Bellwether

We meet at the office, the breeding ground for many of my strongest relationships.  I’ll admit that I am hesitant initially; I don’t want to go near him.  We are forced together out of need, and become quite close over the years.  In fact, he gets me through some of my toughest times.  Looking back now, I can see that the day I am introduced to Microsoft’s schedule-making software called “Project”, I fall in love.  I may be one of the few.  Project is intimidating at first.  He keeps his cards close to the vest, opening up to reveal himself only to those willing to invest the time getting to know him. Those who do are rewarded with the ability to play him in ways that truly allow him to sing. Once I see who he is inside, I want to take him everywhere with me.

While I thought it could never happen, Project and I grow distant over the years.  I move on from my role as a project manager, into more strategic positions. But I’m noticing that the skills I honed in that role serve me well where I’m at today.  The job of a project manager is to lead a team, get the right people sitting at the table, understand our issues, direct meaningful discussion, drive to decisions and document what matters. The project manager is the lodestar, the keystone of a team accomplishing a common goal.  The schedule is the map, riding shotgun, outlining how to get from where we sit today to where we need to be tomorrow.

Thinking about it in those broad terms, makes it clear why one of my soothsaying advocates touts the value in thinking about transferable skills when contemplating your next career move. Mapping out the path is one of my towering strengths, with boundless applications.  How much of work, and life, is about getting from Point A to B? 

So Project and I are back together now, and I couldn’t be happier. When you’re among project managers, he’s randy, reveling in a full dance card; among team members from all over our organization, he appears fully committed to a monogamous relationship with me; no one else is asking him out.  In fact, I’ve even been the object of envy, in my flagrant public displays of affection for him, whipping out my painstakingly detailed step-by-step task list complete with durations, linked dependencies, and assigned resources.  I gush, able to see exactly where we’re going, how long it will take us to get there, and who is on the journey.  Just writing about it puts, if I’m really being honest, a somewhat smug smile on my face.

Oddly, though, I need him to date others. I need them to see his value, to love him as I do. When I’m part of a team lacking a road map, the cartographer in me flails around looking for a paper bag, first to breathe into, second to sketch out a plan, putting something, anything down on paper.  What do you mean we don’t have a schedule?  How do we do this without one?

Some are afraid of the map.  When we put pen to paper, thinking through everything that needs to happen, what we need from each other, where we need to come together, there are no secrets.  No place for anyone to hide.  People are held accountable. It becomes real.  Big, expensive, high-exposure projects with the propensity to get out of hand mean someone’s head has to roll if they fail, right?  There’s an element of safety in hazy accountability.

Sometimes it seems impossible to know where to start, so developing the schedule is postponed as we figure out what exactly we’re doing.  Expectations around how long it will take are made arbitrarily and before you know it, everyone has somehow agreed to a date, but no one really knows where it came from.  An unrealistic expectation may have been set, and now because it’s out there we’re afraid to vet it.  So the longer we go without a map, the harder it is to create one, for fear it will tell us something we can’t quite face.

The thing about maps though, is that they aren’t meant to be set in stone, dictating the only way of doing something.  Even the most organized project manager who starts with a detailed schedule on Day 1 knows that she will need to make adjustments, to adapt as the project unfolds.

 

There are an infinite number of ways to get to where you’re going.  The map is meant to be a guide.  As we follow it, we learn what works and what doesn’t, what decision-makers need to embrace and fully support what we’re moving toward.  It’s not only achieving the ultimate goal, it’s engaging our people along the way to believe in and see the value in the work we’re doing.  The map is the ground you walk on until you get to where you stand.

And that ground is not always what we think or plan it to be. We change our approach based on what happens on the path.  That’s not only okay, it’s to be expected.  There are points along the journey that can’t be missed, that won’t be missed, but there are also countless alternates and detours between those points that will not only take you to your destination, but enable everyone impacted to understand and believe in why you’re standing there.

The lodestar asks for a map, not for fear she'll veer off course, but to chart a new course as she lives through the moment. Every step we take is an opportunity to invite others to join us where we stand. We can’t possibly know how to do that until we start walking.

Buoy

He expected a battle, that’s clear.  While he’s not even in my presentation, he lets me know that he’s had a conversation with my audience.  The group is not where we need them to be.  He’s frustrated; I can hear it in his voice. He’s attempting to will them to our place, and in his haste is closing the coffin on their opinions, burying the very perspective and collaboration essential to our success.  Doesn’t he know that you need to meet people where they are and lead them to where you want them to go?

