The Plant

Another goodie from the Internet sent to me by my brother. I have no idea where he finds these!As for this and other stories like it, I find that I can always use them at work for leadership training. Certainly, anyone who has been in a leadership position has had parallel kinds of things happen as happened with the retiring CEO and the young managers. As a leader, I always look for the Jims -- I don't find them as often as I would like.

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.

Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the young executives in his company together.

He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you." The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. "I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed.He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Everyday, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.

Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.

By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.

Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful -- in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back. "My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the CEO. "Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front. Jim was terrified. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!"

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed - Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, "Behold your next Chief Executive Officer! His name is Jim!"

Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed.

"How could he be the new CEO?" the others said.

Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow. All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!"


* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.

* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.

* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.

* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment.

* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.

* If you plant hard work, you will reap success.

* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.


So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.

Shooting the Bull

Here is the joke I promised in yesterday's 7 quick takes. I don't remember where I heard it, so I cannot provide any citation, but I do use it from time to time when teaching managers or managers-to-be.

A nattily dressed young man, clearly a transplant from the farm to the city, came into a cafe one day, pulling a bull behind him. He ordered a coffee, passed the time of day with some folks sitting near him, then pulled out a gun, shot the bull, and walked out. The cafe staff spent considerable time cleaning up the mess he left behind.

The next day the same young man appeared, pulling another bull. "Wait a minute," the cafe owner stopped him, "No bulls allowed. Yesterday we spent all day cleaning up the mess you left. What is going on here, anyway?"

The young man looked at him and replied, "I am in management training: get up in the morning, drink some coffee, shoot the bull, leave the mess for everyone else to clean up."

Sometimes it seems that is precisely what happens among the managers I work with! (Of course, I would never do anything of the sort -- if you ask me. Now if you were to ask someone else...on second thought, please don't!)

Have a happy Saturday, and if you shoot the bull, please clean up your own mess! ;)

Work and Spirituality

I read a post today on Catholic Spiritual Direction, a wonderful blog, listed on my blogroll in the right sidebar, to which I would refer anyone interested in very insightful posts on living a godly life in today's world. The question a reader had posed was "how do I deal with issues of advancement and self-promotion at work?" The answer was splendid, and I suggest you wander over there to read it.

I have often commented on work issues on 100th Lamb, and its predecessor blog, Blest Atheist. As with anything else, if one lets go and lets God, as the saying goes, work goes better. One does not need to tout one's accomplishments. God will ensure that they become known and noticed when that is important, and otherwise it is not important. Among the things that I have noticed when it comes to inviting God to take over my work life are the following (far from a full litany of benefits and blessings):

(1) Servant leaders become powerful leaders even though that is not their intention. Jesus showed us the way to be good servant leaders when he washed the feet of his disciples. I ask of those managers who work for me that they think constantly of when the feet of their employees need washing and to tend to that task with alacrity. Recently, a would-be leader who had run into some complications with his team members asked me as someone he considers his mentor how to handle the situation, and I told him he needed more humility, to throw his inflated ego in the trash because it was doing him no good, and forgive those who were creating problems for him. Oh, he found that hard, but he tried all of it. He even sent me a self-learning plan for developing humility, at which point I called him to my office to explain that one does not achieve humility; humility simply comes as a result of something that is so easy that is almost impossible for some people: always put others first. Others can say whether or not our actions are examples of our humility; we cannot begin to measure our own level of humility without being arrogant about it. A strange characteristic this humility! But so desirable!

(2) Power grows the more you give it away. This fact is one of the most counter-intuitive realities with which immature managers must cope. Most new managers want to hang onto power. They want their employees to defer to them, even sometimes to call them "sir" and "ma'am." They want overt respect. As a result, they get the titles, the overt behavior, and the public respect. What they don't get is the implicit respect that is not demanded but freely given, the love and support that comes with it, and the willingness to go the extra nine or ninety yards, as needed. I am tickled pink with employees who point out some shortcoming or inconsistency in my behavior. It means that we are working as a team, and teams are more powerful than individuals. I also notice that when both responsibility and authority are delegated to them, employees are willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the tasking. In turn, if the manager asks them to do something that they would prefer not to do, they do it anyway, without grumbling, because of the bond between them. That is real power. The power that comes with position is multiplied a thousandfold when it is bestowed upon a manager not by his/her superiors but by his/her subordinates.

