Family Matters

I’m on spring break with my kids this week and we went down to the ocean front to climb on the boulders protecting the marina’s shores from the battering tides. There’s no way around it, climbing on the rocks as a kid is pure joy. My kids acted like they were sea lions, barking into the ocean air. They laid on the rocks, as if they were sizzling pieces of meat (funny, and a little strange). Then they jumped from boulder to boulder pretending that giant geckos were chasing them.

The concept of psychological safety was coined in the 1950s by the famed psychologist and psychotherapist Carl Rogers. Originally focused on the conditions necessary for fostering an individual’s creativity, the term’s application has expanded to include significant research on high-performing teams and organizations.

In the United States, the employee feedback industry was valued at $1.6 billion in 2022. Companies are dedicating millions of hours a year to providing employees feedback on their performance. Feedback is so important, according to Gallup’s research, that employees are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree that they are motivated to excel at work when their manager provides daily feedback, compared to annual feedback.

While the fairy has already graced our home once before, my son’s discovery of a second loose tooth was met, not with joy and excitement, but with fear and foreboding. That wiggly fellow on the bottom was terrifying for Henry for it meant “buckets of blood” (his words, not mine), not a shiny coin beneath the pillow nor the knowledge that bigger, better teeth were to follow.

In Charles Duhigg’s seminal book on habits, The Power of Habit, he found that nearly 40% of our actions in any given day are habitual. From our morning or evening routines to the way we interact with others, much of our life is spent on autopilot.

I stepped into my platform shoes, adjusted my feather boa, and slipped on my bedazzled glasses. I was ready. I could hear the crowd out front as the MC announced that the next contestant would be singing Elton John’s I’m Still Standing. It was time. I paraded around from behind the stage and took the microphone as the band started playing the opening notes of Elton’s iconic song…

As a part of a succession planning project, I spent four hours with a client and his family helping them better understand one another. We used assessment data to highlight the different personalities around the table. We talked about why he could appear scattered while his wife appeared rigid. We talked about the fact that when their daughter was stressed out, she got expressive and aggressive while their son retreated to his room.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.This is an incredibly well-crafted 10-word quote attributed to Gandhi. I don’t know if he opened his mouth and that fine sentence just slithered out or if it was thoughtfully designed and dropped delicately into a conversation that is now memorialized. Either way, these words, hanging out together, are brilliant and carry a meaning that few other words strung together could ever hope to achieve.

My kids love to play “make-believe”. They create fantasy worlds, allowing their imaginations to run wild with endless possibilities. It is beautiful to watch them transform a couch into a fort to be defended or turn an empty paper towel roll into a weapon to slay mythical beasts. Unfortunately, the older we get, the less we play make-believe and our ability to expand our thinking beyond the present lessens with age. However, we haven’t lost the ability to pretend – we simply forgot that the here and now is not the only way to look at life.

Putting your clothes away each day is oddly important, with ramifications that act like all-encompassing tentacles enveloping every aspect of your life. I never realized this until the other day when I had a chat with my son. Let me play back the talk…"Henry, we need to chat. I’ve noticed that most of your toys, books, and clothes are scattered all over the room. You have a pile over here, a pile over there… you literally have underwear hanging from a lamp. You’re the epitome of a college kid and you’re only five.”

That little star is synonymous with parents and their children. Rarely has a father or mother raised a child without singing that song at least a handful of times. The six illustrious notes of the song could be played almost anywhere, and odds are most people could snag that tune from thin air in under four fingers on the keys. However, a Stanford study shows us that when you tap your finger to the tune without striking a key, only 2.5% of people are able to identify the song. That tune you’re humming in your head as you tap your finger is just that, a tune in your head. You hear it perfectly as you tap and cannot fathom someone not knowing the song, but the reality is, the listener just hears tap, tap, tap.

While it may not seem obvious, employees and potted plants are similar. Staggeringly so. Let me explain. First, their presence can sometimes go unnoticed. Second, if exposed to harsh conditions, they suffer. Third, you need to be measured and consistent in the way you interact with them, or again, they suffer. Fourth, the more attention you give them, the healthier they become.