“For what do you use which of these spaces?”

A young man sent this response:

“While I agree that a colleague can be a friend and vice-versa, I do think that it is better not to mix these two spheres.”

His response came to mind as I watched a chat on Twitter tonight about the same subject - the line between the personal and the professional.

And that reminded me of something I posted to a listserv several years ago, in response to a question raised by a colleague (who also happens to be a friend). Her question was this: “When it comes to the personal and the professional, where does each of us draw that line?”

My response three years ago to my friend’s question grows more accurate every day.

**********************

Bonnie:
Thank you so much for raising this.  Because in a profession where all we have is what’s inside our heads and hearts, I have stopped looking for the line between what is personal and what is professional.  I have one life, and everything informs everything else.

Some of my closest friends in the world are people I met through my work.  I have former clients who call to tell me of a new professional hurdle - 5 years after they stopped being a paying client - and similar clients who send me email jokes, or just call to go to lunch.

We took a 100 mile detour off a business trip a few months back, to pay a surprise visit to a former client who has not been a client since 1997.  I will probably remember forever his smile and outright giggling-like-a-kid upon seeing us. Was that business?  Was it pleasure?  Does it matter?

More to the point of the question, does it inform our work, our professional outlook?  Will I perhaps recommend to a client that if they want to see their resources grow, they might pick up the phone and call someone they haven’t spoken to in a long time, just to say hi?  So was that side trip personal or business?

When I am writing my next book, and I need folks to do peer review, will I head to those I neither know nor trust? Or  will I instead ask the same people who have watched me go through good and bad times, have been there with me throughout, and whom I know and trust both personally and professionally?  And isn’t the only way I can maintain that professional bond to also maintain the personal bond?

If I am in Chicago and I go to dinner with you - a friend who is a friend because you were a colleague first - and we talk about life, the universe, and everything (and perhaps it is snowing and the food is great, as it was last time…) - is that business or pleasure?  When it is time for my next book to come out, is it likely I will ask you to be part of the peer review team, just as you asked me to do for you? The trust we share will not have come from watching each other’s  listserv posts as professional observers.  That trust will have been built through visits and phone calls and LAUGHING a lot!!  So is that business or personal?

And doesn’t one inform the other, simply because we are not a “work” person and a “play” person but just one person? Isn’t that what helps us grow overall, which of course grows our business?

I don’t stamp out widgets for a living.  I live my life, pursue what interests me, and somehow make a living from that. So where is the line?  I prefer not to have one.  Sometimes that means I work my butt off, 24/7, because I am energized by what I am working on.  Sometimes it means I take 2 weeks to hide away and write.

Sometimes it means, like today, that in the middle of the day I will take my 82 year old mother to the movies.  And I will see something in that movie that will inspire me.  And I will scribble it down on the way home, so I don’t forget to send a note to a client / friend.  And we will laugh about that tomorrow, that I can’t even see a silly movie without my mind going in a million different directions.

So which part of that is personal vs. professional?  I can tell you definitively that our business prospers almost entirely because I don’t have a line - that each informs the other, as it is all just one life.

So here’s to my meeting each of you over a long dinner one of these days when we are in the same city.  And here’s to our raising our glasses in a toast to friendship and the amazing interconnectedness that makes life worth living and makes our businesses strong, all at the same time.

*********************************

What about you? Where do you draw the line? Or do you draw a line at all?

A sign catches my eye and I am suddenly laughing out loud.  It says Slow Down.  “Yup, I sure need to do that!”  I think to myself as I notice that even at 6am, my mind is already racing with things to be done today.

I breathe deep. And as we share during our consultant immersion courses, I know that deep breath is my body telling me, “Ok, you can change things right now. What is possible here?”  We do that, have you noticed? When we are in the middle of something difficult or confusing, we take a deep breath as we are about to tackle the next thing. What a great signal that gives us!

With that breath, then, I asked myself, “The sign says slow down. What is possible here?”

From there, each step on my walk opened up a different answer, each one making me smile (some making me laugh out loud, there alone walking up and down my neighborhood streets.  What a sight I must be!)