(3) Dealing with difficult people becomes easy, fun, and rewarding. I have said it often, and I truly mean it. I love difficult people. They are my greatest reward for being a manager. Watching a disaffected employee become a contributing team member produces one of the warmest fuzzies that any manager could ever want. I have very few difficult people among the 400 or so who work for me although four years ago when I began this position the division was considered riddled with difficult people. Now the division is called the "black hole" of our organization by the EEO office and by the Union because even people who used to practically live in those places, complaining about their supervisors and work conditions, no longer visit. They are happy contributors to their teams' work. Once a senior manager, who no longer works for me, asked how to deal with difficult people. I told him that the key was so simple that most managers won't use it: genuinely love them. He told me sorrowfully that he could not do that and not long after resigned. I replaced him with someone who could do that, and the 30 or more chronic complainers in that particular subdivision now appear in the corridors and at group meetings with big smiles. When the new manager first appeared, many stopped me in the hallway to thank me for the change in leadership. Now when they are unhappy about work conditions, they do not run to the Union or the EEO officials for help; they come to their supervisor.

(4) The workplace becomes a place of worship as well, a place where people are inexorably drawn and from which they do not wish to depart. Many a night I have chased people home with the words, "we work to live; we don't live to work." Actually, it is not the living to work that compels people to stay in the office after hours. It is the palpable presence of God in our workplace. Who would want to leave that? Once I had a manpower team from headquarters visit for a week for the purpose of determining staffing needs -- were we understaffed (yep), overstaffed (nope), or staffed just right (not that, either). After spending a week of visiting and talking to employees, during which the visitors had open access to everyone, thanks to a building schematic and names/titles of employees that I gave them with the invitation to go wherever they wanted whenever they wanted and talk to whomever they wanted. They did. The head of the visiting team came to my office at the end of the week, ostensibly, I thought, to talk to me about staffing levels. Instead, she told me that she wanted to talk about the atmosphere in the work place. "I have read about places like this," she said, "but I have never actually seen one -- where people love to come to work, support each other, and willingly remain to make sure that all tasks are completed and everything is ready for the next day. I wish I could work here." There is nothing to my credit in what she found. Rather, that is what happens when one lets God into the workplace.

(5) Moreover, once God is in the workplace, God does what God does best. Miracles happen. Chestnuts get pulled out of the fire by unseen hands. Cutting-edge and seemingly-impossible-because-no-one-has-ever-done-it-before work gets done with amazing ease. Where task and mission require, 48 hours of work finishes itself in eight hours. Pride in the accomplishment of the division and not in the accomplishments of individuals appears; employees give credit to each other, supervisors to employees, and employees to supervisors. People talk about God and even pray together -- in an institution where separation of Church and State is the norm, the expected, the required. The most amazing, though, are the real miracles. We have had several people literally on the brink of death who have reappeared in our midst. I have blogged before about some of them, among these being Jackie, who ended up with a blog clot in her lung and comatose after surgery but survived and will be returning to work, and Tareq, an Iraqi immigrant to the United States who suffered from cancer and heart failure and did eventually die but not before a miraculous post-surgery recovery that gave him an additional year at work and at home, a year he desperately needed to put his family matters straight and save the life of his son who had to be rescued from Iraq when he was personally targeted by insurgents. For all these people, we have had employees of several faiths praying together, our own little ecumenical world, where religious flavor and fervor come second and God and each other come first.

Well, this is not at all the post I had planned to write today, but the writing of it took on a life of its own, inspired by my reading of Fr. Todd's response to the questioner on Catholic Spiritual Direction, and here it now is. So, I shall post it. Tomorrow I will post what I had planned to put up today.

