Cancel all Meetings..... No Seriously....

Meetings, meetings, everywhere and not a drop of decision. If you work in a large organization, I am sure you feel put upon by the amount of meetings you have to attend. Not the kinds that really accomplish anything except to stroke some egos, but the kinds that simply steal your valuable time for no tangible outcome. The amazing thing is that for many institutions these same wasteful meetings probably at one time accomplished something practical, but if you are in an older established company, you are probably attending some "habit meetings"---you know the ones that have just been around forever. A manager recently asked me how I would decide which meetings were valuable and which were no longer necessary. The answer was easy. I told him, "Cancel all meetings...." He looked at me like I had three heads. "No, seriously....."

When I took over as director/administrator of my addictions unit, I had been there for several years and attended all the mandatory, wasteful meetings. I knew they weren't all a waste and that some overlapped in purpose, but I did not want to lose any that actually were helpful. I still was not sure which I should keep, so I cancelled them all for three weeks except for the JCAH required staffing of patients. When I announced it the staff looked at me in the same way as this recent client. My thinking was that if I let the dust settle and allowed people to make their own schedule with the newly opened time slots, any gathering of people that repeated itself to exchange information was probably genuinely productive and therefore would be kept as long as it was useful. After a couple of weeks what could be done on the phone or e-mail was done and if real conversation exchange were necessary, the relevant people would gather and leave when the info exchange was finished. I was right. It happened just like that. People gathered when necessary and a few of these gatherings became regularly attended using only what time was needed.

Realize though, this radical step of cancelling all meetings takes courage because everyone is married to at least one meeting. My point is that the information exchange may not need to include an actual gathering in one room and can be done on an "as needed" basis. The other needed gatherings will form around the necessary people's schedule and can actuallly float during the week to fit flexibly to any acute scheduling problems of the attendees. If a meeting forms casually it is needed, if not, the information was probably exchanged in some other manner.

So to see which of your meetings are really necessary, cancel them all for a while. Seriously.

Acknowledgement Upholds Dignity.

I will admit it, I watched "Undercover Boss" tonight for the first time. I just wanted to see what it was about. Granted it is the Cinderella story all over again in a workplace setting, but who cares, it's fun. This show should help managers realize how powerful it is to truly acknowledge someone in their workplace. Giving acknowledgement to employees is an ongoing issue in every company I work with and the reasons managers have trouble giving this acknowledgement is covered in my book (see Fundamental Three), but I want to share my own recent experience with the power of acknowledgement.

I was in a Florida Walgreens buying some beer (yes they actually sell it there) and there was a long line of people being served by a single older woman in her fifties. As each customer reached the checkout, she took each of their items and neatly packaged them in an extremely conscientious way. She individually bagged each bottle before placing it into a larger bag, reached back to get a cardboard strip to place between the bottles in the bag before she placed in the next bottle, opened another bag for any other items and placed them in it slowly and carefully as if she were handling eggs. She did this with the five customers before me and treated each as if they were the only customer in the place. I would love to tell you that patience is one of my virtues---it is not. By the time my turn came I was pulling out my hair as she took what seemed a full five minutes with each customer, which at the time felt like an eternity. I mean, just put the bottles in a bag and move on, would ya? But no, she took meticulous care for each customer's precious purchase.

As my turn came she double bagged my beer and made sure that it fit perfectly even folding the top of the bag down with three perfectly symmetrical folds. I do not know what made me do this, but I considered saying something about the enormous time she took with each customer because everyone in the line was harrumphing and sighing to send a signal that they were as impatient as I was. Right as I opened my mouth someone sighed a little too loud behind me. I was embarrassed for the cashier and myself because I could have easily done the same thing given another minute, but something unexpected happened. For some reason as I opened my mouth and heard my own impatience acted out by someone else behind me, my better angels prevailed.

"You take such care in your bagging of people's items," I said in the most sincerely gentle tone.

I do not know where this response came from (actually I do, see Fundamental Seven in my book), but it came out. This woman looked up at me with the brightest smile I had seen in years. Her face beamed radiantly.

