by Robb Hiller
We’ve looked at asking the right questions and activating our God-given gifts. The last few chapters of this book will bring us full circle to overcoming the challenges we all face. We need to find and be advocates. This is the crucial third point of the Power of 3 triangle, and there is a direct relationship between gaining advocates and the speed and success you’ll experience with any challenge or situation.
Practicing the Power of 3
Our successes and trials help us to both discover our talents and gifts and to lead us closer to our purpose if we activate. Use the following charts to help you think through your successes and trials.
Begin by listing your past successes, going back at least ten to fifteen years. What came naturally to you? Can you identify the specific gift or talent you used in each success? How did this lead to a step forward in your purpose? Here’s an example using a story from chapter 4: I set up a lemonade stand to buy a toy truck when I was in sixth grade. What came naturally to me? I lived just off a golf course, and it was hot. I thought I could offer the golfers lemonade, and I knew how to make it. I took my wagon and set up a sign. I sold out in ninety minutes. Specific talents: I had a goal (goal setter), looked for a need (inquisitive), and took advantage of being close to the seventh hole (common-sense solutions). How did this lead to a step forward in my purpose? I love helping people find a solution to something they need. It has been my life’s work for the past twenty-five years.
Success
What came naturally to you? What gift or talent did you use in this success?
How did this success lead to a step forward in your purpose?
Now do the same by listing some of your trials in life. They help us see where we got offtrack and can teach us something more valuable than gold. What trials or adversities have had a real impact on you? Can you identify the specific gift or talent that would have made a difference if you possessed it? What was the greatest lesson you learned from this trial?
Trial
What talent or gift would have made the difference in this adversity?
What was the greatest lesson you learned from this trial?
[1] Amy Adkins, “What Millennials Want from Work and Life,” Gallup, May 10, 2016, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236477/millennials-work-life.aspx .
CHAPTER 6Invite Advocates into Your Life: Accept Support and Strength
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
ZIG ZIGLAR
NOT LONG AGO, I was asked by a medical device company to help an employee pull out of a slump. The organization has a great culture built by leaders who care about their people. They believe in developing advocates who can support one another. After being at the top of his field for several years, John was struggling.
Before I met John, I had him complete a series of leadership and talent assessments as well as an emotional intelligence tool. My goal was to see what might be causing his dip in results and consequent stress and to determine if he was open to personal development. If that was the case, we would enlist advocates, and I’d help him lay out a path to success with a specific “Foundations of Excellence” plan. His boss would join to help and support him along the way, and John would get additional help from me with targeted materials and follow-up.
When we met, John looked nervous. We sat down for breakfast and started by chatting about the traffic that morning. Then I asked a question to get us down to business: “What would you like to get out of our day together? I’m here to help!” It took an hour before John admitted that for a long time he had been trying to do things on his own. He had spurned his manager’s suggestions. He had clammed up and become unresponsive, nodding his head to whatever his boss said and then doing what he himself wanted. John was open to my help, but he didn’t feel he needed an advocate within the organization. John’s boss and her boss are tremendous leaders, but John struggled to let these advocates in. Why?
We Need Help!
Do you ever push advocates away or neglect to seek out an advocate because you’re so busy?
There’s a bit of a lone wolf in all of us. We believe we have to make things happen—alone.
I used to be severely afflicted by this disease of “I’ll handle it myself.” Back in the days before GPS, I’d drive somewhere new and get confused along the way. But I hated to stop for directions. I said to myself, I’ll figure this out! The trip took twice as long finding my way through trial and error as it could have if I’d stopped for directions. Today, I know better. I’ve discovered the joy of having an advocate, with Siri or my wife directing our trip. Advocates take the stress out of navigation!
Many organizations are discovering the importance of advocates. In the past, a significant portion of leaders thought soft skills were a waste. Many doctors and medical practitioners, for example, believed bedside manner was overrated. How things have changed! Today, the medical field actively surveys patients about doctors, staff, and their entire experience. Providers with a “let’s speed this up” approach are coached to create a more holistic experience. And we can all go online for ratings of doctors and facilities to glean insights from previous patients.
Business leaders are also learning the dangers of not cultivating a strong culture in their departments, divisions, or companies. Potential employees hop over to Glassdoor.com and read what people inside the company are saying. Leaders who don’t value advocates, teamwork, openness, putting the right talent in the right job, and making sure the values of the company are lived out suffer from high turnover and poor execution. On a broader scale, revenue eventually goes down, down, and down.
But what happens when a company encourages soft skills, teamwork, the development of individuals, and a compelling culture? What happens when an organization elevates those values? Employees are motivated. Customers pick up on the positive atmosphere. Results improve.
