Your #1 Talent Retention Threat Is Not What You Think It Is

Employers who want to attract, inspire, and retain their absolute best talent must connect with them on the playing field of their personal purpose in life. Help them see how what they do for you serves their big, epic, life-size sense of personal purpose and mission

“Have you ever watched The Profit?” my friend and financial advisor guru, Kate Stalter, president of Better Money Decisions, just caught me lazily waving my remote control in the general direction of the tv. I’m not a channel surfer, so she rightly figured that I would be open to some specific suggestions. And because she is one of the few people I know here in Santa Fe who is more likely to watch CNBC than a local access chat show about crystals and dreamcatchers, I’m open to her ideas.

The Profit, as it turns out, is not The Prophet (a step in the right direction right there). You probably know it. It features serial entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis, who takes on troubled small businesses and tries to set them to rights again. The drama is where he delivers hard emotional truths to company leaders and brave faces melt in a mudslide of tears.

While scrolling through the On Demand selection from past seasons, I spotted an episode that featured the founder of Farmgirl Flowers. Since I love the bouquets Farmgirl features in its Facebook ads, and since I’m, in fact, a girl, I said, “Let’s watch this one first!” And so we did.

Inside the first couple of minutes I went from “Oh that’s so cool!” to “Oh…that’s too bad.” Here’s why: The first moments of the story were about how a perfectly great employer lost a talented, hard-working, visionary, passionate employee because Farmgirl Flowers founder, Christina Stempel, needed to go somewhere where she could “actually do something good in the world.”

Yay for Farmgirl Flowers. Too bad for Stanford University. She had been Director of Alumni Relations and Campaign Outreach for Stanford’s law school. And to hear her tell her story just briefly on Episode 20 of Season 3 of The Profit, it would appear that Stanford might have failed to help her connect what she did there with “actually doing something good in the world.” So she turned to flowers.

I see it all the time. Fabulous organizations of all sorts spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on employee engagement initiatives but still lose their best talent. Why? Because they don’t help their employees connect what they do with helping make the world a better place – in the context of what’s essential to them. You know the story of the three masons, right? One mason says he makes bricks for a living. Cool. Another mason says he’s making a wall with the brick. Yeah, okay. The third mason points to the cathedral under construction and says, “I’m making that.” That third mason is going to be the one who sticks around for the long haul. You want that guy.

When your employees tell their friends what they do for a living, do they talk bricks? Or do they talk cathedrals? And if they talk cathedrals…is it the cathedral that actually resonates with them personally? How do you know for sure?

Here’s the core message of this article (in case you’re too busy to read the whole shebang…but if you stop here, you’ll miss an amazing video at the end):

Employers who want to attract, inspire, and retain their absolute best talent must connect with them on the playing field of their personal purpose in life. Help them see how what they do for you serves their big, epic, life-size sense of personal purpose and mission.

How do you crack that nut? You get them to open up by asking them the right questions in a safe, sincerely curious environment. One on one.

I get it. This approach isn’t as efficient as scores on spreadsheets (which are also essential, don’t get me wrong). But how efficient is it to lose hard-won talented individuals who are so passionate about doing something that makes a larger difference in the world that they will leave a cushy berth like Stanford, taking huge personal risks in the service of the vision and mission closest to their hearts? Aren’t these the people you would do almost anything to keep?

The Why That Makes Them Cry

“You suck!”

As much as I hate that expression, especially when it’s aimed at me, I have to say this is one of my top five favorite moments in my entire career of interviewing employees who love their work. I love it so much I have to repeatedly talk myself out of turning it into a ring tone for my phone. (It wouldn’t go over well if my phone rang while I’m standing in line, say, at the post office.)

“I promised myself I wouldn’t cry!,” said my interviewee, a manager at Rackspace, a managed cloud computing company outside of San Antonio. (I had already been at Rackspace for a couple of weeks, interviewing employees who love their work there. And word had gotten out that tissues were involved. Not that I intentionally go for the cheap emotional jugular, it just turns out that way sometimes.)

This choked-up outburst came after a few awkward moments of silence after I asked him a simple question, “When was the last time you were deeply proud to be a Racker?” He was so quiet for so long, I worried for a moment there that he was having trouble thinking of a time. As it happened, he was having trouble reclaiming some equanimity so he wouldn’t answer my question through a squeak of emotion.

