For What It's Worth

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Unwavering Support

(10 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• Lasting change begins with personal integrity. Before we attempt to reform institutions or communities, we must examine our own motives, assumptions, and commitments. Authentic transformation starts inward.
• Autonomy and community are not opposites. Healthy community does not suppress individuality; it depends on self-aware, self-governing individuals who freely choose to support one another.
• Support is sustained, not performative. Real change rarely comes through noise or force. It grows through steady truth-telling, accountability, and the quiet courage to stand with others over time.
• Every generation must decide how it will participate in change. The times will always shift, but the character of that change depends on whether we retreat into division or commit ourselves to shared responsibility.

“The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first.” –Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership

In Being a Game Changer 2 we saw how responsibility, servant leadership, and accountability work together to shape healthy organizational cultures. Effective leadership begins within—requiring individuals to hold ourselves to higher standards before expecting change from others. By choosing proactive ownership and daily acts of integrity, leaders become the moral and cultural backbone—the soul—of their organizations..

Principle #5: Supporting One Another

One of the defining qualities of humanity is the people who step forward on behalf of those who cannot easily speak for themselves. Throughout history, in every generation and every culture, individuals have been respected for sharing what little they had with those who had even less. They call attention to injustice and offer a steady example of basic human decency.

They are a clear expression of our better angels (see Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined). If we took a moment, each of us could create our own list of both well-known and unsung heroes. Trying to name them all would be nearly impossible.

Who would be on your list? What is it about them that makes them stand out to you? What are their strengths and their limitations? Which qualities do they seem to share?

This is the last entry in our series on becoming a game changer. So far, we have looked at:

• Committing to being a game changer
• Being a truth teller
• Being the soul of an organization
• Being accountable

Today, we’ll conclude by exploring what it means to be intentional and generous in our support for one another.

The Courage to Stand Together

For many of us, this may be one of the most challenging commitments we make. It is not easy to step forward when our intentions can be misunderstood, and feeling misunderstood is never comfortable.

There is often a cost to anything truly worthwhile. Think of the people on our own lists of heroes and the sacrifices they have made to help create a better world. At some point, each of them likely searched for meaning or purpose and chose to make a difference where they could. Almost all hoped to leave the world better than they found it. Some may even have paid the ultimate price.

Most of us will never be asked to make that ultimate sacrifice. Yet we can still build on what they achieved, standing “on the shoulders of giants,” as Sir Isaac Newton wrote. Let their example inspire us, without feeling that we must compete with them. It is enough to do what we can, where we are, with what we have.

Every generation faces its own unique complexities. Those challenges also bring opportunities, and each generation has the chance to respond and adapt—some more successfully than others.

Ten years from now, life may look much the same on the surface, and we may feel that little has changed. Yet we may also look back on those same years with genuine satisfaction, recognizing the progress that has been made. Ultimately, it is up to each generation to decide why it acts, what it chooses to do, and how far it is willing to go.

Our deep support for one another grows out of a deep commitment to telling the truth—to ourselves first, and to others second. This is a slow, human process that rarely happens overnight; it can unfold over a lifetime. Many who came before us never had the chance to see the changes they worked and sacrificed for, yet their efforts still opened doors for those who followed.

In that sense, his words echo the broader theme of this series. Standing together requires more than agreement; it requires inner steadiness. It calls for patience, humility, and a willingness to grow. We cannot offer meaningful support to others if we are unwilling to confront our own inconsistencies.

Ultimately, the commitment to stand as one is both inward and outward. It asks us to cultivate integrity within ourselves and then extend that integrity into our relationships and communities. When we do, our support for one another becomes less reactive and more rooted—less about winning and more about belonging.

The call to stand together is not a call to abandon autonomy. On the contrary, it assumes it. Only individuals who have wrestled with their own convictions can meaningfully support one another. Without personal integrity, community becomes performance. With it, community becomes transformative.

While the final commitment we make is our support of others, it was important that we revisit the idea of our commitment to an inner life for, as Greenleaf writes in Servant Leadership, the “inward and outward …are seen as part of the same fabric.”

One interpretation of Greenleaf’s quote is that, based on our character, whoever we are on the inside is seen as our outward actions. Another is that moving in and out of our inner lives also means that there is an ebb and flow of relationships. Some connections with people will have a greater influence, others not so much.

