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When did women stop raising their hands?

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

An incident last week jolted me awake about women in the workplace.

I participated in two days of new employee orientation for a financial services client.  About 70 percent of the 40 people in the class were women, the rest men. As part of a group exercise the instructor asked for a representative from each table to stand up and share the group’s work.  A man spoke for every group but one, that being my table where I stood up.

I was shocked and saddened. Why are women letting men dominate, even in non-threatening situations like work orientation games?

When I was in my 20s we women boldly stood up and spoke up, knowing that our views were as valuable as the guys, oftentimes even more so.  We weren’t very good at slinging the bull shit like some of our fearless men friends. So our responses were often more considered and thoughtful.

We knew we had to speak up.  Trailblazers like Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzeg had worked hard and sacrificed much to help us move into the corporate world. We wanted to pay it forward by succeeding and helping other women in their journeys.  Having a say and being heard was essential.

When I was working at AT&T early in my career I was promoted into a job where I made $22,000, taking over for a man who hadn’t been performing so well at the job but had been making $48,000.  More than double what I was paid for the same responsibilities. I raised this disparity with HR, which told me that the man had more experience, and, confidentially,  “if you keep speaking up like this you could hurt your career.”  I loved telling that story, and I more loved seeing the pay gap between women and men shrink.

We’ve made such gains over the 30 years, but apparently not enough.

Aside from my fear that women will continue to not get promoted as quickly or make as much as men if they do not speak up and believe in themselves, I worry about businesses being able to adapt and grow.  Research shows that the more diverse the thinking an in an organization, the faster and better it can solve problems.  If women are submissive, organizational performance will suffer.

I was recently planning a conference with a wonderful, enlightened European man.  He recruited the first 12 speakers.  Eleven of the 12 were men.  When I pointed out this imbalance, he was taken aback. He hadn’t even noticed that he had invited almost all men.  I am pleased to tell you that this conference is now equally represented.

Today the Fast Company blog  had a story that caught my eye, “Eight Successful Entrepreneurs Give Their Younger Selves Lessons They Wish They’d Known Then.”  When I clicked on the story all the entrepreneurs were men. Really? The writer couldn’t find one successful female entrepreneur?

Let’s call the media on this imbalanced view of business.

Let’s also get back to supporting and encouraging women in the workforce.

I don’t know about you, but I thought we had come farther.  I thought my  diligence in helping and promoting women had worked and now I could move on to new issues.

Not so.

Just as Sheryl Sandberg is doing with her LeanIn.org,  we need to help women stand up and be heard for their considerable talents and perspectives.   If they don’t speak up confidently they will be overlooked  for promotions and for increased compensation.

Worse, we wont be able to solve the complexity of today’s issues without the equal voices of both women and men, and not just women and men.  But people who think differently from one another.  Believe me, no one has the answers figured out in any industry.

 

PS — this Hay Group study just came out yesterday.

 

Filed Under: Activating change, Communicating, Leadership, Musings, Organizational change

Get things under control

March 12, 2013 By 2 Comments

“The Cardinals are tired of reading about financial corruption, sexual improprieties and infighting at the Vatican. They want a Pope who can get things under control,” explained Father Thomas Reese to Tom Ashbrook on his NPR “On Point” radio show today.

When there are calls to “get things under control”  there is no hope for control.

Whether it’s trying to control clergy in the Catholic Church, parents angry over school policies, or customers  tweeting unfavorable product reviews, there is no control. 

When I hear “get things under control” I know it’s a situation that can only be addressed by getting at root cause issues.  It’s not a “handling” or crisis communications issue, it’s a systemic issue requiring that the real problems be addressed.

No new Pope can get the Catholic Church “under control” without addressing some deep seated issues.

No business leader can get customers under control if customers  hate the products or customer service.

No school official can get parents under control if they feel their children are not being served.

No politician can get voters under control if they believe the politician is more interested in getting elected than representing their views.

No good can come from trying to control.

