Jason Buffington .com

Transcript

Last week, I suggested that if you are a Leader, then you are an Apple. Click the link or here’s the short version: 

• If we’re leaders, then we’re apples
• our main job is to produce and plant seeds
• some of those seeds may turn into trees
• some of those trees will produce more apples, more leaders
• and those leaders’ impacts … are partially our impacts

That is leadership. 

OK?  If you are serving others, then you are an apple tree – here are 6 tips to doing that:

1. If you are an apple tree, don’t try to make oranges.  Be authentic in who you are – so that what makes you great, your nature (pun intended), benefits others. 

• It’s great to sit under an apple tree and enjoy the shade, but an apple tree is not great because it makes shade.  It’s great because it makes apples.  Great trees make great apples – sometimes by quality, sometimes by quantity, occassionaly both. 

• As an apple tree, life is not about you growing taller, it’s about you producing apples – some become food/fuel while others become trees someday. Either way, it’s not about you.

• You are better together.  Flowers and trees are most effective when they are among others, but that does not mean to surround yourself with just other apple trees.  Sometimes, a single red rose is best surrounded by white carnations.  An orchard of trees is better than just a few.  We yield better results when we are surrounded by others that are also serving their purposes.

• Seek out nutrients.  Sometimes, you will find yourself in a place where good stuff just keeps landing on you.  Bask in that.  Take advantage of it.  Thrive while you can.  In other times, nutrients may seem scarce, so be intentional in stretching out your roots, and reach for what you need.

• Lastly, never forget that before you were a great apple tree, you were a sapling.  Before that, you were a seed – from some other apple. Growing, producing, and serving is how you thank those apples and trees that came before you.

See you next Monday