Broken people create broken businesses.
Broken businesses break people.
Whole people have the potential to create businesses that become a place where people can rediscover their identity, find healing from the brokenness of having lived in this broken world – discovering, and growing into the full potential of God's design for their lives.
In my book, When you lose yourself, do you know where to go looking for you?, I wrote a chapter which I think is really important for entrepreneurs:
What kind of mirror are you?
Stranded in the hall of mirrors
I can nevermore avoid
Images that cannot show me
Something long ago destroyed.
In the darkness, in the distance
In a corner of my mind
Stands a puzzled child in silence
Lonely, lost, and far behind.
In imagination only
In my single mirror see
Clear and calm, the one reflection
Of the person that is me.
- Adrian Plass, Broken Windows, Broken Lives
If there is someone close to you right now, with whom you have the liberty to be a little weird – go right up to them, and look into their eyes.
You will notice something. You. Two very small “yous.” One right in the centre of each eye.
We all are mirrors, each of us. The way you respond to me, tells me not only something about you, but also something about me. But because we are incorrigibly self-centred, as much as we can practice to see the world through another’s eyes, we never really quite get it right. And the effect of that is that the picture that I see of me, when you respond to me, is often the stronger picture, than the picture I see of you. It is stronger, but less obvious. In this lack of obviousness, lies part of its strength.
Standing in front of a mirror, you see the mirror, and you see yourself. Mostly we notice ourselves, and not the mirror. But step aside, and the mirror would begin to reflect other parts of the world to you. Similarly, we are mirrors not only to each other of each other, but also to each other of others. Sometimes when you talk to me, you don’t only reflect something of me, but you also reflect something of someone else.
In the physical, visible world, the quality of a mirror is determined by how accurately it reflects that which is before it. Crack or distort the mirror, and the picture it shows is no longer a true representation of the world it is reflecting.
Similarly, in our world of interactions, each of us is broken in one way or another; and just so is every person we are dealing with also in some way or another – broken. We are broken mirrors reflecting broken mirrors.
But there is One Mirror that was broken, and then restored. And He is the Only Mirror who has the ability to see through all our brokenness, to the very core of who we are, and reflect back to us, who He had made us to be. You see, Jesus is the Mirror that has the ability to take all the brokenness, absorb it, and reflect back a perfect image – as if it had never been broken. We can see in Him what we would be if we were not broken.
And that brings a bit of mending every time it happens.
When we deal with each other, we often just reflect each other’s brokenness. But when we deal with Him, He looks through it all, and reflects to us that His Wholeness can be ours.
There are then two things from this that we would all probably do well to remind ourselves of:
The first is to spend time, regularly, asking Jesus to show us who He really sees, when He looks at us. This will go a long way to mending the broken mirrors of who we are.
And the second is to learn to not just indiscriminately reflect back to those around us, their brokenness, but to ask Jesus to show us His reflection of the people we deal with every day, and to give us the courage to reflect back to those around us, the people that He had created each to be.
Many people don’t know Him. But they know you. Be to them, every time they deal with you, a moment of experiencing something of what it is like to look into the Unbroken Mirror.
This is your responsibility as entrepreneur
As an entrepreneur, or any other business leader, the people working for you are in some ways unnaturally vulnerable to the way you see them and treat them. This is true, whether you like it or not. You are not just another person in their lives. By the very nature of the structure of our society, you are a person of authority in their lives.
None of us are perfectly whole. We all have some brokenness.
But as a business leader, it is your responsibility to do everything in your ability to not allow your brokenness to spill over into the way you treat the people who work for you. You have the responsibility to create a culture and a workplace where people are restored, not broken even further.
Can I encourage you to take a little stock? Maybe ask for some feedback from people in your company or personal life you can trust the most. See if there are ways in which you are allowing some of your brokenness to break the people around you. If you find such areas, begin to pray into these, begin to look into your own heart. Begin to identify the warning signs of when you are about to do this.
Often inner healing does not happen overnight. But as a leader, it is your responsibility to do the work needed to create a workplace that is a place of mending, rather than a place of breaking.
To your success
Ashton
Grow Your Business
5-2-50 is a community of Christian entrepreneurs and founders who are passionate about building wealth and eradicating poverty by creating good jobs. We focus on businesses of at least 5 people that have been running for at least five years, helping them grow to at least 50 people, reach ZAR 10 million per year NPAT, and free the founders from the day to day grind of their business.
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