And this was a moment of sweet satisfaction to me. Several years earlier, while I was living in Silicon Valley, a well-meaning CHRO of a household-name tech firm tried to warn me off this quixotic mission of capturing the sound of personal passion and purpose among the techies there.

“Really, Martha, these software engineer types aren’t interested in saving the world or helping humanity,” she said. “They just want to work hard on the next big thing, cash out, get rich, and be on to the next idea. It’s all about getting rich here.” Judging from the MSRP of the cars in the Whole Foods parking lot in Los Gatos, where I lived, I wondered if she was right. I was still new in town, driving a second-hand Saturn. What did I know?

So there I was a couple of years later, just being told I suck by this techie manager guy at Rackspace’s San Antonio headquarters. True, San Antonio isn’t Cupertino. But otherwise the conditions were the same – a global high-tech company just on the verge of going public. This manager was a transplanted Manhattanite. So it’s all about getting rich, right?

Nope. It was all about telling me the story he wanted to tell without breaking down into the humiliating guy-cry. The time he was the most proud of being a Racker, he said, was when his hard-working team of techies as a group told him they wanted to forego their budgeted summer blow-out and use the money instead to refurbish a nearby elementary school that was down at the heels. Instead of beer and brats, the money was spent on paint, push brooms, and potted plants. A hot, sweaty, filthy, San Antonio summer day that might otherwise have been celebrated rafting on the river was invested in making a public school bright, clean and cheerful for the incoming crowd of kids.

And here he is, months later, telling me how proud he is of his coworkers and their community spirit of sacrifice.

Afterwards, I walked back out to my car to drive back to my hotel. And I reflected back to my Silicon Valley CHRO friend and thought, “heh.” A little too smugly, I have to confess.

The Undeniable Big Three (and One Bonus)

“Come on, Martha, how many people in the U.S. do you think really like their work?” a skeptical reporter was trying to get me to validate this roadtrip I was about to embark on with statistics.

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “If there is only one, I want to find that person and find out what the deal is.” It was 1999, my first book was published, and I was about to hit the road. My mission: To interview ordinary Americans who love their jobs. My MO: To get the word out via national media, which ultimately landed a feature on NPR. Which, in turn, resulted in 4,000 emails in my inbox the morning after the program aired. From all over the country. With the same message: Pick me!

Over the years, since I launched that roadtrip, I have interviewed

  • A CHRO who, as a child, survived a Japanese concentration camp during WW2;
  • A young woman who thought she wanted to be a beautician until she discovered that her calling was taking care of homeless animals at the Asheville, NC, animal shelter;
  • A Columbus, OH, factory worker whose CEO turned his life around when he noticed the man didn’t know how to read and the pair began a company-sponsored school to teach others to read;
  • A Cuban secretary in Miami who dreamed of bringing his entire family across the water to the United States;
  • A Pixar executive who told the story of how the entire company rallied around one employee whose baby was in critical condition at the hospital;
  • The PR executive at Chicago’s Ravinia Music Festival who told the story of how he dreamed of being part of the wonderful world of music as an impoverished kid who would take multiple city buses to get to the park so he could lie on the grass and let the music wash over him. The path he engineered to get his adult self into the Ravinia world threw up barriers at every turn (come to find out, the music world didn’t need another earnest but so-so trombonist). But all his random, make-ends-meet-while-I-keep-my-dream-alive, survival steps ultimately led him there as the PR person;
  • A young Chinese woman who found work at a Pasadena-based consumer company as a way to escape a government that would ignite the massacre at Tiananman Square;
  • A Muslim security expert in Silicon Valley who took the advice of his Secret Service friends and changed his name after 9/11 so he could stay in his profession. The name he chose, he said, reflects the peaceful joining of the world’s three largest religions. Why? Because he loved his work. And he wanted it to count for something.
  • The hospital parking lot attendant in Boise who loves his work because he knows his friendly, upbeat welcome sets the tone for anxiety-ridden patients who are arriving, not knowing what the day will bring;
  • A hairdresser in Hawaii whose proudest moment was when she helped an abused woman restore her appearance. And this stylist told me that it wasn’t the new do that made her proud of her work. It was the fact that she knew that this woman would be able to proudly appear in family photos and for generations afterward, people would see her picture and tell the story about how this heroic woman prevailed against the most violent of circumstances.

