2005 address
The
keynote speaker in Edinburgh on June 1, 2005, was Jill
Garrett,
former managing director of the Gallup Organization and now Director
of Leadership Development with Caret.
Her address, reproduced below, is also available for download
as a PDF (60kb).
Be yourself, with God, serving others
It’s a privilege to be with you today to share some thoughts about the importance of using our strengths to serve God
I have been fortunate to have spent my entire working life studying and
nurturing human talent, for many years in education, and now in the church,
in government, and in the business world. One of my former roles was MD of
Gallup in the UK, and a real advantage in that role was that you could ask
any question you wanted of the UK population and within a week you had a
response.
In 1990’s Gallup asked parents across the world, when your child brings
home their school report, do you spend most time talking about what they
have done well or about what they have done badly, and parents the world
over said … what they have done badly.
If the people who love you most spend most time focusing on what have done
badly. It’s hardly surprising that that another national poll showed
that adults are seven times more likely to be able to articulate their weaknesses
than their strengths.
Yet research from business, science, sports and the arts shows that people
are happier, healthier, more productive and give a better quality of service
when they work with their strengths – with the 'grain of who
they are' rather than when they work against that grain.
Our strengths come in a number of forms, some of which can be learned
and acquired, and others which are innate and which do not transfer easily
from teacher to pupil.
Our knowledge and experience are a type of strength: things like Health
and Safety procedures, the fastest route between two points, the procedures
for dealing with a customer who complains.
Our skills are another form of strength – how to
wire a plug, give an injection, parallel park.
Knowledge and skills can be learned and passed from one person to another.
Yet the most impactful aspect of our strengths – what I call talent
or personality, is not easily learned or acquired once we pass a certain
phase in our development.
Talent refers to the innate dispositions we have, the things
we can’t
help but do in certain situations: things like always looking on the bright
side of things, or like enjoying negotiation or debate, or like wanting to
move to action quickly, or the innate need to be neat and tidy and timely.
Often these are things where we have never been on courses to learn how
to do them, they are just 'who we are'. For others, these will
be the things they hate doing- the things that go against the grain of who
they are.
On Sunday, my mother in law will be 98. She has just finished organising
the Christian Aid collection in her road. She will have thrilled in adding
up the money, recording it accurately and getting everything back to the
organisers on the right date. She has always been timely, neat and accurate.
Thirty three years ago, when as a young bride I asked her how she got milk
that had boiled over off a stove, she said she had never had milk
boil over. No one had ever taught her to be like that – it is just
who she is, how
God has made her! At 98 she can use her strengths to serve God in Christian
Aid administration!
We don’t even think about using our talent – it just kicks in
and, because we have only ever been us, we tend to think that all 'normal'
people behave as we do … and then we are surprised or annoyed when
they don’t
behave like this. The fact that these are strengths means that they are NOT
normal – and recognising that we are not 'normal' but have
unique strengths goes some way to help us recognise that other people are
not being deliberately awkward; God has just made them different!
You may have the knowledge of the procedures for dealing with customer complaints – but
some people just have the natural ability or talent to deal with these complaints
brilliantly and whilst training helps people to improve. Some will
never be very good at it and others, the talented, are superstars and just
get better and better with practice.
You may know the seven steps for closing a sale – yet some people
just move straight from step two to step seven effortlessly, get the sale
quickly and brilliantly – and
no amount of training will make you as good or naturally talented as them.
In the words of a famous psychologist: "You can teach a turkey to climb
a tree, but it’s cheaper to hire a squirrel".
Some of you will be brilliant at walking up to strangers and initiating
conversations – I love it when people come and talk to me – but
I have really struggle when I am the one who has to start the conversation
with the stranger. I can remember as a young Christian going on a course
on how to initiate conversations about Jesus with strangers. I was never
good at it – but I have always found it easy and natural to share
my faith with people I have had the time to get to know better. I am not
a natural street evangelist - yet a number of my friends and colleagues at
work have become Christians because I have had the chance to get to know
them first.
God has equipped each of us with a deep reservoir of talent with which we
can serve Him and others. The science which explains talent development
indicates that these talents really are 'knitted into our brains' from
the womb, just as the psalmist says, and that they are determined in part
by our genetic make up and then by early life experiences, so that God does
the brain wiring and then shapes our life curriculum such that, we are the
Uniquely Gifted, Designer
Creations He intends us to be, equipped to carry out the works of service
He has planned for us to do.
People have often asked me: "Do you think God rewires our brains
when we become Christians?" In response I have encouraged them
to look at the apostle Paul who was determined, single minded, fast moving
and forceful to destroy the church: he has an encounter with Jesus and is
determined, single minded, fast moving and forceful to build up the church.
Conversion changed his values and focus, but not his personality or talent.
Of course God could rewire our brains if He wanted to, but why would an
all knowing God get the brain wiring wrong in the first place?
In my experience, when someone becomes a Christian God works with the person
He has made and uses the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the way they
use who they are, changing their human nature and values (rather than
their personality) so that they use their abilities to serve God and others
and not to serve self. Indeed in Romans, Paul himself speaks of the battle
that he senses going on inside himself as he strives to do the things that
go against the grain of his human nature, of his desire to serve self rather
than serving God or others.
It is now quite popular in the business world to see the value of working
with the strengths people bring – working with the grain of the person
rather than against the grain. However what is less often recognised is that
our biggest opportunities to sin and to frustrate others are around the misuse
of our strengths, using them to serve our own ends rather than using them
to serve God and others. Time after time, when I am asked to work with dysfunctional
teams, the issues are around strengths that have been misused and the failure
to recognise the damaging effect these have on others.
The world’s best bank robbers will be wonderful strategists - they
would not be successful bank robbers if they were not.
The world’s greatest con artists are wonderfully empathetic – it
would be hard to be a great con artist if you were not empathetic.
The lines between decisiveness and bossiness, between pro-activity and impatience,
are thin.
If using our talent or personality is about going with the grain of who
we are, building character and becoming mature is about modifying our natural
inclination, sometimes going against the grain to serve others, to serve
God – because we know that in that situation, that is the right thing
to do.
The word character comes from the word 'to engrave'; that
is why letters are sometimes called characters, and our characters develop
when we choose to go against the grain of who God has made us to be, because
we know that is the right thing to do.
What is character building differs from person to person, depending on our
talent. For some it is character building to speak out against what we disapprove
of; for others the character building thing to do is to keep our mouths shut,
or at least to say what we have to say with grace so that the other person
is let with a feeling of dignity and self respect!
The reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 reminds us that we all need other
people if we are to be effective in our work for God. My work over a number
of years, has involved the in depth study of over 800 leaders. I have yet
never met a leader who has all the strengths they need to be effective in
their role. God has made us so that we are interdependent, so that we need
to use and to value the strengths of others. In the church, I believe
this involves valuing other individuals and other denominations.
On Sunday I was reading some of A.W. Tozer’s writing on diversity.
He said: "We should thank God for giving us our individual personality’s
temperaments and abilities. We should never waste time and energy trying
to fashion ourselves after someone else, no matter how much we admire that
person. God does not expect us to become copies of our spiritual heroes.
In only these respects should we all try to be alike: we should love God
more than anything or anyone else; we should hate sin and iniquity even as
Jesus hated them; and we should be always willing to obey God through the
leading of his Word and Spirit.
Apart from that, it is perfectly natural to be ourselves, that is, different
from each other.
I leave you with these six words: "Be yourself, with God, serving others".
Each one of us is a valuable, designer creation, called to use our strengths,
with Him, in His service, in His work of restoring the whole world
to Himself.