How are you tending your garden?

This time of year is busy around here. You may already know, my wife has a ½ acre garden. To most (including me) this is more like a little farm than a garden. She has tended it from having the sod broken by a tractor to engaging a local Amish friend to plow the ground. Then the tiller went into action. This was followed by laying out the beds (they’re like 5 feet by 75 feet), then planting, watering and covering the plants that are tender.

She was treated to periodic grazing by the local deer herd. So we put up a 7’ high deer fence. Then there was water, weeding, fertilizing and more watering.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it. Then there’s the payoff. Today, she went to the garden early to beat the heat. When she returned she was aglow. The garden is in full bloom. The corn is waist-high, all the crops are flourishing. She’s even beginning some early harvests.

Why am I telling you this story? Because this is how our lives work, it’s just that we don’t see it. Think about relationships, for instance. We meet someone new, maybe a possible friend or business colleague. We break new ground to start the process of getting to know each other. If we find a sense of connection, we nurture the relationship and it starts to grow.

Like the garden, weeds spring up. Relationship weeds can be in the form of disagreements or hidden agendas or judgments. Whatever the form, if we want our relationship to flourish, we must tend the weeds. We start by finding the source of the discord in ourselves. Then we overcome discomfort and speak honestly. Sticking with the conversation until we are both heard and rediscover harmony.

That’s not all. We also have to water and sometimes fertilize. We spend time together to share our experiences. We celebrate our ups and provide compassion for our downs. We comfort and are comforted. We share candidly and love freely. Our relationship garden can bring each of us the experience of joy just like my wife’s experience this morning.

How are you tending your garden today?

Let it all hang out!

Most of my days start with tea and a conversation with my wife. We sit in our comfortable chairs looking over a part of our beautiful outdoor space. This morning I was sharing that I have separated my work into two buckets, if you will. I work with individuals on “personal issues” and with organizations on “leadership issues”. I realized that this separation is artificial.

As humans we don’t have a public and a private side to ourselves. We are who we are 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s true that certain aspects of our personality may be more prevalent at work than at home, but we bring ourselves to both. So what is this separation about? For me, it’s my comfort level. I am uncomfortable with bringing my full resources into a business setting. I believed that certain conversations are off-limits in the workspace, like people’s relationships with their spouses or children.

From time to time, I would find anomalies to my beliefs. I remember sitting with a group of executives of a financial services company. The occasion was the completion of their nine-month leadership program. I asked what was the most important learning from this program. Almost half spoke about improved relationships with members of their family. In particular, the lessons they learned about satisfying their customers extended to these important relationships. I remember feeling deep satisfaction about this and then, over time, I forgot.

Today, I’m reorienting my work (actually everything – more about that in a moment). After all, it’s all about authentic relationships – relationships with myself, others and the world around me. The essence of relationships is integrity, accountability, love, harmony and service. The tools to deepen each of these are the same.

As if some magic spell dissolved, I don’t feel any hesitancy in talking about the “soft stuff” in any context. I know from my experience as a business leader, and working with many organizations, that by focusing on these three aspects of relationship all aspects of life improve. I have seen this show up almost instantly in improved income or profits, breakthroughs in solving problems and clearing up messy issues like distrust.

The funny thing is that I realized that I operate in a way that separates how I work with my clients and how I support my family. As I was talking with my wife this morning, I recognized that I could be of service to her, and when I was, it helped her immediately. Its time to let it all hang out – holding nothing back at any time……

In Memory – Alex Elyjiw

This morning was a good morning to wake up. It was the date of celebration of my birth. I looked around me and saw our younger children and my wife asleep and felt contentment. I grabbed my IPhone, which had signaled me it was time to awake and walked into the bathroom for a good teeth brushing.

As I sat down to see what was ahead in my day, I glanced at an email from a business colleague. He was giving me some information concerning an upcoming trip and at the end of his note, he said that he wanted to share some sad news. Alex Elyjiw had died over the weekend.

I often don’t have a strong response to hearing such news. This time was different. I haven’t know Alex for long and our relationship didn’t extend beyond the office. Yet I feel that I knew him in a way that was very personal. When we first met, he was getting ready to go visit his son who lives in Florida with his mom and step-dad. Alex was clearly excited about spending time with Lucas. He was also remarking about the respectful relationship he had with his former wife and her husband. Whatever the issues they may have had that lead to their divorce there were long in the past.

I saw Alex a week or so after his Florida trip and he was filled with such love of his son and an exuberance to share all parts of his trip including many pictures. This passion for life carried over into his life with his fiance and his friends fortunately for me to his relationships at work. I always felt more alive after a visit with him.

What got me thinking though was not so much the question of mortality, but the question of relationships. I realize that I can have at times an almost transactional nature to relationships. These are relationships that I put time into because I am involved with some work related project with the other person. When our work involvement stops for a while, then I will often fall out of connection with that person. In the case of Alex, after the project we were working on concluded, I put my attention elsewhere.

What a loss for me. By my neglect, I missed out continuing to be in the presence of this wonderful man. As I considered this more today, I can look back over my life and see lots of times when I moved on with other people as well. I was too busy with doing to allow myself to be with those that touch my life and I theirs.

What a poignant reminder on my birthday. Alex you are remembered with love,

Until later,

Thomas

Technorati Tags: authenticity, courage, Gratitude, humility, Imagination, Practices, Relocalization, Self, Self-sufficiency, Trust, Truth, Wisdom

What would you do if I sang out of tune?

“What would you do if I sang out of tune?

Would you stand up and walk out on me?”

This opening verse of the Beatles song, “With a little help from my friends” is ringing in my mind as I reflect on a lesson of a few days ago.

I have been working with a client, “Adam”, for over a year. One of the things that I have observed about Adam is that he is often unreliable in the area of meeting commitments around money. It’s not that he intends to be dishonorable; it’s just that he won’t take a stand for what he believes in within his corporate system. For in that system, if you don’t fight for resources you need to do your job, you are likely to have them taken by others who are stronger. When the resources he needs are reallocated, he gets very embarrassed and sometimes pushes this frustration onto others.

I have seen this pattern of behavior with Adam before, and thought that because I was doing such a good job for him – in fact, I was doing an awesome job – the outcome would be different. I expected this because I wanted it to be different.

What happened? Adam and I had a conversation the other day about a financial commitment that he made. He was explaining to me that he was not in a condition to honor his commitment at this time. My reaction was one of anger. How could he do this to me? After all that I had done!

I was aware enough to know that it would not be a good idea to finish my conversation with Adam in the state of mind I was in, so I asked to talk about this matter later. When I had some time to think about what had transpired, I realized that I was expecting Adam to be different that he was. I was not accepting him just as he is, because he did not meet my hidden agenda. I realized that when I did this extra special job for him, I had laid some requirements on him on how he should “take care of me”. These requirements were unspoken and formed the basis of expectations that I had of Adam.

When he did not meet my expectations, I was angry and felt unappreciated. All of this reaction was facilitated by my own actions and not his.  If I had thought about Adam and what I could realistically expect from him, I would not have expected him to act differently than he had in the past. After I recognized my role in this situation, I felt calm and was able to finish my conversation with him satisfactorily.

I also have two new behaviors to work with. One is not projecting my needs onto others and the other is not expecting someone to act in a way that is different than what I have experienced from them in the past.

Have you had any experiences like this? What did you do?

Until later,

Thomas

Technorati Tags: authenticity, compassion, courage, humility, integrity, leadership, Peacefulness, Practices, Self, selfexpression, Wisdom