Performance-Driven Giving

The Roadmap to Unleashing the Power of Generosity in Your Life

David L. Hancock, Bobby Kipper, Kent Sanders

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780062890504
• eBook ISBN: 9781631957253
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Performance-Driven Giving is an empowering journey that will inspire you to give and live like no one else.

Our culture teaches us that the key to happiness is being a consumer. But the truth is that the deepest and most lasting joy comes by giving. You will learn why giving is so important to your performance and discover a framework for building a giving habit into your life.

Giving is a key factor in your performance in every area of your life. This one-of-a-kind resource shows you the how and why of performing at your very best by giving.

Many people don't give because they have never been taught why, how, or where to give. This journey will show you a powerful spiritual perspective, help you overcome the obstacles giving, and show you practical ways to start giving right away.

If you've been looking for a resource to help you perform and make a bigger difference in the world, look no further. Performance-Driven Giving is your guide to personal and professional fulfillment like you've never experienced.

PART 1

Establishing Your Roots

CHAPTER 1

The Seeds of Greatness

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

—Sir Winston Churchill

One of the most beloved films of all time is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart plays George Bailey, a local banker who always wanted to escape his life in the small town of Bedford Falls. While all his classmates were off living exciting lives, he stayed stuck in his humdrum life. George believes his life is a failure because he never accomplished big things.

One day his uncle Billy loses $8,000 in cash. This sends George into a tailspin. Things keep getting worse until, finally, he decides the only way out is to take his own life. Before he can go through with it, Clarence the angel rescues him. Then he shows George what life would have been like for the people of Bedford Falls if he had never been born.

The ending of It’s a Wonderful Life shows the whole community coming to support George in his time of need. He is overwhelmed by their generosity. Near the end of the film, George holds up a book from Clarence that magically appears on the pile of money. The inscription reads, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

This heartwarming story has inspired generations of movie lovers. Why? Because it reminds us of an important truth: Giving is the best way to live. This is what our parents taught us as children. As kids, we heard phrases like “’Tis better to give than receive” or “Sharing is caring.” Everyone knows that it’s better to be a giver like George Bailey than a selfish old man like Mr. Potter.

If we all love givers and see the value of living this way, why do we have such a crisis of giving in the world today?

Perhaps as adults, we become desensitized to the needs of the world around us. As we grow up and move out of our parents’ homes, we get consumed with our own needs. We have jobs, houses, families, and other commitments. Many people find themselves being crushed under the weight of consumer debt, not to mention the college graduates who face mountains of debt from student loans.

In this context of entitlement and “me first,” it’s easy to get consumed with material goods and put our full focus on making as much money as possible. We become cynical and selfish, only concerned about ourselves and what we can gain from others. While money can certainly be helpful, it’s not the be all, end all of our existence. But we sometimes act like we are competing with others to get the most toys at the end of the game.

Although we all admire givers, few of us actually want to become one. So again, we ask: If we value giving so much, why are so few people actually givers? What are the benefits of giving? How do we create a culture of giving within our families, businesses, and, ultimately, the world?

Those are some of the questions we set out to answer in this follow-up to the first volume in the Performance Driven series: the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling book Performance Driven Thinking™. In that book, we looked at the vital role thinking plays in driving our performance. We showed how your thinking impacts your performance in every area of your life. If you want to be successful, it begins with good thinking.

In this book, we want to take the next natural step in the performance-driven process: giving. This may seem like an unusual step, but we’ll show why true success is not only about yourself and how you perform—it’s about how giving benefits everyone around you and ultimately helps you to perform better. We aim to show how giving can help you become a better parent, team member, and leader.

One of the most pressing questions on the minds of people today is “How do I measure success?” Perhaps that’s always been the case throughout history. However, it’s especially vital today since there are so many different ways to become financially successful. That being said, money is not the ultimate measurement of success.

Many of the world’s most financially successful people agree. As Jay Conrad Levinson and Jeannie Levinson wrote in The Best of Guerrilla Marketing: Guerrilla Marketing Remix, “Of all the pitfalls, the money morass is the deepest, darkest, and biggest. As lack of money is toxic to human existence, too much money can be equally toxic. That’s why entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates spent the first half of their lives accumulating money and the second half giving it away.”

That is a great perspective on true success. It’s not about accumulation—it’s about impacting others through giving and leaving the world a better place than you found it.

In the rest of this book, we’ll dive into various aspects of giving and show how giving can impact every area of your life. But first, let’s take a look at the concept of performance-driven giving and why it’s so important.

What Is Performance-Driven Giving?

In Performance-Driven Thinking, we wrote, “we realized that performance didn’t depend solely on the desire to succeed, and it didn’t solely depend on the effort or will to succeed. The two needed to be connected through a particular thought process. We have defined this process as Performance-Driven Thinking, and we think it could change your life!” We went on to define performance-driven thinking as “The thought process that connects the desire to perform with the will to perform a specific task or goal.”

We are more committed than ever to the performance-driven framework! How, then, does giving tie into the performance that drivers your thinking?

