Comments on Learning As Leadership Blog

Comment on Personal Mastery by Becoming a Vulnerable Leader: One Leader's Journey - Jobs Cobra

Becoming a Vulnerable Leader: One Leader's Journey - Jobs Cobra — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 10:57:02 +0000

[…] vulnerable. I describe in this article my journey through this process through participation in the Learning as Leadership Personal Mastery Seminar on which the principles and strategies discussed in “Ego Free Leadership” are based. In […]

Comment on Damn! I Just Lost my Temper Again by Ray

Ray — Sat, 19 Sep 2020 18:38:36 +0000

I have (violently) lost my temper with my teen son on more than one occasion, and I feel like absolute crap afterwards. How I yearn to be able to go back in time and undo the damage and hurt I’ve cause him! My trigger seems to be when I feel my “authority” is being challenged. I put that in quotes because although I am a parent, my personality is definitely NOT the leader type. In no particular order, here are some insights I’ve learned about myself over 55-plus years of life: 1)I hate conflict/confrontation, and I handle them poorly. 2) I never learned how to properly deal with adversity–as an only child, I wheedled my parents to get what I wanted, and that included avoiding as much pain and adversity as possible. So, I had no experience to learn from. 3) I am very insecure and self-doubting 4) Assertive personalities intimidate me. 5) I also never learned good coping skills for dealing with the normal frustrations of life. In short, I am basically a fragile apple cart who reacts negatively when upset.

Comment on Are You a “Too-Much-In-The-Details” Boss? by Michelle Rodriguez

Michelle Rodriguez — Fri, 13 Sep 2019 16:03:10 +0000

I always try to give my team reports their space to act and just make them feel that I am on their back in case support needed.

Comment on Damn! I Just Lost my Temper Again by Shayne Hughes

Shayne Hughes — Mon, 02 Jul 2018 02:13:17 +0000

Thank you so much for your comment. My heart goes out to you, and I relate deeply to your experience. It reminds me both of my early challenges with my children, as well as my dynamic with my mom when I was growing up (I learned it all somewhere!).
Growing out of our anger is a journey, so I can’t solve it all in a comment. Nonetheless, a few thoughts:

1. we are all imperfect as parents. How you own it and acknowledge it with your son is as important as losing or not losing your temper. My mom was always so up front with me about how she was sorry. she recognized the behavior. Sounds like you are doing this. However…
While I inspired myself from her on this front, the pieces I added were:
a) learning to recognize how my anger was a reaction to my vulnerability and powerlessness. I felt inept, stupid, like a failure, disrespected. You see, anger is the power position of our ego. It helps us avoid vulnerability underneath. Go looking for that, and share that!
b) part of this is owning that you lost your temper because you had these difficult feelings and didn’t know what to do, not because he did something. I told my boys again and again, “it’s not about you. Yes, you behaved in ways (arguing with each other in the car about something completely meaningless!!) that were challenging for me, so I lost my s**t, but it’s my responsibility to keep my calm. I’m working on it.”
And I would restate my commitment to learning to parent without anger.

2. Learn to talk about your helplessness and mounting feelings EARLY. Right away. Ask for help, share what’s going on for you, ask what’s going on for him (he won’t tell you, most likely). Don’t let them fester because you know where they lead. I’ve found the more that I talk about my own struggles in a simple, vulnerable way, the more my boys talk about theirs.

3. My eldest son (now 15) had a lot of anger when he was 4-7. I would get angry with him that he wasn’t controlling himself, I guess expecting him to have more self-control over his anger than I did over mine.
— Work on yourself, your son will follow.
I had terrible problems of rage growing up (15-27). I resolved them to a great degree thru the work we teach. Then I had a kid. Then another. The stresses of life raised the bar on me and I didn’t adapt. All of my reactions of angry overwhelm came back. My eldest didn’t come out of the womb angry. but I can tell you he had a lot by elementary school.
I doubled down on my work on myself. I talked about it openly with them. I cleaned up my screw ups.

— Most of all, I learned to set firm but supple limits with love and openness. To tell them the goal behind the rule. And to never, ever allow myself to rationalize that anger was an acceptable parenting technique.
I can tell you today that my two boys are hardly ever angry. My eldest’s tendency to get angry slowly dissipated without me telling him anything.

