At school – they teach us the three R’s – reading, writing & arithmetic.  But who teaches us about life – sometimes, it seems that we leave all that to chance.  As Forrest Gump once said – Life is like a box of chocolates….   

Have you ever seen the movie Forrest Gump? It begins with a white feather up in the sky, floating through the breeze. You know how a fine white feather dances in the breeze, wafting along and giving a sense of life being random. It wafts along, further down, and lands on Forrest Gump’s right foot. Forrest is sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus by a park, and right from the beginning, you can obviously see that the man is simple. People come and sit on the bench, and he talks to them. Some of them want to talk, while others don’t. He tells his life story and offers them a chocolate. It’s a beautiful movie, a must-see. Through the story, you discover that Forrest has been dealt a pretty rotten hand in life. You and I, we have some good and bad things happen to us, but Forrest is simple. His dad died early, and a bunch of really bad things have happened to him along the way. If we look back at our lives, we can remember the good things. We look at our moms and dads, and most of us can say that they gave us some really good things, did things for us, and loved us. But there were also some bad things that got handed down to us, maybe a personality trait that we wish we didn’t have, but we do. We look at our dad or mom and think, ‘I know where I got that from.’ Maybe we have insecurities because we weren’t loved properly, or we have anger or sexual dysfunction because we were never shown any affection. So, we can’t show affection to our loved ones. Maybe we had great parents, but somehow, they never taught us to listen to other people, work through struggles, or understand collaboration. These life skills, they were good parents, but their parents never taught them those things, the stuff about how to live life. It’s like a box of chocolates, it depends on who we got for parents.

Not so long ago, I did a TV interview, and when I watched the video later, I was shocked to see a man sitting there talking. That was me, an absolute spitting image of my dad. I had no idea. I looked at myself and thought, ‘That’s my dad.’ People say to me, ‘You walk like your father walked,’ and he had some really strong points that he handed down to me, but he also had some weaknesses. As I grew up, I discovered two things. First, I happen to be very fortunate in that I’m intellectually very smart. I discovered that when I was in school, my grades were always really good, and I was always near the top of the class. But I also discovered that I didn’t have some of the people skills that I needed. I’m not naturally a good listener. Naturally, when I was growing up, because I’m a talker – so I’m doing what I’m doing now – I discovered that I talked over the top of people and really didn’t listen to what was going on inside them, in their hearts, their needs, the deep things. I wasn’t strong in collaboration. I grew up thinking, ‘Well, Bernie, you’re pretty clever. You can do this on your own. You can roll over the top of other people.’ So, collaboration and consultation, I just wasn’t very good at those things. And I’ll tell you, I was very much into knee-jerk reactions. When a curveball came at me, I would have these knee-jerk reactions and get angry at people. So, I discovered that these people skills, these life skills, in me were not as good as they needed to be. I didn’t discover that because of good or bad grades at school. I discovered that in the school of Hard Knocks, through life. That school of Hard Knocks was about failures, crashes, broken relationships, and it was a bit like that white feather, you know, that phenomenon in Forrest Gump, that sense of randomness and chance. It seemed like a luck thing.

But in my work, I all of a sudden met someone who would be my mentor, someone who, through life, would teach me some of the life skills that I needed to have. He was very bright, his name is Graham, and he and I are on the same wavelength. We formed a consulting firm together, and over the years, he would sit me down and say, “Bernie, in that meeting we were just in with that client, do you know you didn’t listen? Do you know that you talked over the top of them? Do you realize that you did this and that there’s another way of looking at things, another way of doing this?” So, he invested over a period of 20 years, teaching into my life. I am forever changed and forever grateful for that investment.

The art of mentorship, an older man mentoring a younger man, or an older woman mentoring a younger woman, seems to be a lost art in our society. If you are an older man or an older woman with wisdom, I would strongly encourage you, whether it’s with your kids, someone you work with, or a friend’s son or daughter, to invest in them as their mentor, to guide, advise, help, and help them grow.

