Life's Lessons
Helen Keller once said, "Life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood." Through the course of your life your judgment is always on trial. Sometimes we make decisions that we later regret and other times we can take pride it selecting the right course of action. What guides us is our intuition (our gut feeling) that has most likely been nurtured by prior experiences, which I like to call life's lessons.
It is easy now to sit back and play Monday-morning-quarterback and perhaps dwell on mistakes early in my career, or to wish that I had the same perspective that I have now back when I was in my twenties. Unfortunately for most of us back then we simply lacked experience and we couldn't easily differentiate the important issues from trivial matters, upon which we may have expended too much time and energy. The important thing is that at some point we consciously or unconsciously we need to learn from these life lessons and incorporate the lesson-learned into the way we conduct ourselves. Over time you accumulate lessons-learned and you recognize them as wisdom.
I have often credited and discredited my upbringing when analyzing my ability to make correct decisions. On one hand my childhood was rooted in a strict Catholic family where authority, righteousness and rules reigned supreme. While in my professional career my decision-making value was often measured by my ability to think and act differently. This may sound too deep but I believe the moral foundation is important complement to innovation, not a detriment. What should happen is the lesson-learned becomes an everyday part of your being; you change slightly, you adapt and mature.
I'd be lying if I told you that I cataloged these life's lessons throughout my career and systematically incorporated each in my daily routine and lifestyle. It was more a sense of self-awareness where you experience, understand and learn what works best for you. On the other hand this retrospective forces me to identify, document and explain my life's lesson. The list is short to start (there could probably be hundreds of tales) but will grow as I continually add entries.
Life's Lessons.....Examples
1. Look Out For The Troops - My first assignment as a military officer was as an infantry platoon leader of 40 men. I had completed Officers Training and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, but I felt unprepared and and uncertain that the men under my command would fully accept me as their leader.
The wife of one of the men in my platoon worked at the Officer's Club. She was an attracted German girl, who met and married her husband while he was stationed in Germany. One morning the husband, who was a private, approached me and asked if I would go down to the Officer's Club with him so he could speak with his wife. The wife was scheduled to work the breakfast shift but had not come home the prior evening. As we pulled into the parking lot, we spotted another vehicle containing the wife and a Major that lived in my BOQ (bachelor officer quarters). The couple was in a deep embrace. Not certain what to do, I instructed the private to stay in the car. I then went over to Major's vehicle, rapped on the window and stated, "Sir, you are with the wife of one of my men." The wife promptly jumped out the automobile and the Major sped off.
Again I was not sure what to do next; I just knew instinctively that I had to do something. So I reported the incident to the battalion S2 (Intelligence Officer). The response was swift. The Major was reassigned immediately and gone from the base by nightfall. Word of what had transpired quickly filtered down to the men in the platoon and when I arrived the next morning, my reception was both quiet and overwhelming at the same time. The troops had accepted me as their leader because I had demonstrated that I was going to "look out for the troops." Innocently and unintentionally I had a built trust, and from that day forward it felt like I could do no wrong.
I had learned a valuable life lesson - Look Out For The Troops - that I carried with me ithe rest of my professional career, especially in my relationship with employees.
It is easy now to sit back and play Monday-morning-quarterback and perhaps dwell on mistakes early in my career, or to wish that I had the same perspective that I have now back when I was in my twenties. Unfortunately for most of us back then we simply lacked experience and we couldn't easily differentiate the important issues from trivial matters, upon which we may have expended too much time and energy. The important thing is that at some point we consciously or unconsciously we need to learn from these life lessons and incorporate the lesson-learned into the way we conduct ourselves. Over time you accumulate lessons-learned and you recognize them as wisdom.
I have often credited and discredited my upbringing when analyzing my ability to make correct decisions. On one hand my childhood was rooted in a strict Catholic family where authority, righteousness and rules reigned supreme. While in my professional career my decision-making value was often measured by my ability to think and act differently. This may sound too deep but I believe the moral foundation is important complement to innovation, not a detriment. What should happen is the lesson-learned becomes an everyday part of your being; you change slightly, you adapt and mature.
I'd be lying if I told you that I cataloged these life's lessons throughout my career and systematically incorporated each in my daily routine and lifestyle. It was more a sense of self-awareness where you experience, understand and learn what works best for you. On the other hand this retrospective forces me to identify, document and explain my life's lesson. The list is short to start (there could probably be hundreds of tales) but will grow as I continually add entries.
Life's Lessons.....Examples
1. Look Out For The Troops - My first assignment as a military officer was as an infantry platoon leader of 40 men. I had completed Officers Training and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, but I felt unprepared and and uncertain that the men under my command would fully accept me as their leader.
The wife of one of the men in my platoon worked at the Officer's Club. She was an attracted German girl, who met and married her husband while he was stationed in Germany. One morning the husband, who was a private, approached me and asked if I would go down to the Officer's Club with him so he could speak with his wife. The wife was scheduled to work the breakfast shift but had not come home the prior evening. As we pulled into the parking lot, we spotted another vehicle containing the wife and a Major that lived in my BOQ (bachelor officer quarters). The couple was in a deep embrace. Not certain what to do, I instructed the private to stay in the car. I then went over to Major's vehicle, rapped on the window and stated, "Sir, you are with the wife of one of my men." The wife promptly jumped out the automobile and the Major sped off.
Again I was not sure what to do next; I just knew instinctively that I had to do something. So I reported the incident to the battalion S2 (Intelligence Officer). The response was swift. The Major was reassigned immediately and gone from the base by nightfall. Word of what had transpired quickly filtered down to the men in the platoon and when I arrived the next morning, my reception was both quiet and overwhelming at the same time. The troops had accepted me as their leader because I had demonstrated that I was going to "look out for the troops." Innocently and unintentionally I had a built trust, and from that day forward it felt like I could do no wrong.
I had learned a valuable life lesson - Look Out For The Troops - that I carried with me ithe rest of my professional career, especially in my relationship with employees.