Let me tell you about a local fellow.
Drew Brees is the quarterback of the New Orleans Saints football team. After a great season last year, the team got off to an 0-4 start in 2007, but since have come back to even their record at 7-7. If they win the next two games, they’ll end up at 9-7, only one game off last year’s record with a slim possibility they will make the playoffs.
Even so, Drew Brees is having the best year of his career. Football fans will appreciate these numbers. Brees has not thrown an interception in the last 121 passes. He is on a pace to break the NFL record for the most completions in a season (he has 378 passes and needs 41 in the next two games to pass Oakland’s Rich Gannon who had 418 completions in 2002). Brees has 25 touchdowns this year which means he will probably hold the Saints record in that department after this year.
But wait, it gets better. In the past 10 games–after the disastrous first 4 games–Brees has completed 71 percent of his passes. Last Sunday, against the Arizona Cardinals, certainly no pushover, he completed 26 of 30 passes, including the last 12 in a row. That is almost unheard of, and figures out to a completion rate of over 86 percent. Ask any football fan how impressive that is.
And yet, Brees was not selected for the Pro Bowl, professional football’s all-star exhibition. It’s the recognition from fans, coaches, and fellow players that you are at the top of your game. In fact, no one on the Saints received that honor this year. Dallas, meanwhile, is sending 11 players to the Pro Bowl.
If Brees is disappointed, you’d never know it. This man is the most even-tempered, the most mature, of any player we’ve ever had in these parts. His foundation helps underprivileged children in the New Orleans area and he can frequently be seen interacting with children and parents as he uses his fame, his influence, and his resources to make a lasting difference. If our works indicate our faith, as James says in the epistle that bears his name, Drew Brees is our brother in the Lord.
Recognition is good in almost all cases. Most people seem to like it, particularly when it comes from their peers. In the annual awards show of the motion picture industry–the Oscars–time and again, we hear movie stars who receive the golden statuette speak of how special it is to have been chosen for this honor “by my peers.”
The only thing I recall from Psych 201, a course required of sophomores at my college a long time ago, is this incident. In a factory where hundreds of people were slaving away at menial jobs, someone walked back and replaced the light bulb above the head of one particular worker. There was nothing wrong with the old bulb; he just put in a new one. Immediately, the productivity of that worker went up. Evidently, someone knew he was back there and felt he was important. It’s a great lesson.
The trick is to appreciate the appreciation without requiring it in order to do your best work. And to extend it to others without needing it yourself.
In the last “leadership lesson,” the one dealing with humility, we encouraged readers to take down from the wall all those plaques of appreciation, recognition and achievement that seem to accumulate over the years. And yet, maybe not. There is something to be said for leaving them up. At least, leaving them where you alone can see them and be motivated by them.
After posting that essay on humility, as I was walking from my study, I noticed a plaque given by my seminary some 9 months after Katrina. The text says something about “distinguished service.” Now, it was not hanging on the wall and never has been. It sits on a lower shelf of a bookcase in front of some reference books. So, why is it there? Why did I not relegate it to the drawer–or worse, to the dumpster–as I’ve been counseling readers to do?
The answer is that I’m of two minds on this subject.