"Why thank you," she said almost breathlessly and beaming with pride, "I took an entire course to learn it."

I was touched by her proud response. I couldn't believe I had said what I did in the gentle tone that I had, and to see her react so positively to what could have easily been a sarcastic, nasty encounter---I could not believe my luck in having had it come out that way.

My simple acknowledgement upheld this woman's dignity. In a lesser moment of impatience I could have easily torn her down. Because of my own impatience I could not see that she was intending to be an excellent employee for her company that put her through an entire class to learn this technique. She realized it must have been important to her company or why would they have spent all that time teaching it to their employees. First comes careful attention, then comes speed with more practice. She was truly any company's dream employee, and I was judging her to be a pain. But all it took was a little acknowledgement of her effort and all was right in her world. Why can't we do this for more people in our lives? It would make such a difference for people's esteem.

I will remember this for a while and forget it again. That is the way of the world. We get the teachings, forget them over time, and then hopefully remember them again.

Acknowledgement upholds dignity.

Important stuff to remember for managers and fellow human beings alike.

Staying Together for the Children: The Other Side

One of the most discussed topics in therapy sessions around the subject of divorce is the potential negative effect on children. "I don't want to hurt the children," is the most common phrase and a reasonable one for obvious reasons. While it appears that the only solution is to stay together to avoid exposing children to the pain of divorce, I just want to tell you "The Other Side."

The other side is the one I hear from kids fifteen to twenty who describe their family environment. I remember one seventeen year old female in particular. I asked her, "what is your parent's relationship like" to get a feel for the relational modeling she'd learned growing up. I cannot begin to tell you how many clients of all ages who say some variation of the same answer she gave: "horrible...they hated each other and fought all the time, but said they stayed together for us."

She said this straight out.

"What makes you think they hated each other?"

"Oh it was obvious in their tone and the way they rolled their eyes to us when they left the room. They'd argue all the time, and even if they whispered loudly in the other room, you could just feel it...I just wish they would've split because we got along fine with them when they weren't in the same room together."

"Did you ever ask them about it, their relationship and all?"

"When I got older I asked Mom after one particular fight why they didn't divorce and she said they wanted to stay together until we went to college. I couldn't wait to get out of there and go to college. It was harder on my brothers because they were stuck there for several more years."

I have heard so many variations of this statement. I imagine it is possible that there is a person who had parents who hated each other but is still glad they stayed together for the sake of the family, I've just never met that person yet. My point is that parents rarely hear this side of the negative effects of "staying together for the kids" because they don't talk to people who had to live through it. The bottom line is this: all kids can feel psychological/emotional tension in a room and are negatively affected by it. They may not have the words to talk about it to the parents, but they feel it nonetheless. They want it to stop because it makes them feel bad, and they can often feel responsible for the fight because fights often involve scheduling around the child.

Here is what I cannot figure out: how is the children's repeated exposure to their parent's fighting sparing them any pain? They are not sparing the children from pain by not divorcing, they are simply prolonging their own marital pain for everyone around to feel. Kids get it. You hate each other. They feel your pain.

Another event that often happens after a period of these fights involves one or more of the teenage children in a family begging a parent to leave to stop the fights. They usually poll the other older kids and approach a parent armed with a consensus. If the parent refuses, the kids often lose respect for the parents and withdraw from the family.

"I thought my Dad was an idiot for letting my Mom treat him like that, I lost all respect for them both," she said.

This is the issue: Do what you want for religious reasons or what looks best for the family or others, but if the true reason you are not separating is because you want to spare the kids PAIN---forget about it---there is pain with either decision, but the one where you stay together in a hateful relationship just keeps forcing YOUR pain on them to feel, experience and absorb every day.

Please understand, this is not a pro-separation article. I recommend couples go to therapy and try to work things out---that is the best way to avoid divorce. I am only saying children experience prolonged pain when their parents are in a loveless marriage, and that is the other side of the argument that many parents do not take into account.