Ep. 21 - Ignorance and Vulnerability

How awkward does it feel when you have to tell someone just how ignorant you actually are?  

Yep - it's pretty awkward.  

Tune in today as Rob shares a story about an interesting predicament he finds himself in currently.  While not really equipped to accept the roles and responsibilities he's been asked to shoulder, he must ensure everyone involved understands his ignorance.

We can learn what we need to do, but if we're not already able to do so...and we agree - telling someone just how ill equipped we actually are is awkward and leaves us feeling vulnerable.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:30

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the All Around Growth Podcast, where I share dumb stories about my life with you in episodes like today. It is October 23rd? Uh 22nd? Boy, I don't even know. 2020. This is the All Around Growth Podcast. I am your host, Rob Kaiser, trying to collect and compose my thoughts with this particular episode. And quite frankly, I'm a little reluctant to share this experience because of that whole vulnerability thing. I like to think that I have this podcast and we talk about all these different facets of growth and development in our life. And I suppose that this is not really anything other than that, but it also sounds a little bit weird because I'm sharing some insight and some thought into my life, and that's a little weird for me to do because my life has sort of become something that I didn't really anticipate it becoming, and there are things that are coming to fruition in ways that I didn't really expect, and uh I guess we'll hear all about that as we get moving forward. So without further ado, why did I have to go out of my way to tell someone just how ignorant I am? Well, let's shed a little uh light on this story and provide some backstory, shall we? So I'm a member at a local church. And I am an uh yes, I'm an active member uh of this church. I uh this is the first time in my entire adult life that I have participated in a church, felt the desire to become a member of a church, and actively attended well before becoming a member and since becoming a member. Now, bear with me in my microphone here. Now, what's what's important now bear with me in this stupid microphone. Alright. Now, point that out because there are people I don't know. Alright, look, I feel like there are people who use the church and use Christianity as one of their you know defining characteristics and how they how they identify in this life, and that's there's a lot, and and people do it with political affiliations, people do it with sports teams, people do it with anything and everything. I'm not one of those people. There are things that are a part of my life, but I don't necessarily subscribe to anything or cling to any ideology so strongly that it defines me. Rather, I think I am defined by all of the things that I do, all of the thoughts that I have, and all of the actions that I take. Alright. Now, as I've also talked about in the past, Dave Ramsey has been a big part of my life. I've been a fan of Dave Ramsey's radio show for 10 years. I have actively been participating in Financial Peace University for about four years now. Two years have been actually taking it seriously, and have subsequently become debt-free in that process and coordinated my first course this past winter. In the past, my project management skills have involved budgets and things like that, but only in a very limited capacity, as I was merely just a project coordinator, project manager, oftentimes in the field, and the only time I was really in the office was during invoicing week, just so I could submit the proper reports to my superiors so they could submit the proper reports to their superiors and so on and so forth. I wasn't really involved in things like balance sheets and all of you know, I on and on and on and on. Alright. So after being involved in this church for a while, I I the pastor of the church reaches out to me about uh a month or s yeah, six weeks ago, something like that. Six, eight weeks ago, and asks me if I'd be interested in serving as the interim treasurer. Yeah, that's right. And initially I'm caught off guard by this, don't really know what to make of this, and I tell him that I'm gonna have to think on it. Uh uh You know, so with so I do and I talk it over with some people close to me. Well, really, yeah, and after a few days of contemplating, I I feel like I'm not really qualified to do this job, but it's something I can learn again based on my limited experience of the roles and responsibilities of a treasurer, and at that point in time, like I'm just I'm just sort of going off in my mind what I think it is based on some volunteer organizations that I'm a member of, and you know what I experience when I hear the treasurer talk in our meetings. Like I'm not really looking into this a whole lot, but I'm thinking, oh, it's you know, I can figure it out, right? Right. So a few days go by, I think about it, talk about it, and decide that yes, okay, if I'm feeling called to do this, so to speak, and if the and well the thing is, three different people at church had mentioned my name and thought that I might be a good person to fill this role because I guess the the the current treasurer passed away. I don't know what it was, if it's the way that I I don't know what I don't know what it was that made these people think that I'm somehow competent enough to be a treasurer, all right? But apparently they did. And here we are, the pastors talking to me, and I I I I somehow feel compelled to to do this. I don't know why. If you want to go so far as to think you know, say it's it's like me giving back what wasn't so freely given to me. I paid for the Dave Ramsey course, I paid for Dave Ramsey books, and people pay to participate in Financial Peace University, but to coordinate it, you know, that's on me. And that's on all the other coordinators that were doing that when I was participating in the