Tenor

He tells the story of an angry man, fresh from a tongue lashing from a client, assembling the team to pass along in the same fashion he received it, dissatisfaction and blame for an extremely expensive mistake.  As he finishes his tirade, sucking every bit of collaborative, problem-solving energy out of the room, a cooler head asks if he’s finished, and then proceeds to inform this man of his misdirected fury:  This group of individuals is only the messenger, reporting bad information. Breaches in operational protocol and a lack of communication mean no one has eyes on the big picture; the right questions sure to catch mistakes go unasked.

There are a couple of things wrong with this story.  First and foremost is the fury.  This man’s shaming approach does nothing but shut everyone down.  Sure, I get that he’s angry.  His head is on the chopping block; he’s not a “doer” on this team, he’s responsible for oversight, and as such he’s the one with the burden of communicating the implications of this error to his superiors.  But the reality is he’s responsible for much more; he’s responsible for modeling and supporting an environment where hard questions are routinely asked, with the goal to uncover risk before disaster strikes.  Small mistakes happen every day. Left unchecked, they can become monumental.  I believe we can prevent some of them, mitigate many of them, and solve for all them when we create environments where we welcome constructive conversation about them.

Secondly, is the finger-pointing behavior this fury unleashed triggers.  People automatically shift the blame; it’s a natural defense mechanism.  It’s pretty certain this team played some part in the outcome, but few are willing to make themselves vulnerable in that admission amid public flogging.

Core to the culture of safety we are developing in my organization is the concept of “near miss” reporting.  A near miss is defined as a situation with potential to cause an accident, identified and corrected before the accident ever happens.  Things like addressing improper ladder set-up before the technician climbs it, or stopping someone without safety glasses before she walks into the lab.  We track our near misses, broadcast them; reward even, the individuals who call out these seemingly small infractions before they cause a serious problem.  I love this behavior.  It is at a very basic level an exercise in vulnerability; one that is sorely needed in the workplace, and evidence of an ever-so-slight shift in culture to one of constructive collaboration through a willingness to speak openly of failures.

 

We could easily go the other way.  We could track these same near-misses negatively, dock pay, or invoke performance plans, but instead we choose to look at them as learning opportunities, as evidence that safety is so important to us we speak openly about these mistakes to draw continuous attention to risk mitigation, stressing prevention and raising awareness with humanity top of mind. We empower people to learn from a position where corrections can be made before consequences become dire; their ability to make a difference becomes visible to the team.

  

I can’t help but think back to the angry monologue. What if instead this man had pulled the entire team into the room, not just the group he views as the offenders, and explained calmly the mistake and its deep financial implications?  What if he had asked this group of experts in the field to help him unravel and understand how this all happened?  I like to believe he’d walk away from this conversation with more ideas then he’ll ever be able to implement to solve this problem, and a loyal team willing to help solve any problem.

The executive oversight role can be a struggle in business and in life. As parents, some of us wake up one day to realize we’ve received an unwanted promotion into this position.  Our young adults are making their own decisions now, and we feel a bit powerless, no longer calling all the shots. Do we breeze in periodically to take them to lunch, or hold the perfunctory check-ins so we can walk away reassured we’re all good?  Or do we roll up our sleeves, teaching them how to assess and manage the risks inherent in life by asking the tough questions lurking below the surface, and listening without interjection to the answers these intelligent and vulnerable individuals so desperately want to share?

We can make a difference no matter where we are in the food chain.  At the top we set the tone. Are you yelling? 

Brief

They arrive in a cardboard box: Fifty 3-1/2” X 5” notebooks lined up in a row, each containing thirty-two blank white pages pinned to their chipboard covers with shiny silver staples, drenched in possibility.  The most daunting of all is the lone copy offering a clue: “This book contains all the answers” is artist Dallas Clayton’s proclamation across the cover; however, he’s left the insides decidedly void for another artist (me) to fill.

