"One Thing And You're Kilt For Life"

As the joke goes (or how I heard it) a guy is asked by his wife, "Do these pants make my butt look big?" The fairly oblivious husband responds, ""Nope your big butt makes your pants look big." The wife, fuming as she slams the door leaving the room says, "That is it, I want a divorce!" The oblivious husband sighs and mutters, "One thing and you're kilt for life." I am sure there are other variations of the joke, but it is the last line that I am focusing on here.

I am seeing a disturbing pattern in this increasingly politically correct and hyper-sensitive world in which we live. In the name of political correctness, I am seeing people's increasing comfort with totally writing someone off for one misplaced or inappropriate comment. I am talking now about friends, or people with which there is some history and relationship. I totally understand how first impressions are very powerful and making a huge gaffe in the first meeting can sour future interest in starting a relationship, but I am talking about established relationships here. I am noticing an increased hyper-sensitivity by people who were "shocked" or "offended" by a friend or associate's statement and a willingness to say through act or deed, "I don't like them anymore."

Now I am not talking about a comment that reflects a long pattern or history of similar comments by someone. That would be just the last straw of a long line of comments reflecting the same attitude. I am talking about some fresh comment or offending behavior that in the offended party's mind was "just too much" or "crossed the line." I say all this because I too have been the party that said the wrong thing at times throughout my life and have unfortunately lost people because of it. "What horrible thing did you say, Kevin," is the thought that you may have I am sure, but for the most part I was never told by that person what those things were, or given a chance to respond or defend my statements-- I was just banished. No, they were not some racist/ethnic slurs or anything of that inflammatory proportion, but the comments just offended someone, and that was it, potential or established friendship ruined. I've even had others defend me in situations by saying, "Oh, that's so and so and they are always reacting to stuff like that." I am thinking in those situations: "why couldn't we talk about it----conflict resolution style?" People do not want to talk in way too many cases I am seeing these days.

One comment recently was when I saw the sister of a friend react anxiously about a mess someone made and said, "Wow, that is just like your sister would react." End of possible relationship with the newly-met sister. I had overstepped some unknown boundary and it was the topic of much conversation the next day about how "rude" I was. I only found out several months later from someone else that she had that reaction to my observation. There are other examples of course, but you get the idea.

Now, I admit, I am very forthcoming of spontaneous insights and seemingly innocent observations, but I am shocked by people's increasing willingness to "write someone off" simply because they were uncomfortable with someone's offhanded comment. I see the same thing in corporations when someone asks a "forbidden" question or points out a commonly known, but taboo/undiscussable fact. The offending party is increasingly ostracised or fired. What has become of us as a culture? Are we becoming so psychologically fragile as a whole that a simple statement can get us fired/dumped/ostracised by communities?

In my book (you know the title already.....don't you?), I talk about a similar effect I've found in groups. I call it the "tyranny of the child." This is where group discussion/attention is held captive by someone who is offended by something that was said, and that person then proceeds to take the group hostage, claiming all attention to their personal drama surrounding their personal offense until they have receive a satisfactory amount of attention/apology/nurturing to allow the group to move forward. I distinguish this from a person appropriately sharing impact of another person's statement by pointing out that sharing impact from someone's statement does not demand the group as a whole to stop and "fix" the emotional "harm." "I am hurt so you need to fix me," is very different from, "I had this reaction to your statement." One is "needy child attention-getting", the other is "adult" sharing.

My point in all this is that is seems to be more and more acceptable these days to be able to write someone off because of one social faux pas or a perceived slight or insult. Is this helpful in any way? Are we becoming so politically correct or socially fragile that any comment that offends us warrants justifiable abandonment? Have you ever been banished for something stupid or spontaneous that you said at a gathering?

I am encouraging something more adult in these situations if you experience some "offense" socially. Investigate the motivations behind the statement. Find out what was happening for that person before you banish/fire them. Have none of us made a stupid comment before? Is there any room for social error anymore? I once jokingly referred to myself as a "girly man" using Schwarzenegger's line and was angrily confronted by a group member who told me that her brother was Gay and I owed her and him an apology for my "sexual slur." He was not there at the time, but she knew it would have been as offensive to him as it was to her, and she wanted her pound of flesh now. I apologized, but she remained angry.

