Last week, a member of our Eastern Wisconsin Convene Team initiated a group e-mail that grew into a string of blessings upon one another in business, family and service. What started as an encouraging word of appreciation became an abundant offering of prayers, requests for prayer, expressions of thanksgiving, and further demonstration of the significant service in which our Team members engage. It was one more piece of evidence of the leadership community fabric forming while we work to develop ourselves and our businesses Underneath this leadership fabric is a Team Covenant.* It goes like this:
We are a team. As a team, we define our culture. Condemnation is checked at the door and disagreement is welcome in the room. We recognize that fully present participation is our highest contribution to our teammates. Because we are teammates, we commit to give abundantly, to receive in similar measure, and to keep confidentiality We choose accountability to follow through on what we say personally and in business, mutual assistance, and open communication.
The increasing length of each sentence is intended., and each sentence cascades into the next. Here is a little more definition:
We are a team. We need to be committed to and contribute to each other as we grow ourselves and our businesses.
As a team, we define our culture. Even if another entity were to dictate the values by which we should operate, in the end we take responsibility for creating the environment by which we grow ourselves and our businesses.
Condemnation is checked at the door and disagreement is welcome in the room. We recognize that we do significant discernment work when we gather. When we collectively care about the result, differing values, sometimes even competing values, come into play. We are not going to hold back our judgment about a matter. Neither are we going to make definitive, unthinking, or insensitive pronouncements.
We recognize that fully present participation is our highest contribution to our teammates. This part is especially hard because so many matters compete for attention before, during and in the moments after one of our Forum Days ends. And yet, our ability to be fully present and undistracted with our Convene Team, means we grow in our ability to be fully present with our employees, our families and our friends. When we are fully present in these key relationships, we make it possible for them to flourish. When we are mentally and emotionally elsewhere, we become a significant contributor to their floundering.
Because we are teammates, we commit to give abundantly, to receive in similar measure, and to keep confidentiality. Being present means we concentrate and think with our teammates, and we leave our conversations in the room. This makes it possible for us to learn, as well as contribute our learnings, in safety. So, we must hold an open posture as we give and receive. If we do not remind ourselves to keep this discipline, we will only tell and sell rather than listen and learn. Our commitment to learning means we ask questions for the purposes of further discovery before we start dealing out what we already know. Learning fosters our needed and continuing growth.
We choose accountability to follow through on what we say personally and in business, mutual assistance, and open communication. We declare what we will work on, report on the effort, admit our mistakes, make our corrections, and celebrate the hurdles we cross. We keep committing ourselves to listen to how we are perceived, and develop our capacities even as we live well within themm so that margin and life balance can be honored. We keep making ourselves open to the counsel of peers.
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The women and men in our team keep telling me they are better leaders and better people because of their involvement, especially because of the care they receive and can offer, alongside the insights they gain. We don’t do it perfectly. Far from it. But we earnestly pursue it. Does participation in such a peer-based advising team hold interest for you as a company owner or CEO, wherever you might live?
Would you like to contact one of the Convene Chairs along the western shore of Lake Michigan?
Chicago - John Wright Southeast Wisconsin - Joel Borgardt Eastern Wisconsin - Mark L. Vincent
*Convene asks all participants in all teams to sign a covenant that covers all members in all teams. Many individual teams develop supplemental covenants, specific to the fabric of their teams, such as this one.
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If you enjoyed this article about living in covenant from Mark L. Vincent, you’ll enjoy our live learning venue even more! Join hundreds of leaders learning together how to operate their company well, all on a biblical platform at the Leadership Summit 2017 in Hilton Head, SC on May 3-5, 2017.
Can’t make the Summit but crave more learning? Tune in to our Convene online leadership learning portal!