Live 2019 with Grace

During some personally difficult times, clients and colleagues will often ask us, “Why do you do this work?” 
 
They are puzzled that we would choose to put ourselves in the middle of the messiness and pain that people experience in their lives and work.

We do this work because we know that
when people matter to themselves and believe that
others matter, too, success is ensured.

This is true in organizations, on teams, and with individual contributors. Success increases when people matter.
 
Often in life, and especially at work, we can start to believe that things matter; results matter, money matters, but people…they are in the way. 
 
Yet, the most powerful leaders we know understand that it’s the people that create the success and that when those people are treated with respect for their contributions, with interest in their wisdom and perspective, and honored for the challenges they must deal with every day, everyone thrives.
 
A few days ago, our Administrative Assistant, Chris Karis, sent us an article by Peter Wehner in the New York Times called, The Uncommon Power of Grace: A revolutionary idea lies at its core: radical equality.
 
In it there was a paragraph that described how we treat ourselves and one another when we believe people matter – the author used the term grace.
 
When I recently asked . . .  how, as a nonbeliever, he understood grace and why it inspires us when we see it in others, he told me that grace is “some combination of generosity and magnanimity, kindness and forgiveness, and empathy — all above the ordinary call of duty, and bestowed even (or especially?) when not particularly earned.” We see it demonstrated in heroic ways and in small, everyday contexts, he said. “But I guess, regardless of the context, it’s always at least a little unexpected and out of the ordinary.”    
 
When we matter to ourselves and when we believe others matter, we bring a combination of generosity, magnanimity, kindness, forgiveness, and empathy to ourselves and to others in the face of our humanity and the messiness it brings.
 
This year, our commitment to you is to support you in mattering to yourself and to creating environments where others matter, because this is the combination that creates unexpected and out of the ordinary success.
 
We’re in this together!