(Note: I know that the image is not entirely appropriate, but it is also not entirely inappropriate. I found it on the web and could not resist including it!)

7 Quick Takes Friday #38

See more 7 Quick Takes Contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.

For this week's quick takes, I am moving back from a concatenation of themes to a litany of days. From Friday through Thursday, each day was different in some way even though my work week calendar was a wall of meeting times.

1. Friday. The day began a little unusually but in a fun way. One of the gurus in our profession was conducting some training for us, and the head of the training division brought her to meet me. We have known each other by name for decades but had never met. That was fun. Then I walked her upstairs to our training center. Walking through the halls with her, I was greeted by the usual hugs, handshakes, and hellos in many languages. I love it when I can mingle a little more closely with employees than my typical daily schedule allows. (It is also good practice in keeping my language knowledge fresh for unused languages become rusty and then disappear.)

2. Saturday was Doah's day, and as soon as I get a chance I will post about it in detail on Clan of Mahlou. Donnie and I drove to Santa Clara, where he lives in a group home. We all went to lunch; then he and I took a walk for exercise around the little shopping area where we had lunch. Each of us has lost one pound this week. It may not sound like much, but one needs to lose one pound in order to lose ten. (One pound ten times adds up.) After that, I gave him $20, and he immediately spent nearly all of it on food for his co-workers. Then, he wanted to buy a fishing pole and tent for his next outdoor adventure, planned by his group home leader. The fishing pole was easy, but the only affordable tent had been sold out. Doah was not to be daunted. He approached the store manager, all by himself, and in his limited language somehow convinced the manager to take down the tent in front of the store and sell it to us at discount! (And they call him retarded!!)

3. Sunday was one of those "stuffed" days -- too many activities and too much food, beginning with breakfast in Monterey and ending with a late lunch at our favorite restaurant, Jardines, in San Ignatio, the latter with visiting friends from Maryland. We managed to squeeze in a quick trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium (you may have seen it on Star Trek IV), but not to visit the exhibits -- just to use the bathroom and renew our membership because Shane and family were planning to visit in the afternoon and use our guest cards. (Sort of like what Doah used to do when he was living here -- go to the Aquarium not to look at the fish but to eat them; there is a great cafeteria there.) I also squeezed in noon Mass, which is in Spanish, so it was a Spanish-speaking afternoon: Mass, Jardines (the waiters there are more comfortable in Spanish), and our friends from Maryland (one is originally from Mexico and the other from Panama). Later in the day our neighbor dropped by; she is also Latina. Gotta love San Ignatio for keeping my Spanish fresh.

4. Monday. Monday is usually a boring, difficult day at work with one meeting after another, so I look forward to our evening prayer group. We are reading Things Hidden by Richard Rohr (great book), sharing our reflections on the various chapters, and often the needs for prayers that they elicit. Typically, we begin with singing hymns; sometimes Johnny or Anne bring their guitar as background music (Johnny is a professional singer and guitar player so that makes for a nice singalong). More often than not, I end up pounding out the notes on the piano. Whatever works... We also discussed the girl who wants a blessing from the pope about whom I posted yesterday. It was a member of our prayer group who first brought her to my attention. After singing, talking about our lives (and prayer lives) for a few minutes, and discussing the book, we spend some time in prayer, to which we bring our own requests and requests that have been sent our way. We have seen some wonderful answers to prayers in this group. It is always an "up" way to end the day.

5. Tuesday. For some reason (the reason being simply that I did not look at my calendar before going to work), I mixed up my schedule on Tuesday, thinking that it was a day without any outside interaction, so I dressed comfortably in one of my Jordanian dish-dashas, rather than wearing a suit. After I got to work (a good half-hour from home), I discovered that we had a visitor being escorted by my boss's boss's boss, and I was scheduled to brief him -- in my dishdasha (long, ethnic dress). Oh, well! The deed was done; I had no way to change. I had forgotten, however, that the big boss spent some of his youth in Saudi Arabia; instead of being put off, he was very taken with my attire. Whew! (It was reminiscent of the time that I chose not to spend a fortune on a ball gown and wore an ethnic outfit to that event.)

