The Fourth Paradoxical Commandment

May 19, 2008

The Mentorship Approach With Teams & Groups

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

This isn’t really a revolutionary concept. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Marc Antony delivers the line in one of the most-memorized speeches in the English language:

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Of course, his goal was to get people to remember good deeds, but the pattern he described is true. What, then, is the point of doing good?

There has been a shift in recent years in what people are being taught about networking, mentoring, and even marketing. Instead of quid pro quo relationships (You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours) people are encouraged to look for opportunities to help other people. It sounds like a noble, altruistic ideal.

But it’s presented with an idea like karma: if you do good things for other people, it will come back to you many times over. It will come as offers of help when you need them, an increase in your sales or client referrals, or new business opportunities. I think that’s pretty close to the old system: You scratch my back and “the universe” will make sure a lot of people scratch yours.

Is there a point in doing good simply because it’s good? I had an employee who was a single mother with three children, the youngest with birth defects. She was going through an organization to help her family get a house. They required her to move close to where the house would be built but keep her same job. That meant she was driving a long commute to work for us. I wrote a recommendation for her when she tried to change to a closer job, but that’s when the organization told her she would start over in the process if she changed jobs.

I called the case manager at the organization to discuss the situation. I explained that, although she had to be moved to part-time because her transportation was inconsistent and her disabled infant needed a lot of medical care, she was coming to work as often as she could. I explained that the medical care was near where she was living and near where the home was being built. I urged the case manager to allow her to change jobs but stay on track to get the house.

It was several weeks before the organization agreed she could switch jobs and not lose her place in line for the housing program. During that time she worked when she could, and we scheduled her for as many hours as she could work. This was not helpful in any way to me or to the other employees. It would have been much more convenient to hire a part-time person who could come in consistently when needed. In fact, after she moved to her new job, we hired a part-time employee who came on a regular schedule and things were much easier.

But it was wrong for the organization to have unreasonable requirements on a low-income single mother with a disabled child. It contradicted the mission and underlying purpose of the program, helping people who can’t otherwise qualify because of difficult life circumstances to have a house.

I did what I saw to be the right thing, to keep her as an employee as long as it took for the organization to approve her application, and to call the organization and advocate on her behalf. If I hadn’t written it here, nobody but a couple of people would even know. I’m not getting referrals from poor single mothers or from bureaucratic agency employees because of what I did. I’m not waiting around for the universe – which to me would mean God – to repay me.

I intended it as doing good simply for the sake of doing good. It was right to help that family reach their goal, and it was necessary for me to do what I did to make it happen. Sometimes the only payment for doing good is knowing that you have done good, even if everyone else forgets.

Do good anyway.

Posted in The Mentorship Approach With Teams & Groups, Zine 9: May 2008