The Grey One’s Gift

The Grey One’s Gift

by | Nov 30, 2024 | Living

The young one had a map of sorts, mostly a list of turns drawn on birchbark – arrow left at the big oak, right after the log bridge, and so on. The path was long for one so young, winding through a deep hardwood forest, crossing a rushing stream on a fallen log, then climbing through fir-filtered sunbeams almost to the tree line.

Finally a small clearing opened to the sky, where one could see up to the first ridge of the mountains and down to the village below. Across the clearing, nestled into the hillside was a cabin, so covered with lichens and mosses it seemed a part of the wood. Before it sat the Grey One, carving a stag from a small piece of wood. The horns of the animal were still blocky as was some of the body, but a near perfect hoof was raised as if the buck would prance off at any moment.

“I am sorry to disturb you, Grey One,” the young one said. “Wind sent me up this path to talk with you.”

“Ah, in trouble with the Elders?”

“No. Well, at least I don’t think so. The village is busy laying up grain and roots for winter, Maybe I was in the way. I ask a lot of questions. Wind just said “Go, it is your time.”

“I see. And what have you been asking about?”

“Oh, everything really. About the stars, and the animals, and where babies come from? Why some things grow and why other things die?”

The Grey One chuckled. “Yes, I see why they sent you. Did you have trouble finding me?”

“No. Wind gave me this drawing of the way.”

“Hold onto that. Come sit by me on the ground and lean your back against this tree. Let us see if we can answer some of those questions.”

The Grey One listened patiently. It seemed to the young one there were more questions asked than answered.

“And what do you think, young one?”

Towards the afternoon, the Grey One served warm soup retrieved from the cabin. After they ate, the Grey One said “I have a small gift for you, something you must practice. Sit with me upon the ground again.”

“Now close your eyes. Breathe softly, in through your nose, and out through your nose.”

After ten breaths breathing together, the Grey One said, “this is the Earth Breath. Through this breath you feel the Earth. Keep breathing as you listen to my voice.

“Breathe in through your nose, and out through your nose. Feel the ground beneath you, each grain of soil, each wet leaf and pebble. You are a part of the ground. As you feel your Connection to the Earth, think also of your Core. Become stronger of body and open of mind.”  Be humble and grateful of spirit. The earth will guide you as you grow and improve your Core.”

Several silent moments passed. Then Grey One gave the young one an apple. “For your journey back. Use the bark drawing, backwards this time. Practice the gift of breath until we meet again.”

Seasons passed. The young one grew, and met the Grey One now and again in the wood near the village. The Grey One always asked “Do you practice the Earth Breath?”

“Yes Grey One.” This young one was diligent, grounding and growing.

Winters later, Wind said, “It is time to visit the Grey One.” The young one still had the birchbark and made the journey.

The Grey One asked. “What gives you joy? Do you sing? Or work with your hands?”

The Grey One listened, then shared a new practice.

“Practice this gift after the Earth Breath, still protect your Core, the health and fitness of your body, mind and spirit, and grow your connection to the Earth.

This is the Fire Breath –  in through the mouth, and out through the nose. The Fire Breath is for your passions, your gifts, talents, your Capability.  Nurture and grow your Capability the way we blow upon the saved coals from yesterday’s hearth to cook today’s meal.”

The young one committed to practice both Earth Breath and Fire Breath building Connection, Core, and Capability.

Seven season circles swirled past.

When the young one next readied for the climb up the path,  Wind said, “Stop by the stream for a few moments and observe; the Grey One will ask you what you see.”

And the Grey One did ask.

“The water moves swiftly in some places; it eddies and pools in others. There is no holding it back. It fills in the spaces among the rocks, moves around them, or over them, it is always there and always moving.”

“Well observed, young one. Now Water Breath, in through the nose, and out through the mouth, can be added. With the Water Breath you connect with others the way the water adapts to the shapes around it. The stream rushes to a river, which glides along the loam banks to the sea, where the tides first hug and then push back from the shore.

