How Did We Become Gilburg Leadership Incorporated?
Our Family Story
We are often asked, “How is it that three siblings came to work together in this business?” The short answer is that we each joined our father’s consulting business in our own fashion after pursuing varied careers where each of us tended towards leadership, facilitation and problem solving opportunities. As the family business became a viable option, we each joined, bringing that diverse background and experience base to the table.
There is a longer, deeper answer to this question that stems from our family history. As in many families our childhood years bestowed many gifts and wounds upon us. Our parents divorced after several years of trying to make it work, as our mother suffered from untreated mental illness.
We were mostly raised by our father, Alan Gilburg, whose life’s work has always been (and still is) to heal the world. As a youth worker, a pastor, an international educator, and an organizational consultant, Alan has always demonstrated a deep commitment to his vocation. Our childhood experience was molded in this crucible: a caring, yet absent mother and a single, mission-driven father.
As children we coped with the challenges we faced, sometimes alone and often together as a team. We learned some strategies for how to be safe and make the most of dysfunctional settings: Deb frequently saw solutions and created order and structure for the benefit of herself and her younger sister and brother; Amy was often a powerful and persuasive mediator—helping her younger brother feel engaged and cared for while calming and reassuring her sometimes stressed older sister. Jon frequently took a low profile: as a keen observer of the family dynamic, he avoided confrontation and found ways to fend for himself, seeking non-traditional solutions to problems.
Not surprisingly these childhood traits carried into our adulthood. As siblings and co-workers we had to find ways to bring our best to the work we do without getting side tracked by our old childhood dynamics. This was and is a process of speaking truthfully to one another about how we are “showing up”. The inner and interpersonal work we have done with one another (and with our father) has been both painful and liberating. No one likes to be seen as less than capable and certainly no one likes to have his or her darkest behavior exposed to others. And yet, it is this effort that has strengthened our adult relationships and allowed us to be more fully present and bring the gifts we possess individually and collectively to our vocations.
As adults, we are all highly attuned to people—what they are doing and saying, how they might feel, and what they most need from themselves and others. Deb still sees strategic solutions clearly and can pave a path of logic for any individual or group to follow; Amy relies on a highly intuitive sense of what people need in order to overcome long-held and outmoded beliefs that limit them from achieving their capacity. Jon keys in on the underlying and fundamental group dynamics or behaviors that might prevent a group from becoming a powerful team. Our own experience of creating a strong family “team” allows us to explore what a group of people requires to be a strong team. The candor, apprehension, and personal risk-taking that can accompany Team Alignment are places of comfort, ease, and personal experience for us.
Ultimately, we hold a strong belief, borne of our own childhood traumas and successes, that as a people, we possess the capacity to better ourselves and our situations. We can discover the answers. We see our life’s work as being guides to those willing to seek the answers to complex challenges, answers that can be found within themselves and the people who surround them. We are experts at working with people, and as consultants we help leaders and teams foster the trust and communication skill, or “relational capacity,” and the commitment to specific practices, that enable them to act on the knowledge they possess to do the work that desperately needs doing.
So our story brings us to your story. We imagine, like many people, you are increasingly aware of your discomfort and dis-ease with your current work environment. Perhaps you have come to the realization that things must change in order for you to have the kind of experience and productive output you dream of. Perhaps you are hoping for more from yourself and your people, but are painfully aware of the limitations — a lack of trust or clarity of what you are capable of as a team. Regardless of why you are reading this and what you are facing, we believe that the path to your desired future is best walked with a guide who is familiar with the terrain. We are experts in the rocky, murky landscape that accompany human relationships, and we have experienced the remarkable power that surfaces when compassion and light are brought to those relationships. It has been the bedrock of our sustained success. It is a dominant theme to our story.
What is your story? What is the theme to your story? What would you like it to be? We have helped many individuals and groups write new chapters to their stories; chapters that read the way they want them to read, not the way they have always been. Perhaps we can support you. Please contact us.