Serve others. I’m not qualified to do 90 percent of the work my association’s members and staff do every day. What I can do is align the truths I discover by asking questions into a plan that depends on trust and openness. Use your resources and your experiences to serve everyone you connect with to achieve your organization’s mission. Commit to helping them get through their roadblocks and you’ll be doing it for your organization as well.

Be honest and sincere. That’s not as easy as it seems. But trust can only be built by being trustworthy. When we enter conversations with a commitment to being frank and open, we can have the real conversation that can lead to real accomplishments. Will that conversation be difficult? Sure. But truth and sincerity are the keys to long-term value.

Ask good questions. I started here only two years ago, and for the first year I asked a lot of questions that took advantage of my newness. I was free not to know “accepted truths.” That’s good, because I’m skeptical about them. I still strive to ask questions that can lead to improvement personally and organizationally: Why am I procrastinating? Why is this project succeeding (or failing)?