| Lorne Rubis - Part 2

Shark Week, Forgiveness and You

201217 Aug
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Posted inBe Respectful

Key Point: I wrote about the heroism of Louis Zamperini in Laura Hillenbrand’s New York Times best seller Unbroken, when the book was first published last year. The perseverance of Zamperini overcoming more than a month at sea battling sharks intent on eating him and his mates was highlighted in the Discovery Channel’s popular Shark Week, which recently aired on cable TV across North America. What I believe most remarkable about the Unbroken story, however, was NOT about beating off relentless, attacking sharks… Instead, I was in awe of the incredible tale of survival that took place after. These same men were captured, and suffered the actions of misguided Japanese guards that cruelly terrorized POWs during WWII. And even more powerful than the message of perseverance was the story’s conclusion, a beautiful message of peace and forgiveness. Why do people hold grudges at work and elsewhere? Here’s the deal… Forgiveness is the right thing to do because it is the healthiest thing for you!

To better understand the benefits of forgiveness, I’m referencing a very credible source: The Mayo Clinic. Forgiveness does NOT mean denying that another person hurt you. But you can forgive the person without forgiving the act.

The Mayo Clinic describes the following as the benefits of forgiveness:

1. Healthier relationships.

2. Greater spiritual and psychological well-being.

3. Less anxiety, stress and hostility.

4. Fewer symptoms of depression.

5. Lower the risk of alcohol and substance abuse.

It is not often easy to forgive. And if you read about the incredibly dehumanizing abuse absorbed by POWs, especially Zamperini in Unbroken, you might think it’s impossible. Yet that’s exactly what happened in Zamperini’s life and he experienced all the benefits described above. Read Unbroken to become humbled by the beauty of the human spirit as it rises way above ugliness and bitter days of darkness.

Character Move (As recommended by the Mayo staff):

Determine the value of forgiveness and the importance to YOU.
Reflect on the facts of the situation. Examine how you’ve reacted and how the combination has affected your life, health and well being.
When you are ready, actively choose to forgive the person who has offended you (and remember forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciliation or reconnecting with the person).
Move away from your role as a victim. Release the control and power the offending person and situation have had on your life.

And the most wonderful outcome, as happened in Unbroken, you may no longer define your life by how you’ve been hurt… Even better, you find new levels of compassion and understanding.

Forgiving human “sharks” in The Triangle,

Lorne

Oscar Pistorius the Blade Runner and the Rest of Us

201214 Aug
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Posted inBe Abundant

Key Point: It is obvious why most of us watched the 2012 London Olympics and were enchanted and inspired by Oscar Pistorius, the Olympian sprinter amputee who ran on carbon fiber blades. (Hence the nickname, “Blade Runner”). Most of us are thankfully born with all the expected parts where they are supposed to be. We are labeled as so called “able bodies.” In Oscar’s case he was born without fibulae and his parents felt amputation below the knees was the best long-term option. He is labeled as disabled. And we watched in awe as the fastest man with no legs competed shoulder to shoulder with the word’s best. The following motto has guided Oscar: ” You are not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have.” Perhaps the rest of us, able bodied or not, can benefit from focusing on that motto and how we live our lives. By the way, he has had more than one hurdle in his life; a boating accident left him in intensive care for five days.

What if we focused more on the strengths and abilities we have than the ones we lack? I am not talking about any of us becoming Olympians. I’m just encouraging us to give more attention to the gifts we have versus our shortcomings. Often I find that people get hung up on perfection and refuse to accept their own humanity. So they tend to give up on things that they are actually pretty good at and could even become great doing if they persevered and practiced. When people we care about don’t do well on an exam, or do not win a competition, we rarely (hopefully) diminish them. Yet we beat the heck out of ourselves and see ourselves as failures when we don’t meet our own expectations. Why?

Psychologist Mark Leary points out the value of having self-compassion (an important “cousin” of self esteem). Whenever bad things happen to us, self-compassion helps from adding self-recrimination on top. Leary points out “if people continue to beat themselves up when they fail or make mistakes, they will be unable to cope non-defensively with their difficulties.” How do you think Oscar is responding to his results at the Olympics? Do you think he’s spending a lot of time beating himself up for not doing better? On the other hand, do you think he’s satisfied that he’s reached his limits? I don’t think he’s doing either. I believe he’s accepting what went well, objectively examining what didn’t and building from there. As it is for Oscar, the real competition was much less against other athletes and much more about our self-development. That’s why I think we break new ground when we become our most important and loyal cheerleaders. The person most important to encourage me, is me… Sure, I need coaches, as do all athletes (see my last blog) and I think acknowledgment and encouragement from others is helpful, but the key to forward movement is how I think about myself. This propels what I do.

Character Move:

Challenge yourself to focus more on exploiting your abilities. What are they? How will you do it? (Sometimes reading a biography of someone like Pistorius is an inspiration and road map).
Give yourself the self-love and compassion you deserve. Like the Dalai Lama points out, you need to have a strong sense of self-compassion to treat others that way. When you observe people treat others poorly, it is often an indication of how they feel about themselves. And like the philosopher Ayn Rand said, “to say I love you, one must first be able to say the “I.’”
I strongly encourage you to read Tal Ben-Shahar‘s, The Pursuit of Perfect. It is an enormously useful and practical guide for building a greater sense of balance in dealing with the challenge of perfection.
Combine two thoughts that can seem at first glance to be contradictory: Exploit your abilities with a growth mind set, while having a deep sense of self love and compassion. They go together.