A yield sign.  Wow, could we ever use that!  Given the conversations about collaboration that have been occurring at SocialEdge.org and at the Institute’s Facebook page, a yield sign might be just the thing as we consider the conditions that will lead to more community-wide cooperation.

A sign said, “Prepare to stop.”  I especially laughed at that one. It’s not enough in our lives to tell us to stop, look around, take that deep breath and consider what’s possible.  For most of us, life is so crazy, we need to prepare to stop - make an appointment to stop!  “I’ll get a massage next week,” or “I’ll try to find some time this weekend to just read the paper…”  Prepare to stop.  I loved that one.

And then I saw it - the clump of weeds growing furiously in the crack between the street and the curb. That clump of weeds might as well have been screaming through a bullhorn!

“I am tenacious. Nothing will stop me. Yeah, it’s asphalt and concrete - but I am growing with such fervor that they have a whole crew of city employees to try to stop weeds like me, growing in the cracks of the street. Hard as they try to whack us down, though, we keep coming back, keep growing.”

Suddenly this blog post wrote itself in my head. When we are aiming at what’s possible, we acknowledge obstacles simply as things we must find our way around.  As my friend and colleague Nancy Iannone told me yesterday, “When I find myself problem-solving, I am just as mired as my clients in all the reasons nothing will work. But the minute I start helping them reach for the vision of what’s possible, everything falls into place.”

If we set ourselves on a course that inspires us, we are those weeds. Nothing can stop us, and everything falls into place.

All we need to do is take a deep breath, slow down, and aim at what is possible.

Photo Credit: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

Each day, as we watch the news unfold from Iran, we are inspired. We are encouraged. We are frightened for the violence faced by those who are holding themselves accountable for creating not only the future of their country, but in many ways, the future of our whole world.

So this week’s Rock Out is a reminder of the power we have together that we do not have alone. It is a reminder of those who are holding themselves accountable with their very lives. And it is a reminder of the power of art to convey all of that.

I can think of two other Monday Morning Rock Outs that have used this song - one to share the power of the arts to connect us with what is possible, and the other to address the message that is so strong as we watch the news unfold in Iran - the power we have when we all stand together.

And now this one, by Jon Bon Jovi and Iranian superstar Andy Madadian (check out the background about this endeavor here.)

If a song has landed in this spot three times in three different ways - if so many people are using this song to provide the same solid message - then it is a message we must keep in mind as we head out to create the future of our communities this week.

We have power when we stand together, holding ourselves accountable for accomplishing something bigger than ourselves.

What will you hold yourself accountable for this week.  And who will you link arms with today, this very hour, to make sure you can accomplish that?

Make it a great Monday and a great week, all.

Many thanks to Phabiola Herrera (aka @Phabi), a new follower on Twitter, for the heads-up about this video.

Photo credit: The Boston Globe I strongly recommend clicking the link, to see the rest of their breathtaking and powerful images.

If we want to create a healthy, vibrant, compassionate, resilient future for our communities and our world, strength-based work is not enough.

I know that’s stepping on a lot of toes, but hear me out.

Strength-based / asset-based work is seen in various places.  It is seen in community engagement efforts, to engage folks in solving their own problems.  It is seen in the counterbalance of “Yes, we did a needs assessment because the funder wanted it, but we also did an asset map to assess our strengths.” It is seen in the battle cry to not just look at clients and communities as a pile of needs, but a pile of strengths to address those needs.

All this is good stuff.  Heck, I even included the need for building on our strengths as Pollyanna Principle #5! As Jody Kretzmann of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute says when he speaks about a glass being half empty or half full, “When we consider only needs, we are considering only the useless part of the glass.”

That said, there is a gap that focusing on strengths cannot fill. When we use strengths to solve people’s problems - to help stabilize a homeless family or to eliminate crime from a neighborhood - our best possible outcome is that we will eliminate that problem.

And while yes, we indeed want to solve those problems, when all we do is fix what’s not working, we are limiting our potential. We are failing to reach for what is possible, because what is possible goes beyond just eliminating harmful circumstances. What is possible is - well - everything we can dream of!