Am I crazy or was that an obvious overreaction? Are you seeing the same trend?

It seems increasingly these days that one thing and you ARE kilt for life.

Millionaire & Truck Driver: A Marriage of Skills Not Status

I have a friend I met in the 80's---and for those of you losing count, that was almost thirty years ago---and he was a construction contractor for much of his life. He also owned a nightclub at one time and would tell stories of booking Flip Wilson, Tina Turner and drinking with Dean Martin. He just lost his fortune in the recession (real estate crash) and at sixty years old needed to do something else. He has been a millionaire at least twice in his life, and he recently decided to get a job as a truck driver. "I never thought I'd be in this kind of job, I used to think it was beneath me, but I needed something I could do now, on my own, and with little initial investment," he said to me. "I figure I can do this for ten years and retire if I do it the way I want to do it."

This is the new face of employment: the marriage of diverse skills as opposed to employment status seeking.

For most of us growing up, we went to school to get a higher paying job, hopefully with a fancy job title. This job title was our status in the world. "What do you do," is the American follow up to "Hello." What we did was who we were, how we judged our success and ultimately how proud we were of ourselves. Fair or not, true or not, it did not matter, that was the way we were raised.

Things in the 21st century have changed though, and fast. Corporate executives are working at Starbucks and Corporate Coaches are janitors. The new question of the century is not what CAN I do, it is what WILL I do. What am I willing to do? Underlying the willingness issue is a point of pride/esteem. What work is beneath me? This is the question that is nagging everyone these days especially those over thirty because they are still part of the old school of thought that says some jobs are "beneath me." This is a troubling, though pervasive, belief that some jobs are "too low" for me. We are witnessing the beginning of the end of this belief system because the economy has forced a huge contingent of extremely educated and trained people to take any work wherever they can.

What is problematic with the whole "that job is beneath me" kind of thinking is the extra hardship it is causing some people. The old expression is, "Pride goeth before a fall," meaning better to let go of pride before you hit the ground. Unfortunately I am watching many people hitting the (economic) ground. I am hearing stories every month of people selling their possessions on E-Bay before they will work for $12 an hour. One person, with two previous car repossessions, took her last $2,000 and bought (more like rented) a "no money down" car with monthly payments she knew she could not afford so she could look rich for a while (until it was inevitably repossessed also). The only point I am making here is that I believe for the next decade, people are going to be moving more toward matching skill levels rather than ego levels. Like the millionaire, contractor, club owner becoming a truck driver because he figured the system out, highly skilled workers, executives and degree holders will begin to see and value any employment as progress in the new hard economy. They will begin to adjust their pride levels to a new practicality---"money is money" and "I am not my job title." A culture where work ethic is more respected than job title would be a welcome change and one that is already in progress.

Before I go further, I must point out to the readers of this blog who have not yet read my book (a thought I try not to imagine) that I too have had my post graduate degree, humbling job phase so I know first hand all of the psychological issues that come with such a "fall." Believe me. But I want to end this piece with a silver lining in all of this job adjustment the nation is doing. The silver lining is profound and it goes like this: what if a majority of people "fell" from their status jobs and learned that after the loss of status, the only thing that is truly important is the people they work with and their relationship with them? What if "status" had less to do with what you did and more to do with who you are to work with? What if your focus became less about job titles and more about job relationships and how important it is to relate and support your fellow employees? I honestly believe that we as a nation are being asked by this crisis to move one more step beyond greed and power and move to the most important thing in life: Relationship. If this crisis does even a little toward moving people into work relationships with people whom they would not have previously related and allow them to find their common humanity, then from my perspective, the whole crisis would bring a "net plus" to the nation. Then, if these newly forged work relationships brought down the old walls of class/ego/status separation between people of all shapes and sizes even a little bit, then, as the song goes, "what a wonderful world it would be."