Water is the essence of change and the Water Breath shows us how to adapt. Water connects to rocks and the shore, but is always water. So too, your Core connects and adapts to others, and may change with Love, but remains – you. The Water Breath is the first practice where breath leaves your mouth. Take care with your speech.”

“As a young one,” the Grey One said, “I was quick of mind and word, able to see solutions that eluded others. I spoke my mind, but was at times poorly received. I saw in a glass that I have two eyes and two ears, but one mouth. I learned, what is help is not mine to define. Now I watch and listen, but speak less.

Many winters travelled into memory.

Wind was now gray too. A kind face, formed in deep lines traced from years of smiles, spoke to the young one, now a new parent. “The Grey One feels winter’s breath and cannot make the journey to the village. Go now before snow closes the path.

And so this new parent, who practiced Earth, Fire, and Water Breaths, made the journey with no need for the birchbark map.

“I have one more practice to share, the Air Breath, in through the mouth, out through the mouth. It is a breath we all know from being winded; “out of breath” we say. The Air Breath is everything that unites us as people, as animals, and even vegetation, for do not the very trees breathe life into us. So the Air Breath is our beginning and our end. I have taught you this pattern.

Earth breath first, the Connection between your Core and the earth. Fire Breath,  second, burn bright, as you blow on the coals of your gifts and passions. Water Breath third, your Connection through Love to others, never losing yourself. Water reminds us that Change is the primal law of all life. The first three breaths teach you to grow and build upon Core, Connections, and Capability.”

Now the Air Breath, is the symbol of your connection to all life, and bids you share your Contribution. Teach your capability to your family and friends, and with love to the stranger.”

“Breathe in, inspire. Breathe together, conspire with love. Breathe out, expire. You have naught to leave here but your gift to the world, your Contribution.”

A light snow began to fall. The former young one walked slowly back to a new family gathered around the hearth, and was grateful for the Grey One’s Gift.

 

 

Picture above is “River Dave” Lidstone near his woods cabin in Canterbury, NH in 2021  Original photo by Jodie Gedeon via AP

The Grateful Consultant

The Grateful Consultant

by | Nov 22, 2024 | Consulting

It is almost Thanksgiving.

At our house we all sit around the turkey, for those who partake, and four-cheese mac-n-cheese for those who don’t, and say one thing we are each genuinely grateful for. Saying just one thing often precludes career stuff, I mean it doesn’t really stand up to health, and the love of family and friends gathered together,

But I am grateful for my thirty-seven year career in consulting, my clients, my colleagues and for interesting work, and enough remuneration that I was able to retire.

I actually think that gratitude is a required value for a good consultant. If you are genuinely grateful for your job, for the opportunity to help clients and their companies change, for the relationships you build and the collaborations with clients and colleagues, wouldn’t that make you a better consultant?

When I worked for myself, and received a check, I called, or wrote my client and said “Thank You.” Sometimes I sent hand written “”Thank You” notes. Thanking people for their business always seemed to pleasantly surprise people. When I called, I said thanks, and people often asked what I really wanted. “Just to say Thank You.”  “Really?” “Really.”

Did you ever thank your boss or your colleagues? I wish I’d done more of that. I got wonderful opportunities and enjoyed working with mostly smart nice people.

I told clients I pitched, thank you for the opportunity, and I may have said the same when I was interviewing, but I don’t think I said  ‘thank you’ enough after I was hired.

Thank You.

I’m pretty sure I’ve told George Litwin I appreciate the way he mentored me and for some of the most exciting projects of my career. Thank you again, George. Did I thank Ellen Hart for hiring me at Gemini Consulting? Not sure. Thank You, Ellen. Did I than Jon Katzenbach, Marc Feigen and Niko Canner when I was hired at Katzenbach Partners or at any time before I quit four years later and left the same day? Thank you, Jon, Marc, and Niko.