 

Filed Under: Activating change, Communicating, Language, Leadership, Musings

A ridiculous 2013 strategy

December 20, 2012 By 2 Comments

“Mum, if you’re so interested in this folk metal band, why don’t you come to the concert with me on Friday night,” my 17-year-old son asked as we watched the band’s YouTube videos.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “All that screaming and headbanging and moshing. Do you know how old I am?”

Later that night I thought, why not? What might I learn if I went? Who might I meet and what kind of story might emerge?

The next morning I read a post by Seth Godin, “Ridiculous is the New Remarkable,” in which he wrote:

We can view the term ridiculous as an insult from the keeper of normal, a put-down from the person who seeks to maintain the status quo and avoid even the contemplation of failure.

Or we embrace ridiculous as the sign that maybe, just maybe, we’re being generous, daring, creative and silly. You know, remarkable.

Generous, daring, creative and silly?  Mmmmm.

Then yesterday a big city mayor’s chief of staff called and asked if I could lead a retreat the Saturday after Christmas for front-line city managers who are burned out and frustrated.  “Their jobs are never going to get easier, but maybe you could help them get re-energized and see that they’re part of something bigger.”

Again, my first thought was, “That’s ridiculous.  I planned on taking a week off. I have no time to get my head around this. I don’t know any of these people, and I’d be giving my time away.”

So I agreed to do it.

This afternoon I have a call with a former editor at Random House about editing a book that I’ve been too afraid to push out into the world, and yet feel needs to get into the world.  I’ve decided to self-publish the book, which seems ridiculous. Will anyone take it seriously if I self-publish?   With Guy Kawasaki’s new book  as my guide, I’m going to do it.  (The books is APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur: How To Publish Your Book.)

You see, I’ve decided to make “ridiculous” a strategy for 2013.

When presented with situations that my gut screams “RIDICULOUS!” I am going to say yes. Ridiculous will be a filter for  making decisions on how I spend my time, how I learn, and how I challenge my own assumptions.

Since I made this strategic decision yesterday, the year ahead feels quite exciting.  Perhaps even liberating.

People often ask me how I make decisions about my business and my own professional development.  In fact, last week someone asked about how I make decisions to support my “personal brand.”  I hope I didn’t offend the woman when I burst out laughing and then told her why I think obsessions around personal branding are self-limiting.  Perhaps I should write to her with a more considered response,  “My strategic filter for my career development in 2013 is ridiculousness.”

I don’t know where this adventure will take me, but I am confident I will learn much, laugh much, and become a more creative and empathetic person.

Warmest wishes for a holiday season that’s ridiculously happy and rich in  possibilities.

Lois

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Activating change, Innovation, Musings Tagged With: , ,

Has marketing become the screw aisle?

October 23, 2012 By 3 Comments

Lisa was cutting my hair and talking about how she fixed her own toilet.

“The worst thing about hiring guys is that they talk so much about the job,” she said. “They get to your house and start talking about all the things they need to check, all the things that could go wrong, and how the project is probably doing to stretch out over a few weeks  because the distributor might not have the right parts in stock.

“In the time it takes a guy to tell me all this I was able to go Home Depot, buy the toilet kit and finish the job.”

Empowered by her success with the toilet Lisa was now building a deck in her backyard.

“The standard sized boards made the project straightforward,” she said, “but the challenge was the screws. Have you ever walked down the screw aisle? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of different sized screws. To make matters worse you need different kinds of tools for different screws. I mean, c’mon, how many different kinds of screws do we need? Why can’t I build my deck with one or two types of screws? I really resent the screw aisle. Why do people make things so complicated?”

I closed my eyes as she started cutting again.

Screws. Financial investments. Health care plans. Government legislation. Business strategies. “Expert” advice. Diet plans.   15-step proven methodologies on everything from marketing to living a better life.

Over-complicated, over-thought and so overwhelming that most of us just freeze. The paralysis numbs us and dumbs us. Making us reliant on experts, products and services that we may or may not really need. Or, like Lisa, just making us resentful, angry and suspect.

Has marketing become the screw aisle?

I fear that it has.

While choice is a wonderful thing, have we gone too far in product extensions?

