Learning Solutions Blog

Guest Post for "Elegant Leadership"

2011-02-27T15:02:00.000-05:00

Please see my guest post for Sylvia Lafair's blog, Elegant Leadership. Dr. Lafair is the president of Creative Energy Options and the author of Don't Bring It to Work:

http://blog.ceoptions.com/?p=2276

2010-06-22T15:56:00.001-04:00

Family Teamwork = Better Caregiving

Part 2

Author's Note: This series of posts was written in alliance with Carebuzz, a site that offers resources for caregivers. Please visit their site at http://carebuzz.com.

In the first post in this series we discussed building a high performing family team by keeping the information and conversation going to better serve the loved one. Here’s another recommendation for family caregivers on how to build a supportive team.

Whether in the workplace or in the family, use all the resources at hand. It’s important that family members discuss how to share responsibilities to achieve a common goal of providing the best care. Too often one person tries to do it all, quickly becomes overwhelmed, and then resents that no one else pitches in to help.

Because of geography, skills or financial resources, caregiving usually falls to one or two family members, and the rest are left to wonder what’s going on and why they’re out of the loop. They may want to help but don’t know how and hesitate to offer their services. The primary caregiver may be too stressed out to think about how to divide up the work or simply doesn’t want to ask others for help.

Neither the care recipient nor the family members benefits from one person taking on all the work. Think about a football team; each player or group of players has a different role, and all the roles need to work together effectively for the team to win consistently. The quarterback may call the plays, but if he tries to do everything himself, disaster follows.

In my own family experience, others have helped with everything from researching the medical condition or facility to supplying “insider” medical knowledge, doing laundry, running errands and pet sitting. Everyone has a talent that can help in sharing the load and making caregiving a more pleasant experience for all. Those at a distance from the care recipient can still accomplish a lot via the internet, phone or library. Those who can’t contribute financially can help with household chores or other work.

And remember that, in many cases, the care recipient also has gifts to offer to the family team. If they are still able to do things such as writing notes or making phone calls, those small tasks help keep them connected to others. When my mother was in a nursing facility, she insisted on filling out her own menus; it saved us time and helped her feel useful. The most effective teams use everyone’s strengths to the best advantage.

What has been your experience with using all the talents in your family to provide better care?

2010-06-03T16:56:00.001-04:00

Family Teamwork = Better Caregiving

Part 1

Author's Note: This series of posts was written in alliance with Carebuzz, a site that offers resources for caregivers. Please visit their site at: http://carebuzz.com

When helping mom and dad, siblings often face issues such as coordinating their medical appointment schedule, home care and health crises. Applying “team building” concepts to family caregiving can ease stress and greatly improve a loved one’s care.

In this series of posts, we’ll explore the major keys to building a high performing family caregiving team.

The first key is communication. Lack of it often trips up the family team and prevents the best care. Usually one person in the family is the primary caregiver and is often overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done. He or she simply does not have the time to keep all family members updated.

Absence of communication then sets up a situation where others make incorrect assumptions about the family member’s condition or the caregiver’s intentions. We have all seen what happens when people make assumptions, don’t bother to check if they’re correct, and then act on them.

Pretty soon you have a lot of needless worrying, finger pointing and anger that tends to get worse as time goes on. Some family members may completely withdraw from any caregiving responsibilities; others will form “cliques” within the family and criticize the main caregiver or other family members. None of these behaviors contributes to improved care.

In many situations siblings do not have a plan for keeping each other up to date. Because everyone doesn’t have the same information, they disagree on what constitutes “best care” for parents and experience dysfunctional behavior. So what can families do to prevent that from happening and improve communication?

It’s a good idea for family members to agree, ideally when the caregiving begins, on a means of communicating, the items to be communicated, and frequency. If family members are comfortable using the internet, there are great sites such as CaringBridge and GenerationsUnite where they can set up a page to update everyone. Family members can reply, ask questions, send greetings, suggestions and offers of help. Even Facebook and Twitter can be used to keep the information flowing, although privacy concerns must be addressed on public sites.