One of the most wonderful outcomes of having advocates in our lives and being advocates for others is the mental health benefits we open up. Inviting and being advocates increases the flow of the neurochemicals in our nervous system so they can better communicate with one another. Then we are motivated, happier, and clearer in our thoughts and everyday decisions.
It turns out that getting and giving help really is, as Zig Ziglar suggests, a lot like motivation and bathing. We need it every day!
If advocates are so important, why do we find it so difficult to accept help? Let me suggest a few key reasons you might identify with:
We believe it’s a sign of weakness to need help. While we might be unafraid to ask small, innocuous questions, we avoid bringing up big issues. We’re afraid to let others into our world, fearing they will think poorly of us or use our vulnerability against us.
We may not consciously understand that we are stiff-arming potential advocates. Our defenses of not engaging, making excuses, or avoiding discussions make life seemingly safe.
We haven’t experienced the great joy of having advocates in our life. If we rarely let others in, we’re not able to see their necessity.
So how did John finally see his need and come around to the idea of inviting advocates into his life? Once John shared what he wanted to get out of our time together, we ran through the assessment tools I had sent him. He saw the incredible talents he had been given. He wrote down his natural talents and made a second list of thoughts and habits that might negatively impact how he was doing his job. I saw John’s amazement as we talked about the natural gifts he had and what would happen if he used those more and grew in just a few areas. He smiled, relaxed, and shook his head as if to say, “Why didn’t I see all this before?”
By the end of our day together, he gained clarity in his thoughts, and we determined four key areas to work on. We devised measurable ways for him to see how he was progressing. The importance of having an advocate and a supportive manager gave John hope and fresh motivation.
The bigger revelation for Joh
n came as he began to see the other key elements of the Power of 3. He saw how asking the right questions was key to his success both professionally and in his personal life. And he certainly connected with the analogy of my British Lab, Bentley, being such a natural. We never had to teach Bentley to love anyone and bring energy into a room. He just does that naturally. John now saw his natural talents in a different way and was eager to activate them.
When John’s manager joined us for the last hour of our time together to review the development plan, I could see the load on John’s shoulders lighten. He knew there were people in his camp ready to help him!
The Cure for Loneliness
According to US Senator Ben Sasse, author of Them, a growing consensus among psychiatrists, public health officials, and social scientists is that the number-one health crisis in America is loneliness. Many factors make us an increasingly isolated people:
technology that encourages us to pursue “likes” rather than real relationships
the loss of stable, close-knit neighborhood communities
declining participation in social, service, and religious organizations
politically driven, us-versus-them mindsets
The result is a national calamity. It’s not a coincidence that life expectancy in the United States has been declining since 2016, the first drop in fifty years and the longest sustained decline in a century.[1]
More than ever, we need each other. Studies show that people with strong social relationships experience
increased life span,
faster recovery from stress,
better health (one study found that college students reporting strong relationships were half as likely to catch the common cold),
greater sense of identity and belonging,
increased confidence, and
a more positive outlook and better mental health.
In addition, I’ve observed in my personal life and my work with businesses and other organizations that people who develop close bonds with friends, family, colleagues, and mentors are the ones most likely to succeed, conquer challenges, and move ahead when they get stuck. It’s as if these people have extra measures of resilience, strength, and wisdom that others do not—and in many ways, this is true.
We’re wired by our Maker for deep relationships, a truth made clear in the Bible:
Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.[2]
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.[3]
Those words affirm that we function best in life when we rely on each other.
Nevertheless, many of us struggle, like John, with independent streaks that cause us to resist drawing on others’ strength. Culture encourages us to pull our own weight and lift ourselves up by our bootstraps. We sing with Simon & Garfunkel, “I am a rock. I am an island.” We celebrate the strong and independent, not the “weak” and “dependent.” The motivations for our independence can range from pride of personal accomplishment (a good thing) to feeling embarrassed to ask for help (a bad thing).
There are additional intriguing words from the Bible that not only capture this dilemma but supply a perfect solution. A great leader wrote to his friends, “Carry each other’s burdens.”[4] A few lines later, however, this leader says, “Each one should carry their own load.”[5]
What? Those two bits of advice seem confusing, if not contradictory. He seems to be saying, “Carry each other’s burdens—but wait! You should pull your own weight.”
The early readers of those words would have understood the real intent. The words burden and load seem like synonyms in English, but the words have very different meanings in the original Greek language. They’re actually a vivid picture! The Greek word for burden is literally a boulder too big for one person to carry. Load in Greek is the word for a Roman soldier’s daypack, the basic supplies and tools the warrior needed for battle.