Have  ‘content marketing’ emails started to sound like the guys who drive us crazy yakking about how complicated the job will be, how tough it might be to find the right parts, how they’ll have to come back again to measure and that’s going to be tough because….”

Are too many preying on people’s fear, uncertainty and doubt? Exacerbating anxiety to sell more than a person really needs?

Is our marketing building a screw aisle or making it easy — and maybe even enjoyable — for Lisa to build a beautiful deck?

 

Filed Under: Advertising, Marketing trends, Musings Tagged With: , ,

Find the engine for change

October 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Wonderful insight on change, creativity and collaboration from composer Philip Glass from last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:

When I talk to young composers, I tell them, I know that you’re all worried about finding your voice. Actually you’re going to find your voice. By the time you’re 30, you’ll find it.

But that’s not the problem. The problem is getting rid of it. You have to find an engine for change.

And that’s what collaborative work does. Whatever we do together will make us different.

Filed Under: Activating change, Innovation, Musings Tagged With: , ,

When experiments go splat

September 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This morning I experimented with a speech I give as part of my pro bono work with hospices.  It was a bomb.

Instead of using my usual presentation that people always LOVE, I decided to do something very different. No PowerPoint, no lessons and advice. Just sharing a personal story that I thought illustrates the value of choosing love over fear and worry.

Though people cried and smiled and seemed moved by the story, they were waiting for more. I thought a 20-minute story would be enough. Who wants to sit in a ballroom longer than that?  Well, these 200 caregivers and health care professionals certainly did.

Like all experiments we learn from them. But the smack of knowing you didn’t excel can really sting. It can make you want to stay on the safe path. Who wants something to splat when you can do what you know works?

I’m always urging friends and clients to experiment more. It’s the only way to learn, to grow, to innovate.

Yet today I’m reminded why people don’t experiment more.

I learned some helpful things, but I feel badly that I may have disappointed many people this morning who were waiting for an in-depth 45-minute “how to.”

Cue the Gloria Gaynor’s disco song, “I Will Survive.”  Turn it up loud.

Keep experimenting even when it hurts.

Filed Under: Communicating, Musings

Rebel Lifeguard

July 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Thomas Lopez was fired from his lifeguard job two weeks ago in Hallandale, Florida.  He saw someone struggling in the water, got someone to cover his beat, and ran to help the swimmer.

For this he was fired.

You see, Thomas didn’t follow corporate procedures, which require that he not leave his designated patrol area. Thomas wasn’t working for the town, but for Jeff Ellis Management Company, to whom the town outsources its lifeguard services.  By outsourcing the town has cut its lifeguard budget in half and there have been no drownings in the nine years that the management company has had the contract.

So let’s not blame Jeff Ellis Management.

The real issue to me is what happens to people who work for outsourcers.

Outsourcers hire low skill workers, pay them low skill wages, and require that they simply follow company procedures. No thinking, please.

The intelligence to do the job correctly is built into the procedures, whether it’s lifeguarding, call centers, making hamburgers, or manufacturing. Highly skilled, highly paid people design these predictable systems, so that low wage, low skill workers don’t need to think or be paid much.

That’s why outsourcers save companies and governments so much money.

The question I’ve been pondering is what happens when we make more and more people automatons, paying them NOT to think.  Punishing them when they do. Like what happened to lifeguard Thomas Lopez, who was making $8.25 an hour.

Do they become depressed, lose self-esteem, anesthetize themselves with food, video games or worse?

Or do they become really angry, rebelling in negative ways that help neither them nor their employer?

Or do they suck it up, figure a job’s a job, and find meaning from doing things in the hours they’re not working, like church or music or volunteer work?

What happens to us as a society by rewarding people to just follow the procedures? New ideas not wanted. Never leave your stand. Never have much of a career path, except one low paying automaton job after another.

Aside from the obvious widening wage gap, what happens to the soul of our society?

Filed Under: Musings Tagged With:

This is why I write

July 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I’m in the process of writing a new business book and a book of creative short stories. I love to write, except on the days I hate to write. Those days when I’m stuck, doubting the work, and tired. Then a note like this arrives from people that my sister-in-law’s parents met on a cruise.  A husband and wife taking one last trip together; she had been diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and was intent on trying to have the best life possible during the end of life.