Somewhere through all of that, I came to faith in Jesus. I met this Jesus guy and came to a saving faith in God. And by that, I mean I don’t just believe, I know. I know that I am forgiven by God in Jesus Christ, and because of what he did for me on the cross, I have eternal life. It’s nothing I did. I just met this Jesus and was so excited when he came into my life, and I’ve given my life to him. I look back on those ups and downs, on my parents, mom and dad who did a whole bunch of good things, on the gaps somehow in my life skills, on that school of Hard Knocks and the pain involved in those Hard Knocks, on Jesus coming into my life, and on this mentor, Graham, who came into my life to bless me. It looked random at first, it looked a bit like the breeze that blew the feather, but I discovered that there was a hand behind all of that. It wasn’t like a box of chocolates at all. In all that randomness, there was a steady guiding hand, guiding, helping, and steering, just at the right time, speaking.

Psalm 27 verse 10 says, “Although my father and mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord God will adopt me as his child.”

Now, I’ve never been forsaken by my mom and dad, but we all end up with some gaps growing up, and some people are forsaken by their parents. The most unexpected thing of all is that God is in that space, that God has his hand in our lives. Jesus has this wonderful learning for life. It’s never too late.

This week and next week, on a different perspective, we’re going to be looking at a whole bunch of things, like the blind spots we have in our inability to listen, our inability to communicate and collaborate, and dealing with uncertainty. All of those life skill things that sometimes we miss out on. We’ll be looking at them from a different perspective. Join me. It’s not by chance that you and I are together today. And even if your father and mother had forsaken you, yet God will adopt you as his child.

We all have blind spots, although we hate to admit it.  And as we know from driving a car, blind spots lead to accidents and accidents hurt.  But what do we do about them? They are after all blind spots.

“Over the years, I’ve learned that I have quite a few blind spots. I’m a very trusting person. I don’t expect people to do the wrong thing or fail me. I don’t expect people to just not do what they said they were going to do. Now, that’s a strength, but it can also be a blind spot because I tend to overlook people’s failures and weaknesses to my detriment. On the other end of the scale, other people can be really suspicious. It’s right at the other end, but it still has consequences because it’s hard to build trusting relationships when you’re constantly suspicious.

You may have heard me talk about what I call the ‘hand grenade syndrome’ in the past. You know, when someone is in their trench over there, it might be at work, in a club, in a group, or in a family, and they get in their trench while the other party gets in their own trench. Then, all of a sudden, one of them throws a hand grenade, maybe in the form of a cranky or nasty email. Another person reacts and throws back an even bigger hand grenade, and then the other one says, ‘Well, you’re not gonna get away with that,’ and they throw an even bigger hand grenade right away. And so it goes on.

We all have blind spots. Sometimes it’s about individuals, and sometimes it’s about groups of people. Sometimes it’s easy to look at the unemployed and think, ‘Well, you know, if they only got up and got a job.’ Or even in churches, one denomination may look suspiciously at another denomination. Come on, people, what we do with blind spots is we trade reality for some substitute. It might be a stereotype, like ‘I know what that denomination is like, they’re all like this,’ or it might be a preconceived notion where we see someone at work and think, ‘Well, you know, they’re not particularly good at A, B, and C, so they must not be good at anything.’ So, we take reality and replace it with a lie, and instead of looking at that person through the lens of reality, we look at them through the lens of a lie.

It’s easy to undervalue a person, and it happens due to blind spots. We judge them quickly based on the first couple of things we see them do or by their outward appearance, and what ends up happening is that this blind spot robs us. We miss out on their potential, we don’t realize what they’re good at. They become disgruntled, progressively less effective, and eventually resign. And we think, ‘Hang on, where did that come from? Why did they resign?’ And all of a sudden, we have to look for someone else to do the job, go and hire them, train someone new, and the cycle goes on. That’s what happens in life, right? How do we deal with those things? Who teaches us this life stuff?

We’re going through a series that I’ve called ‘Bringing out Your Best,’ and if we continue to have these blind spots and don’t do anything about them, we will continue to experience crashes, and crashes will continue to hurt. The alternative is that we deal with them one by one. I have to tell you, dealing with one of my weaknesses is just not easy, and I know it’s the same for you. Firstly, we don’t want to acknowledge the weakness, and secondly, when we’ve gotten into the habit of doing something a certain way, it’s really hard to change that habit.

So, what do we do about these blind spots? Where do we go? Who is going to help us and teach us some of these life skills? Listen to what Jesus said the very first time he got up to speak: ‘God has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, to give sight back to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to tell them all about God’s favor.’

