Ridiculous Generosity (+ encouragement)

Prime Future 281: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

It’s Thanksgiving week in America and if the pilgrims had celebrated with prime rib instead of turkey, it would be my definitive favorite holiday. Alas, I still love the idea of pausing life to be grateful even if it means eating turkey.

Gratitude inevitably leads to generosity.

A mentor of mine was recently talking about business relationships, and said “I may have made some decisions that looked dumb to outsiders, but my bent towards generosity has never once disappointed me.”

I love that idea. When you say the word generosity, people usually think of things like donating to a charity. But there’s another aspect of generosity that is rarely discussed and is just as powerful. It’s relational generosity, or generosity of influence.

Andy Stanley talks about the leadership principle of generously leveraging your influence on behalf of other people, which reminds me of this article that has stuck with me:

“At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly…simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind.”

I know that people can create an inflection point in someone else’s career with generosity because I’ve experienced it again and again. When I was young and dumb and clueless (so like, yesterday), people invested in me via their time and wisdom, and by connecting me with other people. And all of those people, bit by bit, completely expanded my view of the world and what was possible.

People have shown me Ridiculous Generosity.

The leaders I respect and admire exercise Ridiculous Generosity — it’s core to their ethos. Ridiculous Generosity is a mental model of how to engage the world, a life philosophy.

My hypothesis is that it’s rooted in an abundance mentality.

Folks with a scarcity mindset perceive that if you win, then they lose...so of course they don’t help anyone else. But those with an abundance mentality perceive that not only is there room for everyone to win, there is room to grow the pie so that everyone wins bigger.

Ridiculous Generosity is the other side of the ‘play long-term games with long-term people’ coin.

---

The above excerpt from Prime Future 77: Ridiculous Generosity was written around Thanksgiving 2021. Look, I’ve written a lot of words that haven’t aged well, but these did — and re-reading them recently was a timely reminder for me.

Especially since I’ve recently become hyper-aware of a specific dimension almost every ‘ridiculously generous’ leader practices: encouragement.

Here are five quick ideas about why encouragement matters so much:

(1) Real encouragement is as simple as naming the good, and saying it out loud — the good effort, the good behavior, the good intent.

(2) The ROI of encouragement is high, for both the encourager and the encouragee. It costs nothing and there’s no downside.

(3) Encouragement compounds. We can probably all name the moments when a tiny word of encouragement made an outsized impact, which led to renewed energy or higher sense of possibility or whatever else which led to bigger, better outcomes.

(4) Sincere, effective encouragement is different from fake flattery, which people can smell a mile away, and has the opposite effect as sincere encouragement. Mostly because fake flattery seems self-serving, at best. Fake flattery ain’t it.

(5) A giant in my life used to remind me to be careful with words; that they can build people or tear people down. It’s annoyingly easy to forget this. Because, who needs encouragement? Everyone. You and I have never met a single human who couldn’t use a word of encouragement.

While those ideas are externally focused, they can apply inward as well. In The Hope Quotient, which is one of my return-to-again-and-again books, with its central thesis: “The most important thing I do is stay encouraged.”

The author makes the point that encouraged people do not drop out of school, exit marriages, or quit jobs.

In Destiny of the Republic, author Candice Millard tells the story of James Garfield’s assassination that took the country by surprise, including then Vice President Chester Arthur. Arthur was known as a rascal, a lightweight lacking integrity whose rise to power was a product of corruption rather than his character or capabilities. He became President after Garfield’s death, and a collection of letters later revealed that a surprising source of encouragement compelled him to step up and lead, ultimately changing his scallywag ways into effective leadership.

Those letters were written by a random lady named Julia Sand and they were full of challenging encouragement as he was tepidly beginning his administration, like:

• “You are being given an opportunity to become better than you have ever been before.”

• “Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have been lain dormant half a lifetime. The times need you — the country needs you.”

That encouragement sparked a back-and-forth dialogue throughout his presidency that led to a person rising to the occasion and positively impacting history.

So yeah, here’s to being the people who aren’t afraid to bring the encouragement to the boardroom, milking parlor, kill floor, poultry house, feedyard, branding, or anywhere in between.

What a time to be alive 😉