, send their kids to nice schools, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. But Kent and Amber’s sense of calling—first, to serve God, and, second, to serve other people—led them to jobs with a clinic in Liberia. When the Ebola epidemic broke out in Western Africa, Kent and Amber found themselves right in the middle of it.

Kent and Amber are ACU grads, so we met through alumni-related events, and I visited with them one evening while they were home in Fort Worth. I knew they had something to teach me about giving yourself away in service to others even when the circumstances are tough.

“Residency was tough,” Amber said, “but living and working in Liberia and through an Ebola epidemic was tougher.”

It became even tougher in 2014 when Kent contracted the disease. In fact, he was the first American to return to the United States for treatment of Ebola. His survival story is the topic of Called for Life, the book he and Amber wrote. His commitment to helping in the fight against the disease was a reason Time magazine included him as one of its Persons of the Year for 2014.

As we talked that evening, I quickly discovered that the sense of significance they had about their work is what allowed them to experience joy and peace in the most challenging of situations.

“When I was laying in my bed dying of Ebola,” Kent told me, “I had incredible peace because I knew we were living out God’s calling on our lives. So even though I thought I was going to die, Amber didn’t hear me saying that I wasn’t anxious or afraid. I sure was. But I was okay, and I don’t know that there’s anything more rewarding than that. That’s not what you would normally think of as rewarding. But for the significance of what you’re doing to bring you peace even in the face of death, I think that’s been the most rewarding thing about the life we’ve chosen so far.”

Kent and Amber approach their work as something more than just “doing a job.” Even if you’re a doctor or a nurse, you can do your job without really caring for someone’s holistic needs. You can make diagnoses, prescribe treatments and medications, or give shots without knowing or caring much about what else a person needs to feel whole. As leaders in corporate environments, we can do the same. It’s all too easy to get laser-focused on budgets or strategies or goals or deadlines and forget that we have an opportunity to care more deeply about the needs of those around us.

Kent shared a story that really speaks to what it looks like to care for the whole person when we’re at work.

Two women, Lusu and her adult daughter, Josephine, had become sick with Ebola while caring for Lusu’s other daughter, who had contracted the Ebola virus while working as a nurse. That daughter had died, and Lusu and Josephine were brought to the Brantlys’ clinic for care. Both of the women were very sick.

One night Josephine began crying out for help. It took Kent and his team about 30 minutes to suit up so they could safely enter the treatment unit. By the time they got there, it was too late. Josephine had died.

“Her mother was just a few feet away and had watched the whole thing happen,” Kent said. “That night was one of the most difficult of my life.”

Ebola is most contagious right after a victim has died. But Kent decided he needed to act immediately to remove Josephine’s body so Lusu would not have to endure the additional anguish of having her daughter right in front of her. Even though he wore protective gear, Kent was nervous as he and his team took care of Josephine’s body while also considering the heartache of a mother who now had lost two daughters to the disease and was dying from it herself.

“After that night, Lusu became very solemn and quiet for the next day or so,” Kent said. “She had just become stoic and she was requiring total care. She couldn’t feed herself; she couldn’t get out of bed to go to the bathroom. But you know, I had the advantage of not just seeing her illness. I was able to see her as a whole person, because I was there witnessing the tragedy that was unfolding in her life. I knew that I was not just feeding a lady who couldn’t feed herself, but I was sitting there holding the hand of a woman who had just lost two of her daughters and was dying.”

As he held her hand, Kent began thinking about the song “Today O” by Nigerian singer/songwriter Wale Adenuga. It was a powerful song he and the staff often sang during their daily devotional meetings.

“You could always feel the emotion as they sang this song,” he said. “And often I would have to stop singing because I would think about the lives these people have lived and the tragedy and the horror that they had lived through with 20 years of war and conflict.”

As Kent told me the story, he closed his eyes and began softly singing, just as he had sung that day at Lusu’s bedside.

