#ELBlog #185: What’s Under The Surface

#ELBlog #:

I live in Northeast Pennsylvania. It’s a beautiful part of the country right on the Delaware River where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania all come together. It’s beautiful land, but it is very rocky. When I first moved here, I tried to plant some trees and bushes. All I hit was rocks. So, what do you do when you hit rocks? You build rock walls.

I recently fixed a small area near the front of my house. The process itself to look for rocks for the wall is pretty easy. Just look around in the woods and there are plenty of them. What you don’t see however, is what kind of rocks they are. Many are just poking out of the ground, some come loose pretty easily and others are buried deep and hard to move.

The point of today’s blog is that you don’t always see what’s below the surface. With just a small tap of a digging tool I was able to extract these beautiful stones that could not be seen with the naked eye. The same is true with the skills and talents of people. I work with and I’m blessed to be around so many talented people. Some are very confident in their actions and working to the best of their abilities. Others need some more prompting and motivating to bring out their best.

As leaders, when we see that little bit of a spark in someone, just like a tip of the stone, I believe that we should prompt the skills and talents of people when we see them. Say to them that you really enjoyed their presentation, or they did a great job in this area. Ask questions like: have you thought about? Would you like to? Why don’t you try? Maybe the small prompts will motivate the person to try something new to further develop that talent or gift? There are countless stories of teachers who have done this for kids. I think these prompts are everywhere. So, I challenge you to look for the tips of rocks in the people that we serve and that are in our circles. Bring out the best in others.