Clarify.

Day 16.

To be an Ace is to be relied upon, as an Ace up someone’s sleeve. We are ready to make adjustments and to take charge if necessary when other entities cannot be relied upon.

To be an Ace is to recognize that we actually do not require the participation of anyone else, nor do we have need for special tools; Aces do what they do with what they have. They are able to perform with less, and they are able to adjust with more.

To be an Ace is to be trustworthy, to be ready for setbacks and to be prepared for momentum.

I just felt this had to be shared to my Church Service team today, as we prepared to undertake another initiative, which relied heavily on media personnel and equipment… or so they thought. When the usual expected people involved were unavailable and when the usual camera and lighting were being used, my folks immediately went towards negotiation.

I understood where they were coming from, but I also felt a little frustration when they felt the need to reschedule. To me, they expressed overdependence on outside circumstances for them to function – and I wasn’t about to tolerate this.

So what we did was to use my camera and to use our resources to get what we could done. Another compromise was already worked out, but I insisted that we went out and produced a video from what we had, right here, right now. The quality may not have necessarily matched what they were led to expect but the point I wanted to deliver is for them to think of other alternatives to getting something done, instead of them being too reliant on processes.

Last night, I went back to my obligation to train employees of a certain company regarding their communications, and in this particular case, I was launching a new session on what I imagine is a series on proper instruction. March sessions were about how they followed instructions, and this month was more on how they instructed people.

Long story short, the session didn’t go as smoothly as I wanted, and I basically gave up on the people I was training by directly asking them how I could make the session better for the batches to come. I took their advice and I just left with my tail between my legs, promising myself I would do better next week.

To this end I thought I would take a short break from listening to Ryan Michler as I walked today, and I went back to listening to Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s Dichotomy of Leadership; to be precise I zeroed in on the one chapter entitled: Hold People Accountable, But Do Not Hold Their Hands.

I was reminded of the fact that clarification goes a long way.

In the case of my botched communication session, I was reminded of the importance of me telling these tenured people of the time they would save if they said precise instructions the first time, all the time, to save time. This was especially the case when they would be instructing people over the phone, and this was their responsibility and THE standard to observe when they were telling people what to do through, say, chat or email.

Had I clarified with the team on the importance of precision of instruction, then they wouldn’t have walked out of the conference room all sleepy and bored.

In the case of the reluctance of my church team to think outside the box, I was reminded that they needed to keep on hearing our mission, and our mindset – that is, to celebrate Christ. If they kept the mission in mind, or if they were brought to remember the mission when confronted with setbacks as easily handled as a lack of available people and tool, they would have offered other alternatives.

Had I clarified with the team on our mission and mindset, then they would have prioritized looking for solutions out of the box instead of giving in to the fates.

One thing that I certainly will continue to repeat in every sermon and message I will share derived from John Maxwell’s Beyond Talent would be my own packaged perspective on what I think would be an essential mindset for us in the body of Christ to consider:

We all have a Foundation.
We build Beliefs upon our Foundation.
Our Beings are molded by our Beliefs.
Knowledge, Skill and Will are part of our Beings.
Talent is a combination of Knowledge, Skill and Will.

To understand what our Foundation is, we would ask ourselves, who loves us?

Our answer to this question is what we build our beliefs around. For example, anyone who knows that God loves them because of Christ and His finished work would build beliefs based on this.

And as we believe, so we live. Our being – our physical, mental, and emotional build would evolve based on what we believe. ‘Right’ believing is ‘Right’ living. Self believing is self living, and Christ believing is Christ living.

This was all presented when we were introducing this message series last Sunday. It was timely to construct the mindset as enumerated above in the actual presentation of the message, as it points out the pre-eminence of belief before talent. John Maxwell says belief lifts our talent, but I say we wouldn’t have a clue of what our talents would be without any semblance of belief in a foundation.

Before talents comes belief. Beliefs lift our talents in that by our beliefs, our talents are recognized and raised up.

Here, I will clarify my perspective, as I have last Sunday, and in the Sundays to come. And although I intend for others to go down this journey of clarification, this is for me as much as it is for everyone else who comes to hear what I have to share.

Clarify to the outside world. Clarify to your family. Clarify with yourself.

In clarifying, we flow, and as we flow, we get rid of what is unnecessary, for what is important to remain.