Being on Mission: An insider's perspective

If you have ever explored my partners/associates page, you'll know that for the last five years I have worked in partnership with Mark McGregor, helping with leadership trainings, coaching, resource creation and his book ‘Being on Mission’. 

I have known Mark since we started high school together in 1974, so yes, it’s been a while!  In most of the years between when we graduated from MCI in 1978, and July, 2010, we have had very little contact with each other.   But time works her magic, and the world brings us the people we need to reconnect with and the lessons we need to learn in due time.  

I am one of the ones that said over and over to him that there must be a simpler way of explaining his principles than to go through the work of building a story in which to share them.  The  process of writing that story, the book ‘Being on Mission’ was in it’s 10th year, and umpteenth revision, and people were waiting!

I, like others around him felt that if he wanted to tell a story, the story of his own life would be so powerful!  That story of a kid growing up in MacGregor, Manitoba with the NHL dream in his heart, but the slow death of his father to cancer sidelining that dream when we were 17.  The completion of his education degree before the call that took him to play hockey in Europe.  Not the NHL he had so long dreamed of, but the next best thing!  The life that he and his wife Faye have built over the course of the last 30 year in the raising of two world class athletes in their children Ryan and Kaitlyn.  Of building the international leadership business from the ground up.  Of the training centres he now has around the world, teaching his principles and his coaching techniques to enhance the skills of other leaders around the world.

But Mark would hear none of that.  Instead, he maintained and shared his belief in the power of story to teach, and looking back today, seeing the feedback and the impact of ‘Being on Mission’ i think I finally understand.  

'Being on Mission' is the story of Michael Weber.  Michael is an ordinary man, a person like you or I, who gets caught up in the expectations and challenges of corporate life, too often at the expense of all that we hold dear.  Michael, in his effort to rise to the top of the ladder in his sales business, does so at the expense of his marriage, his health and his integrity.  Also, like many of us, he only sees the damage he has done to himself and others when he has a life altering and near death accident.  How often is it something that is that devastating happening before we begin to wake up to what is most important?


Michael works throughout the book to rebuild his life, learning lesson after lesson through role models and mentors that come into his life.  He experiences a leadership seminar that teaches many of the common sense things that his long time friends have been trying to share with him.  He begins to see the bigger picture in life, the reality that a vision remains but a dream if we do not take the steps and do the actions that will create change in our lives.  As Mark repeatedly tells us, ‘to know and not to do, is really not to know.’


Throughout Michael's journey, in ‘Being on Mission’ we have to opportunity to experience one of Mark’s leadership seminars through the character of Gregory Marks.  We get to learn and participate in activities and discover tools that will help us to see our vision and be on mission for ourselves through tools like the ‘My True Calling’ tool, or the 'Social Roles mapping'.  There are pearls of wisdom and messages throughout the book that leave us thinking more deeply about what is truly important to us, forcing us to ask the question, how do I want to be remembered?  What will my legacy be?  Am i making a living, or am i making a life?  All necessary, although scary questions that we need to explore, but often don’t until tragedy alters the trajectory of our lives. 


I’m honoured and thrilled to have been part of the process for the past several years, and I believe in the principles and messages that Mark shares through the book.  I have been his student myself since we began our work together in 2011, just as the story and lessons in my life has made him a student of mine.  That is life, isn’t it!  Exploring the lessons and learnings that we each have to share, taking what makes sense to us and imbedding it in our own lives,  questioning new or different ideas so that we too may begin to broaden our understanding and our belief system of what might be possible in our life.  I have experienced the benefits of his 10 Principles of Leadership and Life, and have seen the positive outcomes that embracing them have made in my life.  I believe that those principles will have an impact on your life as well, and hope that as you work towards being your own best self, exploring what your own deepest purpose and mission in life might be, and creating a vision that will lead you to that, that you’ll give ‘Being on Mission’ a read.  I believe 'Being on Mission' it is a powerful leadership book that  will make a difference in your life, and in the lives of those around you!!

'Being On Mission' is now available in paperback, Kindle and as an audio book on Audible.  

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