A less high tech method is for the primary caregiver to phone a designated family member at regular intervals or during a medical crisis, and have that designated person then call everyone else or set up a phone tree to complete the calls. The phone call method is simple and has worked well for my husband’s large family. Whatever the method, the goal is to continue the conversation with each other. In a later post, we’ll look at how to handle conflict when it occurs—and it will.

What communication tools do you use to enhance family teamwork?

2010-05-26T10:47:00.002-04:00

Never Car Pool With Your Boss—

And Other Lessons Learned From

40 Years in the Workplace

Part 3

Part 2 of this series pointed out how, in relationships, “right” can sometimes be “wrong” and why we shouldn’t store up grievances. This installment continues the series of lessons learned from 40 years of participating in and observing workplace behavior—my own and others’.

Persistence pays off

When I was a child, my father often referred to me as “stub bor n”. Since being stubborn is not an especially attractive trait, I like to think I turned that quality into persistence. Most of what I’ve achieved in life has come through being persistent: not giving up even though all around me were saying “that’s enough”.

A few years ago while on the treadmill at the gym, I began talking to a woman on the machine next to me. After we discovered we had been in the same high school class, a light bulb when on for her, and she exclaimed “YOU’RE the one.” When I asked what she meant, she replied, “You’re the one who stayed in French class long after everyone else quit. We all talked about you and wondered how you did it.” In fact, by my senior year in high school, I was the only student in fourth year French. The teacher was beyond tough, with many unannounced tests and no mercy shown to those who struggled with the language or didn’t do their homework. Although my stomach was in a knot most days, I stuck with it.
The payoff for my persistence was a scholarship to study in France for a summer, a perfect score on my French SAT exam, and permission to skip two years of college French. To my way of thinking, this was not a bad tradeoff for the sinking feeling when seeing those maps pulled down over her surprise blackboard tests. And after she became my private tutor (because I was the only class member), we actually developed a cordial relationship that was far removed from the tyranny she exhibited elsewhere.

That situation was just the first of many times during my career that I wanted to give up but kept going to achieve a goal. I’m certain that some parents and students at the high school thought I was being more stubborn (and stupid) than persistent. And maybe I was. However, I believe that persistence wins the day in most cases. The meek may not inherit the earth, but sometimes the quietly tenacious do.

Capture the lessons in every failure

All of us have no doubt experienced a lot of failures and bad times along the way to success. I know I have. What’s important is not how familiar you are with failure but the lessons you’ve learned from it. Capturing lessons and making appropriate adjustments to our actions are a key accompaniment to persistence. After all, if we persist in doing the same things in the same way, we will not move forward. This concept applies to organizations as well as individuals. Too often, organizations lose the knowledge gained through failure because they are so intent on punishing the guilty parties.

When things go wrong in our careers or in life—when employees quit, when we get fired or laid off, when the client or boss yells at us, when the project doesn’t meet expectations—it’s critical that we stay focused on:

What can I (or have I) learned from this experience?

How will I use this information to improve myself or a future situation?

The bad days will be forgotten but the lessons will become a part of who we are. When I was just starting out in my career and would become upset at a small downturn, I sometimes vented to a much older colleague in the next office. He would listen calmly to my ranting, then respond, “This too shall pass.” His response often saved me from giving up too easily or making myself ill from stress. I still say the phrase to remind myself when I’m in the midst of bad times that don’t seem to end. After I acknowledge the temporary run of not-so-great results, I ask myself the two questions shown above. This blog series is one outcome of my answers over the years.

Look for more lessons in part 4 of this ongoing series.

2010-04-13T12:29:00.000-04:00

Never Car Pool With Your Boss—

And Other Lessons Learned From 40 Years in the Workplace

Part 2

Part 1 of this series focused on not getting too “intimate” with your boss, and on cultivating relationships for long-term career success. This installment continues the series of lessons learned from 40 years of participating in and observing workplace behavior—my own and others’.

