At the end of May, I wrote a piece for Forbes about the outrage people are so quick to feel these days. It began like this: “We are outraged. “We are outraged when we see someone without a mask. Outraged when asked to wear a mask. Outraged with every headline. Outraged by every social media comment. Outraged before breakfast. After lunch. During dinner. In our dreams. It’s an epidemic. And I’m convinced our outrage is more destructive than the novel coronavirus.” (read more) Obviously, I was thinking about pandemic outrage. Boy, what a difference a day can make!
My prior email advice was well-received and triggered requests for advice about text messages. This is a pretty easy one! Text messages provide instant communication. They are quick to compose and often delivered more readily than email. But they also essentially disappear just as instantly, especially when another message arrives. Generally speaking, there is no easy way to flag messages needing attention. No way to file them for future reference. No way to delete the unimportant ones within a thread. No way to attach a document.
These three words might be the best advice I can ever give you to address difficult and uncomfortable situations.
Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. This is not a partisan article. This article is about process. I’m very much a process person and if there is one process I care about, perhaps more than any other, it is our democratic system of government that has kept us safe and prosperous for an impressive number of years.
After witnessing relatively few actions, we put labels on people. When impressed by comments or accomplishments, we reach for positive labels such as brilliant, ambitious, talented, or a natural leader. The more impressive the feat, the quicker we are to draw our conclusions and apply the label.
A business owner who read my newsletter regularly for more than a decade and often told me how much he always learned from me unsubscribed recently. All because of two words. Two words! Wow! It’s no loss to me, but why would someone walk away from an abundant and free source of insights they value because of two words? There are only two reasons I can think of. First, my two words were utterly horrific. Second, the person was wired for blind rage. What were the two words that leaped out at this guy from all the other words I’ve written in 4 books and over 600 articles? What terrible words sent him running with seething indignation?
While speaking at the Elevate Leadership Summit in Idaho, I wanted to illustrate how differently we all see things so I relayed a story about the day I brought my future husband home for the very first time. Within about two minutes of walking in the door, he asked for a hammer. He wanted to pound in a protruding nail on our stairway before something or someone got caught on it. He could not not see that nail. Nor could he leave it sticking out. I, on the other hand, along with my two parents and four siblings, had lived with that nail for a cumulative count of over 200 years without it ever occurring to any of us to do something about it. I certainly knew it was there; I used to wrap the phone cord around it while sitting on those steps and chatting with friends. (Yes, that dates me!) If a protruding nail can be a preoccupation for some and effectively invisible to others, you can never assume your co-workers are noticing or thinking the same things you are. Nor can you fault them for not seeing what you see. This fact is at the heart of my Disconnect Principle.
Now that I have your attention, let me make one thing completely clear: you can not change others! Not bosses. Not employees. Not co-workers. Not family. Maybe especially not family -partners, children, or parents! People change their behavior, beliefs, and life circumstances only when they are ready. Simply put, they ‘gotta wanna’! One of my readers wrote seeking advice about several obstacles his wife faced at work. As I read his email, I could see that part of the issue was her unwillingness to speak up and try to change her circumstances, which was a source of frustration to him. He was sympathetic and concerned, but she was in a difficult situation that wasn’t going to fix itself. So what does one do in this situation?