The Better People Leader

I hope you will forgive me a little self promotion. The project on which I spent the better part of last year is now at a book store near you! (The project on which I spent the better part of *this* year is sitting on my lap, drooling...) I worked with business consultant Chuck Coonradt and publisher Gibbs Smith to create a new business book about leadership. I was the ghost writer -- meaning Chuck had the brilliant ideas and I had the brilliant articulation of those ideas. The result is "The Better People Leader," an excellent (if I do say so myself) little book about how to do better for your people. It is also a companion volume to another of Chuck's books, "The Game of Work."

I would be honored if you found an opportunity to get ten copies for your personal library. =) I would be also honored if those of you associated with blogs or publications found an opportunity to mention the book and extol its virtues.

But most of all, I would be honored if you found the book helpful in your own roles as leaders of people.

Thanks for indulging me this self promo! (It is my blog and my book; I guess I'm allowed to mention it.... =)

Online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781423601586&itm=1

http://www.amazon.com/Better-People-Leader-Charles-Coonradt/dp/1423601580/ref=sr_1_1/104-3413640-3801516?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187812698&sr=1-1

The Spirit of Service

Why is it that disasters bring out the best of us? Why don't we give the best of us when there is not disaster? I am pondering this point in the wake of the California wildfires. With more than 2,000 homes completely destroyed and countless more damaged, it is truly heartwarming to see neighbor helping neighbor, stranger helping stranger. As I've watched the news, I've seen many stories of many grateful people who tell of the kindnesses of friends, neighbors, firefighters, and strangers amidst their grief.

You see the "rally" attitude again and again. After Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Andrew, the tsunami, the fires. I know personally of church meetings in which the prepared sermon was set aside and the meeting was spent organizing efforts to feed, clothe, and shelter disaster victims. Donations flood the Red Cross and other relief agencies. People set aside selfishness and biases to help a neighbor in need.

I love that spirit of service, and I'm so glad it still exists and can be called upon in times of need. It makes me proud to be part of our society.

I feel sad, however, that it seems to come out only in the most dire of circumstances. I'm glad the sense of rallying around our neighbor still exists and emerges when most needed. But I hope it doesn't lie dormant the rest of the time. I hope it emerges for even small scale needs, like when a neighbor could use help raking leaves or shoveling snow. I hope it emerges when a neighbor has a new baby or loses a loved one. I hope it emerges when someone's child struggles in school or struggles socially. I hope that spirit of rallying isn't dormant at all, but is exercised daily and weekly in our small spheres of influence. Then the "service" muscles will be strong and up to the task when the need is in a bigger sphere.

Stupid Sports

It used to really bug me when my dad would come home from work, plop down in his chair, and watch sports for the rest of the night. It seemed to my young eyes that the rest of us were running around the house all evening doing dishes, working on homework, getting yelled at by our exhausted mother for leaving our junk everywhere.

And my dad watched sports. I don’t want to make it sound like my father was lazy, because that’s jut false. He broke his back at work, and he worked hard taking care of our yard and our cars at home. But the fascination with sports kind of torqued me.

Until my dad met the man who would become my husband. You never quite know what to say when you are meeting your daughter’s boyfriend for the first time. And in my long history of catch and release, my poor father met many boyfriends for the first time. So you default to the universal questions: What do you do? Where are you from? Where did you go to school? What do you think about the (fill in the blank with any local sports team)? And while the “what do you do” and “where are you from” questions may have generated some idle conversation, the sports question was always the kicker.

With the catch who I finally kept, I watched my dad take him to sports in the first 30 seconds of meeting him, and there they have stayed—and there they have bonded. Today not a conversation goes by that they don’t debate the finer points of this team or that. Dad has come to our house on several occasions to watch “the big game,” and if they watched it separately they are sure to compare notes later. If there’s nothing else to talk about under the sun, they always have sports.

