This week I worked with my classes on goal setting. To get them in the right mindset of thinking beyond “Get an A” as their goal for the term, I encouraged them to consider the various areas of their lives where they’d like to see some improvement.
We named categories like friends and family, finances, health and wellness, and art and culture. Would they set a goal to spend more time with relatives? To save more money? To work out daily? Or to attend at least one “culture” event per month?
In those goal setting classes, I talk a lot about having a balanced life, one that is rich in relationships, purpose, and joy. A life they would want others to say was well-lived.
Too often over the past few years I’ve had the occasion to think of the end-of-life and the things we say about others after they’ve passed. In each circumstance, I wondered if the work I’m doing daily is building, as the poet says, out of the lumber of my life a temple or a tavern.
This week I learned the man who taught me the very goal setting practice I use in the classroom is nearing the end of his life. He’s comfortable, his daughter says, and at peace. And when I got word through Facebook, I felt pride in the work I’m doing and in the way his lessons have stayed with me.
The Lion
I was a sophomore in high school when Captain Blakeman took the highest officers of our Naval Junior Officers Training Corps (NJROTC) battalion on a retreat weekend for strategic planning for the following year. It was the 4H camp in Front Royal, Virginia, and it was an incredible experience.
Our first exercise was to self-identify our leadership style. I remember claiming to be a Lion: fierce, bold, and willing to take risks. That may be where the entrepreneur in me lives. The writer, the Libertarian, the nonconformist that wears flannels and t-shirts with my business skirts and heels.
Later, during a strategy session, Captain Blakeman explained how each goal could be broken into three strategic objectives and each objective into tasks we could easily do daily, weekly, or monthly. It was my first experience with itemizing work: what will it take to get us where we want to go? Captain Blakeman’s system explained how to create a plan not only for myself but for any team, any organization, and any effort I was meant to lead.
The Owl
My entire career has been built on itemized work organized in the pattern he taught me all those years ago. Even my personal life follows this intentional exercise. Every January I organize the next year’s vision into a series of objectives to achieve and tasks to perform. I’ve become less ferocious and demanding, and more measured and analytical. I’m Owl-like in middle age.
It’s unlikely I’ll have the chance to say goodbye to Captain Blakeman. I’m not alone in these fond memories of what he taught in his decades-long career as a Naval officer and Naval Science Instructor. It’s unlikely he’d remember me, just one of hundreds of teenagers in whose life he made an impact.
The St. Bernard
In all the reflections I’ve been able to do over those we’ve lost, I’m reminded of the third leadership style, that of the St. Bernard. Caring, kindness, compassion and a willingness to go where others won’t to provide relief and comfort.
On the retreat when he had us self-identify our leadership style according to those iconic animals, Captain Blakeman didn’t tell us that the very best leaders know when to be what. Somehow, I think he knew we would come to that conclusion in our own time.
Thanks, Captain Blakeman. May your journey be peaceful and your rest eternal.
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