So. Do any single one of these people I interview rave on about their salary, stock options, retirement benefits, health care, dental, or preferred parking space?

Nope.

This is what they talk about.

I love my work because it:

Relieves pain.

Restores hope.

Brings beauty to the world.

That’s it.

Well, there’s one more: “I love my work because it helps me love my life. I see now how all the twists and turns of my life have brought me here. And it all makes sense.”

I think back on Farmgirl Flowers’ entrepreneurial founder and wonder if anyone at the Stanford University law school took the time to help her see that the funds she was raising might have relieved someone’s pain, restored someone’s hope, or brought beauty into someone’s world. And if the law school had, might she have stayed because she was “actually doing good in the world?”

Well, flowers are nice, too.

 

What Difference Do You Want to Make Through Your Work?

If you’re tempted to say, “Yeah but, my people are different…” think about your own career/life journey. You want to be able to look back on your career days and be able to say, “Yeah…I made a difference in ways that spoke from my heart.” Come on. I know you do. So do your people.

In her poem, The Summer Day, Mary Oliver wrote the hit-between-the-eyes challenge line:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

As a friend of mine told me the other day, “We’re all burning daylight.” The more in touch we are with our unique life’s purpose, the more acutely aware we are when our jobs do or don’t help us serve that purpose. And the more desperate we are to not waste our lives doing work that doesn’t speak to us.

The pressure to move on rises when we just can’t connect what we do with our heart’s urgings. And the days, weeks, months, years are getting away from us.

If you’re reading this piece – especially all the way down to the end – I’m assuming you’re in leadership and you have people. Recognize that each one of them is pursuing their own epic, heroic mission in life. Give them the chance to tell you what it is. Give them the chance to connect their personal life’s purpose with the work they do for you every day.

What’s in it for you? You will keep that precious talent. Which means that you don’t have to spend your time searching for their replacements.

And then you can use that time investing your own wild and precious life in serving your own life’s purpose.

About Martha I. Finney: In addition to writing books on employee engagement, career management and leadership, Martha also helps companies build authentic cultures of employee passion and purpose through her one-on-one interviews and her small group workshop, Career Landscapes.

Learn more about how to bring Martha to your company to capture the authentic voices and stories of employee passion. Contact me at Martha@marthafinney.com

 

8 Leadership Lessons I Learned in Surgery

Organized life – business, career, healthcare – is all about reaching through the present toward a better future. I’m still so in love with the overall experience that if someone were to say to me, “You need the other hip done,” my answer would be a cheerful, “Okay.” How’s that for a happy response to the standard customer satisfaction survey question, “How likely are you to come back?”

This is the first piece of writing I have done since November 18 when I presented the back of my hand for the IV start. But I began writing it in my head the instant I emerged from La La Land, to discover myself already muttering something about politics (my worst case scenario come true: talking smack about current events when I’m not in full command of my wits and others nearby are holding the sharps, lines, tubing, straps and machines that go beeeeeeeeeeep). Hopefully this piece makes more sense now that I have had a few days to shake the anesthesia from my system and get on with the business of thinking clearly.

Here’s the briefest of backgrounds, just to set the stage. Two years ago, Nick Vincent (a client then and dear friend now) watched me hobble across the reception area of his North Carolina headquarters building. And he kindly said, “You’ve got to get that fixed.” For years up until that point, the pain in my hip would reliably go away if I just knocked out the chocolate and lost a little bit of weight. But that wasn’t working anymore. Instead of just going to the doctor already, my smarter-than-doctors strategy was to continue to beat myself up for my lack of diet discipline, compounding the debilitating pain in my hip with totally elective agony.

Being the expert that I am in all things I know absolutely nothing about, I knew that the most obvious solution – find an orthopedic surgeon, go to the hospital, replace the part – was the least attractive solution. And so I spent the next two years, thousands of dollars, and thousands of miles, trying everything but doing it right the first time.

One of the reasons I resisted (setting aside the blood, needles, and paperwork part)? My deep and broad knowledge about employee engagement, culture, years of watching NBC’s ER, and all those times I spotted nurses on strike in front of my nearest city hospital as I was driving by on my way to Carl’s Jr for a Super Star with cheese. New Mexico, where I live, isn’t high on many national quality-of-life lists, except for per capita DWI rates. I brought with me on this adventure of finding relief a really bad attitude about almost everything local, based on nothing more than presumption and elitist snark. So extreme healthcare interventions struck me as being higher quality elsewhere. I traveled as far away as Columbia, SC, and West Palm Beach, FL, in search of a solution, only to return unimproved to my little New Mexico house in the desert after a series of bizarre failed attempts.