In other words, it’s good to be strong and take responsibility for yourself. But it’s also absolutely necessary to know when to call for help when the burden is too great to bear alone.
There’s really no conflict between these two ideas. It’s much like the points of the Power of 3 triangle. The first two are things we do for ourselves:
Ask the right questions.
Activate your God-given gifts.
But the third point involves others in our challenge:
Invite advocates into your life.
Have you ever known someone who was “too needy” or “codependent,” to use the pop psychology terms? Chances are you and that individual were struggling to find the right balance between standing on your own (carrying your own load of daily necessities) and relying on others (getting help with a burden that is too big to carry). What wisdom!
The Triangle within the Triangle
More than ever in today’s complex and challenging world, we need to learn how to invite advocates into our lives. Our advocates can be divided into three categories—another triangle within the Power of 3 triangle: family, friends, and faith.
Family
Our families represent our earliest opportunity to be blessed by advocates. Ideally, parents and siblings show us the power and potential of what it means to have an advocate, setting a loving and positive tone for the rest of our lives. As I was growing up, everyone in my family fulfilled this role in one way or another, but especially my mom. Her continuing support, including her encouragement to pursue my musical gifts, was one of the pillars of my life.
Hopefully, our need for advocates is reinforced early and often as our world expands beyond home. For example, like many kids, I struggled with adjusting to junior high school. I had entered a scary new world and was unsure of myself. I was trying to find my identity. My parents, sensing my unease, encouraged me to take guitar lessons. They knew by this point that music was one of my gifts and that developing my skill would give me more confidence, and they were right. But my lessons with Don, a blind gentleman who taught me how to play, gave me even more. His encouragement and passion for attaining the perfect sound showed me that if I pushed myself, I could achieve more than I realized. His ability to play great music on a beat-up acoustic guitar, without sight, demonstrated that obstacles can be overcome. Don showed me the importance of practice and discipline. He was one in a line of many valuable advocates to follow.
We need advocates because the moment we believe we can stand alone against the world’s trials is the moment we are most vulnerable.
But talking about family advocates raises an important question: What if your family hasn’t been supportive? Families aren’t perfect . . . and neither are we! After evaluating and talking heart-to-heart with thousands of people in the past twenty-plus years, I have deep empathy and understanding when your only family support might be from a single parent, one sibling, or no one at all. We can grieve the loss or estrangement of family situations where things didn’t turn out well. It’s a process to accept that we didn’t get what we needed from our family because they most likely experienced that same lack in their own past.
We might be able to reconcile some past differences with family, and it’s worthwhile to try. Whatever the outcome of our reconciliation efforts, we still can invite and develop friends as advocates to fill the natural and God-given need we all have for support.
This is one of the most powerful parts of the Power of 3—inviting new advocates into our lives because we need others, and when we do, we can then reciprocate by being an advocate to them.
Friends and Coworkers
As we grow, of course, friends take on new importance in our social sphere. They can become our greatest allies—loved ones to celebrate and mourn with, sounding boards and guides through uncertain times, people willing to speak truth when we’re blind to our own mistakes.
Several friends I gained in college have remained close in the decades since. Likewise, I now cherish several clients as good friends. These comrades give me invaluable
companionship, encouragement, advice, and support, never more so than when I was being treated for cancer. I don’t know if I could have gotten through those days without them.
Though I’ve been fortunate with my friendships, many men struggle to establish long-term relationships. Men are much more likely than women to go it alone when facing a trial. Unfortunately, that attitude can be costly. We—both men and women—must cultivate connections to succeed in life.
Hopefully by now you feel a nudge to reconnect with friends and perhaps casual acquaintances you enjoyed but never worked to develop a friendship with. In my church, service organization groups like Rotary, my gym, my workplace, and even friends of my kids, I’ve found friends that can turn into advocates.
When I began to let people know my devastating news of three cancers, I found an incredible number of advocates. One of the most touching advocates was Sherman Black, a CEO who immediately called and volunteered to take me down to the Mayo Clinic. I had helped Sherman with his company in the past, and we had developed a friendship due to our kids being in high school together. He called me weekly for five months. I was touched by another CEO, Jerry Mattys, who when he learned of my situation, said, “Robb, you’ve helped us and been on our schedule for the past ten years. We are now on yours. You let us know how you are doing and what you can do, and that will be just perfect.”
I admit, the many responses like this still make me tear up today. Advocates make life meaningful. So, who do you need to call today and get together with for a cup of coffee?
