From Duty to Growth: Discovering the Mindset That Changes Everything

“How do you view the work you do — as a duty, a paycheck, a calling, or a chance to grow?” Jason Jaggard has authored a book called Beyond High Performance. In the book he identifies four archetypes of worker: prisoner, mercenary, missionary, and athlete. As I read the book, I found myself asking which of these I am. I think the framework can provide you with a great way to examine your own attitude towards the work you do and could lead to some great discussions with your staff, paid and unpaid.

Four ways we view our work

The prisoner works because they have to. They are driven by obligation not inspiration. The mercenary works for a reward. They are motivated by gain or recognition. The missionary works from a sense of calling. It is noble but often without boundaries.

Finally, there is the fourth way which is the athletes’ mindset. And these are people who do not work because they are forced to, because they want to, or even because they are called to, they work because that is the way they are going to grow. Jaggard’s company works with a lot of athletes and here is how he described them:

You never see 95% of the work that a professional athlete does.  You see them on a court with fans and cameras and everything which is the 5% that you see. The job of an athlete is not playing on the court, it is practice. And so, they practice, they work hard, they show up even when they do not want to, most of them because they know that is how they are going to grow. And so, we discovered early that if you help companies and organizations and even individuals embrace an athlete’s mindset, it liberates them from the other three and allows them to do things that they never thought they could do.”

My Journey Through the Mindsets

Now everyone’s mindset can change over the course of a day, much less a career. For much of my career I would say I had a missionary mindset. I was on a god given mission to grow the church and save the world. But there were times in my career when I felt like a prisoner like when I asked my District Superintendent to move me out of one church I was serving and the Bishop said, “No, he is doing a good job. He stays and just needs to suck it up.”  I do not know if he really said the “suck it up” part but it was definitely implied.

There have also been times when I felt like a mercenary being called in to do a job. I remember one conversation with a different District Superintendent who told me they wanted me to go to a certain church and help them heal from the last pastor. On the one hand it was nice to know they believed I could accomplish the task but it also made me feel like a chess piece on the board of life that the Bishop and Cabinet could move wherever they wanted without thought of myself or my family.  It is called itineracy in the Methodist tradition.

Obviously, the missionary mindset makes sense for people in the church Bizz. Afterall, God called us to this kind of work so of course I am on a mission. For most of my ministry, that is how I saw myself. When you are a missionary you do whatever it takes and hardships are just par for the course. Work comes first because how can your family or you be as important as a mission from God. It played a part in destroying my first marriage beyond any doubt. It took an emotional breakdown of sorts to make me realize that the way I was doing the work of God was destroying the work of God in me.

Which mindset describes you right now?

The Power of the Athlete’s Mindset

In management and often in leadership positions the question asked is: what is the next problem to solve? When you solve that problem you move on to the next one and you believe you are making progress. But the individual with an athlete mindset asks a vastly different question.

The question is, what are we capable of? This is beyond a goal in some ways it is even beyond vision because a vision can get tapped down over time. What are we capable of?

The question is, what are we capable of? This is beyond a goal in some ways it is even beyond vision because a vision can get tapped down over time. What are we capable of?

Here is why I love this question and makes the book worth the price: I do not know what I am capable of…yet. I do not know what I have left in the tank until I go there. It is the same with your organization. What are they capable of? To be determined. It is a moving target. It is a journey and not a destination.

How could you start to build into your culture an “athlete-mindset”?

Faith, Growth, and Capability

Remember David being challenged about fighting Goliath? David responds by confidently declaring that he has already killed lions and bears that attacked his father’s sheep, and he will kill the Philistine as well. He tells King Saul, “The LORD saved me from the lion and the bear; God will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine”. He did not know he could kill a lion until he did. A bear seemed beyond his reach until it was not. Goliath was certainly a bigger obstacle, but David asked himself, what am I capable of, and concluded that with God’s help he could do it.

Life and faith are about learning and growing and discovering who you are, your team is, and what your organization is capable of. If you are like me then you are thinking: I get so busy with tasks, I get pushed out of leadership into management. I am busy and bored because management bores me. But I am just wall to wall with stuff to do. I do not have the margin even to ask the question, what am I capable of?

I get it, but what if you built into your organization what am I/we capable of? What if you built into your organization a David culture that is constantly seeking to grow themselves from the inside out? We did this project, and we did not think we could…what if we try this?

What if Failure is the Path to Success?

If it fails. So, what. You were not ready to take it on…yet. I coached basketball for many years and everyday we took shot after shot from the places our offense would make available to the team. The goal was not perfection but improvement. What if we looked at our organizations the same way? We are athletes just trying to get a little better, grow a little more because we do not know what we are capable of.

Michael Jordan famously said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I have been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” 

What would it mean for you, your team, your organization to focus on learning and growing and not worry about success or failure? Would you take some shots and miss? Every athlete does…but what if you made it? You see none of us really know what we are capable of until we do it…and then the goalposts move a little further out. Life is a journey so go ahead and take a shot because you never make a shot you do not take.

By the way, that is what church is. Church is inviting people into the grand adventure of God, and it is daring and it requires sacrifice. And you win sometimes and you lose sometimes, and there’s grace and you get back up and there’s kind of a divine empowerment that happens and it’s romantic and it’s wonderful, and I hope each of you, your team, and organization gets to experience it.