Get Joey's free weekly beBetter Leadership blog:

beBetter Blog

The Battle of Oliver and the Crawfish

By Joey Havens

Share this post:

One of our favorite things to do is host an afternoon crawfish boil at our house. Kris, CeCe’s brother, is our master chef. He always features the normal corn and potatoes, but he likes to elevate his boil with a few surprises. For example, smoked sausage is a favorite add-in, mushrooms, green beans, onions (Yum!), garlic cloves (CeCe has these off limits for me but I love them), artichokes and even asparagus.  

Of course, the preparation and social time between boils is as much fun as the meal itself which happens around a round table with the garbage can in the middle for the shells. The picture with Oliver and the crawfish was taken at the start of the boil. 

You wash all of the crawfish in a big washtub and occasionally one will find his way out. This time Oliver was right on the spot to round the rogue crawfish up. A video of his adventure is posted on his Instagram, @OliverJeanHavens. Despite not really knowing what this crawfish was, Oliver met the crawfish head-on. Staying agile, moving from side to side and constantly making the crawfish back up. 

Yes, Oliver won the battle. His resilience was remarkable, even when the crawfish caught him on the nose.  

Today, we live in an exponential world and we are going to experience more things that we have not seen before at a very fast pace. 

Our ability to learn, unlearn and relearn will be critical. 

Our ability to anticipate some of these new opportunities, challenges and new competition, will provide us the agility to thrive in uncertainty. Most of all, our teams will need to be resilient like Oliver. When we get hit in the nose, we must quickly move back into the fight. How can we build more resilient teams? As always, it starts with a strong sense of belonging, where leaders are intentional to trust and care.  

Oliver, let that crawfish go!  

Leading with Significance has officially hit the retail market and is now available at these online locations: 

For more information on my presentations or to access my beBetter blog library go to joeyhavens.com.