Semper Fi (Fortune Cookie Wisdom for the Year's End)

December 27, 2004 | Category: Family, It's a Trip

A couple of years ago, my former boss, Reed, assigned me this program. This thing was so high-profile, and complicated, and HARD. I was in over my head.

To top it all off, one of the senior guys on my team delighted in doing the opposite of whatever I asked him to do. Because of him, I started each day with the breakfast of champions: 3 Tylenol and a cup of antacid.

Before that Christmas, I called a teleconference with this guy, Reed and myself. To call this guy on the carpet and demand a commitment that he change his behavior.

After the call, Reed asked me why I'd done that. Reed said that that I'd had no reason to embaress the man in front of his boss's boss.

I felt immediately ashamed.

What's really wrong? Reed asked me.

What's wrong? I repeated, near tears. What isn't wrong?

I gave him my litany - my first program with an 8-figure budget, incompetant vendors shipping product to the wrong locations, resources that were staging a slow-down because of layoff fears, yada yada yada....

Reed listened kindly and said And?

And? And What?

Nothing you haven't handled before. If on a smaller scale. So tell me, what's the real problem here?

Oh.

He spent about an hour then, chatting with me, until I realized what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. And never once did he tell me what to do.

You know, I worked for the Church for years. But it was Reed - a former soldier - who taught me some important lessons that I try and bring back to the center of my life each Christmas:

1) Don't judge a person by their worst trait or their worst day

2) Remember that a person's dignity is sacred. Do nothing to violate it.

3) Your problem with someone else is almost always that: your problem. Not theirs.

4) Everyone is carrying their own solutions with them. The most effective way to help someone out in the dark is not to push them where you think they should go. It is, instead, to become a flashlight for them to use in discovering their own way out.

5) Forgive. Especially yourself.

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