6. Wednesday. I had such a rough morning! First, I had an employee who had been fired come to me for relief, but I could not provide it because she simply did not have the skills we needed. She was unwilling to try to learn them. She kept telling me how much smarter she was than her boss, so I finally had to be very frank with her and explained that she would have the same kind of problem in her next job if she did not begin to view herself more realistically, acquire the skills she needed, and ask for help instead of being defensive and pushing away attempts at helping her. I was able to let her resign instead of being fired, which seemed to take some of the bitterness out of the situation, but it is always difficult being this frank with people. On the other hand, one does them no service to let them walk away thinking that the firing was just a personality conflict when it was really a lack of skills. The latter can be fixed and make the person a better candidate for another job. Then I had to cancel a program review because the program manager was not ready. Well, he thought he was, but he was not. He argued with me about needing to discuss specific aspects of his program, about the need to document, and about the need to show measures of effectiveness and account for the effectiveness of the program. He bristled against anything I said that smacked of standardization. He explained that he was unique and exempt from doing things like others did them. Finally, I had to tell him flat out, "I am the boss; this is what I want; this is what you must give to me. So, go back and do it, and I will reschedule the review when you are ready." Two unhappy campers in one morning. Then I had to leave for our other office. "Bitchy Bethie is leaving the building," I told my admin assistants as I signed out. They laughed, and one said, "Hey, we're shocked! You never talk that way." Goodness, I don't usually feel this way, but it was not a usual morning.

7. Thursday. I arrived knowing that I had a calendar wall for the day: back-to-back meetings without a break, not even for lunch. My admin assistant noted that she probably should schedule a bathroom break, but there was no time for that, either. As bad luck would have it, every meeting ran late. One ran so late that I missed graduation for one of our training courses -- and I was supposed to give the closing words. Fortunately, one of the senior managers was there and could do that for me on no notice. We are used to no notice around the office. Then, my boss's boss arrived early for a meeting, and I missed the first 20 minutes. I walked in with an armful of water bottles to find everyone seated around the conference table and deep in discussion. Again, three of my senior managers had taken over. (It is nice that I can count on this.) All I was needed for, as it turned out, was to be the water girl. I handed out the water, which my boss's boss immediately spilled all over himself and the table, then joined the discussion. Well, maybe I was needed for a little more than just water since some decisions had to be made. It tickled me, though, to see how closely by boss's boss was working with my senior managers, without me there. One team! That makes for a productive and happy work place.

As for the weather, yesterday it reached 116 degrees: my ice-cream-on-a-stick turned immediately to soup-on-a-stick, and I was eating fast food whether I liked it or not. Clothes quickly became optional, and all three cats were lying on their backs, exposing their bellies to the fan. Pretty funny picture -- I should have taken one! Today the weather took a mad swing, starting off at 50% of yesterday's temperature: 58 degrees! I put on a sweater. I wonder what the dawn will bring!

Have a great weekend! Watch that weather! I hope yours will be more consistent than ours and that you will not have to be eating soup-on-a-stick.

(Remaining pictures and links are coming later -- I have to tumble into bed for a three-hour rest before leaving for work.)

The Conversion Difference

We have a saying around our organization in offices running from coast to coast and around the world. One hears it periodically. Just last week my boss used it at a meeting of senior leadership. The saying refers to long-term problem employees and goes like this: s/he does not have 15 (10, 20, etc.) years of experience but rather one year 15 (10, 20, etc.) times.

It is my saying, and I am always a bit startled when I hear it. It has incredible staying power. Worse, everyone attributes it to me. Sigh! Even the newer generation of managers use it, and when they meet me, they say, "Oh, we know you; you are the one who said...."