The book they mention is “Be the Noodle,” a book I wrote two years ago about helping my mother die. Many days while writing the book  I thought I was being self-indulgent, helping myself through writing. Other days I was convinced that people needed to know that they’re not alone as they help a loved one die.

My point is that if our intentions are good, we should put our work out into the world and stop self-judging.  Put it out there.  Even if you only lift the lives of a handful of people, you have done great work.

Filed Under: Books, Communicating, Musings Tagged With:

Golf carts and crime

July 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Note: I’m on vacation this week at a beach community I started coming to as a child with my grandparents. This post isn’t about business, but is a reflection of what it takes to get things done in groups. Whether it’s business or beach communities, it takes patience and a sense of humor.

The Chief wanted to talk crime. The Security Committee wanted to talk flags. But for the beach association members the real issue was golf carts.

The annual Home Owner’s Spring Information meeting to kick off the summer starts at the reasonable hour of 10 a.m., allowing people time for morning runs, usually to Dunkin’ for the old timers, but the new people are more the Starbucks types. (And yes, it’s the spring meeting, held the first week in summer.)

The metal folding chairs are set up in 12 neat rows, with an aisle down the middle, long rectangular function tables in the front for the 12 or so association board members and in the back with a nice spread of Danish pastry, with the gooey raspberry filling melting fast in the already hot day. The coffee urns sit next to cartons of half-and-half.

Everyone in this Cape Cod beach community drinks coffee with extra cream, being mostly from the inner belt of Boston’s Route 128. Hardcore Bostonians at their beach cottages, most with one bathroom for as many people as you can squeeze into the house. (Providing that at least two wheels of each vehicle touch the property; otherwise you could get a parking citation. The two wheels on lawns rule takes an  especially creative twist on holiday weekends with the mini-vans.)

Lately folks have been tearing down the old places and building new, with two stories, big porches and two or three bathrooms. Summer living is going through big changes here at Popponesset Beach.

But back to the Community House for the Association meeting, where the petite chairwoman is calling to get started. “There are seats up front, everyone. Let’s get started, we have a lot to cover.”

“We’ve rearranged the agenda this morning because The Chief is here and has some important information about security. So without further ado, Chief…”

“I won’t take up too much of your time this morning, but want to call your attention to something that happened up the road last week. Not in your area, but not too far away.”

With that the local police chief told a story about a couple of bungling burglars, casing houses and making off with televisions and other household electronics in broad daylight.  People listened politely, nodding their heads when the Chief said, “If you see something suspicious, call us. We are here 24/7 for you. That is our job. A suspicious person may be nothing. But you never know.

“Here in your neighborhood we got a call last Friday night about a disturbance.”

Now people were riveted. Burglars might be moving around New Seabury, but we are vigilant. What could have happened?

“A fellow was trying to get into a house in the wee hours, about three a.m. to be exact. Pounding on the door, creating a disturbance. The homeowner called us and we dispatched our officer to the home. We found that the fellow had had a few too many and was trying to get in the wrong house.”

Everyone laughs. This is our Cape Cod.

“We detained the gentleman while we helped him find his house.  But the moral of the story,” warns the Chief has he puts his stern face back on, “is that you just never know.”

Three hands go up around the room.  Hands like second graders who want to be called on by the teacher because they know the answer.

The Chief points to a hand in the back of the room.

“Chief, what about the golf carts?”

A millisecond hush falls among the 60 people packed into the community house, with its beige, yellow and orange linoleum floor. People swivel in their metal chairs to see who asked that question.  Before the Chief responds, chatter erupts. Like opening a door to a school gymnasium. Hushed quiet in the hall, and then the energy and sound explodes.

“Is it legal to drive golf carts on our streets?” the person asks more loudly.

Heads turn to the Chief. The room gets quiet.

“If you have a title, insurance and a valid driver’s license, you can drive a golf cart on the streets,” explains the Chief matter of factly. His shoulders relax, like he was expecting a tough question and got this softball underhanded toss about golf carts.