I don’t know where you are in life, but for me, it wasn’t that long ago that I would have scoffed at that and said, ‘Look, the last place I am going to learn about life is religion.’ Well, that’s not what I’m suggesting at all. What I’m suggesting is that when we unpack what this Jesus has to say, it’s radical, it’s life-altering, and somehow he has this knack of getting in your face and calling things just the way they are.

He was talking to some people once, and he said, ‘How is it that you can go to your friend and say, ‘Look, let me get a speck out of your eye,’ and at the same time, you’ve got a dirty great plank in yours?’ He said, ‘You hypocrites.’ Jesus was not into hypocrisy, and when you read how he dealt with his twelve disciples, he was in their face. When they were squabbling, he was dealing with the issues, and he had some amazingly insightful things to say. Jesus somehow lovingly and effectively confronts our blind spots. He’s real. And what we’re going to do in the next couple of weeks is have a look at some of the outrageous, confronting, and profound things that he has to say.

And what I discovered was, as I began to listen to this Jesus and read what he said in the Bible (I know the Bible may not be a trusted book in your life), sometimes we dismiss things because we have blind spots about them and hold onto stereotypes. It is amazing and realistic what Jesus said in the Bible. So, I began to read his words and then I began to pray about it. Jesus promises that as we submit our lives to him, as we read his words and have a relationship with him, he sends his Spirit into us to speak to us.

Let me give you an example. One of the things that Jesus said is that if we are his followers, we should be like a light on a hill, shedding light into other people’s lives. We should be like salt, adding flavor to other people’s lives.’ Well, that’s what Jesus said. How does that apply to me today? So, I prayed about it, and I really felt the Holy Spirit saying to me, ‘What about your daughter? What have you done lately to be light and salt to her or to your coworkers in your ministry?’ Sometimes God really leads me to pray for a program director or a general manager of a station somewhere, and I call them and encourage them, saying, ‘I’ve been feeling led to bless you.’

Just recently, God did an amazing thing. I had been overseas to our parent ministry in America, ‘Back to the Bible,’ and picked up a few things in the warehouse, like a couple of books and some tracts, and a box of coffee coasters with ‘Back to the Bible’ and a little Psalm on them and a beautiful picture. When I came back home, as we were unpacking, my wife asked, ‘What do you want to do with these coffee coasters?’ I said, ‘I really feel that we should send them to this elderly gentleman in Melbourne. I’ve been feeling for a long time that I should contribute to his administration. I’ve felt led to pray for him.’ So, we sent him this package with a love note, saying, ‘I really appreciate you, and I’ve been thinking and praying for you.’

Jesus came to give sight to the blind. It’s a profound promise, and we discover it when we read his word and allow the Spirit to work in us through trust and faith. It’s different, isn’t it? Maybe it’s too practical, maybe it’s not what we expected, but try it, it works.

The things they forgot to teach us when we were growing up—there are plenty of things dealing with blind spots, and letting Jesus teach us is one of the things that many of us were never taught while growing up. Join me again tomorrow when we’re going to be talking about learning to listen.

One of the most frustrating things in the world is when we’re trying to tell someone something and they just won’t listen.  But what about when someone’s trying to tell us something.

I heard someone say once that most conversations aren’t dialogues at all. In fact, there are two concurrent monologues: two people talking at each other instead of alternately listening and then talking. You know when you’re trying to get something across to someone, and you can see it in their eyes that they’re not actually listening to you? They’re figuring out what to say next. And you can see them sitting there, leaning forward, trying to size something up. We’re all guilty of it. You see it in meetings at work all the time, you see it in families—people are talking at each other, but somehow no one is listening. Why is that?

Well, there have been some significant changes in society over the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I remember when I was growing up, children would be seen but not heard. Well, praise God that’s changed. Kids are more included in the life of a family and entertained more than they were in the past as society has become less formal. Society is becoming less structured. As time goes on, it seems it’s becoming more open. People everywhere are more aware of the world through the media. I was in India in a remote, very poor village not so long ago, and half the people had mobile phones. You know, the kind of opening up. You listen to the news, and at the end, they say, ‘Log onto our website and have your say,’ or they ask you to vote on a particular issue and they take a poll.