Sometimes “right” can be “wrong”

I have always been proud of my ability to come up with the right, most effective answer to my clients’ dilemmas. There’s nothing wrong with being “right” in that context. However, when it comes to relationships, being “right” can sometimes result in garnering last prize instead of the win we were going for. Just think about the friendships and marriages we’ve all observed where one party goes to great lengths to prove he or she is correct (usually accompanied by some degree of gloating). How long do those relationships last—or at least, how long are they happy ones? The problem is that, to be “right” within a relationship, we usually have to make someone else “wrong”. My experience has been that when people are told they’re “wrong”, they shut down/withdraw, sulk or act like cornered raccoons. None of these reactions leads to increased productivity or successful relationships.

At one point I was a member of a team in which two people were in constant conflict with each other, each continuing to insist the other was wrong, no matter the issue at hand. Numerous attempts to mediate the conflict or coach the combatants were unsuccessful. Although they were able to avoid each other most of the time, the team suffered from their stubborn insistence on “rightness”. The sad part was that both of them were very capable people who had much to contribute to the organization; they just refused to acknowledge, at least to each other, that perhaps their solution or method was not the best one.

Don’t store up grievances for a rainy day

While it’s a good idea to save money for lean times, it’s not advisable to store up grievances and complaints for someday. As someone who for many years was no stranger to conflict avoidance, I understand the desire to not tell someone the truth about problems, resentments or sticky issues between the two of you. And yet, it seems we can only store those things in our hearts for so long before we either make ourselves sick—physically, mentally or spiritually—from so much internal garbage, or we explode. Usually those explosions are in the form of a lengthy data dump of past grievances upon the other person; sometimes the explosion can be in the form of physical violence.

I vividly remember a meeting I attended a few years ago in which one person literally unrolled the scroll with a list of complaints, some going back 2 years, against the leader of the organization. As she systematically went down the list, the leader became increasingly distraught and finally began stuttering, a problem he had supposedly overcome in his youth. When I asked when she had first made the leader aware of these issues, she answered that she had waited for an appropriate opportunity to communicate, and that opportunity hadn’t happened until the meeting. I’m not certain what opportunity she was waiting for, other than a large enough audience, but the ultimate result of this mountain of negative feedback was an unhappy one for all concerned, not just the two people directly involved.

When we’re not pleased with someone’s performance or behavior, we need to be willing to give that difficult feedback as soon as possible after the event and in a constructive way. Unlike good wine, difficult feedback will not get better with age, and we are not doing the other person or ourselves any favors by holding back. This does not mean that we should constantly nitpick what others do. We need to ask ourselves, “How important is this issue in the bigger picture?” and “How much do I value this relationship?” The answers to those questions will help us decide whether to deliver the feedback or let it go, never to resurface. Once we’ve decided to let it go, we need to be careful not to dredge it up again later during a heated debate. The whole subject of how to give effective feedback is for another blog post.

Look for more lessons in part 3, coming soon.

2010-03-10T19:43:00.001-05:00

Never Car Pool With Your Boss—

And Other Lessons Learned From 40 Years in the Workplace

Part 1

Zig Ziglar said: “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” I’ve often thought that my purpose in life is just that: to help others achieve their goals and dreams, thereby achieving mine. This series of blog posts on lessons learned from 40 years in the workplace is my gift to those just starting their careers, stuck somewhere in the middle, or reinventing themselves in second and third careers. Enjoy the posts, use what you can, regift or toss out those lessons that you don’t think apply to you. The lessons are in no particular order of priority. Here’s part 1:

Never car pool with your boss

This is another way of saying don’t get too “intimate” with the person who approves your work or leads your team. Early in my career I car pooled with my boss and two colleagues. It was a disaster, although it led to many amusing, almost unbelievable stories, plus content for a retirement roast. My boss was personable and seemed knowledgeable in his field; we liked and respected him, which led to the car-pool decision. What could be wrong with riding to work together and having additional opportunities to discuss business while sitting in traffic? A lot, it turned out.

We found out things we really didn’t want to know about the boss. For example, most mornings he barely made it halfway down the driveway before his wife came out onto the porch in her bathrobe yelling, “did you take your pills?” or “you forgot to take out the garbage.” After dealing with whatever issue she brought up, he got into the car, bringing with him the strong scent of recently fried bacon. My colleague’s theory was that the boss’ wife used his suit coat as a splatter shield. Weather extremes were a trial. He refused to fix a $10 item that would have heated the car during the winter, and rolled down the windows during Baltimore summers rather than run the air conditioning. We even had to plead with him to leave earlier on mornings we were facilitating training sessions. He became a laughing stock rather than a respected leader, and, one by one, each of us came up with a flimsy excuse to exit the car pool.