Did I thank my partner Keith Morton at Morton-Culler and Company or my Results-Alliance partner the late Ric Taylor? I think I did, maybe not enough. Thank You Keith and Ric.

Thank you to Jere, John, Roopa, and Brigitte, and any and all who helped me and especially to those that I behaved in a less than grateful way.

I was probably better at thanking clients than I was at thanking bosses and colleagues. How very me.

“Hey, wait a minute,” you say. “What about self-confidence? Isn’t that the core of consulting? Shouldn’t  bosses, clients, and colleagues be grateful to work with me?”

You make an interesting point, person powering up. You are smart and nice and a little insecure so you work really hard. (This is the hiring spec for most consulting firms.) But are you sure that you aren’t covering your insecurity with confidence? Consultants sometimes do that so well that they come off as arrogant. Of course, there are also consultants that have been told for their whole lives how smart they are; these consultants come to believe their own press and their insecurities become buried so deeply below projected confidence that no one, not even them, know their insecurities actually exist. (Guilty.)

Don’t be that guy? (Most of these consultants are men, but perhaps gender-jerk correlation is not causation.)

Gratitude, though? Is that really necessary? Yes.

Let’s say you work in a firm with two mid-career consultants. One thanks the analysts and production people who stay up all night so the consultant has the deck for the client at 9:00 a.m. The other says “That’s the job. I did it. They’ll do it if they want to stay with the firm.” Who gets their work prioritized in a crunch? Who gets analysts to request to be staffed on their project and who gets those who are “available,” no matter how often the project manager complains to staffing “availability is NOT a skillset.”

Gratitude is a leadership trait and the definition of a leader is a person others want to follow.

And you have to be grateful even when you get bad news, “We need more time,” “The data show that your hypothesis isn’t true,” or “I made a mistake.” How a leader (grateful consultant) reacts to bad news, influences whether people tell you the truth, or are willing to take the calculated risks you ask of them.

Gratitude and humility are correlated, maybe even causally. The core of humility is respect for others. It is the willingness to admit that someone might have a better idea than you, or work at least as hard, or see a way to proceed that you might be blind to. If you respect others to that degree, wouldn’t you be grateful that they are on your team?

Some, who have met too many ungrateful, unhumble consultants will guffaw now, or at least, not believe this thesis. If I thought my apologizing for my own misdeeds and those of the miscreants of my former profession would help, I’d say “I’m sorry.” I am sorry.

My current contribution is to encourage others to be humble, ask more questions before you present an answer, and respect not just your client, but all junior members of the client system. Respect your colleagues even those much below your level. And be grateful these people give you the opportunity to help make positive change.

 

 

At this Thanksgiving time, I am grateful for grateful consultants, for all my former clients, consulting colleagues and bosses, for subscribers to Wisdom from Unusual Places, and for those who helped me with, bought, read and/or reviewed my book, Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors.”

Thank You!

The Culler Curse

The Culler Curse

by | Nov 18, 2024 | Living

Disaster!

Off and on all day yesterday, I puzzled over what to write this week. Some weeks the words flow like a fast stream onto the screen.

Then there are those other times, when Billie says, “You know, none of your subscribers will show up at the door if you miss a week.”

R–E–T–I–R–E–D? Isn’t that how you spell it? Why have I turned my avocation into a job with DEADLINES?

So yesterday was one of those days where I struggled with not being able to decide what to write and being anxious about it, and rereading everything I’ve posted in the last three years so as not to duplicate.

Then, OMG, It’s 5:30! I’m cooking tonight, and I can’t remember how to cook the shredded chicken with gravy. I’m late, and I haven’t defrosted the chicken, and now Pip, old black lab with diabetes and a UTI, needs to go out.

Now that’s done, where’s the recipe, oh yeah, tucked into the front cover of Lynne’s cookbook. I reached for the shelf in the cabinet to the right of the stove. . . .