“What about kids driving these carts, Chief,” asks another. “I saw a golf cart with kids hanging off the back and they almost hit an elderly person walking across the street.”

“Yeah, and a golf cart crashed into my neighbor’s yard one night around 2 a.m. and damaged some property,” someone else yells out.

“Okay, now,” says the Chief. “According to the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles, you must be a licensed driver to operate a golf cart. This means underage kids should not be driving golf carts.”

“But Chief, how about kids with a learner’s permit?”

“Chief, what about a golf cart that goes under 20 miles per hour? I believe that’s exempt from the rules for golf carts, which go faster than 20 miles per hour.”

“Please, everyone,” says the Chief. “The rule is you have to have a title, insurance and license to operate a golf cart. I believe Chapter 90, Section 18 spells this out, but I don’t have the exact information here.”

“Chief, how many people can be in a golf cart?”

A helpful community member and golf cart owner answers, “As many people as there are seat belts can ride in the golf cart.”

Now that people other than the Chief are offering advice, more people speak up.

“Everyone might be interested to know that there’s a universal key for golf carts,” says a stocky guy in his Korean Veterans baseball cap.  “You can go to the hardware store and have a key made and it will fit any cart.”

People nod in an appreciative way. We really know useful stuff.

“Chief, what if we’re driving the carts at the country club and don’t have our licenses?”

“No worries, we’re not going to give you a citation crossing the road over to the club.  This is about common sense, everyone. We don’t need to get into a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. Ah, excuse me on that. I see that there are some lawyers on the committee.

“Remember, title, insurance and license,” he says, with the three words becoming like a mantra. “If you stick to those three things there should be no problems.”

It’s now 10:50. The sun is blasting through the window shades, reminding us that it’s a really good beach day.

A woman waves her hand and interrupts from the back of the room.

“Excuse me, please. I live across the street and people have parked in front of my driveway so I can’t get out.  Every time there are official meetings in the Community House, people park illegally, blocking our driveways.”

People squirm. The chairwoman thanks the neighbor, who obviously doesn’t have a golf cart, but does have a car. Which she can’t use.

Humbled by the obvious disregard for other rules, the meeting moves off the carts and on to the beach flags, the second most important beach community issue.

I sit on the beach later in the day with my flag safety-pinned to my beach bag and wonder about the seaweed.  There’s a lot of it. Should I bring it up at the next meeting?

 

 

Filed Under: Communicating, Musings Tagged With: ,

Pretend you’re someone who can

May 29, 2012 By 4 Comments

There was much to love in writer Neil Gaiman’s recent “Make Good Art” commencement address to the University of the Arts.  His advice about pretending to be someone else has been swirling in my mind for days.  Not to be someone else or copy someone else, but to behave like another person to do the thing that you think you cannot.

“Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult, in this case recording an audio book, and I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could. She put up a notice to this effect on the studio wall, and she said it helped.”

To find more courage to do the work you really want to do, who might you pretend to be?

As you pretend to be that person, how might your work change?

When I was  in high school I sometimes pretended to be the late actress and writer Ruth Gordon.  At 15  I felt like an outsider and misfit in my huge, urban high school. Yet I had drive, confidence and a hope that things would be different once I got out of that adolescent jail.  After performing the role of the prostitute Kitty Duval in William Saroyan’s “The Time of Our Life” my sophomore English teacher Mr. Roberts suggested I read Ruth Gordon’s rambling autobiography “Myself Among Others.”

Gordon, also a five-foot average looking girl from Boston, wrote of her determination, her perseverance and her “screw them” kind of attitude.  The Ruth Gordon line that sang to my young self was,  “A Star is Born was the movie, but that’s fiction. A star is not born, a star makes himself or herself a star.” I loved that book. I loved the Ruth Gordon that I had conjured up in my mind. She was a young rebel heroine.

In my freshman year of college I entered a talent contest. Panicking that I had none, I channeled Ruth Gordon and did my Kitty Duval monologue. I won.

Years later I bought Gordon’s autobiographies at a used book store.  Re-reading them I was disappointed.  Her advice and writing seemed so flippant and superficial.

