Grace is a state of thoughtfulness toward others. Patience involves calmly tolerating delay, confusion, or inefficiency; enduring pain or trouble without losing self-control; and refusing to be provoked or angered by an insult or perceived slight. Good humor is the ability to see, appreciate, or express what is funny, amusing, ludicrous or ironic in a situation.

I realize these terms are quaint—old-fashioned, curious, maybe even fanciful in our current society. But if there has ever been a time to learn and practice these characteristics, it is now.

Taken together, grace, patience and good humor create a model of leadership that sets direction and priorities, provides time for learning, encourages participation, endures inevitable set-backs and failures, and perseveres toward goals that matter.

Yes, they are ideals. But they can also be realistic if we teach and model them. Sadly, there are more examples of driving ambition and ruthless disregard for people or things that do not further immediate success or personal gratification. Sadder still, such images garner high ratings in the media.

I was thinking of this over the 4th of July weekend and in days since. My parents are here for a rare week-long visit. As you might expect, there have been many gatherings of family and friends and, since Mom and Dad are staying at my house, I have been involved in many of them.

Planning began weeks before they arrived. Their schedule of activities carries daily demands of time and attention. I fretted about my work. How could I take so much time off? How could I be with them and still fulfill professional obligations? How would I be ready to travel for business immediately after they left? How was I going to get everything done? Forget about grace!

I’ll admit to feelings of mild resentment for siblings who were not investing the kind of time or attention that I was. But I have gained enormous perspective over the days my parents have been here. What a gift.

The most poignant moment and stark reminder came from my Dad, who is struggling with Alzheimer’s. The disease has progressed to the point where he does not remember sitting outside and marveling at fireflies for an hour on Sunday night. When we walked my dog the next day, I said I wondered if we would see fireflies again that evening.

Dad’s reply: “Fireflies? What are those?”

I explained what they are in the same way I had done a dozen times on Sunday evening. He was charmed once again by my description and was excited about the prospect of seeing them. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen those.”

I simply smiled and said maybe we’d be lucky.

It was a moment of sudden clarity in which I understood the extent of my mother’s challenge and my father’s mortality. It was a quiet moment that spoke volumes about what matters most.

My Dad may not have the memory of a magical summer evening, but I do. It’s one I’ll cherish long after he is gone.

I had the great privilege recently to teach a Leadership course for a new MBA program at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee. There were twelve women in the class who ranged in age from late twenties to fifty-something and held jobs in organizations from the Fortune 50 to a local county agency.

We had some important disagreements during our time together. And while I can’t speak for any of the students, I truly enjoyed the education I got as a result. I hope they did, too.

There are two things that I appreciate most as I think about how we disagreed. The first was the respect we offered in expressing our viewpoints and listening to each other. The second was the time we took to consider different perspectives and truly learn from them.

As a child, I grew up in an education system that held the teacher’s point of view as sacrosanct. Disagreement was unheard of because no one in the room was smarter than the teacher. Besides that, children were ‘to be seen and not heard’ in those days.

It followed naturally that other authority figures—bosses, policemen, government leaders—were also smarter and more powerful, so obeying their directives was accepted as the right thing to do.

Those days are long gone. That’s a good news/bad news deal. The good news is that ideas come from everyone and everywhere. Sharing them can make us all smarter. The bad news is that not all ideas are good or useful. Sorting through them takes time and judgment. More bad news is that learning how to disagree gracefully is a trial and error proposition. Many people never get there.

In the context of our Leadership course during a time when business embraces a global community, multiple generations, and all sorts of ethical challenges, the opportunity to disagree was rich!

What I experienced is that there is still a practical power inequity of teacher as ultimate grade determiner. This adds a measure of tension which has the potential to reduce the quality of disagreement and learning. Once again, I am fortunate to have been involved with a group of motivated women whose desire to learn and grow superseded their insistence on getting straight A’s.

But the tension was great because our academic and business cultures still equate good grades with success. Businesses often select candidates on this basis. But when it comes to leadership, the integration and application of learning is far more important than a checklist of academic activities successfully completed. This is where education stumbles and the expectations of employers get frustrated.

Students want to know what teachers and teaching institutions want. They structure their lives accordingly for a short while, anticipating good grades, good jobs, and a good life as a result of compliance.

But compliance doesn’t cut it in a world that moves in irrational ways with rules that change on a whim. If I offered anything to my Leadership students, it was the challenge to see the world clearly, make meaning in a purposeful way, and choose a path for themselves and potential followers that would be worthwhile.

