Charles Gupton

Charles Gupton

Defining the Depth of “Friend”

There are many ideas and concepts that need more descriptive English words than we often have at the tip of our tongues to describe them properly. “Friend” is one of them.

Avery and me after putting insulation under the house.

As I was finishing up with the small talk during a business event recently, I was asked, “Got big plans for the weekend?” I hesitated then said, “With the help of a friend, I’m putting insulation in the crawl space under our house along with support jacks to stabilize the floors. I guess you could call those big plans.”  The response came back in a flash, “Good luck with that. Any friends I know would bail as soon as they saw the work was hard.”

True dat. I’ve had a number of house and farm projects through the years see the quick exit of a buddy or even a paid worker who realized the work involved was, well, work.

People make casual offers more frequently then they should, agreeing to help folks in their circle of acquaintances with projects that are frustrating their ‘friends’ with details beyond their capabilities. What are often sold as little projects by a person in need become massive in the eyes of the ‘savior,’ and the ‘savior’ then bails out, leaving the ‘needy’ person frustrated and possibly with hurt feelings or even a broken friendship.

Having been on both sides of the needy/savior divide on numerous occasions, I understand the power and importance of follow-through on really helping someone and maintaining the integrity of the relationship. I am also no less than amazed when someone sticks with a project to see it through.

The past year, I’ve taken on a couple of major projects only because I had the help and commitment of my friend Avery to see them through. Early on, I kept expecting him to not show up for the next round of work, but every time he did. Even though the work is always difficult, dirty and exhausting.

Even though I am loyal, hardworking, and willing to finish anything I start,  Avery consistently keeps the bar high for what I expect those standards to be now. He goes beyond what anyone I know is willing to do to finish a job well.

Avery on a jackhammer, digging a fence post hole.

Most people I encounter enjoy being with people who don’t challenge their growth,  level of commitment, or expectations of quality of service. This goes for their business and personal lives as well.

I can’t say it’s comfortable but it is desirable for me to keep raising the bar of excellence. Associating with people who display their commitment to excellence in service through action rather than empty talk raises my game as well as my stake in the game. They check my complacency and make me a better person.

And isn’t that a real definition of a friend?

Charles

Thoughtful Impact or the Status Quo?

I had an unusually wonderful meeting with the Director of Development of a non-profit this week. The meeting was set up to discuss photography coverage for a fund-raising event this fall, but instead evolved into a broader discussion of how we could work towards incorporating photographs into their overall branding and communications efforts.

My desire is to do more than simply shoot pictures. I want to use imagery to create awareness, communicate stories, and capture emotions. I want to inspire imagination.

Most of the people I talk with seem to be satisfied – no, compelled – to stick with the status quo. Although it’s seldom spoken, the question that seems to hang in the air is “How can we just get it done for the least amount of effort, for the lowest possible cost?”

Increasingly, I’m finding that the lowest expenditure brings the lowest impact. Sometimes (but not always), a little more effort and money can bring an amazing return on investment. But the major difference is in the planning and thought given to the outcome desired and how the work fits into an overall strategy. By asking in advance, “What is the impact we ultimately want to have and will this use of our resources bring us closer to achieving that goal?,” we can use what seem to be very limited resources to produce a far greater outcome than we could have imagined.

I believe the same is true for individuals as it is for organizations.

I have a buddy who has amazing talents. Amazing. But he uses most of his time and energy under-utilizing his gifts. In his case, the expenditure is not of money, but of heart — a willingness to allow passion to be publicly invested. By relying on the status quo in thinking about how people should serve and help others with one’s talents, his impact is far less than it could and should be. It’s not that he’s having no impact. It’s just that using the same time, with greater thoughtfulness and focus, could lead to a greater outcome, in my observation.

Is there an area where you can be making a greater difference by being more thoughtful and proactive? Is the status quo around you compromising your heart and ability to serve?

Charles

Confusing Work With ‘The Work’

When Linda and I took a sabbatical from our communications work several years ago and ventured into organic farming, I spent an inordinate amount of time doing the work of laying irrigation, preparing the soil, fencing pastures, and other necessary tasks to allow us to produce the various crops and products we ate and sold.

But over time, we found that the most important work that we did was not the growing of food, but the growing of the relationships with our customers. The points of contact where we were engaged with the people most affected by our efforts – whether it was delivering produce or attending a farmers’ market meeting – did more to deepen the relationships and fuel our hearts than anything else we did.

We came to understand that it’s not just about work, but “The Work.”

As I was sitting in a recent peer advisory meeting where we were discussing the metrics that were most critical for each of our businesses to succeed, I had a profound revelation. I had been setting the number of client and potential-client meetings that I was having as the most important metric to count. After all, no business can have sales without customers.

The revelation was that I was not establishing any metrics for nourishing my creative heart. I was counting meetings as having the most value in my life, but not anything connected to producing my art. It was truly an ‘A-ha!’ moment.

As soon as I started writing down the  “The Work” my heart wanted to achieve, the other work I needed to get accomplished seemed to be so much more approachable and less burdensome to consider. Just as I’m far more inclined to enjoy any work I do when I’m physically rested and fed, my heart is far more engaged when it’s rested and fed.