I’m still so in love with the overall experience that if someone were to say to me, “You need the other hip done,” my answer would be a cheerful, “Okay.” How’s that for a happy response to the standard customer satisfaction survey question, “How likely are you to come back?”

Eventually, all things came together at the same time I caught some Ring video of myself galumphing on my front porch, even though I had, by then, lost a lot of weight. I resolved that enough is enough. And I joined the global cadre of “hippies,” who along their own journeys of delay and denial also eventually decided enough is enough. And, like me, all around the world, on November 18, answered the question, “Which hand do you want to use for the IV?” This would be the first of about five needle sticks for me that day – which was actually the worst part of the whole experience when you get right down to it. The other aspects of the day were other people’s job descriptions. My only performance expectation was just to hold still. And not look.

So why is this turning out to be an article on leadership – other than the fact that I’m just an employee engagement geek and can’t help myself? Because I was paying attention to the goings on of the day in the gleaming, brand new hospital in a small town one hour north of Santa Fe.

At every point in the entire process, I discovered a chain of passionate professionals cheerfully doing what they do best, easing a patient along this magic carpet ride toward one day feeling better and restoring hope for a pain-free future of just being able to walk across a room without wincing.

There were a couple of missteps, which I’ll also tell you about. But here it is, almost two weeks out from my Big Day. I’m still so in love with the overall experience that if someone were to say to me, “You need the other hip done,” my answer would be a cheerful, “Okay.” How’s that for a happy response to the standard customer satisfaction survey question, “How likely are you to come back?”

There are gallons of lessons to be drawn from the surgical experience. So I thought I’d have a little fun here and lay a few of them out for you (I mean, it’s either writing this piece or doing PT):

An often-overlooked leader role is to manage transitions – not simply keep focused on objectives.

This I actually learned from a nurse at a neighborhood bar. Leading up to the Big Day, I tended to be, maybe, a little obsessive. And I talked about my worries in places where I would be overheard by strangers. One of those strangers turned out to be an off-duty traveling nurse, trying to enjoy her farm-to-table pumpkin soup, craft beer and new novel at the bar where I happened to have been sitting at the time. Come to find out, she’s a recovery room nurse. Since I love asking people what they like best about their jobs, I turned my focus away from myself for just a second and asked her my favorite question. Her answer: “Holding people’s hands as they come to and reassuring them that everything will be okay.”

Huh. When I got home, I pulled down my copy of William Bridge’s Managing Transitions, and made a mental note to write more about this role in greater depth. Later. But for now, I think it’s enough to just wonder how much wealth we miss with our unrelenting focus on the finish line.

Make sure the support staff knows all the relevant hard words.

The day before my get-acquainted appointment with my ultimate ortho, I got a call from the large health system’s call center.

“I see you have an appointment with Dr. B tomorrow to discuss hip replacement on your right leg. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t do right legs. He only does left legs.”

And with that, the appointment was cancelled and more months were wasted while I resumed my search, wondering, “Why does this have to be so hard?”

Months later, my still small voice said, “Give Dr. B another call. Maybe there was a misunderstanding.” Yes, he does both legs. And no. Not a soul could figure out who this call center gremlin was and how she could have possibly had that belief. It wasn’t until I was immediately post-op, walking up and down the corridor with my PT who looks amazingly like Tim Ferriss, and who I will talk about later in this piece, that it dawned on me.

Hip replacement candidates quickly discover that there are essentially two main options for entry – posterior, which is quite literally a pain in the ass and anterior, the golden child of all desirable approaches for almost every possible reason. Understandably, I was on the hunt for an ortho who does anterior. Dr. B doesn’t do anterior by himself – it takes special training and loads of experience. And that note is on his cheat sheet for call center employees to refer to.

Call center employee must have seen the word anterior and thought to herself, “That must be one of those fancy medical ways to say right. I better make that helpful phone call and cancel the appointment.” And so she did.