It was like being in a long marriage, where every little quirk begins to annoy the other party to the nth degree, yet with none of the benefits of marriage (other than a continuing paycheck). We simply knew more than we wanted or needed to know about our leader’s idiosyncrasies. What I learned was: be friendly, helpful, professional with your boss. Discover enough about him or her to understand where the leader is “coming from” and draw the line there. I’m sure I’ll hear from people who married the boss and lived happily ever after, but my experience tells me they’re the exceptions.

Cultivate relationships

This may seem to contradict lesson #1 but you don’t have to be best friends with someone to make their day. If you go the extra mile to offer congratulations, sympathy, best wishes on birthdays and other special days, your colleagues will more likely remember you and help you be successful. Moving up the scale of difficulty, be happy for your colleagues even when they get an opportunity you wanted. Love people even if you don’t always like their behavior. And do all these things with no expectation of returned favors. I’m not suggesting you go for sainthood or doormat status, just take the high road when others take the low. You might be surprised by how many people actually will love you back.

One of my bosses (not the carpool man) was someone I had known since age 3. We worked for the same company for years and developed a great professional respect for each other. Toward the end of my tenure with this company, I had a chance to be promoted, I thought, and then all of a sudden they moved him into the position I wanted, and he was now my boss. Both of us were a bit uncomfortable with the new situation, so we talked openly about how we felt and agreed on how we wanted to move forward. After that, we went on with our work and enjoyed being part of a team that was making a difference. We never had a problem with each other, and he later became—and is still—one of my clients. The trusting relationship we had cultivated over many years helped us get through a rough patch.

A few years ago Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval wrote The Power of Nice, in which they described how their business became one of the country’s fastest growing ad agencies by being “nice” to people. I remember thinking, finally, someone has acknowledged how powerful it can be to build warm long-term relationships instead of burning bridges on your way to success.

Lessons Learned Part II coming soon.

2010-02-05T15:55:00.003-05:00

When Is “Strength” Not a Strength?

Author’s Note: Some of you have noticed that I haven’t blogged in months. Although I hate excuses—mine or anyone else’s—this post may help my readers understand.

My mother died in October after a summer-long illness. Her death came only a few weeks after my father-in-law had passed away suddenly. I thought I was handling everything quite well; I made the funeral arrangements, delivered the tribute at her memorial service and served as executor of her estate. For months I had been doing my best to keep my business running while going to the hospital or nursing home every day to ensure that my mother was well cared for. I wrote most of my blog posts and client reports in those sterile rooms, to the hum of my mother’s oxygen tank.

Even during the December holidays I was able to suck it up, shop, clean, cook dinners, entertain guests and play keyboards for several church musical events. I had quit writing anything; I was too tired, not interested and considered it a low priority. During this time I heard frequent comments from friends and colleagues along the lines of “You’re so strong” or “You’re the strongest person I know” or my favorite “You look great for all you’ve been through”. I wondered if they expected me to dress in black and wear no makeup. Unfortunately, their expectations fueled my desire to keep going and not disappoint them.

So it was quite a shock to buttoned-up and busy me when, after the holidays, the sneaky grief I had been holding back suddenly hit me during a remembrance service at church. At the end of the service I sat sobbing, unable to even get out of the pew, and upset that these strong emotions had hit me in a public place where I serve as a leader (Board chair). What would my team members think of this meltdown? After all, they were counting on me to help lead the way during a very difficult period for the church, a year in which 9 members had died. For the next few days I could barely get out of bed or pajamas.

Then a curious thing happened: I became energized and productive again, wanted to write and knew exactly what the topic of my next post would be. It had dawned on me during my grief meltdown that holding back that torrent of emotion in the interest of showing “strength” was not a strength at all. It also occurred to me that a lot of leaders in our organizations do exactly what I did, lest their followers perceive them as weak, ineffective or “too emotional”. The only thing any of us accomplishes by showing that kind of strength when we’re not feeling strong is for others to see us as “human doings”—going, going, busy, busy until we inevitably collapse in a heap as I did.

