He Built Them a Pond

Growing up, my family never traveled outside of the Midwest. While I was fascinated by the vastness of the world, I had not experienced much of it firsthand.

In my mid-20s, I was presented with an opportunity to spend a summer with a group of Americans in the Philippines. This was an easy yes for me! I had never seen the ocean, been on an airplane for more than a few hours, or needed a passport. I was ready to experience new things.

Upon arrival in Manila, I found myself taking it all in. The unique architecture, the sounds of a different language, the taste of a mango right off the tree, and the smell of diesel were all foreign to me. There was an overwhelming sense of newness which forced me into a constant learner mindset.

It has been said, “the more you see, the less you know.” This was certainly my experience. Everywhere I looked I was reminded that I had so much to learn.

Over the course of that summer, I was able to experience life from a variety of perspectives. We worked with small children and orphans in the capital city, visited one of the world’s largest garbage communities called Payatas, and hiked through a jungle to spend two days in a rural mountain village. However, one of my favorite experiences took us to a college on a small island.

We traveled by boat and had been told we would be helping to build a fishpond on the campus. I am not sure what I was anticipating but upon arrival, I remember thinking, “this was not what I expected.”

The main building on campus housed a few classrooms and a couple of offices. Each classroom was very simple with some chairs and a chalkboard. Most of the window openings didn’t have screens or glass to cover them.

The two other buildings were dormitories for students who were not from that island. The dorms were basically one long open room lined with beds for about 30 students. The beds were a basic wood frame with a thin blanket for a mattress. There was a bathroom at the end of the hall with toilets and buckets full of water. There were no showers as we know them, the buckets were the showers!

This college was certainly primitive. There was no grand campus entry, no quad, no recreation center, no large library, or a computer center. It took me a while to realize there was no cafeteria. Instead, there was a small fire pit where students could reheat food or cook livestock, poultry, or fish.

After our campus tour, we heard more about the fishpond we would help to build. We were told that the college President had recently discovered that many of the students were so hungry they had resorted to eating frogs. He was devastated to learn about the depth of hunger on his campus.

As a leader, he wanted to address this need. He met with his leadership team and proposed they build a fishpond in the middle of campus. This would give students the opportunity to simply go fishing when they were hungry.

What a wonderful example of leadership; his people were hungry, so he built them a pond. He was committed to meeting the fundamental human needs of those he was leading. He understood that if a student was hungry, they would not be able to focus, be fully present, or learn at the highest level.

I strongly believe that leaders have a responsibility to meet the needs of their followers. If your people are hungry, feed them.

However, I don’t believe physical hunger is our only responsibility. If our people are hungry for feedback, growth, new opportunities, or they simply hunger to be heard then we have a responsibility to notice and respond to that need. This is a gift we get to give to our followers.

We must navigate our workspace with a curiosity to understand the needs of those we are leading.

I can’t think of a better way to lead people than to address their hunger pains.

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