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Cowboy Up

A couple months after we moved to Houston 20 years ago, people at the franchising company where I worked kept talking about ‘Go Texan Day’ and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Having attended a couple of those in Ft. Worth, I was like, ‘Meh.’

The next year, my boss gave us tickets and we experienced this extravaganza for the first time. Not only is there the expected calf roping, barrel racing and bronc riding, there is a large Midway with all kinds of ways to spend your money.

However, the biggest draw – we’re talking 70,000 people attending each performance for 21 days – is a post-Rodeo concert by a big-time entertainer. This year’s headliners include Brooks & Dunn, Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, the Zac Brown Band and Brad Paisley. Country not for you? How about Cardi B, Panic! At the Disco, Kings of Leon, Camila Cabello, or Santana? We know people who go EVERY day.

The annual tradition starts tomorrow with ‘Swept the Grammys’ star Kacey Musgraves and concludes in three weeks with ‘Coming out of Retirement’ legend George Strait.

First up though was the World’s Championship Bar-B-Que Contest, which we, along with 100,000+ of our closest friends, attended two evenings ago. Hundreds of teams compete in categories from ‘Best Brisket’ to ‘Best Dutch-Oven Dessert’. In fact, last year a team from, wait for it, the Netherlands won that category.

Over the past two decades we’ve been a dozen or so times, seeing Reba, Miranda Lambert, LeAnn Rimes, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift… and, yes, Garth. However, my biggest regret was the second year we had tickets, when one of our kids got sick a few hours beforehand.

After a few calls we gave them to a friend… having first offered our next-door neighbors the chance to see a rising star. When I asked if they wanted the tickets, the wife said, “Yes,” paused and asked, “Who’s performing?” I told them. They replied, in unison, “Who’s Faith Hill?”

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Childhood Memories

When Kathy’s parents moved into assisted living four years ago, at their request we brought back to our house furniture that had belonged to her grandmother. We also cleaned out her childhood bedroom… discovering her mom had saved a lot of things that once belonged to Kathy: grade school report cards; childhood books; high school clothes; jewelry; letters; scrapbooks; bulletin boards; thingamabobs; doohickeys; gizmos.

I held up each item and Kathy said, “keep” or “trash.” After many hours of reviewing and reminiscing, we took a lot of things to the dumpster and departed with a filled back seat.

After nearly 30 years of marriage, we’ve collected quite an array of ‘stuff’ ourselves. Enough Christmas ornaments to deck three trees, along with dozens of decorations for Easter, Halloween and Thanksgiving. Gifts from holidays and birthdays past. Books, magazines, DVDs, CDs, albums and electronic devices that would fill a section at Barnes and Noble.

Heck, I kept my Boy Scout merit badges, a folder containing photos cut from 20 years of Sports Illustrated, and all of my college essays. Plus, we have a cabinet filled with the ‘best of’ our kids’ elementary school art projects and other youthful designs.

Which brings up a perplexing thought: will they care about these things when we’re gone, or will they simply sort them ‘keep’ or ‘trash’… then head to the dumpster?

Perhaps it’s not about passing things on to my kids that has me saving things from my childhood. Maybe it’s actually about holding on to the past – and that raises the question: what is that keeping me from accomplishing in the future?

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Quote This

Amidst this record-setting shutdown, each day seems filled with more negativity and uncertainty. Negativity about our elected leaders, our core values, our place on the world stage. Uncertainty about the economy, the climate, the future of our children.

Rather than wallow in what could go wrong, I find it better to focus on what will go right. Since I’m no expert at predicting the future, I typically pull out my Word document that contains more than 30 pages of inspirational quotes and let others impact my thoughts…

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” ~ Booker T. Washington

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don’t.” ~ Frank A. Clark

“By working together, pooling our resources and building on our strengths, we can accomplish great things.” ~ Ronald Reagan

“What is worse than having no sight is being able to see but having no vision.” ~ Helen Keller

“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inactions.” ~ John F. Kennedy

“When you do BIG things, you make big mistakes. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” ~ Walt Disney

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist or accept the responsibility for changing them.” ~ Denis Waitley

“The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it.” ~ Peter Drucker

“Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.” ~ Joan Wallach Scott

“Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.” ~ Alfred A. Montapert

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.” ~ Will Rogers

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The Gift

One of the inclusions in our coaching program is to present clients with a feedback report that helps them better understand the perceptions people hold of their leadership approach. The process involves interviewing by phone up to 12 supervisors, peers and direct reports – asking about: specific strengths, opportunities for improvement, communication style, what the client should keep doing and what to stop doing.