But I’m going to start pretending to be Ruth Gordon again.  In my mid-50′s with so many ideas and exciting projects yet to be done I sometimes sabotage myself by playing a “you’re too old to do that now” narrative. What’s with that?  Using ageism against myself?

Ruth Gordon worked steadily on Broadway  and in movies, and then her career took off when she was 70, becoming a star in movies like “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Harold and Maude,” and winning an Emmy for her guest appearance on the television show “Taxi.”

Her grit, her vanity, her love of her work (and herself) kept her relevant and thriving.

When she died at 88 –  still working — The Los Angeles Times wrote:

Gordon was unique among actresses, not only because she defied the passing of time but because she used it like a bonus, a spiritual annuity paying off…Gordon’s salty, uninhibited, sexy, sharp-witted, energetic, convention-snubbing, life-celebrating and joyous assertiveness on the screen obviously reflected what we might call her own soul-set…But she was above all a woman whose whole life, the bruises and the triumphs alike, informed and enriched her performances. She was a life force who became a symbol of the vigorous and even riotous possibilities of the upper years.

So on the days that I need a little push to take on all that I dream of doing, I will be pretending to be Ruth Gordon exhibiting all of her joyous assertiveness, and trying to dress as well, too.

And you? Who will you pretend to be so that you can stretch and do the work that only you can do?

Filed Under: Activating change, Musings Tagged With: , ,

That’s it? Creating clarity

April 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

I do remember.

Cleaning my office today (okay, moving piles) I found this question card (see photo) from the “12 Key Principles for Creating Healthy Community Change” cards by Margaret Wheatley and Nancy Margulies. (It accompanies principle #10: “Meaningful work is a powerful human motivator.”)

I don’t know about you but I rarely remember and talk about the deeper purpose that called me to my work.

So it was interesting while driving to reflect on that question. I didn’t like the answer that kept coming up. It seemed too simple. But maybe it’s a guidepost I should pay more attention to.

In high school I knew I wanted to be a writer.  But it wasn’t because I liked writing. What I liked was helping people  understand an issue, a trend, a person, a political free-for-all.

Clarity empowers people to make better decisions. To think for themselves. To say no and to say yes. To see when they are being used or spun by people who don’t have their best intentions at heart. To see the differences between a fad and a trend likely to stick for a while. To be able to discern between brave hearted leaders and the self-centered manipulators.

Whenever clients have had complex, confusing, messy situations I’ve gotten excited at the prospect of sorting through it all, asking unusual questions, seeing patterns, and then helping them communicate it in a way that creates clarity. You know that excited feeling where you can’t sleep because your brain goes into overdrive — in a good way? That’s how I feel when there’s a really complicated situation — and  simple communications approaches have failed to help people understand what’s what.

Bring it on! My whole being goes into what Mihaly Cikszentmihalyi called The Flow. That “psychology of optimal experience” where the circuits are fully lit and performing beyond expectations.

I started blogging what seems eons ago because this writing helped me work my intellectual chops at making sense of shifting trends by writing about them. I could never not write. If I had to bucket my work into “Hell, Yes!” and “Hell, No!” buckets, writing would top the “Hell Yes!” list.

My ego tells me that I’m a leadership activist. An organizational change consultant. A Fortune 100 marketing strategist.

But really my purpose is simple, and deeply ingrained.

I like to create clarity so that people can see new ways forward.

 

Filed Under: Activating change, Communicating, Musings Tagged With: , ,

Keep this channel open

February 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

Agnes DeMille was talking to fellow dancer and choreographer Martha Graham in 1943, worrying that her recent success with Oklahoma! was unwarranted. DeMille wanted her work to be great, but questioned whether she could live up to her hopes.

The story goes that the generous and genius Martha Graham turned quietly to DeMille gave her this advice.  Advice that perhaps all we innovators, rebels and passionate professionals should take to heart.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.

Filed Under: Activating change, Innovation, Musings Tagged With: , ,

There’s another woman

December 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

Last week my husband told me there is another woman.

My reaction was denial. After all these years, how could there be another?

