Why does Attollo exist? We all naturally try to live a divided life, a life where we neatly compartmentalize our lives into buckets marked “faith”, “family” and “work”. We desperately try to keep those buckets away from each other. God in His wisdom finds a way to combine those buckets into one marked “integrated life”, a life where the activities of our faith, family and work are lived as a whole. That fact is made evident to me in the most unlikely of places – LinkedIn.
The original model for LinkedIn was to facilitate a connection between an executive who wanted to connect with another executive for some reason. The executive who wanted to connect had to go through a common connection and ask them to make an introduction. This was to protect your connections from the online riffraff and to add high quality new connections from friends and business associates only. Those days are gone of course. I get at least one request a day to connect from a complete stranger who wants to sell me a “no fail – lead generating system” or some other B2B offering. The change in the model hasn’t been all bad though, as I’ve noticed a very human non-business aspect of life pop-up in the posts daily.
In my ten years at the helm of Attollo, members of our groups have gathered together to support their fellow members who are struggling with the same things you often read in posts every day on LinkedIn; the grieving of the early death of a child by suicide, cancer of a family member, a sibling who has progressive MS, a child struggling with identity issues, marital stress, the wounds of childhood trauma replayed in the mind as an adult, and aging parents to name just a few. We also mourn as a group when a business fails. They can and they do. Resolution of these very human struggles comes from within that individual of course, but the Attollo group members pray for each other, their families and their businesses every single day. They also recommend professional support when appropriate.
Often, just knowing that other peers know and care what is going on in each other’s lives and that they are being prayed for on a daily basis by all the Attollo groups lifts the spirit and can make a difference in what is an otherwise very uncaring world.
Our in-person groups attend Mass and have lunch together which builds deep, long lasting friendships. This manifests in the concern for the well being of the other member’s faith life, their family members, and also for business success which is their source of income for the members to provide for their family.
We also celebrate together. Attollo group members and chairs have attended marriages of members, celebrated the births, graduations, and other life events of each other’s children. We also celebrate professional successes.
The thing is that a business leader is first and foremost a person who is, due to our fallen world, broken and often struggling with life outside of work and despite that must deal with the competing demands of their faith, their family, and their business. There are days that occur more often than not that those demands are too much to bear alone and shouldn’t be born alone. That is the mission of Attollo.
