Yesterday was a little bit DIRTY. Yesterday, BTL held practice with a bunch of dirt lovers. Yesterday, we held practice in a little village called Canal Winchester, just outside Columbus. This was only the third practice with this dirty little team. It felt too good to have only been number three!!
We watched some Bono and some B.B.! We read some in the 8 around TRUST. We studied some seminary students and extrapolated to our own work and life. We got into the wild too.
Yesterday was another reminder to me of exactly why I LOVE this work. Yesterday, I watched a bunch of people that are in their “busy” season, take the time to get BETTER. Yesterday, these dirt lovers came clean. They are building trust. They are beginning to take down their fortresses. They are becoming BUILT TO LEAD. They are becoming a TEAM.
Yesterday, our newest builder helped this dirt loving team find the melody line. He hit it out of the park. Yesterday, Karen laughed, Mike came to play, Hazy got some clarity, and Doug showed us his not so quiet STRENGTH. Yesterday, Dan became a little bit less “the man” and a little bit more the “human.” Yesterday, CEO disease lost some serious ground. Yesterday, a bunch of dirt lovers took some BIG steps toward becoming MAGIC.
Stinkin’ AWESOME.
What did you do…yesterday?
Did you and your team get stronger?
Did you invest your day doing exactly what you wanted?
Did you fall further in LOVE with your work and life?
What are doing tomorrow?
I can’t wait for my tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be with two of my clients. Tomorrow I’ll be with another BTL builder working on one of his clients that will soon be one of ours. Tomorrow I’ll be ridin’ NOT hidin’. Tomorrow I’ll be WITH the ones I LOVE and LOVING the ones with whom I work. Tomorrow will be just like today. Very cool.
BUILT TO LEAD 
Like all good melody lines, something STICKS with you. You can’t get it out of your head. It’s something simple, but with a twist.
As the new builder with you today, Chet, the key melody line today for me was “I have to GET DIRTY to COME CLEAN.”
GETTING dirty is different than PLAYING dirty. Playing dirty is what we normally do. Oh sure it seems innocent enough. “I’m a little MUDDY on this — I’M NOT READY to talk directly to them yet.” (sound like a familiar blog?) We take what we CAN’T SAY (translate WON’T say) to our leader or teammate somewhere else. And when it goes around the banks of the channel it belongs, what happens? It gets MUDDIER. And washes up on some other teammate downstream. And if they let the MUD STICK, it dries hard as a BRICK. Another brick in their FORTRESS that I just helped build. A brick with my name & inscribed with the very thing I wasn’t “ready” to say to anyone else. We’re BOTH guilty, and anyone else who comes along and reads it and doesn’t do anything about it is guilty too. More mud. More bricks. More fortresses built, NOT leaders built. More CEO disease, because the CEO can’t figure out why no one will tell them ANYTHING. That’s the way most teams are. Built on fear & distrust. And the tragedy builds too — the very same leaders not willing to talk with their CEO end up building teams who view them EXACTLY the same way. They all get EXACTLY the team they deserve.
What’s the solution? To stop playing dirty I must GET dirty:
1. . . .Doing the real hard on-site work to dig a personal foundation with a strong CORE. This is what the 12 Essentials of Personal Excellence is all about. It takes a strong core to have the CLARITY and COURAGE to not need a fortress anymore, and to begin taking my fortress down a brick at a time. A fortress built with mud on mud doesn’t need any other foundation, but for a leader who’s BUILT TO LEAD it’s a must. With a strong core I don’t need my fortress. And my team can’t help but notice. As I take my own fortress down, it’s also safer for others to approach me directly without fear, because with a strong core I don’t need to DEFEND, DENY, and DESTROY. Instead I can INSPIRE them to build their own cores, and begin dismantling their own fortresses.
2 . . .Dredging healthy channels of communication with the leaders and members of my team. When things get muddy it’s all the more important to COME CLEAN with each other. And RINSE AND REPEAT until it’s not muddy anymore. And like you said so clearly today, Chet, as we learn to do this, we stop taking on other teammate’s mud & slime and become a team that works to dredge healthy channels that are CLEAR, CONCISE & DIRECT.
What happens when we do the real, hard, work to GET DIRTY to COME CLEAN? Today I learned that this is what stimulates CHEMISTRY and healthy FLOW. And when that happens, it’s MAGIC. No one will need to tell us — we’ll already know, and so will the rest of our team and our customers!