Stan Tyra
Stan Tyra is a business professional, author, teacher, and speaker in corporate and faith-based arenas specializing in team building and people management. Stan helps companies understand how to lead, motivate, and value employees. He is also author of The Way to the Top is Down, a book about servant-leadership. Click here to learn more about the book.
Stan appeared live at the 2006 Soar Higher Leadership Conference. Click here for more details.
Contact Soar with Eagles for more information on Stan at 479.903.0208 or carrie@soarhigher.com
Building a Mont Blanc Team – God’s Way
Would you rather be right or build a relationship? The world’s system says to always protect your rights and that your rights are more valuable than anything else. However, that is not the perspective God has. Building relationships is a time-consuming art. It doesn’t come naturally like being an athlete. There are several relationship levels.
- Stranger: Anyone can get along with a stranger; you just need some basic manners.
- Acquaintances: An acquaintance is a relationship where you know a few facts about another person, but nothing real personal.
- Companions: At this level, you begin to share opinions and relate ideas.
- Friends: Friendship moves a relationship to a level of intimacy. You don’t just share opinions; you’re able to share feelings. You enjoy one another’s company for more than just brief encounters.
From God’s perspective, relationships are extremely important. Some of the most severe things Jesus said had to do with relationships. Sometimes, we have to make a choice between relationships and our rights. If we are leaders who demand our rights more than relationships, we will never effectively lead, never build great teams, and we will leave emotional corpses everywhere we go.
One of the key ingredients of relationships is honor. We don’t often honor people as we should. What does it mean to honor someone? To really honor someone is to place value on them. It’s the decision we make that someone has great worth and is a priceless treasure. To honor someone is to put appropriate value on each relationship and act accordingly. We tend to treat people like finding a penny on the street — unimportant, insignificant, not worth the trouble to pick up. Scripture tells us that Jesus is most interested in those “pennies” of the world. Every relationship is important to Him; every person is significant to Him.
I have a Mont Blanc writing pen that I received as a gift over 15 years ago. I am very cautious with it. I am careful to not abuse it. I don’t leave it lying around just anywhere. I protect it. Why? Because it’s valuable! However, I have probably gone through hundreds of other, more inexpensive pens during that same time. Reason being, they are disposable. I place little value on them; therefore, how I treat them reflects my lack of value that I place on them.
If we value something, we will secure it, praise it, or talk about it. I have watched many, many times, seemingly insignificant employees, at least in their own eyes, transform like a cocoon into butterfly. Why? Because someone fulfilled their need to feel valued . Valued people become valuable people to their company, their relationships, and their communities.
The reason there are so many divisions in the world — in the church and in the workplace — is that people value their opinions more than they value people.
It has become common practice in this country to dishonor leadership. Our media is always looking for a story that will dishonor someone. The church is not immune to this lifestyle either. In fact, it seems it is just as common. The problem with the church is we are more American than Christian. Who do we honor in America? The people up front or the people we think deserve our honor. All of us have established a pecking order in our minds that tell us who is worthy and who isn’t worthy of our honor.
We can honor or dishonor people in many ways. We can do it with our lips, our ears, our hands, and our actions. Here is a story that I think will help you see what I mean.
John Blanchard stood on a bench in New York’s Central Station. He straightened his uniform and began to look around. He was looking for a girl whose face he had never seen but whose heart he knew. This is what had happened:
About 13 months earlier, he had been in a library and he was reading a book. What intrigued him about the book is not what the book said but the notes in the margin. He thought, “I’ve got to find her and get to know her.” He did a lot of investigating and finally found her name: Hollis Manel, and discovered she lived in New York state. He got her address and wrote her a letter. The day after mailing his letter, John Blanchard’s unit was sent overseas. While he was gone, he and Ms. Hollis Manel wrote each other often. In one of his letters, while he was gone, he had said, “Please send me a picture of you.” However, she refused to do it. She said, “You know, it really doesn’t make any difference what I look like if you know me.” And so upon his arrival back in the states, they were to meet for the first time at Grand Central Station. He was to bring the blue book and she was to wear a red rose.
Now here is the account of what happened that day:
A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim; her blonde hair lay back in curls over her delicate ears. Her eyes were as blue as the ocean. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness and in her pale green suit, she was like springtime come alive. I started towards her entirely forgetting to notice she was not wearing a red rose.
As I moved, a provocative smile curled her lips. “Going my way, sailor?” she murmured. Almost instinctively, I made a step closer to her and then I saw Hollis Manel. She was standing directly behind the girl in the pale green suit. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a well-worn hat. She was more than plump. Her thick feet were thrust into shoes that appeared too small for her. The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away.
I felt as though I had been split in two. So keen was my desire to follow her and yet so deep was my longing for the woman who had truly captured my heart, and there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible. Her gray eyes were warm and they kind of twinkled. I did not hesitate any longer. I gripped tightly the well-worn blue book that was to identify me to her. This might not be love but it would be something precious. Something perhaps so precious, it would be called friendship.
I squared my shoulders and held out the book to the woman. Even though I greeted her, I felt speechless by the bitterness of disappointment. “I’m Lt John Blanchard and you must be Ms. Manel. I’m so glad you could meet with me today. May I take you out to dinner?”
The woman’s face broadened into a tolerant smile. “I don’t know what this is all about”, she answered, “But the young lady in the green suit that just went by, begged me to wear the rose on my coat. She also said if a man holding a blue book were to greet me and ask me to dinner, I should tell you she’s waiting for you in the restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of a test.”
You and I face this same kind of test all the time in relationships. Had he turned his back and not honored the relationship he had established, he would have missed the love of his life.