December 12. Focusing To Learn.

On teams, there are many things to avoid; harming teammates, holding grudges, and being siloed are a few examples. Some of the things we avoid are likely to allow us to want to escape when we encounter them in our businesses or families. If a business abandons value, the business suffers consequences.

Some have the opinion that love might not be an appropriate attribute to encourage in a business.  But value and love are in alignment with one another. We do not need to avoid love or value in the workplace.  In fact, some of the world's most engaged and admired companies focus on embracing love in the workplace.

These corporate examples have found a way to align love and value to the customers and the team members. The alignment of the two concepts can deliver to teams an attraction to new members that want love.  The alignment delivers a new way to profits and a seemingly unfair competitive advantage.

How will you embrace love on your teams, at your workplace, or with your family?  There are likely areas on our teams, in our companies, and in the organizations that we serve with where the alignment has not occurred. 

The focus on alignment might be the easiest way to increase the value that you bring to the world.  How much focus can you give it today, this week or this quarter?  What is the first thing that you can do about it in the next seven days?

When I think of Jonah, I think of someone who was trying to escape. He was running from his opinion and feelings of God’s love. We read, “But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port.

After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” Jonah 1:3.  

If God was going to save the people of Nineveh, why would Jonah have to be embarrassed? Why would he have to be wrong? We have a basic human desire to be right. Our brains will even lie to ourselves when it feels stressed or pressured just to be right. It is easy to have an opinion which we might believe is right.

But opinions are not necessarily right, and they certainly do not have to show love or value. Perhaps we can focus on being kind instead of being right today. The two are not always aligned. There is no need to run from love like Jonah did, but it might be very human to do so.

This week our challenge is to observe where we are confident that we are right. Maybe we will find that we have left love out of our hearts and minds in doing so.  If we can keep our focus on love, I suspect our desire to be right can be maintained at a healthy level for our faith. 

When we allow our focus to drift, it is like the tires of a vehicle which become misaligned.  The tires in the case of misalignment will wear out early. They will experience needless friction and frustration. They will cost the owner in many ways. 

Is the alignment in your faith worth the energy this week? What is the first thing that you can do about it this week?

Let us pray, Heavenly Father, you know what is in our hearts. Help our minds to be loving this week as much as it desires to be right. Send us courage to embrace love instead of correctness. Send us strength and learning from those with opinions different from ours and open our eyes to collaboration. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.