In a sense, it’s a really good thing. In a sense, the fact that people are becoming more open and exposed and free to speak is a good thing. But having a relationship is not just about speaking. Having a relationship is about listening too.

I love the story where Jesus was walking along, and he had been healing people, so there was a massive crowd following him. Imagine if someone came to your town and healed blind people and people who had never walked before, and they’re walking. Probably people would flock around this person like a rock star, like The Beatles have come to town or like Bono is in town. They would flock around him. So, he had this huge crowd following him. And there were a couple of blind men begging because there was no Social Security, but they were begging on the side of the street, and they were crying out to Jesus, ‘Jesus, Jesus,’ trying to get through the noise of the crowd, and people were saying, ‘Be quiet, you guys, this guy is really important, you know, don’t bother him.’ And Jesus heard them, and he turned around. And what he said to them really floors me. I mean, here is the Son of God, he knew exactly what they wanted, and even if he wasn’t the Son of God, he didn’t have to be Einstein to figure out—here is Jesus healing people, here are these two blind men on the street begging, what are they going to want from Jesus? Obviously, they all want some healing. But the very first thing that Jesus said to them is a question. He said, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Questions are the most empowering form of communication.

When someone asks you a question, how do you react? When someone says to you, ‘Tell me about yourself, what are your likes and dislikes? Did you enjoy that? What do you think about this? Wow, I never quite saw it that way. How did you come to that conclusion? I need to think that through. What if we came at this from a different angle? How would it look then?’ You may notice when you’re listening to this program, I use questions a lot. Because what I really want to do with you is to share what Jesus has to say by engaging you. And questions make us lean forward into something. Questions involve us. What I’d really like is if we were just sitting opposite this table together, and we were able to talk, and I could hear your answers. Well, radio is good, but it’s not that good. And so, I love to use questions to get you to think about issues. Isn’t it wonderful when someone sits down with us at a function or a party, or something, we’ve never met them before, and they just begin to ask us about ourselves? We can all talk about ourselves. We all know how. And then people say, ‘What do you think about this? And how do you feel?’

There’s a secret that most people don’t know about questions. It’s a secret that Jesus knows, and it’s the reason that he asked these two blind men, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And the secret is this: provided that we’re prepared to listen—I mean really listening—and we’re moved by what the other person says, understand what they’re saying without judging—provided we’re prepared to do that, the question empowers the other person. It invites them into a dialogue. The question shows them that we value them. The question is like an investment. It’s a building of a relationship, it’s an invitation to relate. And, lastly, you find out all this really neat stuff. Engaging the other person makes them open to us.

I spoke about my mentor yesterday, Graham. This is something he taught me through life. We worked together as consultants, and as a consultant, when you’re walking into organizations, you have no real authority. The best way to gain respect and to open people up is to ask them questions. I had to learn this. I had to learn to close my mouth when someone else was talking. Not to talk over people—how many of us talk over one another and we just don’t realize it—it is such an incredible act of disrespect. And deliberately, proactively ask questions. And when people answer them, sit there and listen and understand, understand their position, where they’re coming from.

There are two sides to this whole thing of questions. Firstly, on one side of this coin is respect—it’s investing in a relationship. And on the other side, it just makes sense because you find things out. Stephen Covey, in his book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,’ has a chapter that’s called ‘Seek first to understand and then to be understood.’ He paints this picture of two people being in a room, and one of them really wants to get something across. And it’s such a pressing thing that until the other person listens, until the other person understands, until the other person is moved by what they have to say, it’s as though there’s no oxygen in the room. It’s as though someone sucked all the oxygen out of the room. They can’t breathe, they can’t do anything until they get that first breath of oxygen, that sense that the other person understood them. And one of the things I love to do, and I’ve seen other people do it, is when someone has spoken, to show that I understand, to reflect this. ‘So, let me just understand what you’re saying? Is this what you’re saying?’ And when we can explain it as well as they can, then we’ve heard them. Jesus, when he was teaching his disciples to pray, as we know the Lord’s Prayer, he said, ‘You know, your Father in heaven already knows everything that you need and want, but ask him anyway.’ God wants us to speak. God already knows what we need, but he wants to hear us speak. It’s a relationship thing. He loves us.

