Leadership: Ending Well
If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is — your life is a disaster. Warren Buffett
Gregg’s Reflection
Some years ago, I read Bob Buford's book, Finishing Well, What People Who Really Live Do Differently, and am finding it a great follow-up to his earlier book, Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance. I attended one of his Halftime Institute Seminars in 2011. As I read through the 60 interviews with people who have successfully navigated halftime, I found one exercise he suggests in compelling. It is a values exercises that illuminates the competing priorities of any successful professional in America today.
Here are Buford’s instructions for this exercise:
Think about your life in four categories:
- Making and Spending Money
- Achievement (which may or may not be acknowledged by money)
- Relationships
- Spiritual Life
Be as honest as you can be with yourself and put the element that’s most central to your life in the center, then put the other three elements from next most important to least in the outer circle.
Buford goes on to say that the first time he did this exercise, while consumed in building his business, if he were honest (which he wasn’t) he would have put money and achievement as his central values. He suggest you think not about what ought your priorities be, but what are our priorities based on allocations of time and mental energy. When we are focused on making our mark in the world, our relationships (especially men) and spiritual life get crowded out.
I know that in the midst of my 60-hour work weeks, I tried to maintain some balance, but the drain of leading a growing business can be all-consuming. We build things to serve our needs, and find ourselves serving that which we have created.
Buford then goes into an interview with Dr. Armand Nicoli, editor of the Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, who teaches at Harvard, writes for academic journals and maintains a clinical practice.
Early in the semester with his students, Nicoli asks them to articulate their life goals. Invariably their goal is to be successful. Unpacking the answer always leads to the idea of fame and fortune. He then asks them if they had 20 days left to live, how would they spend the time? The universal answer was to spend time working on their relationships with family and friends, and if they have faith, their relationship with God.
In a subsequent lecture, he suggests that fame and fortune are in direct conflict with their highest stated priority of family and friends. Chasing fame and fortune will leave them so focused that they neglect what they value most in life, their relationships.
As Buford tracked this trajectory to mid-life, Nicoli finds his patients with
Disordered Priorities. These people have spouses who are of secondary importance to them; they have children they’re not close to anymore...and they’ve been so busy looking after their own interests that they’ve basically neglected God altogether.”
Because this happens gradually, they don’t realize what they have done to themselves. Retirement is not satisfying to these people, because without their position, which has defined self-worth for decades, they are lost. Buford relates that,
The relentless search for wealth and influence actually interferes with happiness and joy.
In my business career, I've met countless men who have fallen into this trap, and can't seem to get out. My father was consumed with building our business, and had very little time for family or friends. He died at age 75, still coming in to the office every day. I think the American corporate culture sets norms and expectations of focus and dedication that rarely allow one to reach the top echelon without becoming a workaholic. Our largest supplier, Ingersoll-Rand, was a multi-billion dollar global business. Most who became senior level executives had seen their marriages fail, and had grown children who didn't know them. They continued chasing the dream.
Yet, the corporate masters at IR, about the time we sold our business, divested themselves of the Construction Equipment business so many had slaved to grow. Promising careers were short-circuited, and many had to find a new line of work.
Nicoli goes on,
The people who feel best about themselves after retirement, are those who get involved in some kind of work or activity where they can make a contribution to others. Sharing your wealth is important, but sharing your knowledge is every bit as important.
Bob Buford said,
The fruit of my work grows on other people's trees. Joy has more to do with being in alignment with your task or assignment from God, and being in a right relationship with him and your significant others, than with your sense of personal gratification or happiness.
This gets to the essence of why I wrote my book, and have created this blog. I’ve spent 35 years learning management and leadership, while trying to learn how to live as a Christ follower. This blog is a channel to let me begin to share my knowledge and mentor others in the journey. I have had wonderful mentors who have accompanied me on my journey, and I seek to do the same.
This tool of Buford’s is a wonderful way to start thinking clearly about your values and your priorities. May you hear God’s still, small voice speaking to you as you reflect on this exercise. Whatever you are doing, commit to ending well. I have failed to do that in the past, and it became a source of regret. People can have incredible careers, and then fail at ending well. Yet, what people remember is how you ended. Can you think of examples of those who spoiled their legacy by failing to end well?
Don’t let that be you.
Blessings, Gregg
Journaling Prompts
Where in your life have you failed to end well? Do you have regrets? Need to make amends? What are your true values based on how you spend time and attention? Which of the four categories—money, achievement, relationships, spiritual life—is at the center of your life today? Does your life currently bring you joy? What might God be inviting you to re-center Upon?
Scripture
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.
Isaiah 30:15
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
Matthew 6:19–21
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Matthew 6:33
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?
Mark 8:36
If I have… all knowledge… but do not have love, I am nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:2
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:8
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.
Colossians 3:23
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
Ancient Writing
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book 1, Chapter 1
Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy the heart.
Abba Poemen, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward, p. 175
Prefer nothing whatever to Christ.
St. Benedict, Rule of Benedict: His Rule integrates work, prayer, and community—challenging disordered priorities. The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 72
Modern writing
People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
Thomas Merton
When you get to my age you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money… But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is — your life is a disaster. That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life.”
Warren Buffett, Marcel Schwantes, Inc. “Warren Buffett Says the Ultimate Test of How You’ve Lived Your Life Boils Down to 1 Simple Principle,” 2018.
The fruit of my work grows on other people’s trees.
Bob Buford, Finishing Well: What People Who Really Live Do Differently, p. 243
We are not what we do, not what we have, not what people say about us. We are the beloved of God.
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, Crossroad, 1992, p. 26
The real ‘work’ of ministry is to be useless and silent in the presence of God so that He can do His work in us.
Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 16
The path to happiness is actually the path of descent. It’s about letting go of our need to be important and letting God be enough.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, p. 46
Don’t waste your pain. Transform it into wisdom and service. If you don’t transform your pain, you will transmit it.
Richard Rohr, Living School teaching
Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening… before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.
Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, p. 3
Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.
Dallas Willard, Quoted by John Ortberg in The Life You’ve Always Wanted, p. 66