Today O I lift up my voice in praise

For I know that you are always there for me

Almighty God, You’re my all in all

No matter what I face, when troubles come my way

I will praise You Lord

When he sang those words to the despondent Lusu, she squeezed his hand and gave an affirming nod, saying so much more than words could have.

“It was like that song was the prayer she needed but didn’t have the words for,” Kent said. “And for the next two days or so, she really perked up. She started talking to the nurses. Her condition improved. Not much, but a little bit. She came out of that stoic shell and connected with a couple of the nurses. After about two days, she died. But I think what we were able to do for her was meaningful. Even though the disease took her life, I think we were able to treat her with dignity and respect and compassion even in the midst of her tragedy. I think it was meaningful.”

I love that lesson so much, and as Kent recounted it to me, I was deeply moved by the way in which he as a leader had cared for someone far beyond the transactional requirements of his job. In fact, it struck me how he had done something truly magnificent when no one was looking. In one of the darkest places on Earth—in the heart of the Ebola epidemic in rural Africa—Kent had led not only with determination and commitment, but with true passion to help others in a quiet and selfless way. Simply because it’s the right thing to do, and he had an opportunity to do it.

It reminds me that as leaders we can always shine a light in the world and in the workplace when a clear purpose for what we do drives us. I may not be on a mission field like the Brantlys. Nor can I save anybody’s life, like my husband, who also is a doctor. But I can still do something that brings light to people right where I am in the workplace.

Kent’s story encourages me to go beyond treating employees, clients, and others in the business world from merely a transactional point of view and see them instead as whole people. I can stop in the hallway and serve a fellow employee or just tell them I care about him or her. I can let clients know I am thinking about them when I know they are hurting. I can have a sharing mentality with other business leaders and strive to assist those who need my help. We can’t see everything, but sometimes we can see more than we realize if we look close enough. Caring for those around us and having a positive impact on their lives is another powerful way we as leaders can find significance in the journey.

Doing Good . . . Today

Kent is often asked by others and by himself why he’s still alive. Why was he able to survive a deadly disease that has taken the lives of more than 10,000 people around the world?

“The answer I keep coming back to is that I can never come up with a satisfactory answer to why,” he said. “But I will always have to answer another question: so what now? You can spend all day philosophizing about why and where this is headed, but you’ve got to do something with where you are right now.”

Not long after I spoke with Kent and Amber, I was part of a discussion panel at a conference in Chicago. The moderator asked each of us to give some parting advice to the emerging leaders in the audience, so I talked about the importance of finding significance in the journey. After the session, a young man thanked me for what I’d said and then pressed for something more.

“How do I find significance?” he said.

I was a little surprised by the question, but I thought for a moment and then answered him.

“I’m not sure how you find it,” I said. “But here’s how I found it. I’ve learned what I’m passionate about. It starts with my faith, and it encompasses things I truly love, such as leadership and helping others lead at their best, writing and speaking, supporting my alma mater. I’ve found ways to work these things into my life outside of the workplace to help impact others for good and in the process bring greater joy to my own journey. What are you passionate about that you can devote yourself to and that would change you and those around you for good? What do you love that gets you out of bed every day?”

He gave it some thought and said, “I am sure I can think of many things. When should I start?”

“Today is always the best day to start something new,” I told him. “You can begin your journey toward significance by simply taking that first step now.”

As the young man walked away, I felt encouraged by the conversation and determined to take my own advice. “Today” is an empowering thought for sure. Today I can start finding deeper purpose in my work. Today I can take a new path on my leadership journey. Today I can do something magnificent for someone else. Today is the day!

Don’t wait until you’ve got plenty of extra time and energy, or until your savings account is flush or your investments are rolling. Don’t wait until you’ve retired from the workforce. Don’t wait on anything. When you have the opportunity to do good for others, do it. When you can give good stuff away, give it. When you have the chance to love the whole person, love that person.

Every decision you make, every action you take—they all add up to the story of your life. You are writing the chapters every day.

Don’t delay. Start today.