“Talent is God-given, be humble; Fame is man-given, be thankful; Conceit is self-given, be careful.”
JOHN WOODEN
A fifth-grader came home from school, bubbling with excitement after being voted “Prettiest Girl in the Class.” She was even more excited when she came home the next day after the class voted her the “Most Popular Person in the Class.” Several days later she won a third contest, but she said nothing about it. Her mother noted her silence.
“What were you voted this time?”
“Most Stuck-Up,” she whispered.
At times we all get stuck on ourselves. Keeping the hot air of pride from overinflating our sense of importance is difficult. We are living in the most demanding, individualistic, egocentric culture in our nation’s history. At the least insult or slightest remark, we’re ready to sue for millions, spout and fume, and gripe and complain as though our children had just been drawn and quartered. We all fight “Muhammad Ali syndrome” thinking we are “the greatest.”
Sometimes I think we should change the national motto on our currency from “In God We Trust” to “I Want My Rights.” These days you can’t turn right without running into someone’s rights. Rights are demanded for children, the elderly, the disabled, workers under 25, workers over 40, alcoholics, the addicted, the homeless, spotted owls, and snail darters.
Rights are considered as American as apple pie. Indeed, this is a country known for citizens’ rights. The most familiar part of our Constitution is the Bill of Rights. Rights provide the bedrock of our society, and we should give our lives to defend them. They spell freedom. Our rights protect us from being overrun by an autocratic government. But as Philip K. Howard says in his great book The Death of Common Sense,
Rights have taken on a new role in America. Whenever there is a perceived injustice, new rights are created to help the victims. These rights are different: while the rights-bearers may see them as “protection,” they don’t protect so much as provide. These rights are intended as a new, and often invisible, form of subsidy. They are provided at everyone else’s expense, but the amount of the check is left blank…Rights, however, leave no room for balance, or for looking at it from everybody’s point of view as well. Rights, as the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin has noted, are a trump card. Rights give open-ended power to one group and it comes out of everybody else’s hide.1
What has the rights movement fostered? A spirit of anything except gentleness, humility, or courtesy. Instead, people are encouraged to “look out for number one” and to get what they want through intimidation, whining, and threatening to sue.
A Kinder, Gentler You
One of the keys in getting along with others is first getting along with yourself. You cannot see others properly until you see yourself properly. When George H.W. Bush was inaugurated as president of the United States, he said he wanted America to become a “kinder, gentler nation.”
Someone has well said, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness; nothing so gentle as real strength.” Just as you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so people respond more readily to gentleness than intimidation.
Coach John Wooden told the following story that illustrates a great truth:
My dad, Joshua Wooden, was a strong man in one sense but a gentle man. While he could lift heavy things men half his age couldn’t lift, he would also read poetry to us each night after a day working in the fields raising corn, hay, wheat, tomatoes, and watermelons.
We had a team of mules named Jack and Kate on our farm. Kate would often get stubborn and lie down on me when I was plowing. I couldn’t get her up no matter how roughly I treated her. Dad would see my predicament and walk across the field until he got close enough to say, “Kate.” Then she would get up and start working again. He never touched her in anger.
It took me a long time to understand that even a stubborn mule responds to gentleness.2
I am learning this with my first grandchild. Harper is the apple of my eye. He owns me. Harper loves his “Pop,” and Pop loves him. Teresa (“Nana”) has marveled at just how close a two-year-old boy has become so attached to me. She remarked recently at how I am gentle and meek around him in a way I never was with my three sons (sorry guys). Harper has a stubborn streak in him that runs in our family, but it seems as if Pop can get him to do things others can’t with just a gentle word (and the promise of a Cheeto).
This is something like what Jesus Christ meant when He said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). The word meek refers to a kind, gentle spirit. It implies humility. Jesus said these people will control planet Earth one day, and I think we’ll all be grateful when they do. I wish that day would hurry up and get here because the un-meek are making a real mess of things.
But meekness is not weakness. Gentleness is not wimpishness. The words meekness or gentleness should not conjure up the image of a short, skinny nerd with thick glasses who sings soprano in the church choir. Meekness means power under control. An unbroken horse is useless; an overdose of medicine kills rather than cures; wind out of control destroys everything in its path.
Think of meekness as the security to practice humility. When Benjamin Franklin was 22 years old, he was living in Philadelphia after escaping an oppressive apprenticeship. He was, as they say, trying to find himself. One question burned in his heart: “What are the greatest priorities of my life?”
In answer Franklin developed 12 “virtues”—the values that would govern his life. They were temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and chastity.
Franklin took these 12 virtues to a Quaker friend and asked his opinion. The friend looked at them and said, “Benjamin, you have forgotten the most important one.”
Franklin was aghast. “Which one?”
“Humility.”
Franklin immediately added this virtue and then organized his life into thirteen weekly cycles, determining that for one week out of thirteen, he would try to focus on one of those virtues.
