Live in the Spirit

I am about to share something I did in my early days for which I am not very proud to admit.

But first, as an executive coach, I am often asked how I was able to make important decisions quickly and confidently. As a CEO, the buck stops at your desk. You are the one who ultimately makes the final decisions, chooses the company’s values and vision, hires and fires and usually arbitrates between two employees and their feelings, actions or beliefs. Some of these decisions are big ones, others smaller ones (but not to the people who have a vested interest in your answer).

It can also be very difficult saying “no” to a favorite employee/leader or plainly disappointing people. That being said, after 30+ years and literally thousands of decisions, I have found it is much harder now to say no to my 3 year old-granddaughter before dinner when she spies a bag full of Oreos on the counter and she says with sad, big brown eyes, “Pop, Pop, I am very, very hungry.” (All while taking her hand and rubbing her little stomach in a circular motion).

From my experience, there are a couple of things that affect how leaders make these tough decisions (no, not the Oreos).

Here is where I publicly admit that I once stole a set of company procedures to take to my next company. Yikes! I admit it. I was 29 years old and leaving the electric utility industry to enter home health and hospice for the first time. The utility which had been in business for 100 years had a very thorough and structured human resources system with detailed Human Resource policies in which to govern. I mean you could see that there were thousands of procedures created to cover every situation and violation that had ever occurred.

In my new position, among other departments and functions, I was to have Human Resources reporting to me.

Since home health and hospice was relatively new to the United States, my new company lacked these procedures. These procedures were like gold to someone trying to manage a large workforce. Each utility office had multiple copies and I was sure that no one would mind or even miss them.

So, one October day, I loaded my Chevy Chevette and started my drive down I-95 to South Florida from New Jersey. The car was packed so I tied down a box carrying my procedures on the roof rack of the car. Everything was going great until I hit just south of D.C.

I suddenly looked in my rearview mirror and saw what looked like snow. Heavy snow! But only behind me, not in the front or sides of my car. Then it hit me, it wasn’t snowing. I was losing or had lost the Human Resource procedures!

I pulled over at the next rest stop and climbed up on the car and noticed that the box was still there and tied but it had slipped to its side and miraculously opened. Every sheet (hundreds) were gone somewhere back on I-95. There was no way to retrieve them. Gone!

I got back on the road and headed for the Sunshine State which right around this time didn’t seem so sunny to me.

While driving, it hit me that what I had done was wrong. I should not have taken them. I deserved to lose them and to arrive to my new job/career empty-handed.

I fretted about what I was going to do next when I got there with no procedures.

Later that night, I stopped for dinner and I realized that up to that point in my career, that I mostly gained knowledge from various sources that helped me to make decisions:

• Lessons my parents and teachers taught me.

• Lessons my mentors taught me.

• Procedures that I had to follow in school and work.

• Mistakes I had made (I really tried to realize that I never lose, I either win or I learn).

But in the end, when I made the best decisions, the ones that worked out best, I made them based on something else. As my faith grew, I learned to listen to the Holy Spirit. I listened to that little voice in my head or that feeling in my heart which said to do the right thing even though it was the hardest thing.

Whenever I came across a topic in which I had to decide and I had little or no reference from a past experience or procedure, I stopped, listened and prayed. It seemed, the answer was right in front of me, although I didn’t always want to choose that option.

There was a right thing to do in almost every situation, it was staring right at me. I could hear the Holy Spirit say something like “Come on, Glen, just choose it, you can do it”.

I heard one of my pastors refer to this as “Living in the Spirit”. It is a guide, or perhaps you can say, a compilation of proven, accepted and approved procedures from a higher source, the highest source.

Trust your gut, trust your instincts, trust that little voice.

That’s the secret on how I was able to make so many decisions so quickly. (Oh, and I probably screwed up somewhere in the past and made a bad decision, so I know what not to do now).

Live in the Spirit. It seems that the decisions always turn out to be the right ones when I listen to the Spirit, that small little voice.

By the way, I ran into my former boss at the utility about 20 years after leaving the company and fessed up to my actions and apologized. He laughed and said, “If you had only let me know, I would have had someone mail a box down to you in Florida”. We both had a hearty laugh.

In retrospect, I am sort of glad that I didn’t though. Watching it snow ‘procedures’ out my back window helped teach me an important life lesson. And it helped me to grow as a leader and a person.

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.