Building Bikes

This week I attended a leadership retreat with the company I work for. It's a yearly event where we focus on honing our skills and refocusing on the important task of guiding our company forward. Each year we attend meetings, share ideas and network, and of course, participate in a team building exercise. In the past we've hiked, toured The Biltmore House, done an "iron chef" activity... You get the picture. Fun stuff. Fun stuff designed to build the team.

This year, we did the usual meeting stuff, but the team building was different. We built 21 bicycles for orphans. There were team building exercises all along the way - business lessons - you know, to make us more aware of ourselves and our teams. There was also plenty of fun in the process. But in the end, we had built bikes for kids who needed them. It felt better than anything we'd done as a team before.

We (Americans) spend a lot of time worrying about self actualization in one way or another. Even though we may define it in different ways, we think we owe it to ourselves to be fully developed - fully actualized. It's pretty easy to fall prey to the idea that it's all about us - who we are and what we have. The bike building exercise points out an important truth: we can in fact become better developed people and serve others at the same time. In fact, the greatest leaders are those whose mission it is to serve. No one could say it better than Jesus, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all."