Ben Louagie almost didn't give me a chance.
When I interviewed at the Michigan State Medical Society, he skipped my initial interview. I assumed he'd looked at my résumé and decided I wasn't particularly interesting.
Turns out the story was a little different.
He was hesitant about recruiting someone from another health care association in town. And, admittedly, our earlier interactions hadn't exactly blown him away.
Then I joined MSMS.
A few months later, I called Ben and another colleague out for failing to share information about an organizational success. I needed it to do my job. [I have absolutely zero recollection of this, btw.]
He remembers being surprised that the new guy would speak up so directly.
Then impressed.
Then he invited me to lunch.
Afterward, sitting in his car, he asked whether I wanted his job as chief operating officer.
I did.
I told him my goal was to become a CEO someday, and if that was a step toward it, absolutely.
What I didn't know was that Ben had already decided to help me get there.
Getting out of the way
Years earlier, someone had told Ben that a good leader works to be replaced.
Find capable people. Support them. Get out of their way.
“That advice is easy to agree with,” he told me. “It's much harder to follow when the capable person is sitting in your passenger seat.”
Ben could have treated my ambition as a threat.
Instead, he helped create opportunities that fundamentally changed my career.
His philosophy is straightforward: understand your limitations and surround yourself with people whose strengths complement your own.
“I never needed three more Bens,” he said. “One was plenty.”
He also believes the person willing to tell you you're wrong might be the most valuable person in the room.
That's something I've never forgotten about working with him.
The joy of building
Ben's entrepreneurial instincts didn't begin in a boardroom.
They began with family members who couldn't leave a good idea alone.
He remembers someone building a makeshift cart to make repairing a boat easier. Nobody thought about selling it. They just saw a problem and enjoyed solving it.
“Not the opportunity. The fun,” Ben said.
That curiosity followed him through association leadership, health care innovation and startups.
He also gardens.
Every spring, he plants seeds without knowing which will grow. Some don't. Others surprise him.
He sees work much the same way.
“You try anyway, and you learn something from every idea that doesn't take.”
Eventually, he discovered something else.
“Being good at something and being built for it are not the same thing.”
He could run operations successfully. But the work that energized him most involved people, possibilities and building something new.
Love without conditions
I remembered Ben traveling to Romania years ago, although the details were fuzzy.
He filled them in.
He visited a town in Transylvania where churches, community leaders and local government worked together to support Roma families facing generations of discrimination.
The city donated land for a school and church.
What stayed with Ben wasn't one organization taking credit. It was what happened when different people decided a community was worth investing in.
His faith, he explained, comes back to a simple instruction:
“Love your neighbor.”
And he believes the measure of that faith isn't what someone professes, but how they treat people with the least power.
That philosophy also shaped his family.
Twenty-five years ago, his wife, Jen, volunteered them for Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Ben became a mentor to a young boy.
The formal program eventually ended. Their relationship didn't.
The young man became part of their family, lived with them for a time and remains their son in every way that matters.
Their three children delight in introducing him as their brother and letting people puzzle over the family resemblance.
Ben laughs about that.
But there's something deeper underneath.
“What it taught me about family is that how it starts matters a lot less than whether you keep showing up.”
The next generation
When I asked Ben whose influence had shaped him, he talked about his grandfather.
A man who worked hard, had a good attitude and never needed to deliver a lecture to teach a lesson.
Now Ben is thinking about what younger people can teach him.
He jokes that becoming a grumpy old man is a real possibility if he stops paying attention.
“Grumpy is often what happens when a person stops building and starts maintaining.”
So he's staying curious.
Listening to younger generations. Learning new things. Questioning assumptions.
And remembering that people once made room for him.
“The least I can do is listen to the people coming up behind me.”
I think about that conversation in his car differently now.
Ben didn't just offer me an opportunity.
He was practicing something that runs through his entire life: recognizing potential in other people and making room for it to grow.
In organizations. In communities. In family.
And now, in the generations coming next.
That's a pretty remarkable thread to follow.
