The Missing Ingredient

I don’t know about you, but not all my culinary efforts win the gold medal. Many a time the unlucky diners eat the production just to be polite. And more often than not when my cuisine lacks a little something, it’s because it lacks a little something.

Forgetting to add lemon zest or a pinch of chili powder won’t make the outcome inedible, but it will be disappointing. On the other hand, overlooking an egg or adding too much or too little yeast will produce a write-off.

And so it is with our Giftings, and our careers. It may be fine to be gifted at numbers, but if it’s not your nature to be attentive to fine detail, you will likely not excel at accounting or engineering. And while there is a market for educators without people skills, it’s a narrow one.

Just as there must be a hundred kinds of bread, there must be a hundred kinds each of engineers, doctors, lawyers, project managers, and bureaucrats. For example, some lawyers never go to court, nor should they. There are others, though, who are brilliant at cross-examination, but should always let someone else write their pleadings.

So in examining our Giftings to determine our highest and best calling in life, we need to consider both the big picture and the little picture. It’s fine to have a deadly wrist shot, but if you have no sense of the movement on the rink, you’ll likely never make the National Hockey League.

Recall that the Alignment Principle says that everything is optimized for the professional and their clients when the unique Giftings of the professional are exactly aligned with the unique Needs of the clients. When the “Missing Ingredient Syndrome” occurs, the client is mis-served because the professional is missing an ingredient which is critical for satisfying the Need of the client.

Not surprisingly, the same is true when the Needs of the clients you are trying to serve are misaligned with your Giftings– in other words, there is a missing ingredient. The gentle pastoral-style clergyman is only going to disappoint and be disappointed with a congregation full of razzmatazz seekers, feeling unappreciated and unfulfilled.

At the end of the day, then, the trick to Alignment is to ensure that you understand and have the whole package of Giftings that match the whole package of Needs of your clients. If you have that, the rest will take care of itself.