The challenge of a great mentor

"This guy’s going to be the death of me,” I remember thinking at one of my first board meetings as the new director of the conservation department. I was young, full of ideas, and certain that I knew the way forward. 

Too certain, in fact. 

And here was this this old guy, challenging me at every turn. Pushing. Questioning. Arguing, I sometimes felt, just for the sake of doing so. I remember coming home frustrated and griping to my wife how much more work he was creating for me with all his, “Well, what about this?” and “Have you thought of that?” and “We need this information…”

That was over a dozen years ago, and I can say with complete certainty that I am a better leader today because I had Jim Garnjobst on my conservation board. 

I don’t know when I realized what an incredible asset he was to the organization and to my professional life, but once I did, I came to value it immensely. Jim had this way of being challenging without condescending. Authoritative without being dictatorial. He could be steadfast without digging in. He had strong opinions but was willing to hear other sides. He could even be swayed by a good argument backed with solid information. And even if his was still the minority opinion, he would back the group’s decision. 

He was there to serve the organization and the people it benefited. And pushing its leader to make better decisions was a sure way to do so. Many a leader would be wise to follow his example. 

One of his other frustratingly endearing traits was his propensity for storytelling. Many a long-running board meeting concluded only to see Jim launch into a story of bygone days on a Canadian lake with fishing buddies, one of whom was my grandpa. While I wanted nothing more than to conclude my 12-hour day and go home to the family and dinner, I couldn’t help but find myself immersed in his tale and smiling as I drove home fifteen minutes later than intended. 

On a couple occasions, he even brought pictures. The printed kind you rarely see any more. I still have a few he gave me featuring a younger version of the grandpa I still miss dearly, holding a fish…and a story that Jim was happy to tell. 

I now see lessons in those moments of “meeting overtime,” though I doubt such lessons were intentional. When Jim told his stories or asked about my family at a board meeting, he put people as the central focus, not the work. We’re all just people with lives inside and outside of work, stories to tell, things to celebrate and worry about, and connections to be made. His stories connected us.

Care about the people, and the work gets done. And done well. Sure, we could debate and disagree in the meetings. We often did. But we’d make decisions and move on, connected by mutual respect, a sense of shared service, and more than a few fishing stories.

Even when he argued, I came to realize, he did so from a place of service. As a board member, he wanted to serve the people of this county, and repeatedly made clear that was the motivation he brought to the board table. Through his service on the conservation board, he sought to create great outdoor places for families and friends to make memories. To give them stories to tell and to connect them to the community he called home. And he would fight hard for what he thought was best for the organization and people it served.

I suspect he brought this same approach to his long service with Kiwanis and the Carthage Lake Club. And I’d bet he caused more than a few debates at those organizations. I’d also bet both are better for it.

Sometime after he had received the terminal illness prognosis, I asked Jim after a board meeting one night how he was holding up. In what I now see was perfectly on-character, he first mentioned his family and how he had most of the logistics handled so they’d be taken care of when he was gone.

Service. You don’t serve 24 years in the National Guard, stay married to the same person for 62 years, and have the impact on a young conservation director’s life like Jim has without a heart of service. 

He ended the conversation that night with, “Chris, I’ve lived a good life. I can’t say I have any regrets. Yeah, there are probably some fish I haven’t caught that I’d still like to, but that’ll have to wait I guess…”

Jim left us for the great fishing lake in the sky on October 28. He was 87. 

I’ve been blessed to have had a few really great mentors in my life. Jim was certainly one of them. I’ve known no one who could challenge me the way he did, but do so from such an obvious place of caring and from such an unwavering desire to serve others. 

I hope to carry his legacy on by maintaining that challenge culture on my board so that we can continue to deliver great parks and outdoor experiences. To give others the opportunities to create the memories of which board meeting stories are told. 

There are, after all, still some fish waiting to be caught.

This is the monthly "Living Land" column I write for the local newspapers here in Des Moines County, Iowa.