Communication With A Twist

Not in my lifetime

Last night during the election I received texts from all over the world. 6 countries and 13 states… I spent an evening at a giant party with folks applauding the results… with my little thumbs busy connecting with humans who, just like me, spent the last year focused on the election. It was a goose bump night.

Some friends texted me from Grant Park. We talked for a moment late in the night about being there when Obama gave his speech. (I watched him speak on a big screen…with such solid strength - his revelry shadowed by the tremendous loss of his grandmother. I watched as McCain gave the best speech of his career - a real one… the McCain we love.

My friends in Grant Park talked to me about looking into the eyes of the humans there… how had it was to describe the eyes.. the eyes of, specifically, African American men in later years..70’s and 80’s. He said it was hard to describe the look in their eyes… a new word to describe it.

At a breakfast this morning I passed this along to my table at a health care breakfast. Mark Smith, California Health Foundation (one of the best speakers I have ever heard) was speaking that day - we had a packed house. One of the men at my table said, That look is “Not in my life time.”

It struck me. Wow. I wish my dad was here to see this. It really is a profound moment.

We aren’t blue states.. or red states.. we are the United States… I’m hoping we remember that.

and

today on the way to work someone draped a sheet across the pedestrian overcrossing

“Yes, We Did.”

Nice.

Posted by Christina on November 5th, 2008

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Central Park Jogger

Last month at Axis in San Jose, Trisha Meili spoke to a group of entrepreneurs. I’m not sure if you know the name

http://www.centralparkjogger.com/

What an incredible story of the greatness of human beings. Yes, she was brutally attacked and left for dead. And the outpouring of support she received from strangers is mostly what she talks about.

The Marathon runner who months after her attack wrote her and told her he was going to run the New York Marathon in her honor. He won and sent her his medal. She held it last night as she talked about him. Someone she didn’t know who trained for months and gave her the spoils. One runner to another - his card said something about the medal for her as she finishes the marathon she is on. (She was in the hospital 5 months)

She talks about Solomon Brothers, the stock market firm she worked for, set up a working cubicle for her in the treatment center and put up a sign, “Solomon Brothers, Connecticut branch” to make sure she knew she was part of the team always. She had a stockmarket reader and everything.

Her message is perfect for this economy: Think about what you can do- what you are able to do, live in the present moment always and (in my words) believe in something - anything. Each tiny moment that gives a glimmer of hope and humanity.

Posted by Christina on November 5th, 2008

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Vote today!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svhq4C9HhUg

Posted by Christina on November 4th, 2008

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Negative Feedback: Culprit or Cheerleader?

I get a lot of e-mail questions… I thought I’d share one with you….

Got a question for you: as an avid proponent of positive reinforcement and praise, I am also keenly aware that those who do not pass through difficult circumstances seldom achieve much—hence the no rich kids on pro sports teams—and I don’t think I have a single friend in the upper echelons of success who didn’t, at one point or another, go through some very rough times, void of much positive encouragement. How do we reconcile these two points???

My response:

It is interesting in our current culture we tend to equate strife and hardship with success. We point to stories where a person made sense of the tragedy in their lives and made it. Many philosophies believe suffering is necessary and to be expected should we want to transcend or reach the transformation Maslow talked about.

Absence of feedback is the most painful thing that can be inflicted on another. Anonymity.. isolation… a critical ingredient of stress and low output. There are 1000000’s of stories of kids destroyed by negative feedback who did not make it into something great. Who chose to spend their life on the couch, in a go-no-where job and in an unhappy marriage. 1000000000’s of these stories. We just don’t hear about them like we do the ones where a kick in the head made the person discover antibiotics. In my view cancer still exists today because the budding scientist who could have cured it had their dreams diminished in 8^th grade. They never made it to the lab coat.

Positive feedback has been used as manipulation for way too long. Great job – is not feedback. There is a dark side to both sides of this equation. Both sides. Sugarcoating does as much damage as criticism.

So it all circles around to anonymity. If just one person CARED enough to engage….that seems to be what helped many of us to shift whatever happened into making something happen. It just take one person to spark that belief in something else.

CEO’s can be a coach. We can be the spark that shifts a person’s belief in their abilities into reality. Often CEO’s get caught up in perfect. PERFECT ISN’T.

Posted by Christina on November 3rd, 2008

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