Ann Tardy, Author at MentorLead - Page 39 of 39

All Posts by Ann Tardy

Look for the Experience of Being Alive vs. the Meaning of Life

Author Joseph Campbell astutely observed “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.”

As we celebrated my mom’s 75th birthday recently, it occurred to me that she has been on a lifelong quest for the experience of being alive:

  • When I was growing up, my mom constantly adopted new hobbies: sewing, painting, crocheting, basket weaving, antique collecting
  • When she wanted to earn more money, she became a real estate agent and then the managing broker
    (Her agents still reflect, “No matter how busy your mom was, she always made time for me.”)
  • When my sister needed a kidney transplant, my mom donated hers without hesitation
  • And she won’t walk by someone homeless without offering food or money
  • After being widowed, she traveled to China alone
  • Upon her return, she tried Match.com
  • And then at 70 she walked down the aisle again (including a bachelorette party!)
  • She once pulled an all-nighter with me for the best seats at the Macy’s Day Parade
  • After the election, she attended the March on Washington
  • Last year she biked Iowa with me
  • Last month she started doing yoga
  • Last week she tried OrangeTheory Fitness
  • And for 40 years she has done it all in long red nails

I can synthesize her strategies to “experience being alive” as follows:

  1. Keep perspective (“What’s the worst that can happen?”)
  2. Say “yes!” first; figure out the how later
  3. Always have a ticket to the next adventure
  4. Make others feel important
  5. Go out of your way to help people

While my mom doesn’t talk about the meaning of life, she never passes up an opportunity to experience something new or to make a difference for someone else.

Out of Chaos Comes Brilliance (and the Mass Ascension of Hot Air Balloons)

According to the I Ching… before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos.

(The I Ching is an ancient
Chinese divination text and the
oldest of the Chinese classics.)

And that describes the International Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque, NM, the largest celebration of hot air ballooning.

It was 5:00AM when we entered Balloon Fiesta Park with thousands of people from around the world. We immediately walked to the field to secure a spot on the sidelines, ready to witness the show.

Shortly thereafter, hundreds of balloon vehicles drove onto the field to set up in the dark.

And then a strange thing happened… the massive crowd started flooding the field, ignoring the sidelines and the lack of lights, paths, or markings.

We quickly ditched our seats to join them. As we walked through the field, crews were unpacking balloon baskets, unfolding balloon bags (called “envelopes”), checking wires, testing propane equipment, and inflating balloons (first on their side before they are lifted to a standing position).

It was mass chaos... 100,000 people, 500 horizontal hot air balloons inflating, flammable propane cylinders, and the darkness of dawn.

But out of that chaos came brilliance.

The crews worked around us without complaint. The crowd ebbed and flowed around the crews and the inflating balloons. And everyone cheered as each balloon ascended into the air.

Arguably we should have been confined to the sidelines for safety and security reasons. And even observing from afar would have been beautiful. But it would not have allowed for the amazing experience of standing amongst hot air balloons as they came to life and defied gravity.

Being on the field in the middle of the mass ascension seemingly without any order had me wondering if it was done by design…

…as if to remind us that in the moments of chaos in our lives, we must trust that brilliance will follow.

How Jigsaw Puzzles Improve Our Collaboration

One of my readers emailed me recently with a suggestion for creating community: jigsaw puzzles! Interesting… why don’t I do jigsaw puzzles?

  • Arguably, I’m too busy.
  • Practically, I want to focus on projects that progress my goals.
  • Realistically, what’s the point? I already know the end result (the picture on the box!)

As an experiment, however, I bought a 1,000-piece puzzle and dumped it on my unused dining room table… fighting the urge to do something more productive.
Here’s what I discovered:

  1. Patience. The puzzle was too complicated to solve at one time. So I played with it in spurts over a month.
  2. Pause. Turning to it gave me a much-needed pause from the chaos.
  3. Perspective. I often walked to the other side of the table just to study pieces, progress, and the big picture from a different angle.
  4. Partnership. Instead of watching TV, my family started helping me, even cheering when we found a missing piece or completed a section.
  5. Practice. It forced me to practice thinking critically. By definition, critical thinking involves recognizing patterns and understanding how information is connected together.

A Mentor in one of our programs reflected that being a Mentor has taught him to think critically about how he leads so that he can share valuable and practical advice with his Mentee.
Like jigsaw puzzles, mentoring and other ways we collaborate require patience, pause, perspective, partnership, and practice. Ultimately, completing the jigsaw puzzle did not allow me to cross anything off my to-do list. And the final picture was not a surprise. But the experience definitely offered me a new way to strengthen essential collaboration skills.

So now I’ll be bringing a jigsaw puzzle whenever I need to encourage people to connect, collaborate, and cheer!

What does kindness have to do with leading?

Without kindness work sucks – for us and for the people who work with us.

As leaders, our success lies in our ability to keep good people involved, committed, contributing, growing themselves, and developing others.

But good people don’t trust unkind leaders – no one likes following a jerk.

The good news is that being kind is the one thing we have 100% control of every day in every moment. We cannot control customers, co-workers, personalities, the markets, the weather, the traffic, or other jerks.

We can only control how we treat each other – our responses, our character, and our commitment to serve others’ success. We can be kind without exception for stress, pressure, job titles, job levels, or our own momentary lack of self-confidence.

Next time we lose patience, yell, belittle, or disparage another, let’s let a breath in and ask ourselves, am I being kind or am I being kind of a jerk?

And then own the responsibility we have at every moment and with everyone to be human first.

 

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