That happened more than 20 (!) years ago, on my first stint of duty at our organization. I left somewhat after that for 13 years of international consulting and returned less than five years ago. At the time, those twenty years earlier, I had been experiencing difficulty convincing an elderly and not very talented or effective employee to introduce changes to the way she did her job. I pushed and pushed. Finally, exasperated, she snapped at me, "Who are YOU to tell ME how to do my job? I have 23 years of experience!"

With my barely ten years of management experience, only two of it in our organization, I must have appeared to be a smart-aleck young whippersnapper to whom she had no intention of listening. It was that negative comparison, I guess, that made me do it. The need to be in control, the need to feel competent and important, and all those things that young managers want to feel impelled me forward with no regard for anything except my goal, my control, my projects, my reputation, and the changes I wanted. And so, without thinking, I shot back what I thought was a cute comeback, "No, dear, you have one year of experience 23 times."

I realized that I had overstepped my bounds, making a cruel joke at her expense, when her eyes welled with tears. She quickly left my office to hide them. The next day she presented me with her retirement papers. Although I had a small stab of guilt at the time, I also felt incredible relief: lady retires, problem disappears.

Everyone congratulated me on "eliminating" a troublesome employee. Most people considered my cute little comeback to be rather clever, and soon both employees, who had heard it from the lady, and other managers, who heard it from each other, were heard repeating it in the hallways and at meetings. My reputation increased, and I became the darling of some management sets.

I was shocked to find out how persistent that saying had become when I returned. In fact, several new employees, not here when I first came back, asked me if it were true that I was the source of this saying. Yes, I told them, it was, unfortunately, true. Then, at one of my first leadership development sessions with my managers, one of them asked me the same question, and I answered in the same way, "Yes, unfortunately, it is true."

"Why do you say 'unfortunately'?" he asked. "It is insightful and clever and really quite funny..."

He wanted to go on praising me for this "great" expression which all managers seem to have adopted. I stopped him. "It is cruel," I answered. "We can manage more effectively with kindness than with cruelty."

So what had happened in the intervening years? God had intervened. While I was still me in terms of knowledge, skills, and abilities, my heart had changed; my thinking had changed; my very soul had changed. Post-conversion, doing things right became meaningless; doing the right thing became meaningful. Taking care of business became less meaningful; taking care of God's people became more meaningful -- and in every one of my employees I could see the seed of God. I began to seek the approval of my supervisors far less and the approval of God far more until all that mattered was the approval and will of God.

As a result, I introduced the concept of servant leadership. I retired the "I" and "my" of earlier years and began working for my employees, listening to them, asking their opinions, providing support, working together for one goal, none of us more important than the other. The senior and junior managers followed suit. Pretty soon we had developed an upside-down organization where kindness trumps cruelty and problems are solved with prayer. Pretty soon I did not have to worry about whether someone had only one year of experience multiple times because everyone was willing to work together and to help each other; teamwork has multiplied everyone's years of experience by tenfold.

Now, instead of being afraid of me, employees come charging through my open door, asking for advice or help or a hug. Instead of tears in their eyes, I see smiles on their faces. Now, every morning I ask God to let His love leak out through me and splash out onto those with whom I come into contact. Now, my employees constantly try to protect me; they like being splashed with love and want to make sure that I stay around to keep it coming.

So, when my boss used that old expression the other day, a shock ran through me. It was like having a mirror held up to my then-soul, and I did not like what I saw. Fortunately, with conversion, we get not only a new soul but also a new mirror.

7 Quick Takes Friday #34

I'm ba-a-a-ck! I missed participating in last week's 7 Quick Takes Friday because I was at a four-day contemplative prayer retreat. Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler for hosting the 7 Quick Takes meme at Conversion Diary.

1. The best part of this past week is the four-day contemplative prayer retreat on Franciscan spirituality that I attended at the St. Francis Retreat Center. I usually spend nights at home during retreats at the center since I am a local. However, Fr. Kevin, who led this retreat (my first retreat with Fr. Kevin, and I would certainly sign up right away for any others he might offer), wanted us all to spend our nights at the center even if we lived only five minutes away, like me. It was a wise request. Being there round-the-clock put me in a wonderful frame of mind, without being distracted by the various kinds of little (and sometimes not so little) things that come up at home.

