Lunching With a Leader

I had a rare opportunity to lunch with a senior leader today. It was somebody I had known already as I had taken the time to find out his favorite baseball team is the same as mine. We're all people, and there's no need to be in awe or afraid of anyone because of their job being higher on the ladder. I knew well enough to do plenty of listening, as I learn more when I listen more. What I learned was he had played tennis in college at Ball State. Usually I had just seen him in passing before, so even though we spoke it wasn't for long since he is a busy man. He can be out of the office often, traveling to other locations, in fact he said he was doing that next week. Before we went to a lunch counter that had a judge theme- including pictures of people like Oliver Wendell Holmes on the wall- I noticed a picture in his office. It was with baseball pitcher Rich Gossage, now in the Hall of Fame. He shared in other areas as well, like how he met his wife and when, college buddies and how some of them are divorced, even handling his dad's finances more after his mom passed. Proof that it  was well worth it to put in the entry for the 'lunch with a senior leader' drawing through the United Way campaign. Might have had minimal competition for it, but who cares?
   Part of the evening was spent getting caught up on chores like doing dishes and trash and recycle, along with going through mail and shredding some of it. Not much fun, but I need to do it regularly.