When he reached 78 years of age, he began reflecting on his life and the qualities he had built his life around. Though he felt pretty good about having achieved most of them, concerning humility he said, “I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue; but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it.”
I can understand why Franklin felt this way. Humility is one of the greatest virtues and character traits known to man—and one of the most elusive. Think about it. We’re supposed to show it but not know it. If we try to be humble, we have fooled ourselves into thinking we have something to be humble about.
I think of the young, gifted minister who was indeed a good preacher. As his congregation grew, so did his head. After he had delivered his latest masterpiece, a church member shook his hand and said, “You are, without a doubt, one of the greatest preachers of our generation.”
It was all the minister could do to squeeze his head into the car as he slid behind the steering wheel. As he and his wife drove back home, he relayed what the church member had said to him. She did not respond.
After futilely fishing for affirmation, he finally looked over at his wife and said, “I wonder just how many ‘great preachers’ there are in this generation?”
“One fewer than you think, my dear,” she said.
Humility is indispensable in developing a gentle, gracious spirit. Only when we deflate our self-importance and inflate the importance of others can we treat others the way they deserve to be treated.
The Most Important Musical Instrument
Someone once asked Leonard Bernstein, the New York Philharmonic conductor, what the most difficult position in the orchestra was. Without hesitation, the great maestro replied, “Second fiddle.” Everyone wants to sit in the first chair, not the second.
The hardest thing most of us will do today is admit our failings and learn to be comfortable with those shortcomings. Think about marriage. For over 35 years I have been married to the most beautiful, wonderful woman I have ever known. We have had our ups and downs, our peaks and valleys, good times and not so good. But I have learned (and am still learning) that when I play “second fiddle,” she winds up putting me in the first chair.
One of the greatest moves I ever made had to do with taking the second chair. When we were going over the plans with the builder of our present home, Teresa had the idea of adding a keeping room to the kitchen. This addition was going to add several thousand dollars to the cost of the house, and I quickly exercised my “head of the home” authority and said no. I said not only would it cost more money, but no one would use it as we already had a den adjoining the kitchen. She said she understood, and I thought smugly that I had won…until I saw the tears in her eyes. I melted, and with a meek and gentle spirit I relented, though I still thought it was a colossal mistake.
The house was built, and can you guess which room is most used by family and friends? The keeping room and the kitchen have become the nerve center for everyone. The den is hardly ever used. My boys still laugh at our near blunder to not include it. Not only was it one smart financial and social decision, my stock soared with a wife who knows that I trust her enough to take the second chair.
Once again I was reminded that often second place is the first place to be. Whether it is your spouse, your secretary, or your next-door neighbor, everyone hungers for and responds to those who offer courtesy and gentleness in a spirit of humility.
When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he gathered up his belongings and left the office early one day. Michael Deaver, one of his assistants, asked him why he was leaving so soon.
“I’ve just got a few errands to run,” Reagan replied.
Deaver said this would happen occasionally, and it always made him curious. On this day he pulled Reagan’s driver, Dale, aside and told him he wanted a report the next day on exactly what Reagan had done.
After Reagan left, Deaver looked through the “to read” file that sat on his desktop. On top of the pile was a wrinkled letter from a man stationed in Vietnam. The soldier had written to Governor Reagan, telling him about life in Southeast Asia and how much he missed his wife. He just wanted to tell his wife how much he loved her and how he wanted to be with her. That day was their wedding anniversary, and although the man said that he had already sent a card, he asked the governor if he could put in a phone call to make sure his wife was OK. He wanted the governor to pass on his love, just in case she didn’t receive his card.
The next day, Dale told Deaver that Reagan had done more than what the soldier had requested. The governor picked up a dozen red roses and delivered them to the soldier’s wife. Dale reported that Reagan approached the woman in an extremely humble way, offering the flowers on behalf of a loving husband stationed in a jungle hell on the other side of the world. Then he spent more than an hour with the woman, drinking coffee and talking about her family.
Maybe that was one of the secrets to the enduring popularity of Ronald Reagan.
The Lesson of the Goats
Do you know how two goats respond when they meet each other on a narrow path above a stream of water? They cannot turn back and they cannot pass each other for they lack even an inch of spare room. Instinctively they know if they butt each other, both will fall into the water and drown. What do those goats do?
Nature has taught one goat to lie down so that the other can pass over it; as a result, each goat arrives at its destination safe and sound. As Zig Ziglar is fond of saying, “You can have everything you want in life if you will just help enough other people to get what they want.” My version of his proverb: “Treat others with the respect they deserve, and they will in turn elevate you higher than you could ever go on your own.”
Taking second place to others is powerful in that it actually elevates you above others. Though that seems contradictory, it is true just the same. President Calvin Coolidge once said, “No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.”
What is true for an enterprise is true for an individual. If you will learn the power of second place, you will wind up coming in first every time!
Principle Eight—Every organization loves a kinder, gentler leader.