So when he calls me today to make sure the group wasn’t too harsh, I’m more than happy to tell him they were exactly what I expected.  I expected a battle and I was prepared, but not to fight.  I was prepared to listen to understand exactly how far behind us they are on this journey, to adjust my presentation on the fly so I can explain what’s happened since we leap-frogged ahead of them, to acknowledge and validate concerns that they’ve been left behind, to invite them to walk with us as we move forward.  I take questions for over two hours. We discuss the hard stuff. But there isn’t anything hard about the conversation.

This meeting is a test for me.  I’ve been echoing my colleague’s frustration for quite some time.  And it causes me to think more than once about quitting.  Maybe I’m not confident enough in my approach?  Maybe I’m not influential enough to make real change happen?  Maybe I’m not brave enough to speak my mind?  But then I read a perspective so galvanizing I can’t help but test myself.

Will Marre, in "Three Reasons Why We Need Women Leaders Now" is the first writer I’ve come across to take the data that compares leadership competencies in women and men and use it, not to debate whether it’s actually valid, but to support his wholehearted belief that women are built to lead right now.  Not tomorrow.  Today.  Right now, in this world that is still owned by men, he believes we are perfectly suited, exactly as we are, to lead in this tumultuous time.  And he makes me believe it, too.  In a way no other has before. I don’t need to change a thing.  I can just be me.

So I show up to my meeting as me, to see if he is right.  I leave my corporate-speak at the door.  I forget about what might happen if I say the wrong thing, make someone angry.  I own our mistakes.  I admit I can’t even begin to say I know how things get done in the places they call home. I tell them how much I believe in this product. I tell them how much I need their leadership.  I tell them that by partnering to bring this product to market we can be the business change the organization needs to embrace to make it successful.

While I’m a little shell-shocked, digesting all that’s been said, there’s a part of me that wants to jump for joy as I leave the room. Have I won them over completely?  I doubt it.  But it’s a fiery first step.  And I’ve passed my test.

When someone says to me, as Marre does:  “You are perfectly designed to lead in this disruptive age. Be committed to the difference you can make,” how can I not be?

Pabulum

I want him to absolutely love it.  I want him to hang on every word. I want him to subscribe immediately, so he can gush over each new piece before throwing off the blankets in the morning.  I want him to love my blog for no other reason than because it’s mine.

He reads a few posts, at first, when I send fresh links via text message.  I’m bewildered when his response is expressed in wishes that he could write this well; surprise that I write this well.  He doesn’t go looking for more. 

I should shrug it off, but his lack of interest gnaws at me.  Combing through our conversations, I surmise he finds my messages too cryptic, is frustrated seeking specific meaning to decode.  Maybe if I spell everything out he’ll be compelled to read?  I consider dumbing down my writing, in an attempt to grab his attention.

And then I stop myself. What am I thinking?  Words are ubiquitous, ours for the taking.  I make them my own by coining sentences in a style no other can replicate, blooming into stories that unfold as only my mind can tell them. Sometimes I can actually feel the prose billow and bleed. This blog is me.  To make it anything less is to cloak the gifts I am given; to be untrue to who I am.

 

Is he caught up in looking for hidden agendas, double entendres or innuendo in my musings because he’s afraid of his own thoughts?  Well, my posts are meant to provoke thought.  We’re all kindred; I take you to your scary places, those ambiguous, raw and fearsome spaces, by showing you mine because we have to invest a little time in the dark before we can begin to see the light.  You might not like it.  But the beauty is there is no right answer, only perspective.  I’m here purely to compel you to look.  And once you look, to inspire you to act. 

Someone recently told me that I cause others to slow down and pause, to look at things differently. Struggling in my job, I’m now thinking about how to apply this towering strength to get around the fear I’ve placed squarely in my path.  I don’t “tell”, I “suggest”.  Years of arguing my case to an individual incapable of comprehending my logic, accepting my counsel, acquiescing to our truth have honed me into a strident barrister. There is immense power in taking observations to assessments, and assessments to recommendations.  Have I just awakened to find myself in the perfect training ground to become the consultant I aspire to be?

When we dumb it down, we kill original thinking.  No one says it better than Seth Godin, in his blog post "I don't get it."  When we avoid diving deep, tackling a subject that may be hard to express or understand we limit ourselves.  And when we limit ourselves, we limit those around us, too.  Those individuals relying on our unique abilities and contributions to the team at the office, our children who can’t become who they’re meant to be absent of our values and beliefs, that perfect match who doesn’t have a prayer of finding us unless he can see what it is we’re seeking.

It’s always easier to hold back.  Will we get more followers, be better liked if we keep it simple and bland, never asking the hard questions?  Maybe.  But is it worth losing who we are to gain the favor of the masses, or are we happier when we realize that those who naturally gravitate to our real selves are the vital few that truly matter? 

