Lessons Learned from an Adoption: Leaders Tell Stories

Expanding our family through an international adoption has shaped our last three years.  The journey began in December 2009 and in March of 2012 we brought two sisters, Meskerem and Tarikua, to Austin from Ethiopia and into our home.  The adventure continues and the expedition has provided emotional lessons; some of them even apply to leadership.

Leaders Tell Stories:  September 5^th, 2012 was a crisp evening for an al fresco glass of wine in Dallas.  Being outside in Dallas was odd; I live in Austin and spend a lot of time in Dallas – just never outside.  If you travel by air from Austin to most anywhere, all flights lead through sprawling DFW Airport.  Rumor has it that there are more top-tier AA Executive Platinum flyers living in Austin than any other city.  Could be; @AmericanAir is the Roman Road of the sky for those of us from the Keep it Weird city.

That evening was a gift to me, I was flying back through Dallas and needed to see a customer the next morning so I was able to have dinner with two of my oldest and dearest friends.  Over a great Malbec, we talked for a long time about the adoption process – at one point I apologized.  I apologize often when I talk to people because there are so many stories, “I am sorry you two, I have to stop telling you stories, I am turning this into a conversation about Remy and Tara”.  To which my dear friend said, “Alex – we want to hear these stories, they are all new to us and we have seen the pictures but we want to know about this”.  Was he just making me feel good?  I don’t know but there were a couple of times I looked at my bestie and thought I saw mist in his eyes.

What do the adoption stories do for these two close friends?  Truth be told, I really don’t know.  Only in their heart do they know.  Why do stories move us?   What stories move us?  Donald Miller, wrote a great book titled A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  In it he said, “If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to be meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either”

Many people, teams and companies set goals.  We are taught this in Business School.  Attention class, today we will learn how to establish specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted (S.M.A.R.T ) goals.  We set goals we want to accomplish, but how many teams or companies live stories worth telling? 

The leader owns and tells the story.  The story has a character; it is your team.  There is a plot.  There is desire – what is it the character wants?  There is a reason for the desire…a deep unquenchable ‘why’.  And there will be conflict – people and situations will conspire to keep your character’s desire from being fulfilled.  The more you overcome the greater the ending.

Leaders don’t just set goals, they ask their team to live a story worth telling. 

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” - Harold Goddard