(Apostle Paul, Second Epistle to Timothy 4:7)
As I mentioned earlier, long-lasting marriages and long-lasting careers seem to have a lot in common. I was privileged to have two sets of grandparents who had long marriages. I started to say long and happy marriages. I would not pretend to suggest that they were always happy, but I think I could safely say that on the average both couples were happily married. Both lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s and saw some pretty difficult times. I often wondered how they managed to stick it out and stay together for so long—the Coffeys for over 60 years and the Coxes for over 70 years! Some of the gems of wisdom they shared with me have also influenced my views on leadership and followership.
1. Adapt and grow because change is inevitable.
I was fifteen years old when Grandmother and Granddaddy Coffey celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. As we stood near the table with the anniversary cake all decorated, I reflected with Granddaddy on some of the changes fifty years had brought: radio, television, jet aviation and space travel to name a few. They had been through some tough times, literally losing the farm once and yet they had stuck it out together for all those years. They had married when she was 15 and he was 21. By the few pictures I had seen of their youth, she was a thin and pretty blonde weighing in at perhaps 110 pounds—quite a catch!
By now, Grandmother Coffey was (how do I say this delicately?)… let’s just say there was a lot more of her to love than there had been at age 15. So I asked Granddaddy Coffey how a man could stay married to the same woman for fifty years. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close then gave me the same answer I read somewhere in a Reader’s Digest magazine: “Son, after fifty years she ain’t the same woman!” In fact, he had said on at least one occasion, “I ain’t legally married to two-thirds of that woman!” They had stuck it out through thick and thin, literally!
Ten years later, at their 60th wedding anniversary, my wife and I stood across the table as they were about to cut the cake again. By this time Granddaddy Coffey had lost both legs to diabetes and had to be pushed in a wheelchair. He had two different bags hanging on the side to collect fluids from his body. It had been so long since he had hair on his head that he couldn’t remember when he had actually gone to the barbershop for something other than to visit with friends. And he had glasses so thick he could barely hold his head up. Grandmother Coffey pushed his wheelchair close to the table, took his feeble hand and held the knife to cut the cake together. She paused for a moment then laid the knife on the table. Looking across at me she said, “Young man, I recall that ten years ago to this day you asked your grandfather how a man could stay married to the same woman for fifty years and something was said about her not being the same woman after that long. Well, for ten years I have held my peace, but today I want to tell you—after sixty years he ain’t the same man either!”
There is something to be said for sticking it out through all the changes. During one of his lucid moments, I asked Granddaddy Coffey if he didn’t agree that the first year of marriage is the toughest, with all the adjustments you have to go through learning to live with each other, putting up with each other’s personal habits and adjusting some of your own personal preferences. “Hmph!” he snorted, “The next fifty ain’t nothing easy either!” If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth nearly as much as it is with the extra effort staying together requires. I have to work at getting to know the person my wife is becoming over time as she also learns to live with the new me that I am becoming every day.
2. Commitment—let your yes be yes and your no be no.
Granddaddy Cox loved to read the newspaper. One afternoon he read about a man who had killed his wife 25 years earlier and had just been released from prison, his sentence having been reduced for good behavior. “I could be a free man today!” he teased. “I wonder if I could get out early for good behavior too.” Although he joked about “freedom” and being released from the bondage of marriage, after Grandmother Cox suffered her first stroke in 1980, he pushed her wheelchair, lifted her in and out of bed and helped her bathe for at least 19 years before she finally had to go to the nursing home. He would tease her that he had been pushing her around for so long, wasn’t it time for her to get up and push him for a change?
So after they had been married almost 70 years I asked him what’s the secret to such a long and faithful marriage? He thought for a few seconds. “Well,” he said, “when I said ‘I do’ I meant it.” Being a man of his word was important to Granddaddy Cox. Granddaddy Coffey would have agreed. The word “commitment” was not a dirty word to them. When they promised to love till death parted them, that’s exactly what they meant to do. When they said “in sickness or in health,” they fully intended to stick it out through the good times or the bad times.
My wife and I looked at my grandparents as examples of how we wanted our marriage to be. We also joke about the commitment we made in our own wedding vows: “…till death separates us.” Sometimes she asks me if I want to be separated right now!
We signed a long-term contract that we fully intend to complete. We have had to learn to adjust to many changes and we are not the same persons we were when we started out on this journey together over 36 years ago. Instead of looking for a better deal to come along and chasing after some illusive dream, we have learned to appreciate the gift we have and determine to keep on loving each other in spite of anything that might work against us.
Your attitude toward commitment reveals a lot about your integrity, trustworthiness, team-building abilities and effectiveness. Some people think their personal lives and professional lives are two totally different things. I disagree. I would be much more interested in an individual’s character than their resume. Character is who you are when no one is watching, in marriage and at work.
3. Learn to listen more and talk less.
Once, when I was in elementary school, I brought home a report card with all A’s and B’s. My mother suggested I show it to Granddaddy Cox for him to praise me. The very first grade at the top of the report was “Conduct” which was a “B.” I don’t think he even saw the other grades. “It seems to me that one thing anyone could learn to do is be quiet when they are supposed to be and behave themselves in class,” he commented. Even if I couldn’t make A’s in anything else, I could surely make an A in Conduct.
That lesson applies to marriage and leadership—learning to listen more and talk less, seeking to understand before seeking to be understood. All too often words are thrown around with careless abandon when it would have been prudent and wise to wait and hear the other person out before making a judgment. Both of my grandmothers certainly seemed to practice that. Grandmother Coffey waited ten years to respond to that comment about not being the same woman. (OK, maybe she waited ten years to get even! I don’t know.) I never once heard Grandmother Cox make a sarcastic comment and she never spoke a word of retort in haste. She held to that old saying, “If you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Come to think of it, I noticed there were some people she simply did not talk about at all.
What do you suppose life would be like in the workplace if we all took that advice?
Leadership Hints
- Leaders need to keep growing and adapting. What are you doing to grow yourself and the people you lead?
- Do people see you as a person of integrity, whose “yes” means yes and “no” means no? What do you need to do to improve in this area?
- How are you doing in the area of listening to those you lead? Are you quicker to speak or to listen?
Followership Hints
- What initiatives can you take to keep growing and improving?
- To what or to whom are you committed?
- Leaders are people too. Do you need to change the way you talk about yours?
© Dr. Larry N. Gay, May 2010
http://mylead360.blogspot.com “Lessons on Leadership and Followership”
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