COVENANT VIRTUES
SEEK WISDOM
Read Time: <8 minutes
As we talked about in the Covenant Leadership Overview, just do three things to build good relationships:
- Seek Wisdom
- Practice Love
- Get Results
The more people trust your wisdom, that you love them, and that you get things done, the stronger your relationships.
SEEK WISDOM
Wisdom is the knowledge you need to be good at something—whether that is painting a house, raising a family, or leading a business. In the broadest sense, wisdom is the knowledge you need to live a good, successful, and happy life.
Wisdom includes common sense, and the ability to make good judgments and carry out good actions.
Wisdom is much more than academic knowledge. Wisdom is the knowledge you get learning the truth about something combined with the knowledge you get through the experience of practicing those truths.
Think about using the brake on a car. In your driver’s education class, you received academic knowledge about using the brake. You learned that if you press the brake, the car will slow down and stop.
You learned a truth about braking, but that academic knowledge does not make you good at using the brake. You only become good at braking after you practice it thousands of times in different weather, traffic, and vehicle conditions. The more you practice, the more wisdom you gain about braking.
You know a truth. You practice that truth over and over until it becomes a habit—part of your character. Practicing that truth repeatedly gives you a deeper knowledge—wisdom—that only comes through experience. That is why experience—whether its raising kids, coaching a team or starting a business—is so important for success.
Wisdom is a combination of your knowledge and the character you develop practicing that knowledge over and over.
We can put it in an easy formula:
Wisdom = Knowledge + Character.
KNOWLEDGE
The knowledge component of wisdom is straightforward.
At work, you need professional knowledge and—if you are a supervisor—knowledge about leadership and management techniques.
Professional knowledge is the information about your industry and role. If you are a marketing professional, how much do you know about marketing? If you are an auto mechanic, how much do you know about fixing cars?
If you are a supervisor, you need additional knowledge in leadership and management. Remember, you lead people and manage systems and things.
Leadership includes knowledge about how to communicate goals, context, and meaning. Do you know how to inspire, motivate, and encourage your people? Do you make good decisions under pressure? If you are in executive leadership, do you know how to do strategic planning and lead a team of teams?
On the management side, you need to know how to optimize tasks, processes, budgets, and resources to achieve goals.
At home with your family, you need the knowledge to be a good spouse and parent.
In the community, you need knowledge about how to be a good friend and citizen.
With knowledge of these things, you can practice them until they become habits and part of your character. Wisdom is the deeper knowledge you gain through that experience.
CHARACTER
Your character is who you are. It is the sum of your self-leadership, habits, virtues, vices, and your physical, mental-emotional, and spiritual fitness.
Self-leadership is your willpower, your self-discipline. When facing temptation, how well can you lead yourself to do the right thing?
You become what you do. When you do something over and over, it becomes a habit and part of your character. It becomes who you are. In many ways, you are your habits.
Character is all about habits.
Virtues are good habits like courage, honesty, and dependability. Virtues are moral facts because it is a fact that honesty and dependability build trust and the covenant relationships that lead to happiness.
Vices are bad habits like dishonesty, cowardice, and greed. Vices are also moral facts, because it is a fact that these behaviors undermine trust and destroy relationships.
There are mental habits as well as physical habits. You become what you think. If you think negative thoughts over and over, they will become negative mental habits and part of your character. You can trap yourself in negative or unhealthy mental habits just like you can trap yourself in negative or addictive behaviors. That negativity will destroy your relationships with yourself and others, and make you miserable and unhappy.
When you are under stress, you will fall back on your habits. That is why first responders and military spend so much time on training. They train to develop the good habits they will need to be successful when they are in an emergency or combat.
The best way to end a bad habit is by replacing it with a good habit.
There are moral virtues like honesty and courage. There are physical virtues like strength and endurance. There are mental-emotional virtues like attentiveness, memory, and composure. There are professional virtues like nursing, plumbing, and piloting skills.
And there are relationship virtues like love, active listening, and empathy.
If you reflect on your character, what are your strongest virtues? Where would you like to get stronger?
WISDOM, VISION AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
Wisdom is important because it is the knowledge that leads to good situational awareness (SA) and vision.
If you have ever been in a car with a new driver, you know that it takes their full attention to just maintain their speed and stay in their lane. As they drive down a busy street, their situational awareness only extends a little ahead of the car. They have little awareness of the vehicles around them and how they are interacting.
As an experienced driver, you have much more situational awareness of the traffic dynamics around you. You see a big truck in the right lane about to turn into a narrow parking lot. You have the wisdom and vision to make your way to the left lanes to avoid the inevitable jam behind the truck.
In contrast, the new driver continues in the right lane, oblivious to the situation, and gets caught behind the truck.
Situational awareness is the intuitive knowledge of the dynamics of a situation. In our traffic scenario, SA is the feel for the immediate traffic dynamics.
Vision is knowing how the situation unfolds into the future. Vision is how far down the road you see. Vision enables you to see problems early so you can avoid them. Vision enables you to take advantage of opportunities before others see them coming. The more vision you have, the further you see into the future, the greater your advantage.
Situational awareness and vision provide you with big advantages as a leader at work, a parent leader at home or a citizen-leader in the community. The more wisdom you have, the more situational awareness and vision you will have.
WRAP UP
Wisdom is the deep knowledge of something that comes with experience. Wisdom comes when you practice something until it becomes a habit and part of your character.
A wise housepainter knows many things about painting houses from experience you can never learn watching a tv show or reading a book.
That wisdom provides the housepainter with great situational awareness when it comes to the intricacies of painting house. With good situational awareness, the wise housepainter can see where things are headed in the future for the project. That is vision.
There is parent-wisdom, artist-wisdom, pilot-wisdom, medical-wisdom and teacher-wisdom.
Most important, there is wisdom about life itself. That is the knowledge you need to lead a good, successful, and happy life. At its core, life-wisdom is knowledge about human nature and relationships that comes from experience.
Seek wisdom because it is the source of situational awareness and vision, and builds the high-trust, high-performance relationships that give you the best chance for happiness and success in life.
The next section discusses the Covenant Virtues of Practice Love and Get Results.