I also observed this with my husband and his own father. When my husband and I met, his father was in the middle of fight with cancer. Discussions of doctors and medications and logistics of care-giving dominated family conversations. But when it was one-on-one with Dad T., inevitably a game was on the television and the conversation revolved around sports. I often observed my husband and his brothers sitting down next to their dad and asking what the score was. They would talk about this quarterback or that running back or who had to win what to advance in the standings. They didn’t dwell on medication or doctors, they dwelt on March Madness and bowl games.

And because of that, they always had something to say. Right up to the end when the battle was almost lost, there was still a golf tournament or a tennis match or a baseball game to analyze and get animated over. The conversation didn’t have to be about another surgery or the possibility of hospice care. It could be about basketball.

I’ve always been on the outside of these conversations. I don’t know much about golf or tennis. But I’ve learned to love what sports has done for my husband’s relationship with my dad and what it did for his relationship with his dad. And I look forward to what it will do with my husband’s relationship with our children. I probably won’t condone watching sports all evening after work every day, but I will better understand what that passion can do for our family.

Skinny Jeans

I was going through some photos last night (o.k., I admit it, I was scrapbooking photos last night….) and I came across a shot taken of me about five years ago. I was wearing a pair of jeans They were stylish in their day, with their nice loose, straight-leg fit. I remember they were even a little large and I had debated whether to buy a size smaller.

I still have those jeans in the back of my closet. They have become my work pants. I pull them out when I’m working in the yard or painting or doing heavy spring cleaning. But the problem is, they aren’t so loose anymore. In fact, they would be considered “fitted,” except they weren’t designed with any stretch and don’t I know it. Sometimes they are so “fitted” that I can’t comfortably zip them up. I’m close to retiring them altogether so I stop bursting into tears every time I have to work in the yard.

It’s not an atypical scenario. Women gain weight in their 30s. If they aren’t vigilant, it can be 10-15 or more pounds over time of natural body-slowing-down weight. I’ve heard of it. I knew it was a possibility. But I exercise, I eat well, I’m active. I certainly didn’t anticipate 10-15 pounds in my future.

Much less 20 pounds. I am actually 20 pounds more than I was in college. Granted, in college you walk miles every day with 50 pounds of books on your back, and you barely get a snack, let alone a meal, most of the time. But is office work really such an enemy to a slender figure? Is there really no way to stay at an active college weight?

Let me tell you what my real beef is: I’m not as mad about the extra 20 pounds as I am about not realizing how thin I really was in college. If anyone looked at me today, not knowing me before, they would call me a tall, slender person. I have never—today or yesteryear—been called fat or heavy or plump or chubby. And I still do not fall into that category. I have a healthy BMI, I am in the target weight range for my height, and I have solid cardiovascular health. And while I would like to drop 10 of those gained 20 pounds, I would still be considered slender if I didn’t.

And that’s what burns me up. If I’m slender at a healthy ??? pounds, I was down right thin at ??? pounds. And I didn’t even know it!!! Oh sure, I didn’t think I was fat. But I always thought I was an average weight and build. I always thought I could lose five pounds for an even better figure. I always looked at skinny girls and acknowledged with what I thought was a healthy attitude, “I will just never look like her. I have hips and the Jackson family thighs.” Well if I had hips then, what are they today?!

I wish I would have recognized the thin, attractive frame I had then and been happy with it. No, I wish I would have reveled in it. I wish I would have never thought for one minute that just an extra five pounds would really make me beautiful. I wish I would have never considered myself a bigger girl (which I have always been taller and wider than many of my associates). I wish I would have loved my body and not thought a minute about it—except to keep it healthy and strong. I wish I would have known what I had and loved it.

Looking back through my scrapbooks doesn’t make me wish I was that size again. It makes me wish I’d known I was that size when I was that size and been delighted with the Jackson family genes. And while I will still do my best to stay slender and, more importantly, healthy, I will do even better at loving the frame I have and not wasting time on wishing it were different.