   

And so I wonder about “all the answers”. If I’m bound by these pocket-sized limits, I’ve got some serious contemplating, culling and distilling to do. What words or pictures do I deem important enough, so essential to the human condition and getting through this life that they earn tenancy within this coveted real estate? 

Here are a few to get started:

Stop comparing yourself to others.  This includes your siblings, your thinner/prettier/younger friends, your parents, colleagues who outrank or threaten to outrank you, those women in yoga class who dare to wear the short shorts, and anyone and everyone on the internet.  You bring a unique and wonderful set of skills, intention, drive, humanity and perspective to every situation.  If what you have looks exactly like what someone else has, you’re doing it wrong.

It just might take a while. We’re all in a hurry for everything.  And the speed of life only seems to accelerate as we age. Everyone around us seems to demand instant results, and so we demand them of ourselves.  We can’t lose weight fast enough, get promoted soon enough, find a good man before the alarm of our biological clocks is blaring.  But life happens on its own time.  One day you look in the mirror and realize your commitment to diet and exercise is paying off; careers, reputations and bodies of work build slowly over time; we cry over many Mr. Wrongs before we recognize Mr. Right. Practice patience, and try to be kind to yourself in the process.

You’re right.  Wow! Is this one hard?  And I’m always blown away by the lengths we go to, the tactics we resort to in an attempt to bury these words deep in our throats. The other person in the conversation is often right. In fact, if you’re with a reasonably intelligent individual, they’re probably right, like, 50% of the time. There is no shame in being wrong.  We gain so much respect and credibility in every relationship when we’re able to concede the other person is right.  Just say it and learn something from it.  It will make you better.  Really.

No. We think the answer needs to be yes.  But honestly, aren’t you sometimes doing yourself or others a disservice with yes?   Today I declined to participate in a voluntary project I am quite passionate about.  I was the last to reply to the request (uncharacteristic for someone with her trigger finger perpetually poised over the “send” button). But when I thought about the time commitment and everything else going on at the office, I didn’t feel I could fit it in and get it right.  And guess what?  The earth is still revolving on its axis.  I am still employed. Someone else may get a chance to shine.

 

Why not?  I know it’s a question, but for those of us always throwing roadblocks in our own paths, or finding a million reasons why we shouldn’t take a risk and try something new, what if we interrupted our usual diatribe of excuses with some measured thought around what’s preventing us from going for it?  I wonder what we might find.

I don’t know.  In our googilicious world this may seem like a cop out.  Don’t we have the resources at our fingertips to research anything and come up with the answer freaky fast?  Yes, for a lot of things, but not for everything.  The reality is some things are beyond our purview. Some of life’s most challenging questions are rhetorical or for the seeker to look within herself to find.  It’s okay to admit you don’t have all of them.  The answers, that is.  Few of us do.  And fewer still are willing to sit peacefully in the unknown and just listen. It’s amazing what we hear in the silence.  

Lavish

The Who say it ain’t for keeping.  My younger self, jaded and jilted in its evanescence, might interpret this phrase to mean it doesn’t last. It’s a good thing the wiser and somewhat more worldly me has learned it’s really for giving away.

It’s a journey to move along this continuum; the lucky ones reshape their ideas about love.  For some of us it happens when we meet the man we marry.  We create a shared life; evolving and growing together, learning the delicate dance of supporting our partner in becoming himself without compromising the quest we’re on to find our true selves. For others the path is not so straightforward; it takes more than one relationship.  We need to begin, end, spend some time contemplating the experience, and then begin again with someone new.

We tend to chalk serial monogamy up to bad choices, wondering how we can ever forgive ourselves for such a glaring lack of vigilance or clairvoyance.  But what if it’s nothing more than bad timing?  What if at this point in time, in this particular relationship we’re too far to the right on this continuum, unable to recognize that giving love away freely is the way to receiving more?