2. Sunday afternoon, following the last Mass of the retreat, I hurried down the hill to lunch at Jardines, my favorite Mexican restaurant, with a friend who is an administrator at the University of California system (we have multiple universities here: Berkeley, UCLA, UC at San Diego, and more) and several of her colleagues. After lunch, we returned to my house to talk about a project that they are working on. Essentially, they wanted me to brainstorm next steps with them. It turned out that they had based their project in large part on one of my books, so brainstorming next steps was simple for me albeit not for them. Two days later I got a note from the admin assistant. They are paying me an honorarium for that afternoon. Wow! I had only thought that I was helping out my friend and was very happy to receive a free lunch as payment. I have no idea how much, but I am in need of some money to pay off God's credit card for recent use and, just like it always happens, here comes some money from out of nowhere to do that!

3. Ah, Monday! Back to work! A day stuffed with meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. Yep, that would be about right -- four meetings. One of them, however, was very enjoyable. I conduct a leadership meeting for junior and senior leaders every other Monday. Right now, we are reading a fun book that reflects my management practices: First, Break All the Rules. If you are a manager or leader of any sort, I highly recommend the book to you. It is even fun to read. For me, even more enjoyable is listening to the discussions and watching especially the junior managers grow in wisdom and expertise. Mentoring the younger generation in this way is one of the perks of my job.

4. Monday night had an unexpectedly beautiful ending. I hurried home because I did not know if my prayer group co-leader was in town, and I did not want to be late. Of course, he had my key, but that did not matter because the convent always has an extra key. Sr. M came over just as I was driving up. Neither of us was present at the last meeting (I was in Washington, DC), so we did not know whom to expect. Well, no one showed up. So, after some minutes of catching up on each other's activities, Sr. Maria and I spent a long time in prayer together. It was one of those special moments, filled with grace, that one cannot plan but for which I am always grateful.

5. This has been a week of visitors. Some weeks are like that. They are often a nice break in the preparation of documents, answering of enotes, and scads of staff meetings. This week I was delighted to have a few minutes to welcome back one of our employees who works in Saudi Arabia and was back visiting family. We had two visits by teams from Washington-based organizations, both of which wanted to pick my brain and those of one or another of my center or division directors. Then, over came my boss's boss, who is rarely in my directorate, to rehearse for a very high-level visitor from Washington. He was very happy with what my directorate proposed to present. Whew! Then, less than two hours later, I received a call to tell me that the visitor would not be coming, at least not now. Even more whew! The best visitor, though, was a name that showed up on my calendar -- my admin keeps my calendar for me, so there are sometimes surprises for me -- at the last minute on Thursday for lunch. It was a colleague from another directorate. A native of Yemen, he has spent time in Jordan, and we meet periodically over lunch to reminisce about a place that is easily adopted as a second home. What a wonderful, relaxing interlude -- after which I hurried to the bank to wire transfer money to Lizzie who had accidentally overdrawn her account. I guess kids never grow up; they just get bigger! (To be fair, though, Lizzie usually does an excellent job of managing her limited finances.)

6. Recently, I started studying my 18th language. On Thursday, one of my employees who speaks that language natively, offered to give me a 30-minute lesson (and to continue with more lessons next week and in August). Now, I have three-and-a-half hours under my belt. We were able to communicate about myself, profession, and family. Today, she contacted me to change the time. We went back and forth several times and finally decided that we would have to wait until next week to meet. We did it all in her language. I was quite pleased at such progress, especially since the "research" (which I don't quite believe) insists that anyone over the age of 40 will have trouble learning a foreign language. I am well past that age, and I am learning in each hour the amount that textbooks expect most students to learn in a week. So, there, Mr. Researcher, put that in your pipe and smoke it! Don't count grandmothers out of any picture!!

