Was it worth it?

But was it worth it?

I am so blessed to have a pastor who challenges, inspires, teaches and guides me (and my family). I so look forward to his message each week as he helps me to reflect on themes and ideas from different angles, not just the standard one. I am a better person because of him.

Recently he was preaching from the book of Revelation. At one point, as an analogy, he told us about a really cool sports story where a basketball player sort of ‘took one for the team’ while taking a charge from a 6’9, 250 pound opponent. After being crushed by the opponent, and having a charge called against him, the player held out a hand, helped the opposing player up off the ground and asked, “But was it worth it?” Everyone laughed.

I made a note, “But was it worth it?

This got me to thinking about my time as a business leader.

I have a tenure of almost 40 years in business.

I have flown over 2 million miles on American Airlines.

I have endured over 1 million miles on the other carriers.

I have heard the flight attendant read the same announcements over 2,420,547 times.

I have visited every state in our union. Vermont was my last one and it was for fun not work.

I am guessing I stayed over 3000 nights in hotels.

I spent more time than I like running through airports to catch the last flight possible in order to see one of the kids in a game, cheerleading or in a concert.

I ate way too many fast food meals when nothing else was open after late night meetings.

I spent thousands of hours in meetings-dealing with crisis, lawsuits, bankruptcies, natural disasters, etc.

I suffered through a great deal of stress, stress and more stress.

But was it worth it?

You may be a business leader and are asking yourself this same question right now. When it is all said and done, will it be worth it?

Here’s what I can tell you when I look back, (I am sort of out of the ‘rat-race’, as I am semi-retired and focusing on board work and executive coaching instead):

We always tried to be compassionate with people. We viewed caring for others as a privilege. The leadership teams made many sacrifices for staff. Most of the time, it wasn’t even immediately obvious to them.

We always reached for excellence. We challenged ourselves to reach goals, to drive performance and to be great at what we did. This included meeting and exceeding all of our stakeholder expectations.

We tried to do all of this with integrity. We admitted when we erred, tried to be as transparent as possible, made tough choices even when they were not popular and we always tried to do the right thing.

But was it worth it?

Yes, it was so worth it.

Today, I can look around the country and see numerous individuals who grew up in our organizations that are now running their own departments, regions, even companies. I see various programs such as the Thanksgiving Tree program alive and well and feeding the needy both physically and spiritually. I get emails, calls and letters from former associates who reach out just to say hello, to give me an update on their life, to thank me or to maintain our friendship.

I crossed paths and shared life with too many people and families to count in hospice, long term care, home health, home infusion, home medical equipment, pediatric services, etc. I am pretty sure that together our teams made a difference in their lives if just for a moment, a day, a week, a month or a year. Bad things happened to good people. Maybe we were a bright light in such lives even for at least just awhile.

If you feel under attack as a business leader-whether from competitors, regulators, investors, unreasonable stakeholders, disgruntled staff, or life in general, hang in there.

Fight through the urge to quit, the urge to give up, or the urge to flee. Don’t listen to that little voice in your mind who says You are ‘not good enough’ or you ‘cannot do it’.

Stay the course. Remember to step with first your left foot then your right foot. Then repeat again. It is not a sprint.

Win the marathon.

In the end:

It is so absolutely worth it!

(And choose the Lotus Biscoff cookies over the pretzels).

Thanks for reading this.

With a goal to “help the next one in line”, Glen Cavallo, a 30+ year healthcare executive has chosen to share the many lessons he has learned with others. Glen does this by serving as a coach/advisor to leaders at all levels of organizations, as a board member and as he presents inspirational speeches at regional, national, annual and awards meetings.