Most of our organizational policies and practices allow for a few days to a week of “acceptable” grieving for a loved one and then it’s back to business—or is it? Joan Didion, author of The Year of Magical Thinking, writes: “Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be . . . Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.” A friend of mine whose sister and mother died a few years ago said that because we’ve come to expect instant everything in our world, people want and expect quick healing, whether from a physical illness or grief.

How many walking wounded are pretending to be OK as they go about their daily business? And how many grieving leaders keep it all inside so that their followers will admire their “strength”? Perhaps it’s time for us to treat both leaders and followers as human beings rather than human doings. I’m not suggesting that we lower our expectations about performance and productivity, or encourage people to indiscriminately spill their guts about personal issues, or return to a time when mourners wore black for a year. But maybe we need to allow for those waves of grief or sadness to wash over us occasionally so that we can regain our true strength. Sometimes a “fallow time”—or a pj day—can work wonders in restoring our energy and sense of purpose.

2009-07-21T10:17:00.003-04:00

Are You In The "Right" Career?

I have always been fascinated by how we choose our careers—or how our careers choose us. Some of us end up doing work we love because it’s a perfect fit for our temperaments and life goals; others stay for years in jobs that suck out their life force. I once worked with a woman whose wall calendar was filled with X’s, marking off the days until she was eligible to retire in another 10 years and do what she really loved—baking extraordinary cookies and cakes. She reminded me of a prisoner patiently making chalk marks on a wall while dreaming of freedom.

As a career coach I’m frequently called on to help clients figure out their life’s work. They ask me “How do I know I’m in the right career” or “How can I discover what I’m really good at and would be happy to do for the rest of my life?” So how do we really know? We can take various career assessments and personality profiles to see how our interests and abilities match those of others who are successful in a particular line of work. Those tests can give us important clues about our options but they can’t make decisions for us.

So what’s so important about choosing a career that’s a good fit? Just look around you. The fallout from disastrous career choices is not pretty. Some very “successful” people turn out to be profoundly miserable and take it out either on their colleagues or themselves. For example, we all know doctors who, after completing many years of training, realize their chosen career is all wrong for them. Rather than throw away many years of preparation, they continue to treat patients while going through the motions. The results can range from minor medical errors to personal or professional tragedy. And I have lost count of the numbers of people who were happy doing their jobs until the day someone made them a “supervisor”. Usually, unhappy supervisor equals unhappy workers as well.

I have also encountered people doing so-called “dirty jobs” who dispense unlimited amounts of wisdom and joy while going about their daily tasks. One man in particular sang and smiled while emptying the trash. When I asked him why he always seemed so cheerful, he responded that he believed he was doing the work he was put on earth to do and was happy to do it to the best of his ability while making others’ days brighter. His attitude was a great reminder of the impact any of us can have—positive or negative—no matter what we do to earn a living. I believe that most of us want to make a positive contribution, but what agonies we often go through to find work that nourishes us as well.

Parker Palmer, in Let Your Life Speak, says “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you . . . Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about—or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.” In my experience, many of us reach midlife without having truly listened to the “voice of vocation” as Palmer calls it.

So here’s my advice to those of you just beginning your career journeys or contemplating a change:

a Take the time to really listen to that voice. Choose a career—or make a change—because you know it is absolutely the right thing for you to do. Choose work that feels so right you can’t imagine doing anything else.

a Discover your passion and follow it. I vividly recall a client who, when I asked her what she was passionate about, responded “nothing, really,” then after a long silence said, “Well, I kind of like people.” Not good enough!

a Don’t choose a career just because the job is high paying or prestigious or your parents/friends want you to take up a particular line of work.

a Don’t “settle” just to pay the mortgage and put food on the table. Yes, you may need to find work that takes care of the bills, but don’t give up on your dream while addressing reality. For example, find a job with an organization that offers tuition reimbursement so you can prepare for your career of choice while making a living.

a Don’t let fear of the unknown or what others will think stop you before you even get started.

a Never let others disabuse you of your gifts and your purpose for being on earth.

a When you’ve found your vocation, remember to use your talents to help other people, just as they helped you achieve success.

