Tuesday Travel Tip: Align Your Commitment

{Photo by Michael Sladek}

I am on the leadership team of an annual convention for Lutherans called the ELCA Youth Workers' Extravaganza. The event moves from city to city, and this year we met in New Orleans with almost 700 participants.

For participants, it can feel like the biggest family reunion they've ever attended, the deepest spiritual retreat they've ever been on, or the most qualified set of experts they've ever had access to. Each year, someone asks, "How do you do it?"

The E-team, as we call the leadership team, has equal commitments to excellence and hospitality. It's a good combination.

Excellence without hospitality means something really awesome on the surface which no one really cares about deep down.

Hospitality without excellence means that everyone is really nice, but nothing truly remarkable happens.

It takes both.

For the E-team, this means we bring our "A game" while still caring about each other and the participants. We want participants and vendors to only have to ask for things once, or maybe not at all since we already anticipated what they need. We want people to be impressed with our program but know they are heard when they give suggestions for the future.

We also show hospitality within our E-team by being super responsive, super communicative, and building trust by getting things done well and on time.

It also doesn't hurt that we all just like to be together.

It's a great place to live for one week a year.

***
Download "Sacred Spaces," a free chapter of my upcoming book, "Urban Nomad USA: Travel Sized Life Coaching for Journeys of All Sorts" from the right sidebar of this page.

Explore excellence and hospitality in one-on-one coaching by telephone or email.

Don't want to miss another blog post? Sign up on my website to have them delivered by email or become a fan of Urban Nomad on Facebook to see them in your news feed.

Do you know a smart, creative, spiritually-minded person who might be interested in this blog post? Please forward it in its entirety, compliments of Dawn Trautman, Urban Nomad. Copyright, 2012.