Yesterday I blogged about characteristics that I personally look for in an “Elite” Specialist. I categorized the characteristics as:
- Mental Acuity
- Self motivating
- Respects Leadership
- Sacred Mindset
This is not to be misconstrued with the Solutions that are found on TheMTMS training website. Those characteristics are the instilled values of a specialist. For me having the Solutions characteristics place you into what I call Group 2-The Journeymen category. The Elite Specialists are Group 3-The Professionals. I wanted to clear that up so that there are no misconceptions or ideas that we are speaking 2 different languages.
The unwritten value, characteristic or component of Group 2 and Group 3 is the “Willingness to Sacrifice”. This willingness to sacrifice that I am referring to is beyond the obvious of putting yourself in harm’s way for another person. This willingness to sacrifice is an unabated desire to go above and beyond what is expected of you and what you feel you can endure. Long hours? Yea that’s a part of it. How about you find out at 2300 hours, after working 12 hours that there is a change in itinerary and movement at 0600. Are you willing to go do the required route planning, and whatever level of protective site advance that is necessary? You say yes. But here is where willingness to sacrifice really plays a part, you don’t wait to be volun-told you come forth and volunteer before the detail leader assigns the task or asks for volunteers. The elite specialists never lets the detail leader get to, “Do I have a volunteer?” If the detail leader assigns the task to another specialist, an elite specialist steps up and says, “Sir let him rest, I will do it OR, I will help him so that we can get it done sooner.” That’s the willingness to sacrifice that I can measure everyday. This is in no way the same thing for those specialists who are ready to volunteer for an easy task just to stay away from the hard work. Allowing junior specialists to eat before you to get off their feet is an example that can be seen on every detail. Most senior specialists feel that they earn the right to eat first and when given the opportunity, they pop the pigtail out before you hear the “T” in eat.
Willingness to sacrifice is when Chad Duke “Protection Disciple” asked me to mentor him and says to me, “I will do anything you ask me to do.” checks in daily for his next task. He could easily sit back and wait for me to call or email him. That’s an internal mechanism that is driven, not by self aggrandizement, but by the desire to succeed. Pushing past the normal and the expected is willingness to sacrifice.
The Group 2 specialist that exude this willingness to sacrifice see their station in Group 2 short lived and catapult into Group 3 and in many cases don’t realize that this was the final exam. I do not know of any leader that does not want a team of men/women who are willing to go above and beyond the call. As Rudyard Kipling so eloquently put it in my favorite poem of his If:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
That’s Willingness to Sacrifice.