We Accomplish What We Hold Ourselves Accountable For
and
We are Creating the Future, Right Now, Whether We Do So Consciously or Not

As the first two of the Pollyanna Principles note, creating visionary change in our communities and our world requires that we hold ourselves accountable for aiming at positive, powerful, visionary end results.

And that’s why strength-based work is not enough.  Strength-based work focuses on the means we use - tapping on the strengths every individual and every community has to create its own future.  But strength-based work towards marginal goals will still only take us so far.

The key is in the future we hold ourselves accountable for creating, for an individual client, for a community, for the world.

If we hold ourselves primarily accountable for getting homeless people back on their feet, that is where we will aim our strengths. And that is what we will continue to accomplish, over and over again.

If, however, we hold ourselves primarily accountable for creating an equitable society where not only does homelessness not exist, but everyone has the opportunity to reach for their own highest potential, then that is where we will aim our strengths. And along the way to that end goal, we will indeed get homeless individuals back on their feet.

I cannot guarantee we will achieve the equitable society imaged in the second example.  But I can guarantee that if we do not aim for it, we will absolutely not attain it. We will continue to fight poverty, fight drug use, fight terrorism - fight whatever sadness it is our mission to fight.

Try This
Question 1: Today, for every need you identify (in a client, in your organization, in your community, in your country, in our world), ask this question:

What is the best possible outcome here? For whom?

Question 2: Just by asking that question, what might change about your approach to the work you do?

If you have not already taken the first step in aiming at what is possible - for your clients, your organization, your community AND for yourself - The Pollyanna Principles can take you there.

Given the events of this weekend, that somehow seems more critical this morning than it does on other Mondays.

The election in Iran, deciding how that country will interact on the global stage.  The extent to which the whole world connected via Twitter to bear witness to the events in that country at the moment they occurred, far away and yet so close.

If this weekend proved anything, it is the extent to which we are realizing that all of us, all around the world, are really just one big family.

In 2001, eleven days after September 11, two hundred artists of all kinds (not just musicians - actors, sports figures) gathered to record this video at the invitation of Nile Rodgers - the man who originally wrote the song. What was once a disco anthem became an anthem of the heart we all share, all around the world.  And then it became a movement.

Since that day, Nile and his life partner, Nancy Hunt, formed the We Are Family Foundation.  Together they have been doing whatever it takes to link us to each other.  Their latest effort is aimed at having US Congress and the United Nations to declare March 11th We Are Family Day - “a day to celebrate our common humanity and provide an opportunity for teachers, parents and educators of all kinds to teach our youth about different cultures, different religions and the importance of respecting our fellow human beings.”

But can one day do it all? As we hold ourselves accountable for creating the future this week, isn’t it time we stopped thinking of our differences, and started linking arms to accomplish what none of us can do on our own? Pollyanna Principle #3 states that everything and everyone is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.

The power comes when we do indeed acknowledge those links. The power comes when we see that truly, we are all family.

Have a great Monday and a great week, all.

Why the photo of Big Bird? Just one more project We Are Family created - this one for kids!

I’ve been sharing a lot about Pollyanna Principled Consulting and our Immersion Courses these days, mostly because I am as immersed in them as the students are!

So I thought intead of hearing how excited I have been about these courses, I would share a note I received from one of the students in our April class.  Gayle Valeriote is the manager of training and consultation for the Volunteer Centre of Guelph / Wellington, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.  Gayle has been putting her learning into action from the moment she left Tucson last month.  In reading her note, I hope you are as excited about what is possible as we were to receive it!

***

So when we arrived at a favorite Italian restaurant for dinner, I wasn’t very hungry.  I ordered a dinner salad, a cup of soup, and a side order of spaghetti.

“I don’t think you can order just a side of spaghetti,” the waitress told me.  “I’ll have to ask my manager.”

And sure enough, she came back to tell me I could only order a full portion of spaghetti.

I turned to her and pointed to Tracey sitting next to me.  “Does a side of spaghetti come with her meal?”

The waitress explained, “She can get the choice of sides - she chose a salad.”

“She has changed her mind,” I told the waitress.  “She wants a side of spaghetti AND a salad.  She wants you to put the spaghetti on a separate plate.  And because she is my friend, I will treat her to the salad.”

