The Heart

I shattered my wrist and broke five ribs. It may have been one of the greatest gifts of my life.

Summer, 2008.

My wrist required major surgery, a metal plate, and screws. My doctor said I'd be out of work for at least six months.

There was one problem.

I was self-employed. My family depended on me.

Yet I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. I was alive. Family and friends surrounded me with love. And while my wrist was broken, I could still hold a camera.

So I took it downtown to Celebrate Erie.

I began seeing people differently. Not as strangers passing through a crowd, but as entire worlds waiting to be discovered.

I approached three people from very different walks of life with a rather audacious question:

Could I follow you for six weeks, capturing what it meant to walk a mile in your shoes?

That became ErieAlityTV.

One of the extraordinary people we came to know was Clara Ward.

Despite considerable personal hardship, Clara had devoted her life and modest resources to serving children in her neighborhood.

Her story eventually helped inspire a two-hour ABC Extreme Makeover: Home Edition special. A national television production came to Erie, bringing people together around a woman who had spent years giving herself to others.

But here's what has stayed with me.

Clara didn't become extraordinary when the cameras arrived.

She was extraordinary before anyone thought to bring them.

The gifts were already there.

The love was already there.

The community's capacity to respond was already there.

Someone simply needed to recognize it and help others see.

I've carried that lesson into nearly every organization I've served since.

We spend enormous energy pursuing what's urgent, profitable, measurable, or impressive.

But what about what ought to move our hearts?

Not fleeting sentiment. Something deeper: the meeting place between what the world needs and what we've been given to offer.

I came to understand something about my own life that summer:

I had been blessed so that I could become a blessing.

And I've come to believe that one of the most consequential things a leader can do isn't necessarily to introduce something new.

It's to recognize what's already extraordinary in the people and communities entrusted to them, and help it flourish.

Sometimes the greatest possibilities aren't waiting to be created.

They're waiting to be discovered.