Something Happened, and It All Changed...

Looking back, we can all see what shaped our lives. Was it our parents, our teachers, or our best friends? Was it the good experiences, or the bad? Was it our genes or fate? Was it the labels or the stories about us, or both?

Our stories are important. The labels we use to describe ourselves - make a difference. How we combine our labels into our stories - make a difference.

Understanding how labels and stories shape our identity is vital to our growth and development.

Here's a story (my story) ... See how this process works....

Growing up, I loved to make things. I did a lot of crafts in school, and soon discovered I liked to knit and crochet. My teachers didn't like it, because by the time I was in junior high (a/k/a middle school), I would bring my knitting to school and do it in class. One year I made a sweater a week. That was the first time I learned I had such high achievement needs.

At home I started to make clothes. Not just make them. Design them. I'd buy a pattern and fabric, and then work with the basic patterns to transform them into something different and much more wonderful than what appeared on the pattern package. This is where I learned to design and to create wonderful things that didn't exist before. I loved my crafts and I loved my designing, and knew it was a part of who I was and who I would become.

But not everyone saw it my way. My parents didn't understand my joy and my passion for designing. They used to say that when I worked in my room for hours at a time I was 'escaping reality' and was 'living in a fantasy world.' They saw this as bad and wrong, and even when I wore my beautiful designs, I knew they still labeled me as 'escaping reality'.

Over time, I assumed my role in the family. I was the rebel and outcast. I didn't feel appreciated for what I was or who I was becoming. In my reaction to the labels, I challenged authority - especially parental authority - learning more about ways one child could get punished than most would ever want to know. Now I see, looking back, why I have such a need to understand positive psychology, and appreciative inquiry. The good can come from the bad.

Things That Stick

Being labeled an outcast, or a problem child sticks really hard, as all pejorative labels do. When parents - or teachers - or bosses label us judgmentally, negatively, or harshly it sticks. It doesn't roll off our backs so easily. Negative labels actually create the same reaction in the brain as when we break a leg, except social pain stays longer, and takes longer to go away. It stays around and we ruminate on it, we build stories around it, and others build stories around it. The gossip mills are filled with larger than life stories that started with one person labeling another person harshly.

Until I was 16, I was the outcast and rebel. I got into lots of trouble, and got punished regularly. I didn't see my future as quite rosy or bright. While I wanted to be a designer, or an author or artist (had I the talent), my parents saw my future as schoolteacher or mother, summers off, raise the kids, stay home. Being an artist or designer was like being a beatnik or bum.

Then it all changed...

One Friday night, my dad, who was a dentist, brought home a patient to join us for Friday night dinner. This patient was special. It turns out, she was Claude Reins wife, the wife of a famous actor; but she didn't treat us different, and we didn't treat her differently. We just enjoyed her enjoying us.

To tell the truth, that dinner was more than a dinner; not at all because she was famous. It was the conversation we had that night. I still remember where I sat, and what she said.

"Judy, what are you going to do after graduation?" She asked. My eyes opened wide, my heart started to beat. It was the horrible question that everyone asked me, that I didn't yet know how to answer. I knew what I liked, and knew what I loved, but these things were labeled bad.

"I'm not sure yet," I told her. "I'll figure it out." Thinking I could move the conversation over to something else, I said, "Could someone pass the potatoes." "Well, what do you like to do, she asked?" A question I didn't expect. "Well," I said quietly, "I love to design clothes." "And where do you do this designing," she asked.

I looked from side to side to see if my parents were frowning with dismay. Seeing that their glares were a bit more neutral than usual, I told her that I had a room upstairs where I did my work. "Can you show me?" she asked.

Before I realized it, we were climbing the stairs to my special room. I had half finished dresses hanging from the closet doors, always left ajar. This day I had more works in progress laying on the floor and others on the small sitting lounge.

My sewing machine was active with a skirt in progress, things were all around, and she could set it first hand... This was my joy.

"Wow!" She said, "This is amazing. You are truly a designer, young lady. Show me each one at a time. I am quite impressed."

I don't remember much more of our conversation, or how long it lasted. What I do remember is coming down the stairs feeling different, feeling like I was walking on a cloud, feeling so warm and good inside.