If we believe love is fleeting it becomes a precious jewel we shroud secretly, share selectively and dose sparingly; currency in a lonely bartering game. We can think we need to limit its access and jack up the price so high it reaches precious commodity status, available only to those who have grown comfortable concealing their flaws and modeling perfection ceaselessly for fear making visible the real person beneath the surface will result in rejection.

It’s not until we can take love off the endangered species list, lift the embargo and embrace it as the abundant natural resource it is that we are truly able to sustain a happy, healthy relationship.  When we apply love liberally we make room for our partner to show his true self, and in the process, we create that very same space for ourselves. We owe it to ourselves to be with someone who grants us the grace to be ourselves.  And we owe it to our partner to do the same in return.

Lay down beside me.

Ardency

“Be humble in all things but ambition.”  I spy these words while stopped at a traffic light at the intersection of Michigan and Congress.  I love this spot, engine idling; it’s the moment in my end to end drive of this short east-west link between the expressway and the lake when I anticipate bursting out of the shadows of Chicago’s tightly packed high-rises and into the light-filled expanse of infinity offered beyond Buckingham Fountain at Lake Michigan’s shore.

It’s been a while since I’ve tackled the topic of ambition. I have to look up the definition (again).  I search frenetically, in all its iterations, for the hint of negativity, puzzled evermore by the connotations put upon this combination of letters that have turned it into a source of shame for women, and become synonymous with the demise of integrity when it spawns destructive and selfish greed.

 

Ambition [am-bish-uh-n] noun:  a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.

 

What is so wrong with the spirit of this quest, and do we need to sacrifice our humility to embody it?

  

Ambition has long been a dirty word for women. With the exception of short periods during wartime in the early 20^th century, women slowly leaked into the workforce, initially allowed positions mimicking roles at home:  Servant responsibilities keeping male executives organized, maintaining their schedules, bringing them coffee, the unsung heroes keeping everything moving. Millennials may be surprised to know their grandmothers were forced to quit work when they got pregnant, and for some even getting married meant the end of a paying job.  The woman’s priority was supposed to be the home.  Women may not have been “allowed” to have ambitions outside the home, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t.

A loved one suggests to me that maybe women who want to fulfill themselves in the workforce, whether years ago or even still today, could not do so without ambition.  The barriers and social pressures are fierce.  Ask any woman who’s held a full-time job while raising a family:  It’s easy to crowd this space with the demands of traditional womanhood:  Wife, mother, homemaker, volunteer.  Without a burning fire from within to achieve, would many just give up?  The glass ceiling is not broken without determination and hard work; the very definition of ambition.

 

Ambition is not defined as actually doing or achieving something, but as the strong desire to do so. Nor is it defined as the measures one takes to do or achieve, yet somehow over the course of time we have hijacked the definition and decided it is associated with the tack employed to reach a goal, particularly negatively. It’s portrayed in movies like “Wall Street” as the ruthless hunt for wealth and power.

Ambition itself is neither positive nor negative, it is a driving force keeping us focused on achievement of our goals, no matter what those goals are.  Ambition is not limited to the pursuit of money or status.  It applies in the pursuit of anything meaningful to us that does not come easily.  It’s what keeps us in the parenting game, searching for ways to reach our teenagers during those dark years of incommunicado.  It’s what keeps us in a relationship with our partner seeking understanding when we don’t see eye to eye.  It’s what enables us to move seemingly impenetrable roadblocks, to find a new path, to open windows when a door closes, to look inside ourselves and embrace our flaws, to do something that scares us, to sit in our pain in order to move forward. It’s that slow fire burning within us that fuels the courage to put ourselves out there and be all we are meant to be.

Do we need to check our humility at the door in order to embrace ambition?  Only if to build ourselves up with some empowering self-talk.  Pursuing ambition is scary.  It means we need to believe in ourselves and our ability to achieve what it is we so intensely desire.  But our humility is crucial on the quest to fulfill our ambitions.  It helps us maintain integrity and a healthy regard for those around us, and more than anything it holds us close to those individuals who mean the most to us.  For without them, our success is meaningless.      