(For the record: Dr. B works with Dr. J, who is, as it turns out, a rock star in all things anterior.)

No matter who is the most freaked out, leaders always have the power to set the tone for positivity and, even, celebration.

Did I mention that this was my first-ever surgery? My frame of mind in the pre-dawn hours of November 18, without benefit of either coffee or comfort muffin, could have been anyone’s guess. Walking into the hospital, with my little suitcase, the only thing I had going for me – mindset-wise – was the firm self-talk reminder that I am a big girl. Certain behaviors would be expected of me. Running screaming out the glass doors into the still-dark New Mexico November pre-dawn was not an age-appropriate thing to do.

Certain behaviors would be expected of me. Running screaming out the glass doors into the still-dark New Mexico November pre-dawn was not an age-appropriate thing to do.

Then I met Helen, who cheerily greeted me at Same Day Surgery. “Down to your birthday suit, ties in the back,” she instructed with the same smile on her face that, under a different set of circumstances, would have implied warm chocolate chip cookies and milk in my immediate future. “Okay,” I complied. And was rewarded for being a good girl with a warmed blankie, special non-slip sockies for my popsicle toes. And my first stick.

With my change of attire, and being hooked up now, the running outside option was now out of the question. So the only thing to do was to give myself over to the process and focus on the fact that based on all the smiling faces I saw hover over me as I was wheeled to the holding area, I had probably made a good decision. Everyone else seemed to think so.

Everyone has a name; everyone gets to say hello.

In the mandatory joint class I went to a couple of months ago, Yolanda, the fabulously passionate, positive, and excited nurse practitioner, gave us an orientation around what to expect. One of the things she forewarned us about is that during prep time, everyone is going to be super busy, behind face masks, and probably there would be no time for niceties. Fair enough, I thought. I’d rather they just got on with things anyway.

But as it turned out, I got to meet everyone, face masks off. Even Lawrence, the guy whose job it is to clean my blood and give it back to me in its own special pouch afterward. There were Dr. B; Dr. J; Lawrence; Louise; Chris and Chris, and, I think, Victoria, the recovery room nurse. They all said “Hello, we’re going to do everything possible to make sure your experience is a pleasant one.”

To which I was increasingly inclined to respond with: “Okee dokee.”

Teams are efficient. And it’s so tempting to skip the part about introductions and names, especially when the project at hand involves blood, focus, precision timing, and machines that go beep. But while I was lying there, still in holding, watching the movements of a very relaxed, confident, group of people wearing scrubs, everyone had time to stop, paint for me their vision of a successful, even pleasant, experience, and give me their name. What that said to me: They cared about my name too. I wasn’t just “the right hip.”

Treating someone according to what you perceive to be their category kills the charm.

The only awkward moment happened when the nurse anesthetist appeared looking exquisitely self-conscious. In a kind of fluttery way that stops being cute among girls older than 14, he sidled up to the big question:

“How much do you weigh?”

Me on the inside: “Really? After you guys knock me out, the first item on the agenda is an en plein air Foley catheter insertion, with the entire cast of a Fellini circus movie in attendance, for all I would know. And you’re getting all pearl-clutchy about asking me about my weight?”

Me on the outside, bearing in mind that he was the one who would soon be expertly shuttling me between two worlds, not too early not too late: “Why are you nervous about that question?”

Him: “Well, I know ladies don’t like to be asked about their weight.”

I put him out of his misery by matter-of-factly giving up the digits. I have to say that it feels almost churlish to even bring this moment up. He did a fabulous job, performing a scary femoral nerve procedure deftly, confidently and painlessly. When I woke up later I had none of the side-effects that I had read so much about. So all-in-all, zero complaints. I just hope that someone kind and expert reads this and takes him aside to say, “The ladies in pain aren’t vain about their gain by the time they come to you. They just want you to do what you do so well.”

Everyone wants clarity about their world.

I don’t remember a single moment when I didn’t have my glasses on. From the time they put the little mask over my nose to a split second later when I was in recovery, all toasty warm, muttering away about the headlines, I could see everything around me. I didn’t have to be able to see everything all the time; no, I most certainly did not. But I was able to understand my surroundings always, which is probably especially important when there’s not much personal agency otherwise.

There’s always a personal story behind the paperwork.