From the moment my heart got attention, everything else I did was energized. I’ve been told a number of times in the last several weeks that I walk into a room with a renewed energy, and every meeting I’ve been involved with has more new possibilities than before. I don’t believe the situations have changed, but my view of them has.

My current metrics now include accountable projects for both my heart and head, and my heart is enjoying the process of being included in the census.

What about you? Are your feeding “The Work” that feeds your heart or is the work consuming your life?

Charles

A Need for Healing

A close friend had already told me about the planning for the event, but when the invitation arrived, I was still apprehensive.

A church we had been deeply involved with for many years was having a homecoming service and lunch to bring former members together for a time of remembrance and healing. This is a body of people whom we deeply loved. But the officers, who were all wise and intelligent individually, could not, at the time we left, provide the corporate leadership needed to bring the congregation out of a closet.

However, when we left the church, I handled it poorly. When my term as an active officer ended, we left without telling anyone about our intentions to not return. We weren’t mad. We just wanted to grow, and in my mind, that meant leaving and moving on. For some of our friends we left behind, it meant desertion.

Over time, we followed up with most of the people and mended feelings the best we could. Though we were not in close proximity, our relationships with a few of our friends continued to grow deeper and, as expected, with others drifted apart. Relationships require work to maintain, and, to some degree proximity.

On the day of the event, we entered the church with the same apprehension with which we had opened the invitation  – who would be delighted to see us and who would not? Old friends who understood why we left the church greeted us with shouts of joy. A small handful of folks who were angry when we left were still angry 15 years later. The unsurprising thing was that they weren’t necessarily angry with us – they’ve simply continued to live lives of unresolved anger and unforgiveness.

The eerie thing was that the experience of being in the church felt virtually the same as when we left. Except for adding years to the bodies of all of us, there had been very little growth. The same people were in leadership and hardly anyone new had come to the church and stayed there. We felt we had walked into a time capsule where people had a choice to change, but had made the decision not to. The issues they were “wrestling” with 15 years ago were the same ones today. And to my understanding, no one in the church, including the leadership, had ever made an intentional attempt to seek healing by offering an apology for past hurts that had been committed. And to that fact alone, I would attribute the stagnation of the spiritual growth of not just this church but a number of others I’m aware of.

It was a very frightening reminder to me of the importance of dealing with past hurts in a timely manner and not allowing them to stagnate to the point that pride prevents one from ever dealing with it again.

I’ve come to realize that there are people who are particularly suited to getting big things started – whether in churches or companies – but are not particularly strong at maintenance. That was our stage of life at the time. But understanding that does not heal hurt feelings. Healing usually requires a very intentional and thoughtful process of apology and patience.

My style of communication can be rather direct, so even though I’ve had my feelings hurt a number of times, I’m sure my ratio of having hurt others to being hurt is much higher. Consequently, I’ve begun to understand the importance of apology to restoring a relationship. Without acknowledging one’s actions in breaking a relationship, a person can’t expect the relationship to ever heal. When people are hurt, they don’t just get over it without consciously making the decision to do so. And most people won’t move on without an apology.

Understanding this, I have learned – and am still learning – how to make a more effective apology. If you’re interested in learning the basic elements of an apology I recommend reading John Kador’s blog, “Apology Matters” where you can also find his book “Effective Apology”. I also suggest Gary Chapman’s “The Five Languages of Apology”. These resources provide an incredible foundation to restore fractured relationships in one’s life.

What’s your experience with anger? Do you see a hurt that needs healing? What can you do now to resolve it?

Charles

Cleaning Your Heart Out

We’d decided to take our first tandem bike ride of the season and I was digging around for my riding shorts, a t-shirt and socks when it hit me that I had too much crammed in the drawers. A minute later, I had the contents of the drawers all dumped out on the bed, making piles of what I did want to keep and other piles of stuff that needed to go.

For months (maybe years?) Linda has tried to get me to throw out well-seasoned articles from my wardrobe. I said they had character. She said they were ratty.

Although she couldn’t understand the nostalgic value of a t-shirt I played tennis in through high school, she’d shake her head and fold it away for me. But why was I keeping so many pairs of  “Sunday undies” (you know, they’re holey)? And did it matter if most of my socks were mostly like new if they were all threadbare in exactly the same spot?

I wasn’t sure what was causing the wave of desire to clean the drawers out, but I did it anyway. Linda wasn’t even around. When she came in to see if I was still going to ride, she found me going through every piece. If there was any question, I gave her final approval over its merit to stay.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been putting an extraordinary amount of attention into business development. Very little of my time and resources have been invested in my heart and art.

It’s been a couple of years since I led the last of several groups of artists through Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. In her book, Cameron talks about the need to clean out and de-clutter as a way to make room for the new and unexpected to come into our lives. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve experienced a shift in my heart and mind. Rather than list out quantifiable business goals as a part of my group accountability, I found myself interjecting some creative project goals. I hadn’t really given it much pre-thought. It just popped out. It was as if my heart said, “Enough. I want my turn.” Who was I to argue?

Although I’d started ruminating on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to proceed, I hadn’t yet taken any defining action. But as I was putting my socks and skivvies away, I realized my heart wanted to see some change, some cleaning out to make room for something new. This isn’t the end, but I had to start somewhere. So I have.

Fortunately, we still had time left for our ride.

Charles