Giving is a natural outgrowth of performance-driven thinking. It takes it to the next level because the most successful people recognize that we are all interconnected in a web of relationships, whether it’s family, church, school, business, or community. The best performers are those who know it’s not about them—it’s about how much they can give and serve others.

In other words, performance-driven giving takes the concepts we taught in the previous book and shows how good thinking naturally progresses into giving within every area of your life.

Our definition of performance-driven giving flows directly from the thinking process we outlined in the previous book:

Performance-Driven Giving

The giving process that connects the desire to perform with the will to perform a specific task or goal.

Desire: To long or hope for something we want.

Will: To decide, attempt, or bring desire to action.

Throughout this book, we aim to show you how giving is the next logical step to take if you want to connect your desire to perform with your will to perform.

We also want to emphasize that giving is ultimately an action that you take. Many intend to give, or would like to give, but they don’t end up taking action. We want you to think of giving as an action that is part of your everyday life. Performance-driven thinking can have a radical impact on your life, but if you want to take it even further, you can implement it even better by giving.

Five Convictions about Giving

As we begin our journey into performance-driven giving, let’s take a moment to reflect on five core convictions that drive our perspective on giving.

1. Giving begins with you.

As you read this book, you’ll be tempted to think about your family, friends, or co-workers who need to hear what we have to say. And yes, they do! We would love for as many people as possible to hear our message about giving.

But remember, it begins with you. We all have to start somewhere, and many people have not been taught basic principles about giving. Change begins with you and your personal giving.

2. The most powerful giving is based in community.

There are many ways to give as an individual: You can give money, time, encouragement, referrals, inspiration, and so many other things. But when you pair your giving with other people in your community, it’s so much more powerful, whether it happens in your family, business, church, or other area.

It’s the principle of synergy: When two or more people come together for a common goal, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There is creative, emotional, and financial power in community.

3. Giving impacts every area of your life.

One of the core differentiators between high achievers and average achievers is their understanding of how giving makes them greater. They understand the power of generosity and putting other people first. They know it’s not possible to achieve anything worthwhile alone, and that we are built for community.

High achievers who are also great givers also know that giving helps them perform better because of the principle of reciprocity. When we give to others, they are inclined to give back. We can literally create value from nothing when we choose to give first, and then it is reciprocated in some way.

In the process, we make ourselves better. That is not the primary purpose of giving, but it’s a natural result.

4. Most people want to give but don’t know why or how.

If you look at the state of our “me first” culture today, you might be shocked to learn that anyone would want to give. It seems that everyone is entitled and only wants to accumulate power, wealth, and status for their own pleasure and security. However, that is a cynical view of the human spirit.

We believe that most people, deep down inside, truly want to give. But because of too much debt, endless distractions, too much despair, and frequent doubt, they face a lot of obstacles on their journey to becoming great givers.

Just as we said in the previous book that we are born to perform, we also believe that we are born to give. Giving is a learned habit, and one that children as well as adults can learn. However, they must be taught, and that process does not happen overnight.

5. Giving is the best way to leave a legacy.

There is a poignant scene near the end of the musical Hamilton when Aaron Burr fires a fatal shot at Alexander Hamilton. Time freezes in Alexander’s mind as he observes that a legacy is like planting seeds you will never get to see come to fruition. That is the perfect way to view a legacy—something you are creating here and now, something that can impact people for generations to come.

Some people believe that a legacy means being famous. But fame has nothing to do with a legacy. You can be a famous artist or author, and millions of people may admire your work. But that doesn’t mean your legacy was everything it could have been.

There are so many great legacies you’ve never heard of—people who have lived great lives and built great companies and organizations, who quietly helped untold numbers of people in big and small ways.

You don’t have to be famous to create a legacy. You only have to be intentional. That’s why we’ll return again and again in this book to the metaphor of trees to help you become strong in your giving so you can impact many people over generations.

Givers are like sturdy oaks that stand the test of time. Non-givers are like tiny saplings that topple over in the wind. We want to help you plant the seeds of success in your life through giving, so you can in turn plant seeds that help others grow.

Where We’re Coming From

We don’t want you to think this is all talk. In our respective positions over the years, we have worked hard to put performance-driven giving into practice. But we don’t speak as experts on this topic. We speak as fellow learners on the journey of continual giving. As such, we are excited to share our background on the topic of giving and why it is so important to us.

David’s Story

One of the most vital aspects of our business at Morgan James is our work with the charitable organization Habitat for Humanity. Since 2006, we have been a proud partner of Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg. We place the Habitat logo on the back and inside of our books along with a statement of our passion for the organization.

We are honored to help raise awareness and donate books to the organization’s life-changing work, which helps low-income families build decent homes they can afford to buy.

People sometimes ask me (David) why I’m so passionate about our involvement with Habitat. I always answer that it simply makes sense to me. One of the most basic human needs is having a place to live. Helping people achieve this goal is a way we can help a great organization and provide a foundational element in people’s lives.

I have always been a fan of home ownership. I bought my first house when I was twenty years old. In my...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part 1: Establishing Your Roots
• Part 2: Branching Out
• Part 3: Bearing Fruit
• Conclusion: One Hundred Years from Now
• Acknowledgments
• Performance-Driven Resources
• About the Authors