The waitress looked confused for a moment.  This sounded suspiciously like my getting a side dish of spaghetti by bending the rules, paying for an extra salad instead of a plate of spaghetti!  After that split second of confusing, she said, “I think I can do that.”  And sure enough, she returned to say her manager had approved of my convoluted attempt to get what I wanted in the first place.

Oh my goodness!  How much did I have to manipulate their systems just to get a small dish of spaghetti?  And what do you want to bet the salad I wound up buying was several dollars cheaper than the side of spaghetti I was perfectly willing to pay for!

Now before you say, “Oh businesses can be so dumb that way,” consider how many rules your community organization has about its patrons and clients.

I once received the gift of a book that had been purchased at a  “nonprofit” / community benefit yoga center that sold books on the side to raise money.  I took many classes at the center, as they had a wonderful teacher of “yoga for back care”and because they had always shown a deep understanding of their mission of yoga as a means to more compassionate living.

I already owned the book my friend had given me, and so before my next class, I tried to return it.  The Executive Director looked as if I had said something offensive about her mother. “You can’t return that here without a receipt.”

After explaining the circumstances several times, and after my growing more and more impatient to take the class for which I was about to pay real money (a class I knew would have to work doubly hard to build calm and compassion after this altercation), the Executive Director finally told me she would make an exception - I could get a credit for another book.

“Can’t I use the credit towards my classes?”

Without a beat the E.D. told me, “You’re lucky I took the book back at all! What other bookstore would take a book back without a receipt?”

It never occurred to the E.D. that the yoga center was not Barnes & Noble, but was instead a place that received a tax exemption so it could make the community a more compassionate, calm, healthy place to live.  Having been treated like a disdained customer, rather than a respected compatriot towards the vision of a healthier community, I stopped attending the Yoga Center as soon as the classes were over.

As you encounter your clients and patrons and supporters, I urge you to consider that the highest possible potential of your work can only be reached if you see your clients and patrons as partners in creating a better world. They are not widgets you use to sustain your organization; they are the sole purpose you exist.

Whether you treat them with disdain or with reverence, you can bet you are making that clear to them with little things you may not even realize you are doing.

Like refusing to sell me a small plate of spaghetti.

(Photo credit: Rainer Zenz via Wikimedia Commons)

1) The value of taking time to prepare for everything
The biggest part of what folks learn in our immersion courses is that the thinking we do is far more critical than the “doing.” When we jump into any portion of our work on auto-pilot, we miss the opportunity to be more conscious about the future we want to create. And if the purpose of our work is to help our clients create a better future, this is no small thing!

Therefore, much of the work in this course is learning how to prepare for every portion of a consultant’s work, to aim that step at creating visionary outcomes for their clients.

This is not about visualizing success and having it magically happen. It is instead about doing the work to prepare for every single thing you do. And that work is all about thinking before we do.

Most of us are not conscious of the power we have in every phone call: “In this phone call, I want to aim this group at making a dramatic difference in their community.”

Most of us are not conscious as we draft a proposal that will hopefully become a consulting gig: “In this consulting proposal - even before I have the job - I want to aim this group at their potential to make a huge difference in their community.”

Every time I teach this course, I am reminded of the power we have as consultants. If our clients are catalysts for changing their communities, then we as consultants are catalysts for aiming our clients at creating that change!

And I am reminded that every single step of our work - even and especially those steps we take for granted (like an initial phone call or preparing a proposal) - has the power to move clients closer to changing their world.

And that can only happen if we have done our homework to consciously prepare for that work.

2) We don’t change people; we change situations
If we’re aiming every bit of our work at changing the world - a phone call, a proposal, a meeting with a board - what does that mean in practice? It means creating the circumstances in which that phone call, that proposal, that meeting can lead to change.

If we can identify the best possible end goal of a phone call (for ourselves, for our clients, for their communities), then we can also begin to identify the circumstances that would lead to those results. And if we can identify those circumstances, we can skillfully put wheels into motion to create those circumstances.

That’s what it means to consciously create the future!

One of the participants noted yesterday that when we set the stage for success, we change the situations, not the individuals involved. I loved that observation!