Efficacy

The first time I recall hearing this term it rolls off the tongue of a Professor of Illuminating Engineering in a capacious auditorium at the University of Illinois in the mid-1980s. The coursework for my interior design degree back in the day includes material of some substance, not just “coloring” as a not-so-kind acquaintance used to say.  The curriculum is quite technical, and fascinating at the same time.  I wish I could say I remember exactly its definition, but given that it’s been almost 30 years (eep!) since I’ve set foot in a university lecture hall, I’m leaning on the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn State, where they define it as “the ratio of light output from a lamp to the electric power it consumes, measured in lumens per watt (LPW).”  Translated loosely into my words, it’s how effective a light source is relative to the energy it takes to emit the light.

As the bewitching hour on this last day of the year draws near, and we contemplate the resolutions we will declare at midnight, loudly (but for some maybe not so clearly), I’m thinking about change, and the energy we expend as we strive for transformation.

Resolutions fail to come to fruition because we burn out. We promise ourselves monumental change, and then expend enormous amounts of energy in the name of attaining it:   I’m not just talking about the physical energy required to take action, but the mental energy we burn trying to infuse new and foreign behaviors into our daily routines, and worse yet, the emotional energy as we listen to the voice in our heads berating us for lack of follow through. Most of us surrender without ever sustaining the outcome we’re desperate to reap.

I’m a self-described change agent.  This week I contemplate my success at the office this year, and over the past three years. A common theme materializes; each team I lead looks dramatically different today than when I started, yet without upheaval.  They’ve all been reshaped, slowly over time. Just as I have. I look at myself, who I was in April of 2012 when I wrote the very first post for this blog, and who I am now. No raging infernos, dynamite or explosives required, just a steady flame of conviction.

Transformation is about producing a desired effect.  It’s kind of scientific, too, because it’s also about producing a desired amount of that desired effect. It’s pretty normal to question whether we have the power or capacity to do this at all, yet alone with precision. So instead of taking it on ourselves, we make our success contingent. It’s easy to say our results are dependent on what others around us do.  And convenient to shift the blame when we don’t get the results we want.  We let the accountability reside anywhere but with us, because what does it say about us if we fail?

But here’s the thing, and it’s the same thing I’ve been saying over the course of the last 270 blog posts:  The power is within you. All you need to do is want it.  Someone else can’t want it for you, you can’t want it just because someone else does, and your success is not predicated on the presence of that someone you think you need around. You've got this.

I’m encouraging you to think differently about your resolutions this year. What is the change you want to make in your life for no one other than yourself?  This is the only resolution to make. It’s the only one guaranteed to increase your lumen output, and the very best one to make for those around you. Because when you burn brighter you make the world a better place.  

Bustle

It is three days after Christmas; the front door closed behind the last planned guest of the year yesterday evening. I’m lingering on a photo in my Instagram feed of a beautifully painted teacup perched on a table beside a glittering, decorated evergreen.  The photographer reminds us that Christmas actually starts, not ends, on Christmas Day, and writes about how much she loves this post-holiday peacefulness, this time to be still.

I recall, not twenty-four hours earlier, asking myself how fast I can get the ornaments boxed up and leave a trail of pine needles from the living room to the curb. Only pure exhaustion prevents turning this thought into action.  The build-up to December 25th is so protracted, I’m not surprised when on Christmas Eve morning my coffee is presented to me in the white Starbucks cup of ordinary time; the store has run out of this year’s controversial red cup before we even get to Christmas Day!  Yet, there is never enough time.