Learning to listen is one of the most productive things I have ever done, that I’m still learning. Instead of judging a book by its cover, instead of shutting someone down, instead of just not listening to them, what I have gained is the benefit of the wonderful gifts and abilities and insights of other people. One of the most valuable things that we can do is look at Jesus and say, ‘Man, Jesus was and is a listener. Maybe I need to be a little bit like that. Maybe I need to learn to listen for a second.

As any coach will tell you, their team’s ability to win depends not only on the skills of individual players, but also on the team’s capacity to communicate and collaborate. Life’s a bit like that too.

This week on a Different Perspective, we’re looking at: bringing out your very best. You know, our parents and our teachers, we were taught at school the three R’s: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

And mum and dad, well most people have parents who taught them, you know, the sort of things that you need to know. But often when we grow up, we find that we have, I don’t know, gaps in our lives, things that we’re just not good at. You know, we don’t know how to deal with our own blind spots. And sometimes we don’t listen so well. And, I mean, they’re the sorts of things that we’ve been talking about over the last few days and we will be talking about over the next week, as well on a Different Perspective.

I was sharing the other day that I was blessed to have a man by the name of Graham, who has been my mentor for the last 20 years or so. We often miss out on some important life skills when we’re growing up. And for me I was really blessed to have this man who has walked with me, professionally and as a friend, for the last 20 years, who’s helped me to develop some of those skills. Now if you’ve missed any of the programs that have gone in the past, you can listen to them again on our Website, ‘christianityworks.com’. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that at the end of the program.

Today, I’d like to build on those issues of blind spots and listening, and talk about communication and teamwork. We have a big focus these days on our individual skills. And that’s really good, I mean, people want to get more education, um, they get more training, they want upscaling. People want to become the best at what they do that they can possibly be. I think that’s a really positive thing. I … I’m a great fan of education. But, I wonder whether this renewed emphasis on individual skills means that we stop there.

What I can do on my own is limited, what I can do as a part of a team, however, is unlimited. We talked at the beginning of the program about that example of the sporting field. You know, when a team gets out there and plays a team sport, whether it’s football, or whether it’s baseball, or whether it’s cricket, or what – or netball, or whatever it is, they need to know how to communicate. And that communication is verbal and it’s nonverbal.

And one of my favourite games is cricket. And cricket is all about somebody bowling a ball and there are two batsmen, one at each end of the pitch. And they then both run and cross over in the middle when they score a run and they both have to get to the other end to score a run. And often you see people who are run out because the batsmen don’t have that depth of understanding.

They don’t know how to communicate, whether they should run or they shouldn’t run, and all of a sudden, two of them end up at one end, and so one of them is caught out. Good sportsmen in a team know how to communicate and they know how to collaborate.

Jesus, the Son of God, came and became a man on this planet. If anyone could do anything on their own, it’s Jesus, right? I mean, He’s the Son of God, and yet He gathered 12 disciples around Him. Peter, Peter was the leader, and he was the spokesperson; okay, he was a bit impetuous, but he was one of these people where he was in, boots and all.

Andrew, Andrew was someone who brought people to Jesus; Andrew was the, the evangelist. There was a pastoral, caring person in John; they had a treasurer, he ended up getting the sack, Judas.

This motley crew of fisherman and tax collectors, and right at the beginning, you know, over those three and a half years when Jesus had his public ministry and these 12 men lived and ate and worked with Him. You could see how there was friction and tension between them. And one day they were arguing about who would be the greatest of them. You know, that, that sort of thing was going on, and yet Jesus built a team, and this team; this motley crew of fishermen and tax collectors, this team became the apostles.

The men who began the Christian Church 2,000 years ago. The team nature of what they did was so important. No man is an island, we’ve all heard that saying; no person is an island is a better way of saying it these days, and yet when we rely just on ourselves, we’re limited. But as we get communication going with other people, as we talk to them and understand their strengths and their weaknesses, and say, “Well, you’ve got this strength, why don’t you do this thing? I’ve got this other strength, why don’t I do that thing?” And together, we will do something much greater than what we could have done individually.

A team hangs together on communication, on talking, on understanding, on accepting each other just as we are. On learning to listen, as we talked about yesterday. And sometimes when we learn to listen we hear things we don’t want to hear. We hear that someone on our team sees things 180 degrees opposite to our view. And we want to be tempted to roll over the top of them, and throw our hands up in disgust and walk away from them. That’s not teamwork, that’s not collaboration.