The State of Writing

I spent this morning editing a college entrance essay and an annual stockholder letter, and I was struck by one thing: The only improvement the CEO who wrote the stockholder letter has made since college is his masterful command of jargon. The weak command of the English language was very evident in both documents, and I am reminded yet again that writing skills are undervalued and underrepresented in modern America.

I admit I am arrogant when it comes to writing—and awfully presumptuous. After all, I am writing my complaint. I may induce a legion of English teachers and editors to attack my own tenuous grasp of the written word. But it takes courage to write about how bad we write. And if I don’t start the debate, who will?

Actually, many have. I am hardly alone in my concern for the state of written affairs in our nation. I have a file full not only of bad writing examples that have crossed my desk during my years in corporate America, but also of articles from academic journals and the public press alike bemoaning the decline of good writing in all its forms.

Most blame the Internet, e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging. I find this most ironic. The advent of these electronic media and modes of communication have brought “writing” back into fashion. Think of the last time you wrote a letter before you got e-mail. Maybe it was a thank you card, but I doubt it was the kind of beautiful letters exchanged between lovers separated by World War II. And now we are “writing” letters daily. We spend hours a day shooting e-mails back and forth, instant messaging, or texting. Sometimes they are as short as “See you at noon” (or that would be CU@12). Sometimes they are indulgent conversations with an old college buddy who checked in to see how you are. Sometimes they are tirades about some silly thing or other your Dilbertian boss has imposed on the staff. But the point is, we all write. A lot.

So I find it ironic that we are getting worse and worse and worse at it. The college essay I edited this morning was basically reasonable, but the student writing it clearly could not make the leap between e-mail’s “write as you speak” and academia’s “write above your speech.” To me, herein lies the rub. Stream-of-consciousness speech is easy, and now we are grown accustomed to that speech streaming out of our fingers as fast as it streams out of our mouths. To write, to truly write, requires a thought process more complicated than stream of consciousness. It requires deliberate thought. It even requires revision and rewriting. What you put down the first time is rarely what you should keep. That doesn’t mean every word changes, but it does mean making sure every word holds its weight.

Again, I see the perils of writing about writing. Have I thoroughly reviewed and revised this blog? Does every word I write hold its weight or is it leaning upon its neighbors for support? Did I misplace a comma or use “it’s” when I should have used “its”?

Well, nitpick as you may, but the thesis remains the same: The state of writing in this country is disheartening. But as an editor I shouldn’t complain. Bad writing, for me, is job security. And I feel very, very secure.

Clean Desk, Empty Schedule

I remember one day at a former job when I cleaned my desk. You can't imagine the shock waves it sent through the office. Not a passer-by who peaked in didn't exclaim in some fashion or another. But my favorite statement of surprise was my producer's expressionless comment: "It looks like you have nothing to do."

What a Dilbertian thing to say! Immediately I realized the implications of what he was suggesting: cover my desk with papers and magazines and mail and suddenly I look frantically busy. Remove it all (even if it is filed away in an organized and productive system) and suddenly I look as though I could do my nails all afternoon. I had no idea the terribly important and productive aura I projected with my paper-strewn desk. I didn't realize that to my underlings, it looked like the boss was swamped. With a clean desk, they undoubtedly whispered among themselves about how I did nothing but write personal e-mails all day.

And maybe they were right. In a later job, I found myself as the underling of a boss with a very clean desk, and I assure you we whispered regularly about how little he had to do (while we slaved under our piles of paper and floods of e-mail). But truth be told, when I had gotten to the bottom of my piles I realized that much of it could be easily shuffled away into a file or the trash. I was left with a small, but significant, "action item" stack and a very clean desk.

In reality, I am frantically busy at times, and at other times I have a few minutes to clean off my desk. But if it makes the staff feel better about my contributions to the team to have a desk littered with papers, then papers it will be. After all, I must do my part to keep morale high in these perilous times.