Construction Monthly Magazine | Tampa 2023 Build Expo Show Edition

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 pay offs. 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 put us in immediate
proximity to people who had the same or
more privilege than we had.
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 spear
fishing, 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.
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OWNER, FOUNDER
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ON PURPOSE
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.
“
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).
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.
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