Leadership development initiatives teach participants essential skills for better management, but there is a huge problem: Many leaders gain knowledge but don’t apply it. They simply return to their organizations as if they’d been on a three-day vacation.
John Maxwell and his brother Larry created the non-profit organization EQUIP, a nonprofit focused on personal growth and leadership development. A few years later, John had the idea to train one million leaders— and they did, later reaching five million aspiring leaders. That’s when John felt something was off and not working.
After considerable research and troubleshooting, they concluded: “The training we had done was educational, not transformational.”
You’ve experienced this too. Let’s say you had an English teacher in school. It was a blah class. He was a blah teacher. You got passing but blah grades. Blah, blah, blah. You forgot the teacher’s name and everything about that class a few years after school.
Maxwell would say that the teacher was not intentionally significant.
Compare that with your 8th-grade basketball coach, Coach Jones. The coach treated the players as if they were his grandchildren. His main lesson was, “Always do the right thing.” He cared for and believed in you and your teammates. You still think of him to this day.
Coach Jones wasn’t a pushover, but he was intentionally significant. He believed in and saw a bright future for you and your teammates.
Can’t explain
I have often told Maxwell’s EQUIP story because it impacted me like an asteroid the size of the moon hitting Earth. I understand intentional significance, but I struggled to explain it to others. Connecting the idea of how a parent, teacher, or coach can make a difference in someone’s life was a good starting point.
Although you could feel the impact as a child, student, or player, you didn’t know how it felt from the elder’s point of view.
I came much closer in 2018. That year, I met Chuck “Gator Man” Morales, Technical Director of the Go Time Success Group, an award-winning team of coaches and consultants helping home service companies grow and succeed. When Chuck spoke of teaching technicians, he did it with overwhelming passion. I had to talk with his students and ended up interviewing about a half dozen of them. Each tech expressed in their own way, as I paraphrase, “Chuck made a difference in my life!”
When I asked Chuck about it, he said, “I try to reach into their soul and connect with them!”
Boom! Intentional significance.
I still struggled to explain it.
Between your heart and head
Rosa Say, a friend, wrote the book Managing with Aloha in 2004. It’s a window into management through Hawaiian values. It’s also the most noble and dignified treatment of management that I’ve ever read. (Bonus: It contains the most powerful management tool I know: The Daily Five Minutes).
Recently, while rereading Managing with Aloha, I was struck by lightning. Rosa had written a concise and coherent description of intentional significance, which is the book’s subject and its primary value: Aloha. It’s much more than the familiar “hello” or “goodbye” in Hawaiian.
“Aloha is a value, one of unconditional love. It is the outpouring and receiving of the spirit. You must give your employees an outpouring of your spirit, and you must receive theirs.” – Rosa Say
When you “pour out your spirit,” you set the stage for transformation. Aloha is a bridge between your heart and head.
John Maxwell, Coach Jones, and Gator Man embrace and weave Aloha into their lessons. They are intentionally significant, and their students feel it. This feeling makes the educational experience stick.
You won’t remember blah, blah, blah teachers and managers. But you will remember someone who parents, teaches, and coaches with Aloha.
When we are intentionally significant, we can make a massive difference in others’ lives and give them an opportunity to transform and grow.
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