This is not always a welcome challenge. Our biggest disagreements came down to final grades. In the exchanges, I learned to be a better instructor. I gained an appreciation for how students still view themselves through the prism of their grades. Having struggled myself to be found not only competent, but also worthy of notice, I understood their feelings.

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Most people hate getting stuck. Whether it’s a problem at work, home or school, or being physically stuck in bad weather or traffic, immobility is irritating. We don’t like being stymied and held down, so a natural reaction is to buck against whatever seems to be constraining us.

Which often makes matters worse. Remember the first rule of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging.

When we stop digging, we gain time to reflect. This is precious time! Imagine a tangled fishing line or a knotted necklace. The fastest way to straighten it out is to lay it flat and inspect it. When you locate the tangle, you can usually tease it out by paying attention to which way the strands should go.

Problems. They’re great catalysts for learning.

Think back to your last discovery. When you figured something out or got something to work again or accomplished something you had previously been unable to do, how did you feel? Did you get a little rush of adrenaline? Did your mind feel just a little sharper? Maybe you smiled? Or chuckled and shook your head? One of my favorite reactions is the often-laughter-laced, “Who knew?!”

Learning is fun! It proves to us that we have the capability to seek, discover, and master things. Learning to read, write, speak, dance, run, compete in athletic events, date, date again, understand the opposite sex on occasion, figure out a boss, access email at a Wi-Fi hot spot, send photos and order stuff online, use chopsticks, speak a foreign language, drive a hybrid car, remove spots from a tie… just imagine all the things you’ve learned in the course of your life. How is it possible to get and stay stuck?

Here’s how. The faster we move, the narrower our vision gets. Racecar drivers have a very narrow view of the world—it consists of the track and the control panel. When you compete with that kind of intensity, micro-focus is essential not only to competitiveness but sometimes to survival.

We celebrate focus in business. It helps us move fast and get more done. It also gets us digging holes every now and then. The irony in getting stuck is that the best solution is to stop. Stop and think. How did you get here? What options do you have for getting out? How will you proceed? Making even a simple plan is a smarter way to move forward than keeping your head down and digging faster.

Feeling stuck? Stop and learn. You’ll feel better.

I’ve been away from my blog and any sort of writing for quite some time. A long time, actually. In talking with Steve Jagler at BizTech Expo this week, I justified my online silence with stories of client work, speaking engagements, and general busy-ness. I’m just like most of my clients. So why would I use “Bored!” as a headline?

Because I am bored. I have not been writing because frankly I’ve not known what I wanted to say. I was raised with the admonition, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I haven’t had anything nice to say.

I’m bored with the negativity movement the permeates so much of our world today. I’m bored with people who like to point to everything that’s wrong with… well, everything. People who say, “I can’t” or “we can’t” or “it won’t work.”

I’m worn out with worries about gas prices, the economy, the environment, poor leadership, failing schools, teen pregnancy, guns, drunk drivers, stupid bosses, entitled workers, and falling poll numbers for just about everything.

This litany of woe bores me. And I hope it’s beginning to bore a lot of other people, too. Why? Because when we get bored we start looking for something to get interested in and excited about. That’s when change has a chance.

I’ve been talking foolishness to a widening circle of influential people and I’m starting to see a few sparkles in their eyes and feel a tiny pulse of possibility. Here’s what I’ve been suggesting: That we tour the state of Wisconsin to find things that are working—from school systems to businesses, from happy families to productive communities, from medical discoveries to disaster recovery strategies—and begin to teach what works to people who are bored with what doesn’t.

It’s about benchmarking success and sharing it—an Appreciative Inquiry model (for those of you who study such things) that asks what we want more of, not what we want less of. Why study failure when success is what we’re after? Yes, there are deep lessons in failure and they are worth learning. But failure and its lessons often come along the path of striving for success. We don’t need to seek them out.

I’ve been talking about a bus tour but maybe it’s something different. What motivates me is not only boredom, but frustration at seeing small pockets of excellence that aren’t big enough on their own to garner attention or funding, but that have an awful lot to teach others. We need to share this excellence!

We are in the midst of a contentious political season, which generates daily stories of bad behavior and ill will that do nothing to foster growth or prosperity, but instead further a cosmic bad mood and sense of doom for everyone. Where is the value in any of that?

Here’s the call to action: Hit your reset button. What’s done is done. Let’s understand how things got to be the way they are and focus our attention on the levers for change. We may be able to use the ones in place and we may have to create new ones.

