Leadership Thought: Don't Forget to Take the Tartar Sauce with You!

Dear Friends,

I love being around positive people, people like the ones who go fishing for Moby Dick and take the tartar sauce with them.

I don’t know if they still produce the “Master Teacher,” booklets,  but I still have one of their pamphlets from my teaching days.  It was titled  "Eight Ways to Create a Positive Climate." Although meant for teachers, it could be just as well directed to those in other walks of life.

Let me quote some wise words that caught my attention. “The teacher action vital to high productivity is maintaining a consistently positive attitude and using ‘can,’ and ‘do’ words or phrases. Conversely it is wise to use three words sparingly: ‘can’t,’ ‘don't’  and ‘no.’ These three words actually undermine a productive climate and stop creativity and individual initiative cold.”

When my basketball players would tell me why they couldn't do something, I would often tell them the story of the bumblebee whose tiny wingspan and heavy body structure makes it aerodynamically impossible to fly. However, the bumblebee ignores this scientific truth and chooses to fly anyway.

Whenever I would hear one of my players use the “I can’t” phrase, I would always correct him, admonishing him saying, “Change your language or change your team.” If we were to be a team of winners and not whiners, I needed to cultivate a “can do” and not a “can’t do” attitude on my team.

One of my favorite stories involves  identical twins. One was a hope filled optimist. For him everything was always coming up roses. The other was an eternal pessimist. The worried parents brought the boys to the local psychologist.

He suggested to the parents a plan to balance the twins’ personalities. On their next birthday, put them in separate rooms to open their gifts. Give the pessimist the best toys you can afford, and give the optimist a box of manure. The parents carefully followed these instructions and then observed the results.

When they peeked in on the pessimist, they heard him audibly complaining,  “I don’t like the color of this computer…I’ll bet this calculator is going to break…I don’t like this game…I know someone who’s got a bigger toy car than this.

Tip toeing across the corridor, the parents peeked in and saw their little optimist gleefully throwing the manure up in the air. He was giggling. “You can’t fool me. I know there has got to be a pony in here somewhere.”

Wherever I am, I hope I will be hanging with hopeful and optimistic people like this little manure slinger. I want to associate with the Calebs and the Joshuas of this world. When the other spies were finding reasons why they couldn’t  enter the Promise Land, Caleb and Joshua were ready to claim what God had promised. Surrounded by the naysayers who were convinced that they were like grasshoppers in the face of their enemy, they were taking up arms and ready to claim what God had promised them.  “We should by all means go up and take possession of (the land), for we shall surely overcome” (Numbers 13:30).

I love the courageous words found in the opening lines of Psalm 27.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the defense of my life, whom shall I dread?

When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,

Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear;

Though war arise against me, in spite of this I shall be confident” ( vv. 1-3).

Brothers and sisters, it’s time to march against the enemy, look him in straight in the eye, and like Caleb and Joshua proclaim “I gottcha.” And while the crowd may be shouting, “you are wrong,”  or “you are foolish,” “you will never win,” you just keep on smiling as you remind them that you are a “Can Do” kind of person with a bottle of tartar sauce in your back pocket.

Action Point. What will you start or accomplish today that the world might say is impossible?

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom