627: Privilege: What Business Owners Can Do With It When They Have It

The irony of this training is the fact that I am writing the script while flying on a private plane from a secluded island in the Bahamas after spending 3 days spearfishing, eating, and hanging out with friends and clients. That was a moment of privilege. Spending your days with continual electricity is a privilege.     If you are listening to this talk, you have privilege. Privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group”.  A more direct definition is to be “exempt from an obligation from which others are subject.”   How do you know if you are in a class of privilege?  Others shoulder a burden you don’t have to shoulder.   It wastes our time to try and determine if we are privileged, and instead to ask “because we have privilege, what does that mean?”  In the barren desert of the middle east, a man hears a message.  “I will bless (privilege) you so that you can be a blessing (offer privilege to others).”   This training is about the so that.   When you have privilege that goal is not to consume the privilege you have, but instead to inventory the privilege, proximity yourself among those who do and don’t have your privilege, and then offer privilege to others in a way that allows them to follow the same reinvestment strategies. The problem with privilege is that we tend to see it as terminal; either it stops with us (because we consume but don’t re-invest, OR it stops with the direct person we share it with because they consume but don’t re-invest). Brian Fikkert co-authored an aptly named and important book “When Helping Hurts” that opens our eyes to understand that when we have privilege, we want to share that privilege, and too often the privilege we share ends up doing more harm than if we would have just kept the privilege ourselves. It would help to redirect the privilege discussion back into the context of Executive Leadership and tie privilege back to our definition: proximity to motivate a team to pursue the named future you see. Let’s look at consuming and deploying privilege through three lenses of our definition. First, privilege can bring proximity. There is a template for leveraging the privilege of money to influence friendships.  Of course, we are not condoning nor suggesting bribes or payoffs.  Instead, you can choose to deploy your money in places that provide you proximity for connection. We were at a resort with our family, clearly a place of privilege…it was a once in a lifetime type of trip.  This resort puts us in immediate proximity to people who had the same or more privilege than we had.   We get to talking with some of the other vacationers and over time get the direct email of a very well-known and influential music industry executive who has put some of the greatest acts in the world on the stage.  We sat and watched a World Cup match with he and his young son and developed a relationship.  The inanimate tool of our money provided us with “a special right…granted or available only to a particular person or group.”   It is good to consistently ask, “how can the privilege I have provide proximity to bring that privilege to others, or to provide new relationships that breed new privilege.” Secondly, privilege can breed motivation. When you have access to privilege you often have something someone else would like to have but is unable to attain. Think about the privilege of a well-known athlete who is willing to step down from his throne of notoriety and sincerely show up to read a book to a Kindergarten class, or visit patients at a hospital and offer encouragement. The athlete has the privilege of notoriety, influence, and voice…they offer that to those who do not and thus bring a unique motivation that might help that Kindergartner grow up to have a unique impact, or provide the motivation for the mental fight that a patient will need to conquer their disease. Privilege reinvested breeds new and novel privileges that can be perpetuated. Privilege consumed breeds bitterness, expectation, and myopic arrogance that pushes the privileged to think they are the ones responsible for their own privilege ignoring all of the investment of privilege that has been planted into their own lives.   This training exists in part because we don’t want you to slowly become that. You are too generous, and you are too intentional for your life to slowly devolve into arrogance and self-importance. Thirdly, privilege helps to jump the various hurdles on the way to the named future that you see.   I enjoy Guy Raz’ How I Built This Podcast…it is a fascinating look at the emotional inside of some of the world's most interesting businesses. Towards the end of each podcast, he asked a staple question, “Does your success have more to do with luck, or with skill?” I love the podcast, and I hate that question. Remember the old adage, “the harder I work, the luckier I get.”  When we have moments of momentum and success that we cannot explain we tend to call it luck.  Pausing to reflect we can actually align our “lucky moments” to moments of privilege; privilege that you had that connection, or were in that specific location.   There are things we coordinate or manipulate for our benefit, and there are things that “just happen”.  Pay close attention, ask yourself, “would this have happened if I did not have access to a certain privilege that others don’t.” One day I might meet Carrie Underwood… it would feel like “luck”, but a short audit of my relationships and privileges reveals that I had the privilege of being a paying member of a mastermind group, that mastermind group offered me the privilege of meeting and getting to know a very talented guitarist and Dobro player, and that very talented guitarist had the privilege of being the Dobro player for Carrie Underwood. What looks like “luck” to most is actually privilege dressed in a lack of awareness and context.   History’s wealthiest and wisest person whose privilege was well documented once declared, “all is vanity and chasing after wind.”   When we make privilege the end game, we become the walking dead. When we look at privilege as an investment to enjoy and reinvest… we make time for what matters most.   Finally, privilege can and will be a load to bear.  Share that load with people who have wisdom.  The word “team” has its roots in the concept of a team of pack horses…a unified group pulling heavy loads in a specific direction. Privilege requires building a team to help advise, direct, and hold account your privilege so that it remains a value to all, and not just you.   A business owner had accrued a significant sum of money in a profit account that he had setup to build up as his business grew. As we were reviewing progress I told him, “Congratulations on how you have grown that account.” He looked at me with a blank stare and responded, “just one more problem I’ve got to handle.” When you have resources, it is your responsibility to manage those resources.  Of course, most people are bent to desire more instead of less, and the more you have, the more you are required to distribute. The ultimate question you must answer is “what will you do with what you have” knowing that your response to that question will reveal the desire and state of your ultimate motivation. Be mindful, slow, and wise with the privilege that you have.