Brrrraaaangcrraceenkrashareenkingrakingingingtinkletinkle! An explosion. Glass everywhere, everywhere, glass shards, slivers, and splinters all over the counter, and the floor, and the table across the room.

“What was that?!”    

“Broke the spare coffee pot . . . no wait, both, coffee pots.”

We store the spare Melita pour-through pot next to the cookbooks and I had evidently pulled it airborne when I snatched the cookbook and it had tumbled onto the part-full coffeepot below, breaking off the spout and rim.

“I know just what you did. Culler Curse!” said Billie as she went to order new Melita pots and I went for the broom, dustpan, and vacuum cleaner.

Thanksgiving

Things to be grateful for:

I wasn’t cut, or hurt in any way. No one else was in the kitchen, so no picking glass out of the dog, or the wife, or grandchildren’s eyes. Miraculously, the part-full coffee pot on the counter only lost its rim so no mopping or repainting the walls required. Melita coffee pots are replaceable, even if they won’t be delivered till Friday. I hadn’t started to cook dinner yet, so no throwing away a glass littered half-cooked meal.

We are all still alive, mostly vertical, and as healthy as late seventy-somethings ever are -technically the dog is in her human-year eighties, and is showing her age, but is no worse for the glass-splosion in the evening kitchen, caused by the Culler Curse.

The Curse

It was my eldest sister’s late husband, also called Alan, who observed that “Culler’s are all clumsy.” We did tend to trip around my brother-in-law, and bump into door frames, and drop breakables. He would laugh, shake his head, and mutter, “Claaah-um-see!”

I began to wonder how much of our ineptitude was endemic and how much was the anxiety produced by Alan’s ever-present judgement. Were my sisters and I, and my children just performing up to his expectation.

At family gatherings though, when the subject would come up, we’d find that “the curse” showed itself in all our lives at various times even when my brother-in-law was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s just that you’re kinetic,” my kind wife tells me. “You have an energy about you. It’s why electronics so often malfunction around you. And your body is always moving, sometimes in ways that bear no relationship to what you are doing at the moment.”

I don’t know who coined the name the “Culler curse,” but it clearly stuck. The curse is passed down genetically. Not everybody has it or at least has it equally. Most agree that my great niece, Lauren, Alan’s granddaughter, has the curse, but her brother and sister not so much.

My children have the curse, though in varying degrees. My late cousin Jeannine, who sailed around the South Pacific, said “it visits me occasionally and with a vengeance when it comes, but the curse isn’t always there.”

The curse comes in cycles. Today I talked to my sister, Lynne, who told me, “We have a coffee pot that doesn’t fit the maker because, I have broken not one, but two recently, setting them down too hard on the counter. I also talked to my youngest daughter who regaled me with the story of the burn on her hand, injured because she decided she didn’t need the hot water she’d just boiled to mix with her espresso, but then reached for her coffee placing her hand into the steam stream from the kettle.

I remember my mother asking, ”Alan where did you get that scratch on your leg?”

“I dunno”

“Oh Alan, Honey, you need to pay attention.”

Absence of Mindfulness

My mother called me “accident prone,” and said the many minor scratches and cuts that I got as a child were from “not paying attention.” She was right.

If we look at this example, I grabbed for the cookbook, oblivious to the fact that the spare coffee pot was next to it. I was anxious, about not writing, about being late, about not remembering how to cook the dish. I was in my head, and that part of my head was out of touch with the part of my head controlling my body.

I needed to not be on autopilot, to pay attention to what I was doing at the moment, in short to be mindful. The absence of mindfulness sets the “Culler curse” free. When the curse is free, however, it can do things that cause people to say “what are the chances?”, like tumbling one coffee pot out of the cabinet and hit another on the way down.

“You couldn’t do that again if you tried.”

“Yep, Culler curse.”

Of course, we could also look at anticipating the Culler curse. I use the cookbooks, so maybe find a new place for the spare coffee pot.

