Hope This Doesn't Hurt

I sure hope this doesn't hurt too much, but it ain't about you, nor is it about me!

(I am going to have to use I far too often in this piece because I will be using personal experience to make the point I want to make.) 

Guess by now you have all heard that there is no I in Team. That is because there isn't an I in Team and for very good reason. No person is an "I" island.

I learned this important lesson the hard way. More accurately, the importance of "I", was taught to me in what I like to characterize as an overly harsh and stunningly blunt manner. 

After several years at a my first profession and one that would last for over 35 years, I decided to take my first vacation. 

My clients and the business would be placed in grave danger. 

You see I was the only self serving person I knew that could handle my clients and additionally, keep the sales team together. No one in the history of this 100 year old business was as, or had ever been, as capable as I was in preforming these mission critical functions. I handled my clients better than they had ever been handled and my voluntary and selfish absence, although it would be for only a week, might create panic amongst my clients and prove fatal to the business. 

Without my daily leadership, my clients would fail to breathe and the sales team would likely disintegrate or at the very least be severely damaged and beaten back to the point of stone age mentality. When I returned we just might have to start over. Talking a much deserved and needed vacation might just end the professional world as I knew it! The risk I was taking was almost beyond description. 

Independent of these very real "I" dangers, I took my first vacation. 

When I got back from my first vacation,  I was shocked to find everyone still working and the business seemed normal. My client's welcomed me back but not one of them had any horror stories abut how they were mistreated or how lost they felt without my irreplaceable involvement. 

The sales team, and in fact the entire business, was humming right along as if I had never left. Imagine how I felt. I simply could not believe what I was seeing. I was stunned. 

I didn't even have any "While You Were Out" calls to return. 

Thankfully, that is the day that I learned; it ain't about me. It is about the business and the team. But more importantly, it is all about the clients. The business is bigger than everybody including me or "I", as I liked to put it! 

Fortunately, and with our any fanfare, I humbly accepted that it had never been about me, it had rightful been about we!