In my professional life, I help companies ignite a culture of self-perpetuating passion by helping employees link their personal epic sagas with the organizational meaning of the work they do. So I discovered instantly that I met a kindred spirit in Ben, the Tim Ferriss look-alike physical therapist. He told me later that the first thing he asks patients upon meeting them is, “Tell me something about yourself that I won’t find on the chart.”

Inside the initial hour where he’s considerately tying the back straps of my johnny gown, telling me “down with the bad, up with the good” (which I since remind myself every time I have to decide which leg to lead with as I approach a step), instructing me about form and posture over my walker, like I was a member of the US Ski Team, we’re talking about literature. The next day? The topics are blood pressure, breathing, walking with a flowing motion, and how objectivism empowers capitalism in such a way that supports society’s interests as a whole. I tell him the untold story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and he tells me about his mother – a fluent French speaker and a physician herself, who opted not to use the French pronunciations of words commonly used in American conversation – because, she told him, it’s obnoxious to be an intellectual show-off.

During our check-out stroll about the room minutes before I was discharged, the word galumphing came up. It’s a great word, one I’ve used for years when snootily criticizing the way other people walk. Karma bides its time. And now I have to humbly own galumphing as my own personal situation. At least for a little while. But not for very long, if PT Ben has any say about it.

By this time my friend Kate, who was there to pick me up and drive my sorry butt back home to sleep off the oxycodone, was sitting on my room’s sofa scrolling through her phone. And I’m doing my click-roll-click-roll walker stroll around the room.

“Where does galumphing come from?” she asks. We both turn to her and say in unison: The Jaberwocky! And with that, the three of us piece together from memory the nonsense lines of one of the best poems ever.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One two! One two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

Everyone wants to be special and memorable in some way. And I know that PT Ben has seen many more patients in the days since we said good-bye at the hospital. So I know my place in the grand scheme of things. Still, it makes me smile to think we’ll always have The Jaberwocky. And of all the back-views of johnny gowns he will have seen in his career, it will be mine that springs to mind each time the word galumph comes up in conversation.

Joyful employees are the best talent magnets.

Over the following handful of days I met Mickey, Cody, Jessica, Pablita, Melissa, Leah – all of whom came to give me little pills in little cups, measure the output in the yellow bag hung at the side of my bed, plug my I-phone charger back into the outlet, measure, weigh, record, and respond to my call button in a matter of seconds. I discovered this drive to be the very best patient they had on the floor – their favorite – so I didn’t use the button very often (at least I hope I used it less than everyone else – maybe there’s a leader board in the nurses station somewhere and I was way down the list. If so, I don’t want to know my ranking).

The last person to come breezing into my room was the energetic, athletic, joyful Justin, who pulled the duty of reacquainting me with the lav after the last of my hook-ups were detached and I was free to roam about the room. I was still under strict supervision, of course….I learned the hard way that the bed alarm gets loud enough for someone strong to come running if a patient decides to go rogue and ignore the “call, don’t fall” signs posted all around.

By this time, in the company of all these caring professionals, I had come to the conclusion that we can still keep our humanity and dignity even under conditions involving yellow bags and back flap ties. And so I was basically okay with this young, handsome nurse tech cheerfully and confidently making sure I was securely seated before saying, “I’ll just wait right outside the bathroom door, pull this string when you’re done.”

To turn my attention away from myself, I asked him about him. He was born and raised in this town that most people like me drive through as fast as possible on our way from Santa Fe to Taos. As luck would have it, his professional career preparation coincided with the building and opening of this beautiful, quiet hospital filled with world-class healthcare professionals.

The dreary view of the town’s beige skyline outside my hospital room window reinforced my own ignorant opinion about what prospects there might be in a town such as this one. In my curiosity to learn more about why he would choose to stay in this town, I tried to be as diplomatic as possible (probably failing utterly). In response, he gave me his Instagram account name (jchav58_). Flipping through the photos of this young man’s life, I see a deep and abiding love for all things Northern New Mexico. Rocky Mountain hiking. High desert vistas. Trout fishing. Graduation days. The big pick-up truck his proud brother has finally bought. His grandmother, whose own delight on her face at the first time she went trout fishing in decades is recorded in an IG picture. The infant goddaughter whom Justin is holding on his lap and loves so much. The Christmas carols he plays on his classical guitar. The picture of his mother napping with a gigantic black lab sound asleep next to her.