class. So, in a sense, it is me freely giving back what was so freely given to me because those courses, those people who served as coordinators, they helped outfit me with the skills and abilities that I needed at that time in my life and still do today to change my life in the best way possible. So, in a sense, I feel like this is maybe what I had done with being a financial peace university coordinator, like taking it to the next level. I don't know. But, anyways, I say yeah. So I get you know sworn in for lack of a better term, or everybody just raises their hand on a council meeting last month, you know, a Zoom call. And I keep my trap shut and don't really say anything. Well, last night we've got our second council meeting on the phone and we're talking finance. And this past week I meet the financial manager at the church to review all these statements and documents and things of that nature. And then I meet her at the bank so that I can get my signature on file because as a treasurer I will be signing checks. And it finally dawned on me that we're talking about a lot of stuff that I don't really know anything about. So after reaching out to an acquaintance of mine, said treasurer friend from the volunteer organization that I work with, uh, you know, I inquired with him about like what I what am I doing? What should I ask? What am I getting myself into? And you know, he posed some real good questions that I didn't even think about prior to accepting this. And yes, I guess it's an interim role, and I'll be officially sworn in, or or or the church will have the opportunity to, you know, either vote me in or, you know, more specifically, vote me out if they think I'm not a good fit for that for that role. I can vote against the council, if you will, but I just this morning I sent a long, long email to the financial manager and uh the pastor, you know, made sure that I shared my LinkedIn profile with them and had them read it. Made sure to tell them that just a few short years ago I was well over twenty thousand dollars in debt. And outside my experience with Financial Peace University and managing a few projects, uh I have very little experience managing other people's money. Moreover, I went out of my way to tell them that it looks like everything is in good shape, that I, but you know, I failed to ask questions such as how are the books being kept? I I believe we're utilizing Excel as far as I can tell, but I don't know if we're using QuickBooks or Quicken or some other sort of electronic financial tracking software. Um before agreeing to this, I didn't even take a look at what the treasurer had, you know, material-wise, uh, and uh ask questions about who filled our out our our who does our taxes and who fills out the the forms that we have to submit on account of being a church. I mean everything looks like a tight-run ship, everything looks like it's already well managed, but I agreed to something that I didn't fully understand. I feel stupid asking questions that I should have asked in the beginning. But at the same time, you know, I have a sense of trust that things are going to work out. Because if they don't, then things will just go back to the way that they were. And if they do, they'll understand that I don't have the experience that maybe the past treasurer had, or I don't even have the experience that the financial manager has. But I feel like this is going to simply be something that I can learn more about as time goes on, teach myself, and may actually turn into a transferable skill that I can utilize, harness, and uh apply elsewhere in my life when it is appropriate to do so. But in the interim, until I figure that out, it doesn't change the fact that I agreed to and started participating in a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, and to come back after the fact and say so just really makes me feel like an idiot. And the only way to effectively address this negative feeling, this feeling like an idiot, is to, well, just step up and own it and say, hey, you know, I kind of committed to this without fully understanding things, I don't really know what I'm doing, I'm incompetent, I'm ignorant. And those are words that are not inaccurate, and those are actually words that I used in the email to them. Maybe not incompetent, but certainly ignorant and just straight up ignorant. So, you know, I don't know, somewhat stressful, feeling dumb, but at the same time, it's all part of what we need to do in order to grow all around. And that's part of what this is all about is all around growth and sharing stories with one another to let everybody know that uh we are not alone as we go through this life. Um everyone does things that make us feel dumb and everyone, you know, it's okay. Oftentimes it seems like what people want isn't someone who is necessarily the most skilled or proficient in a certain thing, but it seems like what people find desirable is an attitude of gratitude, a willingness to learn, a willingness to admit that indeed we do not know everything that we think we do, and being open and receptive to things that uh are a little different or aren't necessarily everything that we are accustomed to. So perhaps that's part of the reason why I've been called to do this or participate in this role as a treasurer. I don't really know. But hopefully there was something within this story that resonated with you and you know you were able to take something away from the experience that uh that I've had over the past few weeks, a few days, and especially over the past 24 hours. So here's to feeling vulnerable, here's to learning and continued growth and development on this path that we are all on together, and like someone very important that continually reminds me of, all we're doing is walking each other home. So have a great day today. Try to make someone else's day great as well. And uh thank you for tuning in today. Check us out on Facebook and all around the world, the Facebook group, as well as our telegram channel. Thanks, everybody.