HOW I GOT HERE

The meeting was scheduled for 4:00 Monday afternoon at a hotel near the airport. I picked up my boss and took him to his room. There, we met a co-worker to discuss some problems the co-worker and I were having. This was going to be a meeting to resolve difficulties and to plan for the future. I knew there would be some tough going. I might have to say some difficult things to this person. I might also have to hear some tough things from him. But I'd been in these kinds of meetings before, and I was confident that, in the end, things would be worked out; I would get the promotion I wanted.

After about ten minutes, I realized from the tone of the meeting that the agenda and outcome had been set well in advance. Instead of “reconciliation,” the meeting was a rehearsed confrontation. I knew immediately I had been ambushed. I turned to my boss and said, “You've come here to fire me.” He was caught off-guard. When he finally spoke, he said, “That's one option.” It was in fact his only option. Two hours later he told my advisory board of directors, “It's time for Bob to go.”

I had been downsized! I was 39 years old and had been with the organization for 13 years. By most measures I had done very well. I had moved from my hometown to serve in two different locations. I had produced results, gotten my Master’s degree, and grown the work of the organization in the areas I had served. But my time was up. The political winds had changed. At almost 40 years old, with a family, a mortgage, car payments, and credit card bills, I needed to find new work.

I loved my job, and I loved the organization for which I worked. I was successful at what I did. I had good friendships in the organization. Sure, the last couple of years had been rough: change was brewing, but I believed the organization would see the value of keeping someone with my experience, production and wisdom. By thinking such thoughts, though, I was deceiving myself. I had seen other senior staff downsized. This was a young man’s game and I wasn’t getting any younger. I had told myself that eventually it would happen to me, and I knew the odds were against me being one of the few who ever retired from this organization. Yet, emotionally, I didn't want to believe that I would be rejected. I didn't want to believe it would happen to me.

I resolved to learn from my mistakes, and I knew there would be plenty of time later for evaluating the previous thirteen years. At that moment, however, I needed to figure out what I was going to do next. Now, for the first time in 13 years I was looking for a job. I didn't even know where to begin. I needed a job, but I didn’t need just any job; I needed the right job. I needed the job that would be right for who I am.

I found myself driven back to asking questions I hadn’t asked for a long time. Questions that seemed more appropriate for late night fraternity house discussions - but which were as real now (maybe more so) as they had been during those late night college “bull sessions.” I began trying to figure out who I was and what I should be doing with my life.

I was recruited by a former boss to become the Ontario Provincial Director for Young Life of Canada and, we moved to Ancaster in February of 1996. No one should move to Canada in February, but we did. One of my first assignments in my new position was to lead a visioning time for our Management Team. I was given an article from The Harvard Business Review, entitled “Building Your Companies Vision,” which was a summary of the book “Built To Last” by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras.

I was impacted by the concept of "Core Values" for organizations and the idea that we must begin our visioning by identifying those “Core Values.” My concern has always been for people more than organizations. Perhaps my twenty years of working with students shaped the way I think of the world. What struck me immediately was the idea that individuals have a "Core Motivator," and that we must begin our visioning for people by identifying a person’s "Core Motivator."

I was so excited about this idea that I faxed a copy of the article to a friend and asked him to meet me to discuss the idea of "Core Motivator." As we met and talked I informed him of what I thought my "Core Motivator" was. He disagreed and told me that my true "Core Motivator" was relationships and that I performed the other functions of my life out of that "Core Motivator." After several hours of disagreeing with him, I finally saw that he was right, and I thought to myself, "if I don't know who I am, what are the chances that most people know who they are?"

I began to ask friends if they thought this idea of "Core Motivator" was valid. Every person I talked to said the idea made sense, and a few asked me to work with them to help them understand their own "Core Motivator" and plot a vision for their life. The client base began to grow by word of mouth and after several years of a steady stream of clients, I left Young Life to focus my full time energy on “Vision For Your Life.”

Today, after nearly a hundred clients I’ve seen the amazing impact this process can have on individuals and organizations as people "know who they are and be it."