We know that individuals will go where systems lead them (Pollyanna Principle #6). And so we don’t have to worry about changing individuals; we just have to create systems that encourage them to do better.

3) The answers are never as important as the questions
If we know this instinctively, why is it that we attend a training seeking answers? Wouldn’t it be more powerful to seek to learn questions?

I am reminded of this quite visually in our training room, as just 2 days of class have so far produced more flip chart sheets filled with questions than any other subject (We’re up to page 7, filling up with Key Questions, and there are 3 days left!)

Questions to ask a prospective client, to uncover the real outcomes they want from working with you as a consultant.

Questions that get “sophisticated” board members away from their aversion to words like “vision” and “values.” Questions that get past fear. Questions that lead beyond a focus on the organization, and lead towards a focus on community.

As I look across the room at page upon page of questions, it is a visual reminder that answers are a dime a dozen, but a good question is worth its weight in gold.

***

That’s just some of what I’ve been absorbing in this week’s Pollyanna Principled Consulting Immersion Course. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the week reveals to us all!

Do you know how to craft great questions? Crafting Great Sleuthing Questions may help!

As we head into this week to create the future of our world, we all know it’s not always easy. The thing that gets us through the rough patches, though, can be defined in one word: Love.

I am fortunate. I am surrounded by people who love me. They are my friends, my family, my support, my rock. When I am unsteady, they are strong. What would we do without love such as this in our lives?

That is why the images in this week’s Rock Out are haunting. As we face the a world so hell-bent on making life hard, who could possibly be against love?

I love the love in this video. I am saddened by the love in this video. I am inspired and mortified. And I cannot watch this without thinking of the eloquence with which Keith Olbermann stepped out of his normal dragon-under-the-stairs persona to ask that same question: Who could possibly be against love?

Pollyanna Principle #3 states that “Everyone and everything is interconnected and interdependent, whether we acknowledge that or not.” That connection is so much a part of who we are that when we see a cactus pad shaped like a heart, we stop, grab a friend’s arm, pointing and smiling.

We need each other.

As you head out to do your work this week, embrace anyone who cares about the same thing you care about. Link arms. Create a movement. Make things happen.

The Beatles were right. Love is all we need. So please, get out there and love each other.

Have a great Monday and a great week, all!

This is an organization with the potential to accomplish such incredible work - the community could be an astoundingly different place, simply because this organization exists.  Their mission is unlike any other organization in town.  And they have considerable strengths to build upon.

And yet the organization’s leaders have all but squandered its considerable strengths.  They have done mediocre work because the work could easily get funded.  And they have so completely ignored the difference they could make in the community, that now their only hope is a group of past leaders who are gathering to determine the organization’s fate.

My advice to my colleague was simple: Blow it up and start over. Or at least assume that is what you have done as you do your planning.

When we plan to save an existing organization, we dive right into problem-solving tactics. How can we ensure it survives financially? How will we find better board members?  What programs are salvageable? And etc.

However, when we plan as if we had blown it up and started over, we invite the opportunity to ask very different questions.

• If the organization didn’t exist, and we were starting from scratch, what success would we be aiming at? What would the community look like if we were 100% successful?

• What conditions would the organization be seeking to change in our community?

• What kinds of programs might we build to begin changing those conditions?

• Who should we engage as we ask and answer these questions?  Whose lives could be affected by the work we are considering?

• How would we know if we were successful at changing those conditions?  What might be good indicators?

• Who else is doing similar work? Who could we partner with to make this happen?

From there, we can identify the strengths upon which we can rebuild.  From there, we can identify the values we want to always uphold as we do our work.  From there, we can engage others in the quest to build a better community by rebuilding the organization.

Creating concrete plans to achieve our highest potential for impact is something each of us can do with everything we are working on, whether or not your work is in disarray.

• Organizations that are not falling apart can create concrete plans to reach for their own highest potential - the highest level of success they can imagine creating in their communities.

• The same goes for us as individuals.  We, too, can envision our own highest potential and create concrete plans to work toward that success.

And the secret to all this? In the end, we don’t need to blow it up at all!  Just aim at what is possible, identify the strengths that can help you get there, and start walking.