One more thing to be grateful for. I didn’t break the entire second pot. Coffee is very important in this household and the replacement isn’t coming till Friday. (See the second pot repaired with duct tape above.)

Now what could go wrong with this picture?

“Yep, Culler curse.”

AI “Personalization:” Everything Old is New Again

AI “Personalization:” Everything Old is New Again

by | Nov 12, 2024 | Leading

By Bob Musial and Alan Culler

Alan Culler and I are comfortable calling ourselves “old sales guys.”  Recently, we each watched a video where a consultant described how a company could connect with its customers using information that they already had, “personalizing” the customer experience.

The young man wasn’t a great presenter, but there was nothing wrong with the content he presented:

  • Don’t ask people to give you the same information over and over again, as an Urgent Care did to him.
  • Don’t try to sell a dishwasher to someone who just bought one from you.
  • If you know a person’s dog died, stop sending them treat ads.
  • Use some common sense screening. If something doesn’t fit a buying pattern – a cane bought buy a thirty-year old – maybe it was a gift. Don’t send the hearing aid ad.

He advised his audience to be careful about how and when you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) because you can make the customer’s experience “personal” or not-so-much.

“Well, Duh,” said one of us to the other. It seemed like customer relations 101 to us.

We then regaled each other with some of our very own worst marketing experiences as customers:

“Dear, <<FIRST NAME>> That’s how I was addressed,”” said Bob. “This is a simple error of connecting to the “first name” column on an Excel flat file, but failing to make the link to column content. The real problem is no one looked at the resulting email mailing to catch the mistake, so no matter how targeted the content was [it wasn’t] it gets deleted. (Oh yeah, it was sent by a self-professed ‘sales guru.)”

Alan described his frustration with ordering books online. “I typically read historical or science fiction, but my recommended books immediately fill up with whatever I ordered last. This is especially bad after Christmas when I buy the grandkids books. I have five columns of early readers and Where’s Waldo.”

We then went on to described our best most personalized customer experience.

“Hong Kong, 1997” said Alan. “The hotel clerk took me to my room to check me in and my bags magically followed. She took my passport and credit card and noticed that my birthday was the next day. Starting with a 7 am wake-up call, everyone I met in the hotel wished me ‘Happy Birthday.’ My breakfast was comped  and the cab driver the doorman called wished me Happy Birthday as I left his cab.”

Bob said. “I grew up in a small town. I’d pick up stuff at the local grocery for my Mom. The butcher would know what my mother ordered so if I couldn’t read the list or forgot, he helped out. I always got to pick out two penny candies.”

So, what does all that have to do with AI and personalization?

As a society, we are moving towards a seamless electronic sales and service process. Banks, tech companies, on-line booksellers strive to take the costly human being out of the transaction. Some hide call center phone numbers and direct people to online chat-bots. In those cases, the interaction between humans and AI may quickly deteriorate, leading the customer to utter the four most-dreaded words of request, “Speak to an agent.” When you do get to a real person, it soon becomes apparent that call centers measure customer service representatives on metrics like average call handle time, cross-selling on service calls, and not on call resolution or customer satisfaction, not a happy experience.

Now we want technology to “personalize” the customer experience.

At the core of the word personalization, is . . .  “person.”

Persons listen to other people. They hear what is important to the other person (customer). The “seller” offers products or services of value based upon what is important to the customer.

“Personalization”, whether AI enabled or not, is data driven.

In the past, a person might have taken notes about a spouse’s name or a favorite sports team, because it was the basis of a shared “personal” moment, a connection that embodied our shared humanity that gives me, “the seller,” permission to reconnect to learn more about you, “the customer,” to meet your need.

That sales person might have kept a client file, or a notebook. Later that information might have been transferred to a spreadsheet and then Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software like Salesforce.com.

Marketers might have tracked advertisement response rates and purchase history in handwritten documents, then spreadsheets, then ad tracker software.

The key to success of data-driven personalization, whether notebook or software, is keeping the data up to date, and knowing when to use it, and not abuse it.