2009-04-27T15:15:00.003-04:00

How I Got Unstuck and Found Freedom

“Being ‘pattern aware’ is an important component of mature leadership,” says Sylvia Lafair, author of the recently published book, Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns that Limit Success. Her book is an exploration of how patterns that were created to help us cope with family situations end up tying us in knots (and “nots”) in our careers. You will absolutely recognize yourself and your colleagues in Dr. Lafair’s “13 most common destructive patterns in the workplace.”

So let’s get personal here. I’ll own up to a pattern I wrestled to the ground to illustrate how we get stuck in family baggage and how I found the way out. Dr. Lafair says there are 3 steps to becoming pattern aware and finding the way OUT:

1. Observe your behavior to identify patterns.
2. Understand the origins of those patterns.
3. Transform behavior by taking action.

I had no trouble identifying my non-serving patterns, but it took a while to understand how I came to be a world-class “martyr” (one of the 13 patterns). The book describes a martyr as someone who “will do everyone’s work, bend over backwards, go above and beyond the call of duty.” As one of my colleagues said, “[I] took over-functioning to a new level.” If that sounds like a good person to have in the workplace, you aren’t factoring in the guilt exacted by martyrs, who love to suffer and let everyone know, over and over, how hard they are working and how guilty others should feel for underappreciating them. Yeah, that used to be me. Over the years I must have annoyed quite a few people, who were probably thinking to themselves, “We’d be glad to pitch in if she’d just ask for help.”

The book relates the typical family experience that creates the martyr pattern: “Parents could not fulfill their dreams or gave up their dreams to help their child, and the child takes on the burdens.” Now my pattern was making more sense. Neither my father nor his father was able to fulfill his dreams. My grandfather had creative writing and musical talent that was set aside to earn a living as a self-employed roofer; he was electrocuted in a roofing accident when my father was only 4. My father was studying to be a doctor when he ran out of money and went to work for a steel foundry, which was horribly unsuited to his gifts even though he became successful. My mother gave up her career as a nurse to be a homemaker, because that’s what most women did in the 1950’s. Both my parents pinned all their unfulfilled hopes and dreams on me, their only child, and I spent most of my life doing my best to realize everyone else’s dreams.

Now came the really hard part: transforming my martyr (and sometimes victim) pattern into one that would better serve me, my family and my colleagues. To get unstuck, I went back to my family history through a process called Sankofa Mapping (described in the book) and discovered wonderful, positive legacies passed on by my ancestors. Sankofa is a West African word that means “heal the past to free the present.” Wikipedia states that it “symbolizes one taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present in order to make positive progress.” That’s exactly how I used my new understanding of my family history.

The story that stood out for me was that of my great great grandfather, who had been a leader of tenant farmers in Ireland. In a last ditch attempt to seek redress for injustices, he led the tenants in a collective lawsuit against the landlord. Although the court ruled in favor of the tenants, their demands bankrupted the landlord. My ancestor, along with the rest of the tenants, lost his home and livelihood. As the story was told to me, he said to his family, “We’re going to America. There’s no future here.” With their last few dollars and an undying faith in God, he, his wife and 10 children came to the United States to seek a better life.

He could easily have fallen into an annoying litany of “poor me” or “you owe me,” but instead he stepped up to his role as family/community leader and expressed gratitude for the opportunity he found in a new land. His heirs continued to provide strong yet compassionate leadership in a variety of fields from business to education to missionary service in developing countries.

Reminding myself of that story of their strength, persistence and faith in the face of almost overwhelming odds has given me alternate patterns with which to carry on my own leadership legacy. Dr. Lafair says that the martyr transforms into the “integrator” who asks for help and gets others involved in sharing the burdens. Instead of carrying my family burdens on my back, I can now stand on the shoulders of my ancestors as I move forward in my own journey and ask others to walk beside me to help carry the load.

By dropping the heavy load and the poor me excuses, I’m becoming—at 60—the person I was always meant to be. And it feels great! Ultimately, as Dr. Lafair points out, transforming our patterns is about freeing ourselves to live fully—not only in the workplace, but in all aspects of our lives. Who doesn’t want that kind of freedom?

