Nobody handed me a roadmap.
I was eighteen and working at a video store when my manager pulled me aside and made me a shift supervisor. I had never managed anyone in my life. There was no handbook, no onboarding, no conversation about what it meant to be responsible for other people. I was handed a set of keys and a title and pointed at the floor.
A few years later I was a youth minister, building four ministries from nothing on twenty thousand dollars a year. I walked into my annual review with documentation, results, and a case for what I had earned. My pastor told me he didn't know the meeting was happening. Then he said the truest thing anyone has ever said about me.
“You are giving these kids caviar. Start giving them peanut butter and jelly.”
He could see the sacred in the Eucharist. He could not see it sitting right in front of him. I have spent the fifteen years since helping leaders in hospitality and beyond avoid that same blindness, because rank does not protect against it, and neither do good intentions.
Only attention does.
M.Ed. in Learning, Leadership & Organization Development, University of Georgia. ACC coach, International Coaching Federation. CPTD, SHRM-CP, and Certified Dream Manager. Award-winning filmmaker, former youth minister, and more than five thousand leaders trained.