Within our own ministry, here at ChristianityWorks, we have wonderful people but we don’t always see things in exactly the same way. And part of my role, as the leader of the ministry, is to work through those communication issues and to make sure that we’re all heading in the one direction, even though we see things from a different angle. It’s just the reality of life; it’s the way things are.

So, on the one hand we can want to discontinue our relationship or cut them off, or judge people because they say things differently. On the other hand, we can communicate, we can listen, we can ask questions, we can really understand where they’re coming from, digest their perspective and learn something from it. And say, “Wow, you know, they’ve got a point here.”

You think, in a business, the clients service department, the people who are on the phones to the customers, the people who are out there in, in customer interaction. They’re going to see things differently from say, the accountants in the finance department, who are going to see things differently from the sales and marketing department, who are going to see things differently from the operations division. People come at things from different angles; the joy, the blessing, the strength is when we build it together as a team. And that means communication, and it means collaboration.

I was recently looking at a company and, they’re a commercial business, and one of its employees. This man had some real strength and he’s generated a lot of revenue for the company over the years, but he has some weaknesses and limitations, too. And those weaknesses were fairly well understood, and they need to be managed. He needs help and support in certain areas to do what he does well.

But for some reason, one reason or another, the company stopped doing that; they stopped supporting him. And all of a sudden, he became disgruntled, and all of a sudden, he started making mistakes, and all of a sudden, the relationship broke down and he left. Had they listened to him, had they understood him, had they managed the weaknesses, he would still be earning the revenue for them today, that he was yesterday.

Jesus says, “Love each other”. That’s not some kind of fluffy, woolly thing. Love is tough sometimes, love involves sacrifice sometimes. It involves communication, it involves collaboration, it’s about involving people who have different views and different perspectives in decisions and in processes, and together we can achieve so much more as a team than we could on our own.

I trust that you’re really enjoying this series on ‘Bringing out Your Very Best’. Tomorrow we’re going to be looking at another subject, how to build influence.

People are so busy these days – just getting their attention can be frustrating. Let alone getting them to do something for you. Grr … It can drive you crazy.

And it is a busy, crowded world we live in: e-mails and meetings at work, they just seem to bombard us. And at home it’s the kids, and their activities, and the sport, and entertainment and doing the tax return, and you know, it just all mounts up. And maybe you’re not in that situation. Maybe you’re a grandparent or maybe you’re a widow and you see your kids and your grandkids. They’re rushing around and doing all this stuff, and you’re sitting at home thinking, “Why don’t they ever ring me? How come they never pay any attention to me?”

Well, whether it’s at work or at home or wherever with our extended family, most of the people around us have too much to do. And because we have to focus on so many different things, to get something else on our agendas, well, it has to stand out from the crowd. And the one thing that really makes other people in our lives stand out from the crowd, is value. Jesus knew this. Jesus saw the disciples squabbling. And they were squabbling about who’s going to be first among them, who’s going to the more important, who’s going to be the kingpin, number one. And Jesus said, “Listen, guys, if any of you wants to be first, you have to be the very last, and you have to be the servant of all.”

Now, it’s easy to say, “Ah, well look that was 2000 years ago. I mean, life was a lot slower then and Jesus isn’t here now and well, we live in a much busier, much more sophisticated, electronic, entertainment focused world, what does He know?

But it turns out, that Jesus has a real point. Over this last week, I’ve been sharing with you, if you’ve been able to join us, about a man who has been my mentor for the last 20 years. His name is Graham – he’s a really wise man.

And he’s taught me a lot of things, a lot of the people skills, the living skills that were gaps in my life before I was able to work with him. He and I had a consulting firm together in the information technology industry. And one of the things I noticed with him, when we going to visit senior managers in client organisations or organisations we were trying to sell our services to, he would always make a point of stopping outside the senior manager’s door, and inquiring of his secretary, and saying, “Hi, how are you, my name’s Graham, what’s your name?”

And he would always strike up a relationship, and as we were leaving he would always say to her, and it was mostly her, the secretary. He would say, “Thanks so much, it was really great; nice meeting you, I’ll see you around.” And after a few of these, I said, “Graham, why do you bother? I mean, why do you do that? What is it with the secretary thing that you always say hello and you’re nice to them and stuff?” And he said, “Think about it, who’s the gatekeeper? Who do you have to get through on the phone and through the door before you can get into the senior manager’s office? The answer is: the secretary and if you haven’t got the secretary on your side, you’re just not going to get in and see the senior manager.”