Flash back 14 years ago to a fundraising auction at our son’s preschool. Greg and I were like over-excited kindergarteners trying to win the bid for this painting by Ron Ehrlich, an extraordinarily talented artist whose children also attend the school.

Win we did, putting the large painting in the living room.

My family and friends tease me about how much I love this painting. Every time a new child comes to our house I  ask him or her to look closely to see how many women they can find in the painting. I love watching them concentrate on trying to see what ‘s not apparent. When they excitedly point at the painting and say, “There she is!” We talk about her. Is she an African woman wearing a basket on her head? How long are her legs? Is she part of the horse? When they don’t think there are any more women I point out all my girls.

Up until last week I thought I had seen them all.

But sitting at the far end of the living room while the dim December sun lit the painting, my husband saw another woman. She’s been in our living room for 14 years, but neither of us had ever seen her. Now that we are aware of her big silhouette we wonder how we ever missed her.

As the year ends and we enter the dark season, I’m wishing that you, too, can see more in what already exists – find fresh opportunities in your work by thinking more about possibilities than problems, recognize qualities in your family and friends that have been overlooked, challenge your own certainty to let in new views, new people, and new courage to help you achieve what you really care about.

That other woman is waiting to welcome us.

 

 

Filed Under: Activating change, Musings Tagged With: , ,

The most important role of a speaker

November 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Organizations pay big money to bring in professional speakers. Some are funny, others are inspirational, many are informative.

As a speaker my aim is to provide all those things. But what matters most to me is moving people in such a way that they have meaningful conversations following the speech. Conversations that matter about their lives, their work, their businesses.

It is through conversations that we learn.

A college student came to one of my recent speeches as part of her work-study program at a Boston college’s communications department and wrote this critique.  The second to last line makes me understand that the event was a success.

As for the speaker/author Lois Kelly – she was phenomenal! My grandmother is dying of cancer and my mother’s relationship directly parallels Lois’ relationship with her mother.

Lois Kelly was funny and interesting, while also respecting that she was discussing a heavy topic. She was serious when she needed to be, but followed those moments up with something positive and uplifting. I was tearing up at multiple parts of her talk, mostly because I could relate to what she was saying.

I believe that her ability to relate to and engage the audience is what made her so great. She had a funny PowerPoint to go along with her talk and add a visual aid. I left feeling comfortable and uplifted. My mother left with a new perspective.

The event sparked a 2 hour long conversation between my mother and me about everything we had experienced. I would say it was a success!

 

 

Filed Under: Activating change, Communicating, Musings Tagged With: , ,

Being grateful for being our best selves

November 21, 2011 By 1 Comment

Thanksgiving is a time for me to reflect on gratefulness. This year I’m giving thanks for people in my life who live at their best.

By that I mean being guided by idealism and what they really care about. Some make a lot of money, others very little. But fame, financial gain, societal approval and “followers” is not what propels them forward.

They are free of other people’s “shoulds,” even as many of them work in bureaucratic organizations. In the face of tragedy,  their hearts have broken open to  compassion and hope rather than breaking apart in bitterness and self-absorption.

As kids, we know who we really are and what matters to us.  As we try to conform to school rules, work cultures, societal images of “success,” we often lose ourselves.

But we can reclaim our freedom.  We can live a paradoxical life of safety and adventure, fear and love, certainty and risk, sadness and joy.

A newsletter from my son’s camp (American Youth Foundation) arrived in the mail today with children’s answers to the question: When are you at your best? Here are some of their responses:

  • When I’m at my best self, it’s like there’s a flame in my body powering me to try anything, make anything, do anything and even if it’s just a spark you can still try, you are still part of the world.
  • My best self is a person who is brave, kind and polite. It is also a person who is generous. A person who has lots of energy. A person who is me.
  • When I am my best self I have a positive attitude, and am filled with joy and happiness, and I’m always helping others. Also, when I’m trying my best and when I’m myself and not trying to be someone else.

In the face of so much uncertainty in today’s world, let us give thanks this week for being able to be our best selves.

Filed Under: Activating change, Musings
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