Last year I shared about our family motto Climb Mountains. Since then, we have worked together to produce family values which are Courage, Faith, and Integrity.
I often get the privilege of speaking with leaders in times of difficulty and I recently witnessed an act of courage that inspired me to stick to my family values.
A friend of mine joined a fast-growing startup several months ago and was having an immediate impact. He is a strong sales leader and helped to make changes to be more consistent with driving revenue and growth that could be relied upon. He quickly built strong relationships across the leadership team and invested a significant amount of time, energy, and money into the growth of the business.
Scaling a business requires new skills. As they scaled it became clear a stronger operational muscle was required from the CEO to reliably sustain the growth they were experiencing. Leadership and the board wanted the CEO to step down and assume a different role in the company and to promote my friend to CEO. There was tremendous pressure on my friend to become the CEO. Not only because of the confidence they had in him, but there were others willing to invest in the company even further if my friend took the helm and drove the company in the direction he outlined.
For the last several years my friend has been optimizing for peace and freedom. This role as CEO conflicted with his values. He did not want to become CEO because it would have a material impact on the peace and freedom of himself and his family.
Despite the conflict, he decided to accept the position as CEO.
Almost immediately after that decision things started to happen that communicated clearly to him that the violation of his values was not going to be the best for him, his family, and his colleagues. He resigned as CEO and from the company days after committing.
Those not familiar with the situation or the individuals involved would say the decision to walk away was career suicide or a massive red flag on the company. I am fortune enough to be see just enough to know this is far from the truth. My friend had established his values well before they were “needed” and then had the courage to stick to them when it mattered most.
Where do your loyalties lie? What are you optimizing for in your life?
My friend had clarity on what he was optimizing for and was able to come back to it in a time of distress.
Take 5-10 minutes today to write a draft of what you are optimizing for in life. This will take iteration and be a process and I am inspired how this work can have a massive impact on how we can demonstrate courage when decisions become difficult.