He abandons the reading because he doesn’t see himself clearly in my writing.  Could it be he’s just not yet brave enough to really look? 

Gravity

He’s the perfect guest speaker for my next educational forum, but I’m a little intimidated.  I don’t know him well which means I’ve conjured up a million reasons why he’ll refuse my request.  I walk over to his desk in my best all-business posture intent on setting the stage with the purpose of my meeting and the part I envision him playing in the story we want to tell.  I explain why I’ve cast him, his area of expertise relevant to our audience, his message timely.  He listens; he nods; I can tell he understands.

 

And so I dare to close the deal with a smile, beckoning, “Are you in?”  He beams back at me in affirmation.   The words of the Dali Lama find their way into my head; the ones that remind us of the power we have to create positive interactions.

I often forget the buzz of energy one person is capable of evoking with nothing more than a smile.  Sometimes we get so caught up in life’s pressures that we think there is no room for a little levity. Maybe the work needs to get ridiculously difficult before we’re able to take it lightly.  Maybe it’s in those moments when we’re most lost that we realize we truly have nothing to lose.

Swath

“Girls experience inequality in every aspect of our lives.”  The magnitude of this statement is still sinking in for me. The very fact that this has me paused; yes me, the one who writes frequently on this topic (see Arylide and Heresy to name just two), is jarring. When you stop to think about it, the ways in which disparity permeates our existence as women are staggering.

 

There is glaring focus in third world countries where blatant and brutal violations of human rights occur as a practice:  Girls are denied education and instead put in the workforce, betrothed as child brides, and subjected to female genital mutilation.  There are the first world problems of gender inequity in the workforce, associated compensation and promotion deficits, and the imbalanced division of labor at home, detailed most recently and visibly by Sheryl Sandberg in “Lean In”.

And there are those seemingly incorrigible, nuanced and subtle ways women are marginalized through the media and the socialization of men, and women themselves, that attack almost invisibly like dry rot, leaving far too many of us reminding ourselves regularly that there is so much more to us than our physical appearance.

    

Today is the second International Day of the Girl.  Recognizing that investing in and empowering girls is vital to drive economic growth, the United Nations officially sanctions this day to raise awareness of the oppression girls face around the globe.  The most hopeful aspect of this resolution, in my eyes, is the acknowledgement that in order to break this cycle girls have a right to be part of the decisions that impact them and require the support of their parents, families and the boys and men in their lives to make it happen.  It’s about time, right?

I don’t know about you, but this empowers me to start thinking differently about the boundaries I’ve allowed myself to stay within.  Who says I have to change myself to find success and love in this world?  Where is it written that a glass ceiling can’t be broken by collaborative and compassionate leaders?  Who defines beauty for me? 

Yesterday at the office a female colleague reminds me, yet again, of the capacity one woman possesses to change the world.  Her e-mail to me says simply this:  “LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!!”

Read more about International Day of the Girl here.

Impalpable

My children grow up watching Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs”, a reality-based program bespoke for scrappy boys; it features a host rolling up his sleeves and learning how some of the world’s most unusual, gross, weird and downright filthy kinesthetic jobs are actually done. Episodes like “Sheep Castrator”, “Maggot Farmer”, “Lightening Rod Installer” or “Deadly Snake Wrangler” fascinate my kids. Highly entertaining and educational, each show opens with a commendation, expressing respect and admiration for these humble workers who “aren’t afraid to get dirty.”

We likely all have experience with our own version of a dirty job, albeit nothing as literal as this television program.  But who hasn’t done something no one else wanted to touch?  Some of the best advice I’ve ever received from my dad is to volunteer for those assignments, the thankless projects that no one really expects to garner any results, often the ones you can quietly work in the dark recesses of the stage, outside the spotlight. Delivering superior results in these situations brings nothing but positive press. But it’s not easy, and it takes forbearance and grit to endure.

Sometimes we put our hands up for these assignments, knowing full well what we’ve signed up for, walking into them with eyes wide open.  Other times we feel like we’ve somehow been knocked out and kidnapped, only to awaken disoriented in a strange and awful place without any hope of finding our way home again. Quitting is an option, but something tells me that those of us who end up in these places are here because we’ve got exactly what it takes to get the job done.  It’s all in how you look at it.

When you find yourself in a dirty job, you often question why you are chosen.  If you’re feeling like the victim, it’s easy to think that maybe the job is so unappealing or thankless that no one else could be coerced to take it.  You can wonder if leadership views you as expendable, a sacrificial lamb for an effort no one truly believes will be successful. You worry your reputation is being marred, and that few will remember the extraordinary hurdles you jump, that the indelible mark will be an exhausted limp across the finish line.  In no time you’ve sapped your own strength, vaporized your power to push forward and be successful.

