How Can I Help?

I was on a car ride recently and I was waiting to use the outdoor (read, grimy) rest room at a gas station in a remote town. While waiting in line I struck up a conversation with a rather rough looking man who was about my age. He had a long beard that was in a pony tail- sort of like a pirate might have. He asked me if I would watch his daughter- a girl in her early teens- while he ran into the gas station to check on his young son. He told me that his wife was in the car nearby but she couldn’t get out. I said, “sure”. When he came back with his son he asked if I had some extra tissue so I fished some out of my car. It was a very small thing but he thanked me profusely.

As I was pulling out from the gas station I saw the man back at his car with his kids, and he was helping his wife out of the car and towards the bathroom. She had no hair and was clearly a very ill cancer patient. My heart broke for them all. I was glad we had such a pleasant exchange but it left me wondering if there was more I could have done for this family that was clearly in the midst of a very, very difficult time.

What if we approached every situation we encounter with the question, “how can I help?”.

How would this change:

• our family relationships
• our work relationships
• encountering strangers on the street
• people in our places of worship

The concept of servant leadership is not a new one, but in our day to day lives, are we working to implement this in the challenges we face?

In our work places we have complex objectives. We want to get promoted, we want recognition, we want to make money, and presumably we want to do a good job. What if we suspended these wants and instead replaced them with the singular objective of solving problems and trying to find ways to help to make situations better? Would the other objectives we have be addressed in the process (or be replaced by more important objectives)?

I recently listened to the book by Mark Bertolini, “Mission Driven Leadership: My Journey as a Radical Capitalist.” As a side note, this was my first foray into listening to a book (I had a long drive in a car alone)- and I didn’t love the medium- I would have preferred to have read the physical book. That said, I thought the book was a raw and honest look at his success as CEO of Aetna- and how his life was shaped by some pretty significant personal tragedies. If anyone thinks that it must be a cake walk being on the top of the world as the CEO of a Fortune 100 Company, this story will disabuse you of that notion. In short, all the money and success in the world doesn’t stop personal tragedy from affecting you and your family.

However, one thing that really impressed me about this story was the approach that Mark Bertolini took to running a business. Contrary to what most of us think, the laser focus that most executives have on metrics were not his focus, and as a result Aetna had wild success. Why? Because he knew that metrics can lie, and that forward looking projections are guesses. What he focused on was trying to really get to the bottom of why things were happening in the company — and trying to figure out what he could do to solve actual problems. He sought the “how can I help” moments in his company and really applied himself to doing all he could to fix what needed to be fixed. The results followed from that.

Since reading this book, I have tried to be more aware of the opportunities I am given to be helpful- even in small things. Sometimes chores that I would rather not do are really opportunities to be helpful wrapped in drudgery- but unwrapping them and dealing with them are the right answer, and can have really positive impacts on the people around me. We have a world right now where there is a lot of dissatisfaction, but instead of adding to the clamor of complaint, why not instead ask if there is something you can do to improve the situation. If not- maybe just not complaining and being grateful is a step in the right direction?