Be a Blade Runner in The Triangle,

Lorne

Who Knows You Better Than You?

201210 Aug
Comments1
Posted inBe Accountable

Key Point: The biggest gift you can get in your career are people (coaches) who care deeply enough to give you an honest mirror. One type of coach focuses on performance. This person helps you perform better for the organization. You are shown ways to give more value as determined by the needs of the system you’re working in. Another coach is more of a personal development guide. This person helps you develop and achieve personal goals by helping you exploit your talents. The same individual rarely serves both these roles. Both development activities are important and while they are different, they are also normally related. The fact is most of us, based on science, just can’t do it alone. Other people are necessary to complete our self-understanding. We just don’t know ourselves well enough…As hard as we try. The research shows other people know us better than we do on our own. Read on to learn more.

In his book Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, psychologist Timothy Wilson summarizes decades of research on what he calls our “adaptive unconscious.” He shows us just how much of what we do during every moment of every day happens below our conscious awareness. This includes what we think, how we feel, the goals we pursue and the actions we take. Some of it we can notice if we engage in a little self-reflection, but much of it is not directly accessible to us at all. If you want all the fascinating science please read the book. The way our brain works is a blessing and sometimes a curse regarding deep self-awareness.

When we struggle, the data suggests that we most often blame ourselves based on our ability. Yup… Most of us think we just “don’t have it.” Yet research by scientists over the last 30 years confirms that natural ability is rarely the root cause of failure. And as Peter Senge reinforced in his iconic book The Fifth Discipline, cause and effect are not closely related in space and time. If we are going to really improve performance and develop ourselves, we need to find the true root cause. We need solid evidence about where we went wrong. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of evidence that usually doesn’t make it to our consciousness on its own. We need help getting the right answers.

Character Move:

Don’t be so proud that you won’t seek help from both a performance and development coach. People who are experienced and/or trained to be legitimate coaches will help by asking the right questions and will put a mirror up to show behavior. This will help us discover what’s beneath the surface. Find your coaches!
Recognize that relying only on self-diagnosis is dangerous. It is likely that self-diagnosis, for just pure scientific reasons, is unreliable. A repeat of No.1 above: Get solid help to increase self-awareness and to build an action plan based on evidence that really addresses root cause and not just symptoms.
Kick start the self-awareness using a more research driven analysis process, based on a Business Press e-book, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently. The author, Heidi Grant Halvorson, recently created the 9 Things Diagnostic. It’s a set of questions you can answer online and get immediate feedback (for free) that tells you which of the “9 Things” you need to work on, and which ones you have already mastered.
However while No.3 above is based on good research and will help you evaluate against the “9 Things” model, it is only a stop over on the way to a more complete self-awareness journey. The mirror you get from caring, insightful coaches that help us get conscious self-understanding, completes this road trip.

Knowing ourselves more in The Triangle,

Lorne

It’s or its? Too or to? Why it Matters to Your Career

20127 Aug
Comments
Posted inBe Accountable

Key Point:

The following is a hilarious comment on the importance of grammar when getting a job by Kyle Wiens, as published in an HBR blog.

“If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss‘s more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar “stickler.” And, like Truss — author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves — I have a “zero tolerance approach” to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.

Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have “zero tolerance.” She thinks that people who mix up their itses, “deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave,” while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified.”

How do you feel about using grammar as a screening filter for recruitment?

Have you heard some of the well-informed commentary by experts during the 2012 London Olympics? Whether swimming, gymnastics, or any event for that matter, people who really understand a sport can describe how executing, based on minute details, is most often the difference between gold and silver. Learning and practicing a skill based on putting together specific best practice details is the key to excellence in almost anything. This means we have to have a willingness to learn and a tenacity to really improve. Hence the argument that if someone hasn’t learned basic grammar and is not able to attend to detail in a resume, why would one assume they would be able to learn and attend to detail in a job? Is this too harsh? I’m not so sure. When you have experienced anything of extraordinary excellence, how much of it came down to an obsessive attention to detail?

Character Moves:

How much of a stickler are you for details in your work?
If you outlined the key processes of the elements in your role at work, what would be the differentiating details? How can you practice delivering and improving on them?
Do you have the will power and tenacity to be excellent? Is being mediocre good enough? Perhaps your customers are just too fussy and demanding.
Why not create your own personal Olympics? What are the specifics that would earn you a gold medal? Is it more important for you to be good or to constantly improve?

Details in the Triangle,

Lorne

P.S. If you want to find out if you’re truly a “grammar geek,” take this quick quiz.

Character Triangle

Our character is exclusively ours. We define it by how we think and what we do. I believe that acting with Character is driven by what I call the Character Triangle.

What, exactly, is the Character Triangle (CT)?

The CT describes and emphasizes three distinct but interdependent values:

Be Accountable: first person action to make things better, avoiding blame.
Be Respectful: being present, listening, looking again, focusing on the process.
Be Abundant: generous in spirit, moving forward, minimizing the lack of.