Every once in a while you attend a presentation or seminar that is really impactful. The exceptional ones resonate in your personal life and in your professional life. Several members of our team at REMEDI, including myself, attended such an event just last week.
The event was the Smarter Commerce Leadership Forum in Dublin, Ohio, hosted by IBM. The speaker was Eric Greitens, a Navy SEAL, award-winning author, Rhodes Scholar, humanitarian and Founder and CEO of The Mission Continues. Eric spoke about living with resilience and leading with strength and compassion through adverse circumstances. His work these days is filled with efforts that transform how America views its veterans, and how they view themselves particularly through his organization The Mission Continues.
The premise of his talk, his personal efforts, and those of his organization revolve around inspiring and guiding veterans who have served their country, to a related life of service to country, community, family, mankind, etc. after military service and/or injury.
I cannot possibly recount all I learned from this event, but here are a few key life and business lessons that were take aways from the leadership forum...
Many of these points were formed from Eric's time in SEAL training and service as a SEAL, in addition to what was learned from his humanitarian efforts.
- Compassion, in addition to courage...a firm commitment to action, is essential in any mission. See the book trailer...The Heart and the Fist...
- People are often overcome in tasks by the "HOW". Regularly revisit the "WHY" in a task to order to stay focused on the task.
- Team first is key and essential to survival. Focus on others inspires one’s self to perform their role given mutual reliance on others to perform theirs.
- We are all faced with adversity even in business. The leadership we have on the front lines is where the battle is won. We must look out for our team.
- Courage is built by continuing to confront ones fear. This is used to help vets determine how to redirect themselves to service.
- Evolution of tasks (increasing in complexity) is sometimes painful and scary...but required to change who you are and change your character for the support of those around you.
- Have the courage and willingness to do the hard thing right in front of you. Difficult tasks were/are often made easier by focusing on only the very next thing and nothing beyond that...a dividing or compartmentalizing concept.
- We all have an untapped capacity for courage.
- When people are pushed past mental, physical, emotional limits...even elite athletes, folks tend to revert to thinking of themselves and not team. For success beyond these limits focus on those who count on you to be strong and play your role on the team. Focus on getting through the next minute, then hour, then morning, then making it to lunch, etc.
- For purposes larger than yourself you need to build the team around you for the next challenge.
- Resiliency is the ability to incorporate hard experiences into your life and make yourself better from it.
- When people are faced with hardship they sink to their level of training they don't rise to the occasion. So we need to train people more to raise their capabilities.
- When faced with an obstacle or adversity, the solution is often changing course by a degree or two. Like in the instance of veterans who have served their country, redirecting this service to a purposeful business, family, personal life. Changing course often sounds easy but it is difficult to do.
So how does this correlate to integration professionals? While I believe B2B and MFT solutions can transform your business, it's your leadership that will create the action plan for incremental enhancement and support of your business.
Eric Greitens suggests not only thanking a veteran for their service, but go a step further and inquire about how else they are serving these days...
