Chapter 9: Lighting a Spark
On page 126, they talk about what happens when an opportunity that we expected is no longer there. I think I have step 2 down, “Stand ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired,” but I think my expectation is that the inspiring will come from some outside source. When I understand that willingness and inspiration can come from within as well as outside, I will be on the right track. Maybe asking for help is the best route as Roz suggested. I don’t know why that makes me so mad. I guess that is a clear indication about how I really feel about the troubled relationship. I have been waiting for an invitation to enrollment. I have wasted so much waiting for someone else to do what I believe is right. No more waiting, I have the opportunity to be invitation, and I am going to take it.
Chapter 10: Being the Board
“When I blame you for something that goes wrong, I seek to establish that I am in the right – and we all know the delicious feeling of satisfaction there. “ “There is nothing I can do about your mistakes – only about mine.”
I used to be so bad at this with kids. It took me a while to see that we are all working together and not working against each other. Getting work done is for their benefit. I am so lucky to work with other teachers that feel the same way.
The Cora story was great. I often run into this with middle school girl’s athletics. There are kids that come to every practice and there are kids that come to a few. We are so small, next week we will play with 6 players that I cannot afford to run anyone off. I usually don’t make the decision to establish “punishment” for missing practice. I tell the girls that when they can be there, it is best for them and the entire team. When they can’t be there, they can’t be there. Some parents have issue with this policy. That is, until they need to make an orthodontist appointment. If someone misses most of the practices that week, there is a natural consequence that they will not be able to keep up with the speed of the game so I have to take them out of the game.
Chapter 11: Creating Frameworks for Possibility
This one is tough. Especially when it has been in practice for so long. This is such a brilliant way of looking at relationships and being a leader. I love the fact that Zander didn’t point out how each person had some role in the misbehavior. He simply allowed the kids to paint their own picture of their dream and goals. Through that, the kids came to realize that the behavior of the previous night wasn’t in line with what THEY wanted for the experience. How powerful! How interesting!
Chapter 12: Telling the WE Story
This chapter reminded me of a story from a few years ago. We were in a meeting about camp and the upcoming season. We were working together to come up with a list of things that needed to be done before the kids arrived. I suggested that the front entrance be mowed and weeded. My boss and friend of several years said, “We already did that last week. We can have it looked at again before the kids come.” Without hesitation, I broke out in laughter. This woman has a private jet, 6 homes within a 100-mile radius, and all of the comforts that money can buy. When she said, “we,” the picture in my head was of her weeding while Pedro mowed. What I took from that though is that she had this amazing gift of enrollment. She could make a solution that she needed done, seem as though the solution came from you. Everyone works together in the camp setting and she was the master of making things work and simultaneously enriching the very people she worked with. I have never met a more gifted leader.
Overall Impressions
Looking at the bigger picture the book painted; I am reminded of an extension cord. My father purchased my grandmother a lawn vacuum. She was very skeptical of the device. The bag is to small, it isn’t very wide, it is going to take forever, etc. I decided to stop listening to the same story over and over and go out and try it. My mom got the vacuum and extension cord and tried to plug it in. My dad had purchased a 100-foot heavy-duty extension cord with the machine. The cord was so heavy and bulky that we couldn’t get it off the hook. We decided to take pieces at a time and pull it down. Inevitably it became a huge mess. We decided to just plug it in and try near the plug so we didn’t have to try to untangle the entire thing. Well, the vacuum worked well. I picked up at least two large bags of leaves in 10 minutes. The vacuum mulched them into tiny pieces so we could take the scraps and put it in the garden. After seeing the efficiency of the machine, we decided to finish the rest of the yard. We were back to the extension cord. I wanted to finish the yard quickly. I started pulling on one end and my mother started working on the other. We were both cussing my dad for buying the biggest extension cord in the history of forever. Although, my dad’s vision for the extension cord was that we wouldn’t have to worry about finding plug. This would in turn make the work go faster. In our haste, we didn’t work together and we got into this downward spiral. We finally thought we were finished with the untangling and my grandmother came out to let me know I had a phone call. I went in, took the call, and then went back outside. My mom had thrown the entire cord in a pile and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. I finally convinced here it would be worth it. We finished the rest of the yard in 20 minutes.
This book reminds me of that. We are often given a huge extension cord that would unleash the possibility in our lives. When life becomes a mess, we try to figure it out from our individual perspectives. In the end we find that when we meet in the middle, one or both parties has made a mistake and it doesn’t work. It is easy to declare that the relationship isn’t worth all of the effort so we cast it aside to deal with later. Working together, understanding that we are all different, keeping the conversation from a downward spiral, keeping an eye on the end benefits instead of the struggle that is in front of us, understanding that each person wants what they think is best for them, remember that we each play a role in problems, our perceptions of problems can make a huge difference in the way we feel about them, remembering that few things are matters of life and death, and sharing the positive parts of our life can transform the world and the way we live in it! Here’s to the possible!
Working together, understanding that we are all different, keeping the conversation from a downward spiral, keeping an eye on the end benefits instead of the struggle that is in front of us, understanding that each person wants what they think is best for them, remember that we each play a role in problems, our perceptions of problems can make a huge difference in the way we feel about them, remembering that few things are matters of life and death, and sharing the positive parts of our life can transform the world and the way we live in it!
Kate, this sentence is profound as it challenges each of us to move past what is very comfortable (our self-centered perspective) to a place of discomfort (the perspective of others). I believe this book challenged us in the same way – moving us from our position of complacency to that of righteous indignation of the status quo that will prompt us to confront those areas of ourselves and our environments that do not embrace the dream that we’d like to make a reality.
ReplyDeleteThis is the sentence to which I was referring:
ReplyDelete"Working together, understanding that we are all different, keeping the conversation from a downward spiral, keeping an eye on the end benefits instead of the struggle that is in front of us, understanding that each person wants what they think is best for them, remember that we each play a role in problems, our perceptions of problems can make a huge difference in the way we feel about them, remembering that few things are matters of life and death, and sharing the positive parts of our life can transform the world and the way we live in it!"