Before handing clients their report, I ask them to consider it a gift… the opportunity to learn things they may never have read before. I say: “You asked people to offer their thoughts and they graciously took the time to provide candid comments.” I do this because the experience of receiving feedback elicits a lot of surprise reactions and emotions, ranging from ‘Wow, that’s great. No one ever told me how positively that impacts them’ to “Oh, I had no idea when I do that it’s so disruptive to the team.”

I also remind clients not to focus too much on a single comment, and instead to look for patterns in areas they want to keep doing (‘Affirmation’) or change (‘Redirection’). About a week after the session, I follow up with a phone call to see what specific items are resonating with clients and introduce a template to create their development plans. Once completed and shared with their supervisor, that document becomes the guiding light for our ongoing coaching work together.

The experience of receiving feedback takes an open mind and commitment to do something with the information. For those willing to step out of their comfort zones, build on strengths and change areas that are limiting their success, it can be a career-advancing journey.

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More 2018 Lessons Learned

Part II of II

Here are more lessons I learned during the past year:

Express Lane – Remember the Information Superhighway? That’s so last century. Web 1.0 brought us static pages. Web 2.0 provided interactive connectivity. Web 3.0 is here, and as Peter Diamandis noted in his November 18 ‘Abundance’ newsletter: “During the next 2 to 5 years, the convergence of 5G, AI, a trillion sensors and VR/AR will enable us to both map our physical world into virtual space and superimpose a digital layer onto our physical environments.” This technology leap will impact how you receive news, how companies advertise, and how you shop. Diamandis is a visionary and worth a weekly 10-minute read.

Continuing Ed – After deciding to become a coach 16 years ago, I sought the most successful coach I could find who would agree to teach Kathy and me how to build a sustainable practice. Taking that approach, I never attained certification… which was no big deal until people started asking me about it a couple years ago. So, in March 2017, I began the journey to gain credentialing from the International Coach Federation – and after 150 classroom and mentoring hours, plus 500 new hours of coaching clients, I earned the Professional Certified Coach (PCC) designation in May. Sitting in a classroom for day-long weekend training, having a Master Certified Coach critique several of my recorded client sessions and passing a certification test enhanced my coaching skills and instilled renewed energy in me.

Savings Grace – It’s amazing how quickly 37 years passed since I was last in a classroom in college – and retirement is visible on the horizon… albeit probably in 2028. We are three semesters of college tuition and apartment rent away from our youngest coming off the family payroll, so we’ll soon be getting a raise. The volatile stock market this year reminded me of the importance of diversification, especially in the twilight of a career. Those ‘don’t worry about the ups and downs’ long-range views I had after the 2008 crash have changed to ‘I really don’t want there to be another major correction now that I’m getting close.’

Giddy Up – The best quote I saw for the first time this year is from the late writer Alfred A. Montapert, who published ‘The Supreme Philosophy of Man’ in 1970: “Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.”

Gift Giving – If you’re looking for an end-of-year goodwill gesture, please consider contributing to an organization that helps those devastated by the California wildfires. One that’s doing good things is Direct Relief (100 score on Charity Navigator), which has worked around the globe for 70 years to ‘improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergency situations.’ Every contributed dollar designated for California wildfire recovery goes directly to local aid, with none for administrative or fundraising purposes.

I’ll conclude with this from Kelly Clarkson, who was the talk of Twitter during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade for singing live in freezing temperatures instead of lip-synching: “The thing about Christmas is that it almost doesn’t matter what mood you’re in or what kind of a year you’ve had – it’s a fresh start.”

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Seasons Greetings. May 2019 be your best year yet… and continued success in all things.