If you want to learn, I hope you’ll get on the bus. If you’ve had success and have something to teach, please tell us where you are. If you have resources to further statewide education in success (which by the way could be shared globally)—a bus, gas money, hotel rooms, food, meeting rooms, technology, communication systems, energy, knowledge and experience, a database of contacts—please raise your hand if you’re willing to help. Respond to this blog or email me at execadvise@mac.com.

We’ve run out of time to be complaining about who or what isn’t working. It’s time now to figure out what can work and invest our minds and energies to see that what works, happens.

It is the winter of our discontent in Wisconsin where relentless snow, frigid temperatures and dangerous driving conditions are daily fare.

I’m an optimist by nature and even I’m getting cranky. I’m tired of shoveling snow, maintaining my balance on icy sidewalks, narrowly missing accidents on snow covered and slippery roadways, and dealing with people who are perpetually angry and frustrated. This weather certainly challenges a person’s equanimity. It dampens initiative, dissipates energy, and generally grinds things to a state of surviving, not thriving.

And thus it calls forth resilience.

But what’s the process of moving oneself from disgust and fatigue to determination and accomplishment?

It starts with the stories we tell ourselves about what’s going on and what we can do about it. Global climate change might have something to do with this polar phenomenon or it might simply be part of a cycle of nature that has existed long before we got here and will continue its way long after we’re gone.

If, as the global warming believers say, we humans have mucked up the environment with our selfish and careless ways, then we probably deserve all the misery we’re experiencing. If, on the other hand, this is part of a normal process, then perhaps it’s easier to grin and bear it, knowing that this, too, shall pass.

At risk of being considered a simpleton, I prefer an attitude of acceptance and forward movement over an angry or belligerent railing against something we cannot control. When the snow falls, we clear it away. We can’t stop it and we can’t determine how much or how little we get. Nature happens, we deal.

At the same time the weather is challenging us, we are enduring a political environment in which acrimony reigns, tongues unleash venom, and competitions become increasingly bitter. It’s painful to watch. More painful, still, to hear the stories people tell themselves to explain their rage. Listen closely. The key theme is that opponents are stupid, greedy, cruel, even evil. Conflicting points of view degenerate to snarling attacks.

We are sinking into disgust and fatigue, forgetting about determination and accomplishment. There are reasons for our fatigue and we’d be foolish to paint smiley faces over them and pretend they don’t exist. The world is far more complex than it used to be with problems that are perniciously unresponsive to quick fixes. This challenges both our equanimity and our resilience. But at some point we need to shake the fuzzy anger from our minds and put some energy behind finding a more productive way to live.

If you want to feel better, don’t wait for the politicians or weather gurus to advise you. Change your stories. Change your responses to challenge. Use your abilities to listen, understand and reason, then decide what you’re going to do.

We know that the weather will eventually change. Spring will bring robins and rain and maybe a flooded basement or two. Summer will bring open windows, Bermuda shorts, and stinging insects. Such is life in Wisconsin. Such is life in general.

When you confront challenge, you can fixate on what’s wrong and blame the idiots who caused it or you can study the situation, decide on a solution and get busy. I’ve observed that the latter group of folks tends to be smarter, happier, more resilient and more successful. They also tend to be leaders.

We live in an age of high drama, insatiable media appetites, and incredible pharmacological advances.
What do you get when you put all these together in a 24-hour global society?

A world that appears to be spinning out of control. A world in which oddballs become famous, kids get medicated if they’re too rowdy, and at every turn someone is harping. You can’t say that! You can’t do that! Why did you say that? What were you thinking? A world in which people learn in little bits over long periods of time that they are fragile, helpless, inappropriate, or out of control.

What trash.

The truth of the matter is that human beings are incredibly resilient and far stronger than they often realize. But if we prevent the kinds of distresses that test our strength and illuminate our resilience, there’s no chance to learn them.

It’s amazing the number of ways we teach people they can’t cope. Instead of listening to boisterous kids, we give them Ritalin. Instead of talking with adolescents about the very real and completely normal discomfort of raging hormones, we give them antidepressants. Instead of examining our own thinking to find solutions to what troubles us, we pour a drink, pop a pill, or develop some other avoidance strategy.

I wonder what would happen if we learned how to cope rather than avoid? What if we could learn to embrace challenge with an attitude of curiosity, learning, and a determination to prevail? I remember as a kid hearing a goofy song about a rubber tree plant. It was a Frank Sinatra song called “High Hopes.”