2009-03-11T17:35:00.002-04:00

A Paradox For Our Times

Every day I hear friends, family and clients telling sad stories of lost jobs, businesses, stock portfolios and peace of mind, and asking me how we’ll ever get through this economic crisis. How can I answer them, except with “there, there, everything will be OK” or “yes, we’re all headed for certain doom”? Is there an alternative response?

Yes! In Good to Great Jim Collins proposes the “Stockdale Paradox” as a way to deal with what life inevitably throws our way. The paradox is: “Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of difficulties, AND at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” Collins named it after Admiral James Stockdale, a Vietnam War POW in the “Hanoi Hilton” who was repeatedly tortured during his 8-year imprisonment. With no certainty of his survival, Admiral Stockdale continued to be a leader among the prisoners and took effective action to increase the number of survivors. He didn’t tell the prisoners to keep their chins up because they were sure to be rescued any day, and he didn’t roll over and wait to die either.

What a simple, yet profound, lesson for us in these troubling times. Throughout history we can find numerous examples of people who prevailed despite living amid conditions much more brutal than we are facing. Just ask your parents and grandparents how they survived and helped others survive during the Great Depression and World War II. I suspect their answers would be some variation of a lesson learned by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who spent 3 years at Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps: “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.”

One of the unsung heroines of World War II was Antonina Zabinski, so eloquently described in The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman. Antonina and her husband were in charge of the Warsaw zoo when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. After the Germans bombed the city and removed the remaining animals, the zookeepers saved more than 300 people from death by hiding them in the empty animal cages, right under the noses of the Nazis. Although terrified that the Germans would kill her and her entire family, she continued to aid the Polish Underground and provided hospitality and even moments of joy to their “guests.” Antonina chose her attitude and did the right thing despite her fear and the brutal reality of her loss of friends and possessions.

And so we remind ourselves as we hear the latest gloomy predictions and unemployment numbers that when the dust settles from this round of earthly troubles—and it will—the ones left standing will be those who confronted the fear and transformed it. Let’s keep stories like this before us, along with the faith that we will prevail. Like Admiral Stockdale and the others, with no certainty of our own survival, we can still be the light that shines in the darkness to help others find the way out.

2009-02-19T15:29:00.000-05:00

Social Networking for Our Sociable Brains

It all started a few weeks ago with a simple question: “Do you blog?” My too-quick answer was “No, why should I spend my time writing stuff no one else will read.” But several more discussions at networking events made it clear to me that I was missing something.

So, true to my usual MO, I did some research to find out what was up with all this blogging, linking and tweeting. I started reading other people’s blogs, and before I knew it, hours had gone by and I realized, uh-oh, I’m hooked. What’s going on here? When the answer finally hit me, it was one of those “duh” moments. We blog, link and tweet because it’s a way to connect with others in a world where the news gets scarier by the day. It’s how we share a piece of ourselves with others and see into their hearts and minds. It’s the modern equivalent of sitting on the front porch in a small town, chatting with your neighbors and feeling part of a community.

And then I remembered Daniel Goleman’s recent book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, in which he says “we’re wired to connect. Neuroscience has discovered that our brain’s very design makes it sociable, inexorably drawn into an intimate brain-to-brain linkup whenever we engage with another person. That neural bridge lets us affect the brain—and so the body—of everyone we interact with, just as they do us.” Our brain circuitry contains what are called “mirror neurons," which reflect back the feelings and actions we observe in others so we mimic or mirror those same feelings and actions. In other words, if we see someone smile or cry, we tend to feel the same emotion and imitate the action without even thinking about it.

As we interact with others, our words and actions can actually reshape the neural circuitry in their brains, for better or worse. That’s an awesome impact, and one that should make us stop and think before we engage our tongues or our keypads.

Goleman ends the book by stating “the crucial challenge for this century will be to expand the circle of those we count among Us, and shrink the numbers we count as Them.” For me, that’s the lure of social networking—to expand my circle of “Us”. So let’s use these powerful tools as a way to nourish our connections with each other to make a difference in the world!