I hope this helps. I don’t even know if these comments go back to the person that originally wrote them–so I hope you actually get this.

The work we do is immensely helpful in providing tools and insights to change these behaviors. If ever you would like to speak with one of us, don’t hesitate.

With support,

Shayne

Comment on Damn! I Just Lost my Temper Again by Clare Kirke

Clare Kirke — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 09:59:35 +0000

Hi
My 12 year old son has a bad temper. He gets angry, argues with himself, throws a tantrum then cries with frustration. This behaviour then causes me to completely lose my temper and I end up worse than him, screaming like a mental case.
As the words are tearing out of my mouth, I know they are really wrong and not how I should be speaking to my son.
As soon as I start to calm down, I immediately feel so guilty, the tears start flowing. I then get angry at myself and blame him for causing me to lose my s**t.
I can feel it building up in certain situations and it festers for days before I actually explode.
His behaviour hacks away at me for days, then BOOM, I explode.
It happens maybe 2 or 3 times a year, but it shouldn’t be happening at all. I feel totally disgusted by myself after I do it. I know woman can be hormonal and I am getting to an age (45) where I am probably starting to be a bit menopausal, but I don’t think this is any excuse for losing it. I feel so helpless and useless because I cant control it when it happens. I come from a long line of bad tempered relations. HELP!!!!!

Comment on What does neuroscience have to say about hot buttons? A LOT! by Larry Biddle

Larry Biddle — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:42:21 +0000

Excellent insights Carole! Thanks so much for your famous cartoons!

Comment on The Emotional Clarity Of Contribution Unleashes our True Potential by Happy

Happy — Sun, 20 Sep 2015 07:31:39 +0000

1: I believe that cluture does in fact play a major role in how you perceive the world. For example, there is a video where a little Islamic girl named Basmallah was taught to recite teachings of Radical Islamic Fundamentalists. She was taught to believe that Jews are Allah’s enemies, therefore they are our enemies. She was taught to believe that Jews are pigs and that they will never see the light of Heaven. She was only 3 years old at the time this video was taken. This shows just how much our cluture can affect our views on the world and the people who inhabit it. You can be taught to see the good in people, or you can be taught to see the bad in people.2: I believe that a stoic or emotionless state of mind will best aid in seeing the world with the greatest clarity. Reasoning and logic, I believe, are probably the most reliable ways to view the world (although it is certainly limited by human flaws). Emotions can easily manipulate your rational thinking into something irrational (like kids who wear their sister’s pants and have that one huge bang of hair and wear black who scream at their parents just because they don’t understand , even if the parents DO understand but the kid is too preoccupied with his angsty bullcrap to see things clearly). Seeing the world in the least subjective state possible (because it is not possible to completely let go of our biases) is probably the best way to live our lives, because that perspective of life allows us to see MOST (not all) of our errors in thinking and perceiving.

Comment on Five Things Bosses Fear to Say that Would Help by Barbara Mariposa

Barbara Mariposa — Thu, 14 May 2015 08:00:51 +0000

You are so right. In the rapidly changing 21st century workplace, we need adaptability, respond-ability and the soft skills of empathy, inspiration and encouragement. People at work are no longer cogs in a hierarchical machine. We need to connect, human to human. This way we bring the best out in everybody.

Comment on Ditching the Email Mindset for Greater Productivity by Larry Biddle

Larry Biddle — Sat, 02 May 2015 20:32:39 +0000

Majoring in majors trumps majoring in minors…

Comment on Let’s change the world, one ego at a time (starting with mine) by Candice Kollar

Candice Kollar — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 17:55:41 +0000

Dear Lara,
Thanks for your inspiring thoughts. I recently came across a small calendar page I had saved. It reads March 26, 1999, the day your mother, Claire Nuer, passed. It serves as a reminder for me of the many things I learned from her and the LaL team. Though that was so long ago, the concepts and tools continue to be immensely useful for me to this day. Indeed, the goals I formed in the seminars helped me to infuse purpose into my business and each and every relationship since then, in business and in life. Thank you, again and keep up the good work!
Love, Candice

P.S. I have recently reconnected with Sam. 🙂