GREATNESS.
- whatshesaid2020
- Mar 4, 2022
- 3 min read
GREATNESS. For a community in Wisconsin, G also represents the Green Bay Packers. For Green Bay Wisconsin, the football team is synonymous with more than a letter. Greatness by definition is the quality of being great, distinguished, or eminent.
This past week, I had the privilege of leading the leadership team from Curative Connections through personal development as part of their strategic planning. Curative Connections is a nonprofit organization in Green Bay, WI whose mission is to help people achieve their goals for independence. The President & CEO is new to the organization, and we met and became friends while working together for another nonprofit organization. We are very much like-minded in mission and leadership style. She believes in creating a cohesive and communicative team of both new and long-term employees to build organizational capacity to better serve their clients.
During our session together, we recognized their individual strengths and collectively we analyzed those strengths in terms of team building. We met at a clubhouse (converted garage) owned by retired General Manager, Ron Wolf, of the Green Bay Packers. In the backyard is this yellow fence with the word GREATNESS and across the street is the magnificent backdrop of Lambeau Field.
Lambeau is home to the infamous Green Bay Packers. I actually wandered in to the Pro Shop and bought my first Packers shirt as a life-long Chiefs fan (when in Rome). I have a dream that someday the Chiefs and Packers will square off in the Super Bowl, but enough about football for now.
In the room we met in was a saying by Ron Wolf, "Identify what needs to be fixed, then go fix it."
Isn't that what we are all doing in leadership and management?
Trying to fix what needs to be fixed? Sometimes its hard to identify the need and other times it stares us straight in the face. It makes for conflicted days and sleepless nights.
Some would say why fix it when it's not broken? I would say then it doesn't qualify for the definition of fixing because it was never broken. That's a wonderful feeling.
When we consider greatness in leadership we can view at it as a core value or systematically as leadership development. It impacts not only individually each person, but collectively as a team.
In an article by Robert Quinn, called Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership, he states:
As leaders, sometimes we’re truly “on,” and sometimes we’re not. Why is that? What separates the episodes of excellence from those of mere competence? In striving to tip the balance toward excellence, we try to identify great leaders’ qualities and behaviors so we can develop them ourselves. Nearly all corporate training programs and books on leadership are grounded in the assumption that we should study the behaviors of those who have been successful and teach people to emulate them. But my colleagues and I have found that when leaders do their best work, they don’t copy anyone. Instead, they draw on their own fundamental values and capabilities—operating in a frame of mind that is true to them yet, paradoxically, not their normal state of being. I call it the fundamental state of leadership. It’s the way we lead when we encounter a crisis and finally choose to move forward.
Quinn goes in-depth as to the explanation and steps to achieve the fundamental state of leadership. I highly recommend reading his article in the Harvard Business Review at: https://hbr.org/2005/07/moments-of-greatness-entering-the-fundamental-state-of-leadership
What greatness have you achieved? Or want to achieve? Is it the public level of the Green Bay Packers or the privacy of leadership in your organization?
Either way, I challenge you to find your greatness not in others, but yourself. You just might be surprised that it's always been there.
What She Said ~ Beverly
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