And I recall, with one of our clients, an organisation in government that we worked with for many, many years, there was one particular senior manager who’s a really good guy. He’s extremely busy, and, and the managers reporting to him often couldn’t get in to see him, but Graham and I could get in to see him any time that we wanted to. It turns out that it’s the little things that count, in building influence with people. I was at a conference in the U. K. recently, and there was a man from a radio station from the Philippines there.

And I said to him, “Oh, we have an office in the Philippines, why don’t I put you in touch with him?” And so, when I got home, I sent him an e-mail and also our Filipino director an e-mail saying, ‘listen, you guys should get together for a cup of coffee’.

Well, one of my co-workers here at ChristianityWorks was saying to me recently, “Oh, my daughter’s, you know, on an exchange thing to Canada and she’s living there and it’s so hard for us to get to talk to her.” And so, I say to him, “Look, there’s a bit of technology on the internet called skype, s-k-y-p-e, and it lets you talk across the internet using some headphones and a microphone, anywhere in the world for free.” And so, I showed him how to use it, and where it was and how to get it. Very quick, and very easy.

It was just a small thing, and he rang me on skype just the other day and said, “Thank you so much that I can talk to my daughter.” What did it cost me, nothing? You might see an article that you think, “Oh, so and so would be interested in that, why don’t I send it to them with a personal, little handwritten note. Or go and visit someone on their own turf.”

You know, in companies, people often sit on the other side of the partition from one anther, and they send each other e-mails instead of going and having a cup of coffee downstairs and having a bit of a chat. Or, maybe you think of someone, and you give them a quick phone call and say, “Look, I was just thinking about you; how’s it going?” These days, these little things, go such a long way to building influence and relationship. These days, people call it marketing and networking, but it’s just plain common sense. Little things do a deposit in a relationship.

They say, “I value you”. Make a connection for people, as in the case of those people in the Philippines. Or, or sometimes, someone just needs a hand carrying the ball that next step, you know, through that next gate, they just can’t quite get there, but somehow you helped them to do that.

Proactively looking out for other people. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “If anyone wants to be first,” the one with the most influence in these people’s lives, “be the very last, be the servant.” Be the one who sees opportunities for other people and helps them through the gate. When you have a meeting, be there on time.

When you say you’re going to deliver something, deliver it when you said you would. Be the last, be the servant of all. I cannot begin to tell you how many doors have opened for me since I learned this. And sometimes, it’s obvious, I mean in the case of the secretary and the boss, it’s pretty obvious that she’s the gatekeeper. Or he’s the gatekeeper; great to see that these days there are more and more personal assistants and secretaries who are blokes.

That, that secretary is the gatekeeper to the boss, that’s obvious. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s not a case of wanting to get something out of someone, but you just see an opportunity where you can make a connection for people. Or help them, or invest in some way, or keep in touch, or go and visit and have a cup of coffee and build the relationship. Invest in the relationship.

Now, sometimes we feel like saying, “Well, I shouldn’t have to, they should invest in me.” Well, we do and you know why. Because most people never learned this stuff when they were growing up. Most people have never really read Jesus’ words, where He says, “If you want to be first, then you have to be the very last. You have to be the servant of all.” Most people have never really come to grips with the enormity of the wisdom contained in those very few words.

If we want to be first, if we want to be the people who really have influence with other people, we need to be the last; we need to be the servant. We need to be proactively looking for opportunities to bless and to help other people. Investment builds interest. We know that the reason you invest money in an investment account, or in the stock market, or in real estate is because you want to get a return.

Well, I’m not suggesting for one minute that we should invest in people just to get a return. But Jesus just nails this: if we want to have the influence with people, if we want to be able to pick up the phone and get straight through to people, if we want them to be the ones that ring us back; first, we need to invest in the relationship. Jesus is so full of real, nitty-gritty, practical, loving advice.

Next week on a Different Perspective, we’re going to continue with this series, ‘Bringing out Your Very Best’. We’ll be talking about what happens when people have knee-jerk reactions.