The lesson of giving and receiving was clearly shown to me this last few weeks on building a team for a political campaign. It was truly amazing what happened and taught some very powerful lessons.--lessons I am still ruminating about how to duplicate in other areas as effectively.
The idea of giving away and having what you give come back to you is ancient and has been told many times in many ways. It is found in the Bible many times and there are many religions and philosophies that also speak of it.
In Luke 6:38 "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again."
Some call it the Law of Circulation. Whatever you call it, there is great power in it.
Our story started when a friend and I came to the conclusion that Indiana was going to be the turning point in the 2016 Presidential nomination process and that there was no political ground game started here to run that campaign. So on March 28th, we started a grassroots Facebook group to start building one to get the campaign ready for the May 3rd Election Day. Our group started with 2 people and soon grew to more than 500- even before the first campaign employee was hired for Indiana and was more than 4,400 just 36 days later on Election Day. We had more than 40 people who accepted Administrator positions on this group who could add, delete, block and more. They had the full powers that the two of us who started it had. It was this core group who were spread out into all nine congressional districts who created the pony express sign brigade to move campaign signs and materials to every county and most cities and to polling places all over the state. The national campaign joined us and we worked together. They cited that they had never run into any such grass roots effort in any other state, and our candidate won in a landslide.
The point of this story has nothing to do with politics other than that was the arena that this lesson was learned. The lesson was actually twofold. One, that we shared a common goal. Two that we gave away power and ownership of the site to others. We chose people we knew first and then people those we trusted knew and trusted and gave them full authority over what went on in the group. Gave them ownership. It was truly magic. It took a life of it's own. My original partner called me one day asking who changed the name of the group, I had no idea, but someone did. I looked at it and thought it looked better so I still have no idea who did it, and don't care. This is tough for a recovering control freak.
What I'm excited about is that just Wednesday of this week, in our company, we were pushing more power out to others to take as well. This to me is something I have been wanting to do for at least two years if not longer. I can't wait to see what dynamic results spring from this.
Have you a team that you could empower more? Could you let go of things that you have been controlling to someone who could do it for you, and trust them to make changes to what you have always done? Could you benefit from the brainpower and energy of others around you to help your business grow by letting go a bit more?
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