This is life in Northern New Mexico. This is where new generations of centuries-old, established, local, multi-generational families continue their lives without having to uproot themselves in search of job opportunities elsewhere. Looking at his hometown through his eyes and camera lens, I can now see a landscape filled with love, family, celebration, music, and belonging.

Thousands of tourists blow through this town on their way to Taos for their ski vacation. They don’t look twice at it, except to maybe wonder who might live there and why. Then you meet Justin, who makes you feel just fine about needing maybe just a little bit of watchful help on the loo. And then you see his love for his life on Instagram. And then you might even think that maybe there’s a place for you there too, “I wonder what the job market is like here.”

Now that I’m in transition from stapled patient with my surgeon’s penned initials still visible on my right knee back to functioning observer of passions, trends and patterns, I can see how engaging leadership really is all about managing transitions.

Organized life – business, career, healthcare – is all about reaching through the present toward a better future. And when we remember to bring with us the love, the connection, the community, the traditions that make us who we are, we can transition from judgment to acceptance; ignorance to understanding; control to surrender; fear to confidence; false pride to authentic connection.

It really is going to all be okay.

What is the Sign of Your Enduring Influence?

Here’s what I like about driving in the west (in addition to the long stretches of ribbon o’ highway that give me uninterrupted time to lose myself in great podcast episodes). It’s all about the old motels – those original rest stops from the 50s and 60s when entrepreneurs noticed that America was going places and needed a place to sleep on the way:

You pull into one end of town to get gas. But instead of hopping right back on the freeway, you decide to drive the entire length of the town on the old business route, and check out what’s going on.  Out where I am, you get teepee motels, astro-aspirational motel signs from the 60s, a revived “hotel of the stars” where I hear you can get an amazing breakfast with a spectacular view of the butte and train tracks. All good stuff. Each one a reflection of someone’s big, personal dream.

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“I Don’t Want to Do This Anymore”

What you’ll discover:  Stop banging your head against the wall. If you give yourself permission to drop the old dreams that haven’t quite come true, you might open new doors of opportunity, new sources of fulfillment that will make you even happier and more successful.  All that hard dream-building work from your past won’t be going to waste. It has just been preparing you for an unexpected, and even better, outcome.

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Little Hinges Part One: Essential A-Ha’s That Can Swing Your Second Phase Career Wide Open

There are a few sentences, movie lines, and aphorisms that ring my bell. When, for instance, Liam Neeson says, “I have a very particular set of skills, skills that I have acquired over a very long career,” that just sings to the career geek in me. He could be talking about cleaning out the gutters, for all I care. I just love how he calmly inventories himself and what he can bring to the situation. We know as the story unfolds that his adversaries will regret underestimating his resolve to get the job done. Heh.

Another line, another movie, has an entirely different effect. Dennis Quaid sweeps Ellen Barkin into his arms in The Big Easy and says, “Your luck is about to change, chere.” Well. That just makes me want to slide off my seat like one of Salvador Dali’s melty clocks. That is the most swoonable line in movie history, if you ask me.

Ooh la la!

The third sentence isn’t a movie line (at least I don’t think so). It’s an aphorism that just sparkles and bristles with embedded possibility:

“Little hinges swing big doors.”

The older we get, the more acutely aware we are that time is running out for acquiring new particular skill sets that require a very long career to refine. We know better than to seek out quick fixes, but at the same time, time’s a-wastin’. So the wise approach is to make fresh use of our already established sets of resources. One of those resources happens to be our life-acquired wisdom – assuming we’ve managed to accumulate any over time.

Wisdom is our most precious little hinge. Little a-ha’s, insights, distinctions we’ve gathered that might have seemed so inconsequential at the moment they come to us that we shrug and move on with our day. But if we stop and take note of them as they occur to us, they can change everything for us down the road.

In other words:  Don’t live harder, live smarter.

Here are a few little hinges that I’ve picked up along the way. Thought I’d pass them on to you (the list is long, so this is Part One):

1. You’re not the person you decided you were 30 years ago.

People – usually our parents — start telling us who we are before we can even tie our shoes. (George Clooney recently called his infant son a little thug. Who does that?)

