Sidekicks
Validation is great, when we can get it.
Mayor Koch used to ask the public for it all the time. "How'm I doin'?"
It helps to know if I am on the right track or not, and one way to test that is to ask for feedback. Without it, I might think I am doing a great job when I am really falling far short of the goal.
A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. - Luke 22:24
In today's reading, I was struck by how the problem of managing a team was back in Jesus' day was not much different than it is today.
I might like to think the disciples were being a bit childish in wanting to know which was the best among them, but that isn't how children play together is it?
I may be wrong about this, but I don't remember any of us as kids striving to be the most liked, most important or most talented in the group. We just had fun together. Maybe that has changed a lot in the half-century since I was a kid, but I know jockeying for position occurred in college.
By college, being the best friend of the guy that everyone wanted to be friends with was important. It was like being a sidekick, the Lone Ranger's Tonto or Batman's Robin. One could enhance one's own identity by being associated with someone of greater popularity.
The sidekick role was important because it made being a follower almost as valuable as being a leader. To be the one with a special relationship to the top meant I could be almost as popular, almost as smart, almost as valuable, and I believe that role carried over into the workplace.
I know I looked at the world that way for most of my career. I aspired to be that guy, the right hand man, the one everyone went to in place of the boss who wasn't as available.
It wasn't until much later in life that I learned many of the leaders I followed were no different than I. They, too, were setting themselves up as the sidekicks of others higher up the ladder. What did that make me? And what happens when the ladder falls?
What Jesus tried to teach his team was that they had to see their roles differently.
They were greatest when they served others. They needed no one to emulate other than the ones they would consider least significant, the servants among them.
Imagine if we took that message to the workplace. What kind of organization structure would we have if there were no sidekicks, no followers and no leaders?
Many view the deacon's role as sidekick to the priest, and that may be how it looks up at the altar, but it isn't really the case. In fact, the very question of who is greater diminishes the significance of all the roles, clergy and lay, within the Church.
Sure, it is tempting to think that I am more appreciated or more valuable than another. It feeds the ego and we are all attracted to that type of nourishment. But there is a need for all of us to recognize the contribution and value of each of us. Without that appreciation for the gifts and strengths each brings to the party, we can accomplish nothing of any great importance.
In other words, the whole is greater than the parts, so the answer to the question is all of us are the greatest among us, all of us as one, that is.
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