"Your daughter is a fashion designer," she said. "You should be so proud of her! I would be."

That was when everything changed. For the first time, the negative label just fell on the floor, like dropping a frock, and I could step into another dress that made me beautiful - mostly in my own eyes.

"You should send her to Toby Coburn School of Fashion Design," she blurted out to my parents. It's the best in the city." I saw my parents blank stares back at her. They either didn't know what she was talking about - or were shocked that she adorned me with such positive praise. The conversation went on; I don't remember much more after that, except everything changed.

Labels - How do they help you see? What do they help you see?

What are the labels we use with each other - with our friends, with our colleagues, or with our family? How do we see each other - define each other - think of each other? Labels give definition to our relationships. They set into place the parameters, of how we will engage - or not engage. They create blind spots - true blind spots - and cause us to look for more proof that our labels are right.

• What labels do you need to examine at work?
• What labels need changing?
• What would happen if you changed a label - reversed a label - or took a label away all together?

Try it at work! Try it at home! Do your experiment, and then let me know what happens!

The more we see each other in positive terms, the more we enable each person to step into their most positive self. The more we see each other through negativity, the more we feel unfairly judged and feel resentful. Resentment breeds resentment and turns into toxic places to work.

Use the labels in your life to create a palette of colors in the world you want to live in. Design your world. Create your world...and make it the best you can!


Judith E. Glaser is the Author of two best selling business books:

Creating WE: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization - winner of the Bronze Award in the Leadership Category of the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, and The DNA of Leadership; and the DVD and Workshop titled The Leadership Secret of Gregory Goose

Contact: 212-307-4386

READ OUR PAST NEWSLETTERS

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE OUR NEWSLETTER

Wisdom for the Road - From Nobody to Somebody

Growing up in my family, I felt like a nobody, not a somebody. You may have too!

In our family, we were three children - whose names all began with a "J." My parents thought it was cute, 'the three J's'. As we learned over time, our collective name became a way for our parents not to have to deal with the challenge of individuality, conflict, and differences. They didn't have to deal with who got the most, or the least, who was the best or the worst. When you label your three kids as one, all the surface conflicts disappear, and life is perfect!

Striving for Perfection

So in our family, striving for perfect became our mantra. We were the perfect kids, the perfect home, and the perfect family. On the outside we were the loving family that everyone admired. We dressed well, expressed ourselves well, and did well in school. We were nice and agreeable, and were role models for others. On the outside we were perfect - on the inside we were children trying to become some-bodies and finding it very difficult to figure out how. The rewards for being the same were much bigger than those for being different.

Being Different

So I rebelled. When my parents said white, I said black. When they said don't smoke until you are 18, I started smoking at 14 and quit at 18. Wherever there was a rule, I felt I had to break it. When your parents have the idea that consensus is always good, and means agreement and questioning authority is all bad - the underlying meta-messages they are sending to their children are that being different is not good, having a different perspective is not allowed and if you disagree with someone you lose their love.

Integrity

Being perfect and same on the outside and different on the inside gets lonely. At the age of 14 I started writing my first book. It was called "No Man is an I-Land" - and I was going to write my way into being the somebody I wanted to be. But at 14 I only had 1½ pages of ideas inside of me to put down on paper - I was just starting my lifelong journey of personal awareness, leadership and discovery - and had a dream and desire but little know-how for expressing it.

Wisdom for the Road

So I've spent my whole life trying to understand what it means to be a somebody, and how to enable each somebody to thrive in a world of amazing and incredible other some-bodies - and to feel good about being different and special. The wisdom behind this relates to every part of who we are as human beings - from our cells all the way up to the systems and communities we live in.

What I have found, and am still finding, this precious learning is the vital wisdom behind life itself - when we allow our somebody to emerge and not be afraid of our own voice, and our own special talents, we emerge as teachers and as wisdom-givers to everyone we know. When we all learn to hold this wisdom in our hearts, and minds and conversations - we become the best some-bodies we can ever be - and we do it together.

