We’re in a message series on leadership at my church right now. This morning, David preached on what it means to be an example, and how we shouldn’t look at things in terms of tit-for-tat as often as we do. “No quid pro quo” was the phrase that appeared on one of his slides.
It reminded me very much of a situation at work maybe six years ago. Now I have a very strict policy about not blogging about my job, and I’m not going to get too far into the ins and outs of this situation at all. Essentially it was a opportunity I recognized and cultivated to help someone near the end of her rope. She was about to give up. I sat with her and we talked at some length about why she shouldn’t. She ultimately recovered the situation, following my advice, and turned it into long-term happiness.
She never acknowledged to me later that I’d helped her. I let that bother me for a long time. Then God clocked me in the melon with it one afternoon. He said, basically, “All right, enough. Did you help her so she’d tell you what a great guy you were? Or did you help her because it was what you should do as a member of My kingdom?”
I ultimately reconciled with myself that the blessing—all of the blessing—was being able to help.
Full stop.
It seems so elementary when I type it now. For a while, though, the resentment was real. She’d have almost certainly made a major professional mistake had I not intervened that morning. How dare she not appreciate that?
No.
How dare I not bask in the glory of embracing the opportunity to make a genuine difference?
I didn’t understand that it wasn’t a transaction. It was over when I helped.
Its completion is not contingent on me spiking the ball.
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I always tell people, “A gift is not a gift if there are any expectations attached. Expectations make it a deal.”
Excellent way to look at it, indeed!
This is where a lot of people get networking wrong too. You can’t go into it with a “what’s in it for me” mentality…doing that closes you off from so many wonderful things. I’m rather risk adverse and so I used to always wonder what the point was–wasn’t I just getting played? But since recognizing that connecting is about Connecting. With People. and just trying to help others for the sake of helping without worrying about the “point”, I’ve seen it come back a hundred-fold and in ways more exciting and expansive than anything I could have dreamed up. (Which is not to say you should help so that karma will repay you, I like to think I would help regardless, just that my experience has been that even with the intent of not getting anything, I often find it comes back later, when I least expect it.)
A shrewd observation indeed, Amanda. Professional networks are some of the most organic constructs we have. If you see an opportunity to contribute to someone’s professional health, you should generally take it.