I’ve been spending every waking, non-working moment since Thanksgiving making lists, amassing the precise materials and quality ingredients for my artistic creations, assembling greeting cards, baking, freezing and packaging cookies, planning menus, buying groceries, preparing feasts, decking, cleaning and clearing the halls, hiding in cabinets, closets and cupboards all evidence that a family actually lives in my home, all for the sake of hosting festive holiday gatherings. Cyber-shopping is squeezed in somewhere; gifts are hastily wrapped at the last minute.  At one point I remember thinking taking the time to attend parties is eating into my time to prepare for parties. No wonder I am salivating over the idea of a few minutes to savor the fruits of my labor.

And so I’m thinking differently this morning.  A snow and freezing rain mix is pelting the windows, propelled by a stiff, howling wind.  No one is going outside. After a warm, green December, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. I, too, can sip a warm cup of tea in front of my own twinkling Christmas tree.  Lap tops, after all, are designed to sit in our laps.

Everything up until today is for others.  What if I take the time between now and Twelfth Night to absorb the beauty of the season, to live in stillness?  It’s time to be kind to myself, to remind myself of all the good I’ve accomplished in the past year, to take inventory of everything and everyone I am grateful for, to forgive myself for all my frailties, to set goals for the coming year that respect my limits as a human being, to connect with those who make me better. Isn’t this what the season is about?

Joy

“Thank you for waiting so patiently,” she chirps sincerely to the woman in line in front of me, finally returning to her station behind the counter.  My guilt nestles in like a pit in my stomach.  This noble woman in front of me stands stoically, listens wordlessly to me when, not a minute earlier, I wonder out loud with much annoyance, “Does anyone work here?”

It’s so unusual for me to open my mouth in these situations. I can’t stand it when other people do it. I try hard to muster compassion, and when I can’t, I pride myself on keeping my mouth shut no matter what mean spirited thoughts threaten to squash the sugar plums dancing in my head. I can’t help myself in this moment, and regret it almost immediately.

While the transaction ahead of me takes place I prepare myself, ready to admit wholeheartedly when I am thanked for my patience that I hadn’t exhibited any at all.  I think about what in this situation is frustrating me.  There are two cashiers, yet it isn’t readily apparent there are two lines, as towers of grab and go bling hide completely my compatriots beside me. It seems silly to me that my dander is up.  I’m not in hurry.  I don’t need to be anywhere else.  The load I am carrying isn’t heavy.  This year’s green Christmas means I’m not sweating beneath a heavy parka. I actually ate before I shopped. And I’m finding the gifts I came out seeking.  Why do I choose an outburst of selfish frustration instead of understanding the obvious pressures of a holiday store clerk?

I name my Christmastime blogs with words that are associated with the holiday season. It is rare to hear glisten, coursers, tidings, wassail, or swaddle in the vernacular of ordinary time.  It surprises me when joy pops into my head as a Christmas word. We can’t seem to find enough of it.

Joy is a choice that can be difficult to see.  It can seem like we live in a world with nothing but problems; that we live our individual lives in constant turmoil.  We’re far more comfortable complaining about what is not right, admonishing ourselves for what we don’t do, then we ever are voicing gratitude for what’s great in our lives and patting ourselves on the back for the good we do. We’re programmed to focus on fixing what is not right and to downplay what is right. We wrap ourselves in an angry story written in isolation, a yarn wound so tightly from our own vantage point that we can’t open up to any other perspective.

To me, the path to seeing joy as a choice and ultimately being capable of choosing it lies not just in a willingness to seek understanding, but in a tenacious commitment to attain understanding, to broaden our purview. And then to forgive both ourselves and our loved ones for the blindness and brokenness inherent in all of us.

Had I thought a minute about what it might feel like to be the customer getting excellent service from a cashier so willing to leave her post and search the stockroom for a coveted gift, I’m sure I would have felt quite differently. My inability to keep my disparaging thoughts to myself while shopping is my humanity making itself visible, much to my chagrin.

I believe we are constantly in repair.  Waiting to choose joy until we’ve got it all together is not an option.  The question isn’t how do we solve all of our problems and live a flawless life, it is how do we accept our humanity and that of those around us, so that joy can be uncovered in the mess.