Unfortunately during the process, “common sense” frequently takes a back seat to technology.

AI can automate data collection and mimic intimate interactions of years past. Computer code, an algorithm, can take the notes, remember the purchase history, recognize patterns of response to certain words, and “personally” recommend a product or service. This technology can dramatically shorten the time required to gather and analyze data from multiple sources to create targeted, meaningful communications.

AI also can portend disaster, ever-faster poorly targeted, even insulting marketing communications that drive customers away rather than attract them.

As you begin the AI or non-AI personalization journey, plan for data accuracy reviews, empathy, and judgement, in short, human insight and oversight. AI programmers and marketers must talk to each other, as the cartoon above illustrates.

Thie AI journey requires detailed knowledge of the customer demographics, and psychographics and the judgement to know when to use it. In the past a customer might have shared a spouse’s name and a savvy salesperson had the judgement to know when and how to inquire after the spouse without sounding creepy.

As AI develops can we trust it to respect privacy, i.e., not be creepy?

The software engineers who develop artificial intelligence are driven by the questions “What’s possible? What can we do?” Marketers must represent the business question, “What  makes sense to generate customer acquisition and retention, revenue and profit? And someone must look at “What should we do? What’s right?”

It is a delicate balance between Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and human Soft Skills like communication, critical thinking, creativity and empathy.

Clients and prospects will appreciate receiving well-timed, personalized communications, messages that make them feel that their business is valued. When done well, it will also help to contribute to positive word of mouth referrals.

However, when not done well . . . word of mouth works both ways.

 

 

About Bob and Alan

with piercing blue eyes Bob Musial

Bob Musial helps clients with business development that encompasses a wide spectrum of disciplines and industries. He frequently uses personalized humor (like the cartoon in this article), to set the stage for conveying a message in a relatable and memorable manner. Bob has a long history of personalized communications built from conversations with contacts, storing “likes and dislikes” information in a custom database designed to deepen relationships. He is the author of Soft Skills, Hard Returns.

 

 

Alan Culler is a retired strategic change consultant and author who worked with multi-billion dollar global companies to help them innovate, integrate, and improve processes, productivity and profitability. He is the author of Traveling the Consulting Road and has a new book coming out soon, Change Leader? Who Me?

Good Grief

Good Grief

by | Nov 12, 2024 | Leading

Here, in the United States of America, we just had the quadrennial shouting match we call our presidential elections. We are a very divided country. We have been divided since our founding according to how much government we want and where the locus of power should reside, federal, state, or local. Now we are also divided by the character of our neighborhood, rural or urban, by education and whether we work primarily with skilled hands or knowledge and keyboards. We are also divided by race, religion, gender, and how recently our ancestors immigrated to these shores. (This is not a complete list. ☹)

Despite these multi-vectored bifurcations, our republic is primarily a two party system. Sure there might be four or five parties on a ballot, but they never garner enough votes to be anything other than a spoiler in a close election. This was a close election, not as close as 2000 or even 2016, but close, and there may be some whining about spoilers, but mostly the election is over.

The emotions of one party can be described with “E’ words: endorsed, elated, enthusiastic, ebullient. Emotions on the other side could be described with ‘D’ words: disappointed, dismayed, distraught, depressed.

On Wednesday morning, roughly six hours after the race was called, a Life Coach LinkedIn connection from Texas, posted “Are you ready for change?”

He went on to describe “D’ word reactions as fear of, and resistance to, change. And gave advice to the losing side not to “spend all your time fighting it. . .[but]. . .accept it and move forward.” I’m abbreviating substantially.

In fairness, during the last two elections each side has spent four years fighting the elected party and I’m sure this person’s intentions were good, but the timing and the “get over it” message struck me as a bit smug,

I responded with a lecture of my own (again abbreviating substantially):

“People don’t fear change; they fear loss, loss of self-definition, and things they believe in. Mostly they fear loss of autonomy or choice for changes they feel are done to them. So they don’t resist change; they resist your change.”