“Anyone knows an ant can’t move a rubber tree plant,” it said. “But he’s got high hopes…” and pretty soon, “Oops there goes another rubber tree plant.”

The song made us laugh, but it also instilled in us the notion of hope and effort and doing things that nobody thought could be done. How in the world did we get from there to the pervasive attitude of pessimism and defeatism that curdles so many unspoken dreams today?

While rose-colored glasses and rose garden thinking are rightfully scorned, I think we’ve tipped too far to the can’t-do side of things. I also think that a lot of bad and destructive behavior is born of this deep-seated pessimism. I know more than a few people who are bitter because they never had someone to validate them by listening, supporting, and reality-checking their ideas. If no one is around to listen, people talk louder or stop talking altogether. Either way, the outcome tends to be unhealthy.

So what do I mean by coping skills? Taking a calm and objective look at circumstances to understand what’s really going on. Trying things. Helping others brainstorm alternatives. Singing songs like “High Hopes” and being okay with feeling silly. Giving yourself and others permission and support to take constructive action instead of freaking out. Granted these take more time and effort and I’ll guarantee that you won’t make headlines. But you’ll begin to see and appreciate your strength and resilience and who knows? Maybe someday you’ll move your own rubber tree plant.

The debate rages on about so many things in public education. The size of classrooms, content of curriculum, whether grades should be granted or a pass/fail system is better. The role of vouchers. How much teachers should be paid. What principals should know how to do. Whether school boards help or hinder educational progress. Whether federal or state mandates should govern testing and how to deal with outcomes when they do.

What we need from public education is for kids to learn how to learn. It’s as basic as that. They need to learn the systems we use to make meaning of things and to communicate with each other. They need to learn the symbols of these systems—numbers and letters—and how symbols are put together with directional markers such as addition or subtraction signs and punctuation to convey information. Rules govern these systems and kids need to be taught what they are.

They need to be taught the rules for living in a free society: how to understand their rights, appreciate their responsibilities, and be aware of how their choices can impact the freedoms and responsibilities of others. For this, they need to learn right from wrong. Good and bad are by-products of decisions that life takes care of whether we understand them or not.

As an example, one of the rules of living in a free society is driving on the proper side of the road. There is a right way. If someone were to decide that he would rather drive on the other side of the road—the wrong way—and that as a free citizen he should be able to do so, he would soon discover that it was a bad decision.

Kids need to learn how the natural world behaves—things like climate and wildlife and the properties and elements that make up these systems. They need to be taught the concepts of independence, interdependence and even collaboration. They need to know the facts of how our Nation came to be, what the words of our Forefathers were, and the context within which these words were spoken and written. It is becoming more and more necessary to learn about the world—its geographies, climates, cultures, and rituals—because like it or not, we are global citizens.

At some point, children need to learn how their bodies and minds develop and how to take care of themselves in order to give their own systems a chance to function well.

Teaching the fundamental operating mechanisms of life today is what public school education should be about. It is, after all, the foundation for equal opportunity. Let’s teach kids how to learn so that no matter what profession, culture, country, or contribution they seek, they have the wherewithal to figure things out, make decisions, and take reasoned and purposeful action.

I’m a product of the 60s (sort of–I was a grade school kid), so I’m well schooled in the emergence and impact of The Sexual Revolution. Women on birth control became bolder in making their desires and availability known; men were cagily advised not to buy the cow when the milk was free.

All hell broke loose in subsequent years and today we have a society in which sex sells everything from razor blades to all variety of alternative lifestyles. That’s nothing new, of course, but our preoccupation with body parts and innovative couplings carries an opportunity cost with regard to other aspects of human development.

This saddens me and I’m hoping the pendulum swings back soon.

What irritates me, keenly I might add, is the time I waste each day clearing my email of soft-porn messages encouraging me to consider fantastic bedroom adventures through enhancement of the ‘male package.’

Since when does the name Susan suggest that particular anatomical structure? Yeah, I know it’s blast email junk that cares naught for who receives it. But I truly resent the time and energy I invest in ridding myself of this crap, not to mention how disgusted I am to see so much of it.

Are men so worried?

After months of being innundated with such garbage, I was feeling pretty indignant. Why should I invest my hard-won resources to provide unintended receptacles for this nonsense? Worse, I started grieving our superficial and meaningless preoccupation with body parts at a time when the world really needs each of us to develop our greatest talents and gifts—our true character—to haul our increasingly dark world back from the brink of savagery.

Comic relief came today in the subject line of one of these messages and, with it, some perspective. The subject line said, “Grow a monster in your pants by New Year’s.” I laughed out loud.