Practices for the Workplace

1. Look for the uniqueness in every employee, friend, colleague or family member.
2. Pay attention to how each person has a unique fingerprint, footprint and mark - their own special DNA.
3. Look for opportunities to create conversations with employees about their aspirations - aspire means to breathe - and when we aspire with others, we breathe life into our dreams.
4. Ask employees "what do you think?"
5. Perceive and acknowledge their unique perspectives as different ways of seeing the world, not as "wrong ways."
6. View conflicts as opportunities for expand the conversation to a bigger frame of reference.
7. Listen non-judgmentally.

Judith E. Glaser is the Author of two best selling business books:

Creating WE: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization - winner of the Bronze Award in the Leadership Category of the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, and The DNA of Leadership; and the DVD and Workshop titled The Leadership Secret of Gregory Goose

Contact: 212-307-4386

READ OUR PAST NEWSLETTERS

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE OUR NEWSLETTER

Ushering In a New Year and a New Generation of Leaders

As the New Year approaches it's a time to look back, celebrate successes and look forward to new opportunities and challenges ahead.

For many, this year will be one of our most challenging. I am hearing people say that - for the first time that they can ever remember it's as though 'we're all in this together'. Somehow that feeling of 'sharing the pain' has a way of easing the pain.

Being part of a team - sharing experiences together - being in a community and together creating the future are some of the most powerful needs of human beings.

When we join a company, a team, or an organization we do so with the hope of being welcomed into a well-functioning, healthy environment that is so compelling and exciting that we look forward to work every day. This expectation - and the deep disappointment that comes when it is not realized - is, in fact, an echo of our own individual wholeness and our most basic need for belonging, appreciating, and understanding.

Strengthening Our Organizational Immune System

We know instinctively that a healthy human being needs to be part of a healthy human community. This sense of health - the recoiling from all that is toxic in human relationships - is the fundamental touchstone we need to hold in our consciousness at every moment of our organizational lives.

When the body is healthy, the immune system works at all times to protect it, immediately identifying and attacking any threat to the body's health. The body learns about new threats and creates warning flags to alert the immune system.

These flags arise from cells, directing the immune system to know where and how to target their action and to marshal the internal resources to restore health. Cancer cells, for example, lose the capacity to pass this important information along to the immune system. When cancer forms inside our bodies, these warning flags are not erected to call the immune system to action.

Strengthening our Individual Immune System

We need to understand that the conditions necessary for creating healthy organizations are, in fact, the same conditions necessary for creating healthy individuals. We need to test and examine our beliefs about the balance between personal independence and the collective good - what I need in the context of what WE need. And we need to learn how to stand comfortably and confidently on that edge.

Raising Our Flags

It is as important that WE - both individually and collectively - monitor the health of our business culture, organization, teams, and one-on-one relationships - especially during times of challenge and economic crisis. Everyone in the organization must have the power to raise a flag if he or she needs help handling challenges, whether they arise from within the organization (conflicts) or from outside in the form of economic challenges we are all facing together. We need to look at challenges not as threats, but as opportunities to learn.

Each of us must be empowered to be part of the team, to watch and listen for challenges and respond to them. Each of us must become alert to challenges and listen in new ways to one another so that we add to the collective ability of the organization to respond quickly and proactively. With this level of awareness in place, we can better recognize how to respond by drawing on the wisdom of the whole organization.

There is, in fact, no I - only WE. Deep down we are not individuals, but rather collectives, billions of cells working in concert, networked together in an exquisite equilibrium via a common genetic code buried in each and every cell. But this amazing, self-healing system operates unconsciously within each of us: When it fails, disease results. When it works, we all learn, grow, and nourish one another and live in a state of health. What keeps it working are our Vital Instincts for mutual success.

As 2009 approaches, let's turn to each other to draw upon our deepest, most profound wisdom for ushering in new ways of thinking in the world. We are a global family.


Judith E. Glaser is the Author of two best selling business books:

Creating WE: Change I-Thinking to We-Thinking & Build a Healthy Thriving Organization - winner of the Bronze Award in the Leadership Category of the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards, and The DNA of Leadership; and the DVD and Workshop titled The Leadership Secret of Gregory Goose

Contact: 212-307-4386

READ OUR PAST NEWSLETTERS

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE OUR NEWSLETTER