Our earliest self-definitions come through the lens of our parents’ own self-esteem. Lucky is the kid whose parents like themselves and each other. Then we eventually take on the job of self-definer, carrying the ball farther down life’s field. Regardless of the start we had, things tend to change in 30 years or more. We change. Hopefully for the better. It would be a good idea to sit down and inventory your beliefs about yourself and your place in the world. You might find that somewhere along the line you’ve changed your mind. And you’re liking yourself – and the world – even better, now that you’ve been around a while, forming your own opinions.

2. Sooner or later you’re going to have to start graduating yourself.

Beyond the official, formal phases of life and rites of passage (school graduation, “flying up” if you’re in Girl Scouts, marriage, kids, etc.) there are mini passages that you have to usher yourself through. Learning that standing up for yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making the other guy the bad guy. Learning how to negotiate. Learning that it’s actually okay to talk to strangers – some of them at least. Learning that there was no such thing as “your permanent record” that you were threatened with as a kid (but there probably is one now). Learning that “because I want to,” is a good enough reason. Learning that most times you owe an explanation to no one.

3. If an adversary doesn’t fight fair, drop your end of the struggle. 

One of the very few benefits that have emerged from this divisive season where it seems that every American is involved in the political argument is that more of us have become acquainted with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. These are 13 rules of engagement designed to give combatants the upper hand in winning any argument or influencing a social movement. When you know the 13 rules, trying to have a reasonable conversation with an ideologue is like playing Bingo with one of those big markers.  Yup, there’s Rule 5 in play. And now we have Rule 12. Check. Oh!  There’s Rule 8!  Bingo!

It’s a passive aggressive, infuriating, mind — uhm — game. The only long-term benefit of these kinds of encounters is that you quickly realize that this is someone to cross off your list of friends.

Sometimes the best way to have the last word is to simply walk away. Choose the arguments to pursue and which ones to drop. Is your counterpart speaking with you respectfully and in good faith? Or is that person putting you in a defensive, unstable, no-win, even shame-based, position? When you start to feel that way, you’ve got yourself an Alinsky-ite in action. (They may never have even heard of Saul Alinsky. Doesn’t matter. They’ve picked up that approach to arguing somewhere in their lives. And you know when you spot it, they’re not about achieving mutual understanding. They’re about dominating you through discourse.)

Just walk away. You’ve won just for being the better human being.

4. It’s unseemly to compete with the younger generations.

One Sunday afternoon after one of those Northern California brunches, while driving around Oakland with a much younger colleague, she suddenly blurted out from nowhere: “Things would open up for us much more if you guys would just retire.” Well, that was weird. We aren’t even in the same profession. So, frankly, it felt a little hostile. It was my first hint that in her eyes, Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have become like party guests who just won’t go home, no matter how obvious the yawns of the Gen Yers and the industrious clearing of the plates and straightening the furniture.

That’s not true, of course. But perception does count for something.  In the meantime, older job seekers are complaining that they can’t compete with the Millennials for the opportunities out there. Well, maybe we shouldn’t. Some employers just want skill sets and will happily forfeit experience for the sake of their compensation budget. They still need your wisdom though. Figure out how to market that. (Hint: Consulting. If you say, “Oh but I can’t sell, I hate selling,” see Number 1 above. Yes, you can. Learn to love it. It’s actually deeply rewarding when you realize it’s about service.)

5. You know more about buying your services than your prospects do.

They need your help here too. Twice this past year I was approached by wonderful would-be clients who thought they wanted a particular thing from me to help them achieve a goal. But it turned out that once I found out what solutions they were going after, I was able to consult them into wanting something else from me instead. The fact that the financial value of the changed project profile was substantially increased is just a happy coincidence.

This is what separates us from being mere order takers: The awareness that our prospective clients think they have the solution, and they just want someone to make it happen. The first thing we can do for our clients is find out what it is they’re going after ultimately. And consult them into seeing a better path toward a much better outcome. This is how you can monetize your wisdom.

6. You can (and should) still learn new tricks.

Books are a wonderful thing. I like books. They are my favorite. I’ve mentioned the book, How to Pitch Anything, in this blog before. I read it less than two months ago. Because of one distinction I picked up in that book, I turned a conversation about freelance blog writing (which I don’t do anyway) into a six-figure engagement based on a transformed vision. And the client gets what she wanted all along.

Blend new skills with the deep resonance of your time-acquired wisdom and new self-respect for your stature as the wise guide. Suddenly things just look different.

And your luck will change.