In the forward to Greater Than Yourself you’ll find the story of Patrick Lencioni and Matthew Kelly.

Lencioni’s business fables, which tackle topics surrounding organizational health, leadership and teams, appear on the national bestseller lists year after year. They’ve sold 2.5 million copies around the world and have been translated into 20 different languages. He is the founder and president of The Table Group, where he spends his time writing books and articles related to leadership and organizational life, speaking to audiences interested in those topics, and consulting to CEOs and their teams so that they can apply his principles in their organizations. He also works hard to use his own theories in the management of his firm, and recently has started applying them at home.

Matthew Kelly is an acclaimed writer and keynote speaker.  His books on matters both business-related and spiritual, have sold more than one million copies in over a dozen languages.  Over the past ten years more than three million people in fifty countries have attended his speaking engagements.  He’s the president of Floyd Consulting, a firm founded on the belief that your organization can only become the-best-version-of itself if the people who drive your organization are striving to become the-best-version-of themselves®.

It was after Patrick met Matthew that he soon realized the, “power of lifting someone else above me, someone, I believed, whose mission and potential exceeded my own.” He believes in Mathew and strives to support him and see him excel.  Pat used his own connections and contacts to plug Mathew into new and better opportunities.

As he writes in the foreword to Greater Than Yourself, Patrick was truly thrilled to see Mathew succeeding, but he asked himself, “How could I feel such a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction helping someone who was younger that I was, and in many ways lesser known, achieve more recognition and attention than I did?  How could I want someone else to be greater than myself? As much as we like to believe that we are capable of such actions, I have to admit that I was surprised by it all.”

He goes on to offer this advice:

“At first [GTY] may seem counterintuitive, maybe even unnatural, but I encourage you to set aside your preconceived notions of success and accomplishments and throw yourself wholeheartedly into the GTY endeavor.”

Clearly, we all have a lot to learn from these two extraordinary role models.