Discovering my WHY?

John Maxwell has said that there are two great days in a leaders life: The day they were born, and they day they discovered why. 

We are doing an exercise where we “tell our story” and mine starts with the journey that lead me to the day I discovered my WHY. 

It was 2008, I was our company’s top sales rep and had aspirations of moving into sales leadership. My wife was getting ready to have our first, and only, child. (more on that later)

Things couldn’t have been better, until that day our son was born and we were told something wasn’t right. “What do you mean something isn’t right?” We asked the doctors. Turns out our son has a rare chromosome abnormally that no one (no doctor, no geneticist, no specialist) has ever seen before. At first it was no big deal, we thought oh well things will work out. 

I get promoted to Sales Manager in September of 2008 just as the market crashes, we pivot and drop half our sales staff because we simply couldn’t carry people that weren’t pulling their weight. 

2009 comes along, market is still tough, sales are starting to come back, we are a single income family and we are getting by like a normal couple with a small baby.

Except as milestones start to pass our little guy by, and we start asking questions. 

Why isn’t he sitting up yet? Which turns into why isn’t he talking or walking yet? All of this along with a few surgeries, genetic testing, specially designed “booties” to help his feet grow in the proper manner. The years are starting to fly by, but our little man isn’t walking or talking, or doing the things that all of our friends’ children are doing. 

This is about the time I thought “why me God?” “Why me, what did I do to deserve this?”

There were several months of us forcing our crying child into a special walker designed to help him begin the walking process-boy he hated it. We would stroll around the cul-se-sac and my neighbor would even bring his dog out for Brody to try and chase-which made this most hated task tolerable for him. 

It’s about this time that my wife and I come to the realization that our lives aren’t ever going to be “normal“. 

All of our friends kids are playing ball, and being “normal” kids. Ours is doing speech therapy, occupational therapy, in home skill building therapy in the hopes he can someday catch up. 

One day I had had enough of trying to make my boy like everyone else and realized that everyone should envy him. He is the absolute happiest little guy you could ever meet. Through all our struggles, this perfect human is smiling and bringing joy to everyone he meets. When I looked at his perfect smile I broke down, cried, and asked God again”why me?” What did I do to deserve to be a father to the most perfectly happy, caring, loving, joyful person on the planet? 

Watch this and you will see why.

Brody video

I found out Why I am here!!!

In reflecting back on why I wanted to go into leadership, it turned from “Because if everyone just did it my way we would be fine” to "How can I help those I lead to discover their why?" 

My wife and I started having conversations about taking every resource we have and putting it toward our only son. Now God may have other plans but we have decided to keep our family small. We call our family The Three Musketeers because we do just about everything as a family. 

We also had concerns about the divorce rate of parents of special needs kids being far higher than that of parents with typically developing children. 

This year our son turned 12 and we celebrated our 15 year wedding anniversary. 

We are nothing special, but when I discovered that I had to lead myself first before I could ever hope to lead my family, or a team, or a company this really started my leadership journey. 

That is why I love what I do. Leading people has become my passion. I’m nowhere near the leader I want to be but everyday I’m getting closer and closer. 

Tregg Lindberg is the Regional Sales Manager at Technocom

Headquartered in Charlotte N.C.

704-200-3280 [email protected]