“But I am the same donkey you have ridden all your life,” the donkey answered. “Have I ever done anything like this before?  “No,” Balaam admitted.”

I received a call from a person who has managed someone for a very long time.  Recently, some issues had resurfaced about the subordinate.  These issues which came down to the lack of some basic good management practices have followed this person for a number of years and the manager was asking me, “Am I being too loyal and have I really tried to fix these issues?  Is it time that I just call it?”.  I had to revert to my tried and true principles of performance management:  1) Will the person be surprised if you move directly to “It’s time for you to go.”?  2) Has the person really had a chance to improve (in this case, improve to the identified issue)? and 3) Will you be treating the person as you’d want to be treated yourself?  Those three questions were enough to give pause and decide that there was still another chance that needed to be given.  The extra chance is not always the right choice, and is certainly not the right way to go if there is a values problem.  But, in many cases, the answer to the three questions will yield us wanting to be sure we are doing the right thing and the best way to do that is to get to a strong affirmative on the answer of question #2.

I wonder when people read the passage in Numbers about Balaam and his donkey before the movie Shrek what the donkey sounded like in their minds?  It’s hard to not hear (or see) the donkey differently now.  Regardless, it is a great lesson for us that it’s easy to forget that we can’t always see what is in front of us but those who know and care for us sometimes do and we need to be attuned.  But, the greatest lesson for me in this passage is that as we go through our careers, jobs and life that there is One who is always with us and when things aren’t going the way we want them to go, there is likely a bigger and more significant reason.  But, we are quick to jump to our own reasoning and we fail to give God a chance to reveal His plan for us.  If we trust in Him, He will always lead us in the right path at the right speed and most importantly, in the right direction.

Reference:  Numbers 22:30 (New Living Translation)