Community as a Transformative Force

In her bestselling book Reality Is Broken, Jane McGonigal explores the surprising ways games and shared experiences can reshape how we understand connection, motivation, and resilience. At the heart of her work is a simple but powerful insight: we are wired for meaningful participation with others.

Contrary to what some assume about gaming culture, McGonigal suggests that the appeal of games is not escape from reality but rehearsal for it. Games create structured environments where people cooperate, solve problems together, and experience a shared sense of accomplishment. In those moments, participants often feel more focused, more hopeful, and more connected than they do in everyday life.

It is this last quality—connection—that deserves our attention. McGonigal describes what happens when people collaborate toward a common goal. Even brief shared challenges can create a genuine sense of belonging. We feel seen. We feel useful. We feel part of something larger than ourselves.

“In a community there is a sense of belonging, fitting in, and caring. Communities typically arises when a group of people who have a common interest start to interact with one another in order to further that interest.

“To become a member of any community, their needs to be an understanding of the goals of the community and the accepted strategies and practices for advancing those goals.” –McGonigal

These observations resonate far beyond the world of games. They remind us that community is not passive. It is not simply a collection of individuals occupying the same space. It is built through participation, contribution, and shared intention.

At one point, McGonigal introduces the concept of “collective effervescence”—the uplift people experience when they act in synchrony with others. Even small moments of shared effort can generate energy, hope, and renewed motivation. We leave those experiences feeling strengthened rather than depleted.

Even a brief, shared endeavor can shift how we see ourselves and one another. It reinforces the idea that we are not alone in our struggles or our aspirations. It gently challenges the myth of radical independence and replaces it with a healthier understanding of interdependence.

When we allow ourselves to invest in community—whether through shared projects, honest conversation, or simple acts of support—we participate in something transformative. Community shapes our character. It refines our empathy. It enlarges our sense of responsibility.

In the end, transformative community is not built on grand gestures alone. It grows through steady presence, mutual encouragement, and the willingness to show up for one another. It asks us to give something of ourselves—and in doing so, it gives something back that we cannot create on our own.

“But even playing a very short game together, we are reminded of how much we share with even the strangest of strangers.. We gain confidence that we can connect with others when we want to, and when we need to. And with that confidence, there is no reason to ever feel alone in the world–virtual, real, or otherwise.” –McGonigal

The Times They Are A-Changin’

In 1964, Bob Dylan penned and recorded this timeless protest song, shaped by the civil rights movement and the growing influence of folk music. It carries a clear and urgent message: change is inevitable, and we each have a choice in how we respond to it.

Interpretations of the song vary widely. Some consider it the quintessential protest folk song, while others see it as overly sentimental. Interestingly, when he wrote it, Dylan admits that even he hadn’t fully grasped its meaning or the full scope of the social upheaval unfolding around him.

We are living in challenging times, and in many ways we are facing questions that feel new. As our society struggles to agree on shared facts it is understandable that, for many, the possibility of people coming together around a shared purpose and common good can feel distant.

Yet, we’ve been here before.

Moving forward will require a deep and sustained commitment to supporting one another, especially across the divisions that make bridge-building seem impossible. At the same time, it is worth remembering that every generation has wrestled with voices resistant to community and reluctant to consider the well-being of their fellow citizens.

People may disagree about the best path forward, but few would deny the need for honesty and mutual support. So, being a game changer begins with where we are: first with ourselves, and then with those closest to us. It is less about telling people how to live and more about modeling, through our own actions, the kinds of changes that bring us closer to our ideal selves.

If the times are indeed changing—as they always are—then the question is not whether change will come, but how we will participate in it. Will we withdraw into cynicism, or will we choose engagement? Will we deepen division, or will we practice the difficult work of support, truth-telling, and shared responsibility?

Unwavering support is not loud or performative. It is steady. It is courageous. It begins in small, often unseen decisions to stand with rather than against, to listen before reacting, and to contribute rather than retreat. Across generations, real change has rarely come from force alone; it has come from communities of people willing to sustain one another over time.

In the end, the times will change with or without us. But the kind of change that endures—the kind that strengthens organizations, communities, and relationships—emerges when we commit ourselves to supporting one another with integrity and resolve. That is where being a game changer truly begins.

¹ See Cătălin Avramescu, The Meaning of Meaning of Kafka, Munich Social Science Review, vol. 1 (2017).

Editor’s note: This post was originally published from 12/14-12/27, 2022 in a five part series called Becoming a Game Changer. It has been condensed and edited for continuity and clarity.