What is your Wake?

The Wake 

One of my favorite things to do is to sit on the back deck of a boat going across the ocean and just watch the wake. It is such a beautiful, ever-changing creation as the ship continues on its path. 

You can tell a lot about a ship as you look at its wake. 

If it is in a straight line, you get a feeling that the boat is steadily on course, and that the captain is not dozing at the wheel, or that an engine or a shaft is not somehow out of whack. But if it is wavering, you begin to wonder. Also, if it is smooth and flat, you know something about the speed of the boat, and if it is steep, you can tell something about its drag. In other words, what the wake looks like can tell you a lot about the boat itself. 

-With people, the same thing is true.

When a person travels through a few years with an organization, or with a partnership, or any other kind of working association, he leaves a “wake” behind in these two areas: task and relationship. 

-What did they accomplish and how did they deal with people?

So, we must look out over the transom (the flat surface forming the stern of a vessel) and ask ourselves, “What does that wake look like?” 
Are a lot of people out there water-skiing on our wake  -smiling, having a great time for our having been connected to our lives”? Or are they out there bobbing for air, bleeding, and left wounded as shark bait?

Henry Cloud, Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, HarperCollins.