This thing has been a burden recently. Recently? Well, I guess for a number of years now. Let me say that it harasses me. In a good way.

With my daughters I am tormented by this. My confession: I am little more than a mediocre father. I have only girls and our personal interests hardly collide. So my personal and social interaction with them (now that they are teenagers) is limited. What am I imparting to them? Am I leaving more than memories of a grumpy old man in the mornings?

But in my heart is this desire to leave a legacy. I believe it is our responsibility. I have written about it and spoken about it to some length in the past, but I have to mention it again. As we strive / battle / work / live to become SSP’s - another acronym: Stellar Service Professionals - one of our main points of service needs/has to be a selected protégé. Or even better, protégés!

I recently attended a seminar workshop by a proudly South African author and consultant, Niël Steinmann, on mentorship. His primary metaphor for teaching is a pride of lions (if you want to treat your management / leadership team to a great day of training, contact Niël at his company, People’s Dynamic Development - www.peoplesdynamic.co.za) and without divulging his entire story, this caught my attention:

A successful pride will successfully breed and raise successive litters of cubs to maturity, while imparting something of the skills and culture of that pride. Lionesses are the primary mentors fo the cubs - in a pride the lionesses enjoy synchronised oestrus so all cubs are born at the same time. They are communally responsible for integrating the cubs into the pride as contributors to their society. Prides that do not accomplish this, are doomed.

So, whatever enterprise you are involved in, it has suddenly become your responsibility to find a protégé and impart into him or her, everything you can. Albert Einstein is reputed to have had the view that a life not lived for others, was not worth having been lived (or something like that). And let’s face it; he knew a thing or two. The sooner you begin to live and work for others, or at the very least, one other, the better.

Now is this not the essence of service? To be a leader, it has been said, is to serve. Perhaps not with tea and scones, but with what you have to give. After twenty years of doing what I have till now, I have something to offer. I have a legacy to leave. It’s not to be found in the investigations I conduct or the reports I write. But rather in the people I leave behind. People that are stronger, wiser and better than when we met.

I have a story to relate that tells of how this could / should work:

A number of years ago I started work at a mine shaft where there was not much of a department to speak of. No real systems or staffing structure. New technology was being implemented in our area of operation and I was tasked to build a team.

To cut a long story short, over a period of three years I built a team of a number of people who became very well-trained and competent at their jobs. Having done this, at the start of the fourth year I narrowed my focus to a single young man named Andries. I selected him purely because I saw potential in this young man and I liked him. Quite simple. I called him into my office one afternoon and boldly made him a proposition.

I would, on a monthly basis, initiate a meeting off the site, away from the mine environment (probably at a coffee shop in town), where I would intentionally attempt to impart some life skills and experience to him for the furtherance of his life and career. What I asked in return was that he does what I asked of him and responds positively to my advice and direction.

For the better part of the year we had our monthly coffee dates. I gave him material (books and articles) to read and guidance with his personal life. This young man was like a sponge and just wanted to learn. He was a mentor’s dream. I literally saw before my eyes how he grew as man and began to plot out a life for himself.

But it didn’t end there.

Today Andries is a junior official on the mine (I have subsequently left that shaft) after developing himself into position for a number of promotions. He owns his own house and rents it out for additional income, and a while ago he called me on a Saturday morning to proudly inform me he had just bought a car. He brought it to show me - a VW Polo.

That morning I sat down in the garden where I was varnishing a wooden bench, I was brought to tears by how richly rewarding this simple process having yielded such success, has been to me.

Now, come on, no matter who you are, you have something to leave behind. Serve someone with something of the Stellar Service Professional you are!

04 June 2008

P.S.:

When I returned to Rustenburg at the start of 2019, I reconnected with Andries. He was still working for the mine, then in a senior position, had initiated some exciting entrepreneurial enterprises, and was a happily married family man. I called him when I decided to post this TIB to catch up and he told me he had now left the mine and was working on his private businesses with a few more prospects in the pipeline.

These connections will never die and the continued joy they bring are worth every coffee date!

22 May 2020