Staying Too Long With A "Friend"---A Frog In Water

I was talking with a female client of mine recently, and she was recounting how she had "stayed too long" with her previous husbands. When I asked her to explain she said, "I knew a long while before I divorced them that I was not in love and that I really couldn't stand them, but I stayed anyway. I don't know why." It reminded me of the true scientific discovery that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out immediately, but if you put it in cold water and and turn up the heat slowly, it will not react to the incrementally increasing temperature and boil itself to death. People, like frogs, it seems, also do not react to emotional pain as forcefully if it is incremental. Have you ever had a friend who did negative things to you like criticize you constantly, put you down in front of others, or regularly say negative things about you to your other friends? It is interesting to see how many people have these "frienemies" in their lives and somehow rationalize keeping them as a friend. I am leaving the issue of spouses out of this discussion because there are particular complexities to extracting oneself from a marriage as I have pointed out in previous blog topics. The topic of "frienemies" though is interesting because very few people actually rid themselves of these people around them who are causing consistent emotional pain. Their cruelty is often rationalized away with comments like, "Oh that's just how he/she is," or "He/she doesn't mean anything by it." But the truth of the matter is that what they do to us hurts more than we often admit to ourselves, so why do we put up with this for so long?

One reason, like the frog, is that the relationship did not start out that way and it may have gotten worse slowly over time. Another reason is that they are not friends with which we spend that much time so we let the behavior go...every single time. But what about a "good" friend--one that we care about and whose opinion really does matter to us? Why do we keep them in our lives when they keep doing such mean things to us? I just want to suggest one reason we stay that most do not think about. It is about Loyalty---and in this case a misplaced Loyalty. It is not a loyalty to the friend because a part of us knows they are not a real, supportive friend, rather it is a loyalty to a relationship line. We stay friends too long with unsupportive people because we have a history together and it is a loyalty to this history of friendship and the past memories that anesthetizes us to the present day hurtfulness. So we take it and take it and take it all in the name of "friendship". The question is why should we take it, and why is it so hard for most people to extract themselves from such unsupportive friendships. What to do with the frienemies among us.

When Youth Supports An Elder

I saw something very important this week that I hope is a sign of an increasing trend. For those of you who are not followers of popular culture, last night was a huge event for a large group of television fans--- Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live. Betty White has been around for eighty-eight (and one half ) years as an actress most famous for her roles on the Mary Tyler Moore show in the 70's and The Golden Girls in the 80's. Why am I writing about this on my blog, stick with me for a minute because I think the event signals something important.

The back story is that Betty made a hilarious commercial that played during the Super Bowl this year and all the twenty-somethings loved it. They loved it so much they opened a facebook page and started a campaign to get her on as a host of Saturday Night Live---the twenty-somethings show of shows so to speak. They got so many people to join the campaign that she was asked to host three months later. My own peers called me before the show to ask me to tape it so they could watch it again if they wanted. They were already anticipating a second viewing before they saw it the first time. What is going on here?

While I was watching it I saw that at least seven former SNL female members came back to be in several sketches with her exciting the audience (and I am sure the shows writers) and ensuring a "Best of SNL" title for the entire show. Remember, these former SNL players all came back for this one show, and that has never happened for anyone before her. That is when it hit me: Youth is supporting an elder. Youth liked her in the commercial, youth got their show to make her host and youth came back to the show to support and boost her skits. It also marked Betty as he oldest guest to ever host the show, and gave SNL it best rated show in eighteen months. While being an exciting event for the show's faithful, it may also be a sign of something bigger---a positive step toward bridging youth and eldership

In the traditional native cultures eldership begins with early elders (60's) and moves to middle elders (70's) and finally to the revered position of full elder (80's on). These elders are revered and honored for their wisdom in these cultures and it is not uncommon for older people from these traditions to brag that they are "almost 80". Our culture, on the other hand, often finds these people abandoned in nursing homes. So what made our culture's youth pluck this one elder, Betty White, to become an icon of their generation? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it happened and that is all that is important. When the relationship between youth and elders is strengthened in any way, our culture matures and that is worth noting. Every positive act of support of youth to elders, especially such a public one, changes our culture's negative stereotypes of older people being feeble and useless and upholds the truly dignified nature of our elders. Youth feeds elders with energy and enthusiasm and elders give experience and wisdom. This of course does not mean that all elders in this culture are automatically wise as wisdom is rarely sought after or valued by most members of our culture, but every act of mutual support strengthens the connection between the generations. Whether it is simply a shared laugh or a deep conversation, all connections that deepen relations between youth and eldership benefit our entire society.

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.