The more ambiguous and uncharted the path is the more mistakes you make to get on the right course.  It’s all trial and error.  When the stakes are high, those involved are quick to panic. And so every misstep is magnified, normally calm and collected individuals start throwing stones, and the bruises are painful enough to make you want to retreat to lick your wounds.

So how is this dynamic changed?  It starts with viewing yourself as the expert, the most talented consultant brought in to assess a really difficult problem, chart a course of action, recommend the resources to attack the project and get the work done.  With this mindset you restore your own power, opening the door to demonstrate tremendous leadership and instead envision yourself breaking the tape at the finish line to the cheering crowd. Remember this job isn’t for the weak, that’s why you're in it.

Truth is, when you take on a dirty job, you will fail more.  It’s an absolute given.  And you learn more, too.  You learn the most by living through failures, and the learning isn’t limited to what it takes to do the job at hand.  You discover your mettle, a jewel of a trait that belongs only to those who have endured hardship.

There are most definitely days when “Pinsetter Mechanic”, “Tofu Maker” and even “Fish Squeezer” sound more appealing than the project at hand.  But these are the days I pull my suit of armor out of the closet, step into some dangerously high platform heels, look in the mirror and remind myself I was built for this.

Aramid

Autumn has ignited the burning bush in my backyard, a few tiny but prominent red leaves tell me so.  It won’t be long before every branch is ablaze in a fiery crimson.  That’s pretty much how suddenly my life turns while I’m attempting to prolong summer, lounging under a beach umbrella at the gulf shore. Trouble finds me down south, filling me with exasperation and dread.  I think about not coming back, really I do.

Although I want some sympathy from my friends, I know what I really need is some new perspective. So I turn to my Twitter feed, in search of virtual words of wisdom.  I happen upon insight into happiness from Psychology Today, and am immediately hooked as I read a father’s words describing the struggles he faces letting go of his growing son.  

While I can completely relate to this parenting story, what I am most taken with is how this author applies the need to let go in other places in his life. We assume that we should hold on to people, beliefs and behaviors to be happy.  “Life will always take things from us we want to keep,” he observes.  The trick is in recognizing that those things which we cling desperately to can ultimately be the source of our pain, not happiness.

As I’m reading through the list of personal examples he boldly shares, I begin to think about my own.  When I trace my current misery back to the source, I come up with themes that are all too familiar to me.  What do I need to let go of in order to make room for more happiness?  Here’s my list:

My need to be seen as perfect, great at everything. While  I seem to do a decent job of understanding that no one else can possibly be perfect, I hold myself to a higher standard.  This can make me wary of trying new things for fear of getting them wrong, and worse yet, leaves the real me and all of my groundbreaking ideas trapped behind a safe, but lackluster, facade.

My belief that good things can only come from hard work and vigilance.  Holding on to this means I never allow myself permission to slow down and ultimately robs me of the joy that comes from cashing in on good luck or chance.

 

My need to have my work acknowledged and recognized. Waiting for rewards and validation from others means I’m never satisfied with my own achievements and I doubt the power of my words and actions.  If I wasn’t always looking for others to like my photos on Instagram, favorite my tweets and pat me on the back for a job well done, maybe there would be room to just enjoy what I do?

On the flip side, it’s only fair to acknowledge the things I manage to let go of quite regularly: 

My need to say "no” to my children because it’s convenient for me.I’ve become really good at assessing a request and accommodating it whenever possible by asking myself this question:  “Am I saying no because this request is really so terrible or because it’s just not what I want to happen right now?” My kids now are much more likely to go quietly and respectfully when they get a “no” because I only use it when it really matters.

My need to compare what I have or what I’ve achieved to others. This one is such a time waster.  You’re always going to find someone better, smarter, faster than you are.  When I stop trying to attach a "number" to what I do, and instead focus on doing what I enjoy I’m much happier with myself.

 

It’s easy to feel like you’ll never be able to cut these cords. I recently came across the opinions of a dating expert (if there is such a thing) compiled in a list of impossibly hard things we should all have completely resolved if we’re ever to be relationship-worthy.  I felt defeated for a moment, until I realized if relationships were reserved for only the people who have all of this right, we’d all be single.

Letting go, to me, is a process, a practice, a mindset.  I don’t know that anyone ever totally masters it.  Recognizing when we’re holding on for dear life and working to loosen the reins goes a long way; as does a little kindness to ourselves when we find the grip tightening again. 

It’s like dousing the sparks before the blaze is out of control.