You can’t win until you fail

You can’t lead until you serve

You can’t hold on until you let go

You can’t lose it until you claim it

You can’t live unless you’re will­ing to die

You can’t love with­out risk­ing not being loved

You can’t get ahead unless you’ll take a step back

Recently, I vis­ited a con­struc­tion site. It is a 50 mil­lion dol­lar bridge con­struc­tion job. The con­trac­tor build­ing the bridge does between 100 & 200 mil­lion dol­lars of con­struc­tion per year. I was meet­ing the man respon­si­ble for over­see­ing this par­tic­u­lar job. I spoke with him (a friend) on the phone, and he told me he was com­ing to the part of the job I was on. A crew of car­pen­ters was work­ing nearby. He drove up and got out of his truck. I noticed he had some­thing in his hand. It was a bunch of carpenter’s pen­cils. No big deal, right?! Until I thought about what was going on. Here is this guy, that makes 6 fig­ures a year, fetch­ing pen­cils for guys that make $10 an hour. Now I know this leader, and he under­stands what it means to empower his team. I swear some of the labor­ers on this job would go to war with him before they knew the details of the con­flict. My friend really knows what lead­er­ship is. He works to keep every­one sup­plied with what they need to do their job, whether that’s pen­cils or major deci­sions that affect the entire project. Next time some­one says they are empow­er­ing their team look to see what they really mean. Are they fetch­ing pen­cils or are they just abdi­cat­ing responsibility?