He responded with a quote from his book, advising me to “cross the fear zone.”

At this point I disengaged, but four days later, I recalled a diagram from much earlier in my career, which I used to “help” people through change.

Moving from denial and resistance to change requires changing focus from the past to future and the personal to the collective

The ‘u’ depicted is “The Emotional Cycle of Change from Gemini Consulting, which is based upon Elizabeth Kübler Ross’s 5 Stages of Grief Model. The matrix is the orientation shift (moving from past to future and personal to corporate).

As a youngish organization development consultant I thought, “if asked,” I could help people move from denial to commitment, making the shift from past to future and personal to company.

I recognize now how naïve that was, but at least I recognized that someone would have to ask for my help. As American psychologist Carl Rogers said in “The Helping Relationship,” “help is defined by the recipient, . . .  help that is not asked for is rarely perceived as help, . . but rather as interference.”

 

Elizabeth Kübler Ross’s 5 Stages of Grief are:

  • Shock, including disbelief and denial
  • Anger, directed at the deceased, self, or lashing out at anyone
  • Bargaining, with God, the medical community, family, “if I do this will you save him (me)
  • Depression, “nothing will ever be the same again, I can’t go on”
  • Acceptance, “It’s over; life goes on.”

Since I created my diagram, I have lost both parents, one sister, one nephew, and a close friend and business partner. I have grieved myself and been around many others who are grieving.

I have worked with people in companies in “hostile takeovers,” and other acquisitions. I have coached business owners whose business failed. I have reorganized companies, seeing people who’ve devoted their lives to one business unit or function, transferred, radically altering their business “identity.” I observed many people go through the “Emotional Cycle of Change.

It doesn’t matter which curve you are on; whether you are grieving loss of a loved one or emotionally processing change, these things are true:

  • It is an individual journey. You are processing your emotion, you must do it yourself.
  • It isn’t a straight line or a one-way journey. You bounce back and forth between phases.
  • You can get stuck in one phase –“De Nile [denial] is not just a river in Egypt,” Is funny for a reason. And perhaps you know someone stuck in anger, – Louis Black’s comedy and his role in Inside Out – are parodies of that.
  • You can’t just – skip to the end. Some individuals might spend less time in one phase or another, but all those emotions are there.

There was a time when I made fun of organizational development consultants who conducted funerals for the old ways, carrying certain values forward into the new. I still think it’s a little woo-woo, but I understand the usefulness.

I saw the remnants of denial left by not saying goodbye to the old. British European Airways (BEA) and British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) still each had different British Airways logos eight years after they became BA. Some field workers at BP still wore their Arco and Amoco coveralls ten years after the acquisitions. Cries of “foreign interference” in the 2016 election and “Stop the Steal” in the 2020 election made working together impossible.

Giving my LinkedIn connection the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he just wanted people to work together. Judging from the comments below, several ‘E’-word people found his post helpful.

To be helpful to those grieving or having difficulty with change, a leader might:

  1. Wait to be asked
  2. Start by just listening
  3. Summarize what you have heard.
  4. Assess where someone is on the grief or emotional cycle.
    • Someone in Shock or denial mostly needs someone to listen.
    • Someone in Anger may need to vent, but be reminded not to seem threatening to self or others.
    • Someone ‘bargaining,” or feeling guilty, might be reminded what that sounds like, and asked if they really think it will help.
    • A seriously depressed person might be directed to professional help.
    • Someone moving towards acceptance, might be encouraged to experiment or to act on things they are committed to in the new order.
  5. Prepare for, and try not to judge, “backsliding,” and “revisiting.”
  6. Avoid saying things like “Get over it,” “Move on,” “let’s look at the bright side. At least you have _____” or “Relax and enjoy it.”

 

Might these ideas be helpful connecting with the other side in a political divide? Maybe. (See numbers 1and 2). It is probably most important to recognize grief, and give people space to process their emotions.