As you build leaders, teams, and strong professionals, the “sense” of responsibility shifts: from task-oriented my-role/your-role to presence of mind. It’s not about “owning” a decision. It’s about perceiving the need for one, assuming the role, and what they do with the ripples of it.

Perceptive

Receptive

It’s been an AMAZING summer. (Plus bonus time!) This is the fatherhood summer I dreamed of in so many ways. Thanks for the grace in taking the time away. I truly hope yours was as fulfilling.

The kids were out doing and adventuring with neighbors and friends in ways they never have. We took some awesome outdoor adventures, new and elevated, created some historical family get-togethers, and explored things I thought maybe would only be ideas. Now they’re all memories and pieces of us all! It was worth everything that was let go. And I’d do it all over again!

So I come back in here with a would-be back-log of prior ideas– instead I choose to make it forward excitement; only a smattering of new jots that I refused to take the time to dive deep into, and now look forward to unpacking those; and great growing relationships, continuing plans to connect and build. Karl is well into the deepest part of medical school, though we vow to still deliver some formality in our conversations.

Today I bring you something “small,” though I think no person’s idea ever needs to be small. However quick, informal, in passing, or whatever it may be. To somebody at some time it’s big. It’s what they need. And that’s why every single one of us, including you, keeps doing it.

I have truly enjoyed taking some time off and working in BuildOthers less than halftime this summer. I miss working in it, and it’s almost impossible to stop the mind and the note taking. Limiting the production, though, has been freeing and giving back that needed mindspace as opposed to mind-demand.

Nearly every year for the last several years at least, I have, however intentionally, opportunistically, or time-delayed, been working on something specific during the summer —in a course, authoring, assisting business development, or building my own— that has not given me or my family the space needed. Doubling up while venturing, experiencing, and exploring. With a family, your give is heavily (majoritively) influenced by the school schedule.

I think 2013 was the last time I had a completely open palette on the summer. And, realistically, that was recovery.

This summer—a little trip for myself and another for just my wife and kids themselves, nice long visits from siblings and parents, some renovation prep, lots of friend time, (and lots of soccer 😊). And a lot of much needed timing for others’ situations.

I don’t worry about losing my place in line in social media. Nor that you’re missing something (there’s plenty out there). I do at times think I might be getting behind on idea-time capacities (you can only pursue a quality idea or two at a time—I’d like to roll out about 7 right now!), consider that partnering growths might lag, or miss following what so many of you great people are doing. (Even though I traditionally stink at following much. 😀 )

BuildOthers is not gone, under a question mark, or even fading. Quite the opposite! It is very alive, very real, and very growing. (Poor grammar and all.) I do hope your own ventures—real life and professional—are ecstatic. I look forward to sharing new content, speeches, and visions together soon!

Imagine it…. kinda bizarre, huh? The same goes for our organizational teams, and how we build it and the individuals. The more you have a system to develop people, the more personal we need to become. With each individual, with how the system is implemented and how it feeds the individual.

There is a positive in ego, and a positive to the acts driven by ego. Yes we cover the traditional perception, but the biggest goal is to explore the non-traditional. Audacity, drive, gaps, concern, chivalry, and one’s own humanity. If I could sum this up with my two favorite lines:

• Mentees: Getting yourself in the right place so you can best affect others
• Mentors: Help them inject their personality, their soul, their healthy ego into what they do

Because the ego is the true expression of the individual.

Let-downs are a very difficult thing. Add to it the unexpected– not let-down, but unexpected moment, and unexpected call to others. Wow. This monocast offers responses and values to stand by as a leader and mentor in action and over-arching principle. You know what you’re doing– don’t rush to rescue them. Or they won’t!

Karl shares how Tacit Expectation isn’t about implied or unspoken outcomes (quite the opposite). The tacit part is in allowing mentees to participate in their problems themselves. And specifically without instructions and but one rule.

Mentors often organically emerge from their desire to teach. Period. Yet it’s not about checking boxes of gravitating from “one to the other;” it’s about gravitating towards the love of seeing others grow. The best part: It can be an intentional choice you have in how you apply your role!

What you are building in people are visible in their outcomes. Not their benchmarks and all the achievements everyone thinks matters. How their end-play vibrates through the world right around them. Not reverberating them… how the environment vibrates it’s own spectacular!

Change comes in all forms: Natural, invisible, intentional, responsive, resistive, fad, necessary, unfortunate, developmental… Just to kick it off.

The responses to and realizations of are just as many or more. Sometimes realities seen too late. Your role as a mentor can have one of the greatest impacts on individuals, the world, and time in a more powerful way than you realize.