The Sexual Revulsion is underway, not because human beings will ever turn their backs on natural and sometimes urgent desires. But we are more than our base urges and we have more to do than to pump up, get down, and turn out prodigy that no one is interested in teaching, guiding, or helping to shape the future.

Let’s reinforce this revulsion by showing people, young and old, how the fire inside, whether it leaps in great flames or smolders with quiet intensity, is the true attraction factor. Let’s remind people that what’s between the ears and behind the eyes will always be more intriguing and have longer-lasting value than what the body can offer, no matter how many ways it is enhanced. A monster indeed.

Journalism, as I studied it years ago, was based on a stringent practice of checking facts, eliminating assumptions, and reporting what is. As students we were admonished to keep our opinions to ourselves until such time as we became experts in some field. At that point, we were told, we might have a chance to write a decent Op-Ed piece.

Proofreading was a skill we learned, too. Errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation were sources of keen embarrassment for credible, respectable journalists. Our reputations were important. Standards were high, enforcement was strict, and we became vigilant in our writing.

To say that these standards have been relaxed would be to state the sad and sorry obvious. And it’s true far beyond the realm of journalism.

I listen to a lot of conversation in the course of a day and I’m fascinated by how much of what is said is misleading, inaccurate, or just plain wrong. I see a lot of behavior too, that although well intentioned, misses the mark of effectiveness. In our rush to say or do something, we become sloppy. Unfortunately, that’s not as benign as it used to be. Where inaccuracy runs unchecked, assumptions displace facts, and experts become so by virtue of successful marketing campaigns, the natural by-products are confusion, mistrust, and fear.

Add to this the fact that we live in a world that values rapid response. A witty rejoinder, quick decision, immediate action, and swift judgment inspire high-fives. But sometimes the witty rejoinder elicits rage; the quick decision shuts down more attractive options; immediate action worsens a problem; and swift judgment turns out to be wrong. What then? We keep on truckin,’ certain that we can fix whatever needs fixing along the way.

It’s easy to see how messed up things can get—and stay—and how seemingly little things can escalate to major crises. Look around the world; there are countless examples.

Here I go with the discipline plea again. Here I go with the reminder that we teach others by what we say and do. We need to re-program ourselves to get it right before we send it out. For starters, this means asking questions instead of making assumptions, getting facts before passing along stories, and refusing to spread rumors of any kind. Yes, it’s a lot harder than living in the moment and leaving unintended consequences for another day. But when we become accurate in our speech, intentional in our actions, and thoughtful in advance of both, we help create trust. Trust promotes safety; safety enables learning; learning bolsters happiness.

Not a week goes by that someone doesn’t say something stupid, then act surprised when they’re called on it.

Words are powerful reflectors of what’s inside a person. And since our society has removed almost all barriers of decorum and appropriateness when it comes to saying what’s on our minds, some people reveal a lot more than they realize.

This is amusing on one hand, disappointing on another.

It is amusing when a tall, strapping executive barks rudely and loudly at some underling on a cell phone while pouring cream in his coffee at a Starbucks counter. He probably thinks he looks pretty cool and sounds like a leader. I think he must have been one of those kids on the grade school playground who shook his fist at a foe and bellowed, “My Dad’s gonna beat up your Dad!”

It is disappointing because this guy believes that Starbucks or the airport or the sports bar or any other public place is his mobile office. His conversations trump ours simply by virtue of volume and outrageousness.

The coarse vulgarity of so much language in the public square reduces most of it to white noise. There’s a constancy to it that makes it unremarkable. But the blunt savagery of it over time has caused many people to harden against it. When people harden, they lose the ability to see what’s good or to appreciate things that are funny, kind, or caring.

It is embarrassing to listen to the shameful way politicians berate each other. Instead of being statesmen and women, they behave more like belligerent toddlers unschooled in either critical thinking or effective communication. Do they realize how silly they look? Do they understand the power they have to diminish the quality of our lives by setting so sorry an example?

Does anyone remember the power of silence? Or how effective a well-considered bit of communication can be not only in the moment it is issued, but for long after the moment has passed? We teach others with our words and actions. Let’s take some time to consider the effects of our language, to think before we bray, and to choose words that convey our intended meaning.

Let’s also pay close attention to what others are saying. When they utter nonsense, let’s ask questions about what they mean. Let’s start challenging one another to communicate more intelligently and with some purpose. Not only would we contribute to a reduction in noise pollution, we would also start demonstrating a better way to live and work with others.