7. I have recently discovered that Mass is offered twice a week at noon at a little, near-by chapel. Unfortunately, I have been too busy to attend on a regular basis. This week, however, perhaps under the influence of the retreat last weekend, I realized that this is not a condition, but a choice. I do not have to be too busy. So, I marked "do not schedule" at those hours on my calendar ad infinitum so that my admin assistant would not fill in anything and I could be "unbusy." I have been able to make both Masses this week (today, even, I ended up as lector), and those days have had a magical feel to them, likely because I had my priorities in order on those days.

I am looking forward to a great weekend, beginning with Shane's birthday celebration tomorrow. I hope your weekend will be exciting and enjoyable, as well!

Day of Flowers

At work, we have some training programs, some of them quite long, that I oversee -- well, ultimately oversee. There are a few layers of supervision between me and those programs. In spite of those layers, I continue a practice that I began 20 years ago when I was a dean. At every graduation, I give flowers to the teaching team. I don't care whether the students did well in the course; I don't care if the students were happy with the course. These issues will come up later in program reviews and making changes is the responsibility of the immediate supervisors who are responsible for these programs. The flowers I give are for the effort, to let the teachers in these programs know that I notice and I care.

The teachers love these flowers and look forward to them. I usually send them with a handwritten "congratulations" note. If I can take them to the teaching team personally, I do, but far too often I am tied up and cannot. So, I send them via my admin assistant. No matter how the flowers are delivered, the teachers are also grateful. You would think that I had given each a significant award, but no, they are just a few fragrant flowers. Even the male teachers like them. They have become such an important part of the graduation process that I have my admin assistant purchase them for me if I am traveling and will be missing graduation.

Today was graduation. I was not traveling, so I was able to attend and give closing remarks. Closing remarks are always easy. The best closing remarks are brief. I know that. The graduation is essentially over, and I certainly don't want to stand between the graduates and their parties. So, today, as always, I kept my remarks brief. Then I had a chance to interact with the teachers and their graduates. Some of the families were present, as well.

So, it was a good day. (Not all days are quite so pleasant.) We celebrated the good efforts of teachers and their students. The teachers smiled with pleasure at their flowers. And then I went on walkabout.

Walkabout is one of my management practices (when I am in town). I take about an hour and talk to as many employees as I can. I usually concentrate on one section at a time and ultimately over a month or two I reach nearly everyone. I always take cookies with me. The sugarfree kind because so many of our employees are diabetic. Living in the Middle East taught me to take a gift when I call on people. It is not the cookies that matter; it is the attention. I was able to make it through two sections on walkabout this afternoon and yet have time not to hurry any one conversation. Oh, I enjoy the walkabouts as much as my employees do. I also learn a lot. People volunteer all kinds of information when they have a cookie in hand!

So, today was just one of those days, one of those good days! To make it even more perfect, I was even able to catch noon Mass at a small church near my office. I hope that you all had as happy a day today as I did, and if not, I will pray for a perfect tomorrow for all of you!

7 Quick Takes Friday #18

My second week in a row at home! What pleasure! And now it is time for this week's contribution to the Quick Takes meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary.

1. The saga of the friend that I had to "fire" on Friday continued this week. Last week I promised the ending, and here it is, but first, a recap from last week: "I have to fire a friend, currently working as a junior manager, for poor performance. (I did not hire her; my boss forced her on me against my better judgment. Now, he has some embarrassment, too.) Ugh! Unfortunately, this relatively new junior manager, in three months of training, was unable to learn even the basics of management. I had a team of six people mentoring her on various aspects of her job. All of them came to the conclusion in recent days that not only is she untrainable but also her pride and lack of self-awareness preclude anyone's ability to train her. So, the decision was made to fire." On Friday, she was supposed to see the senior manager, her supervisor, at 1:00. At that time, he would have given her the bad news. Well, instead, she sent him an enote, saying that she was ill and going home. Later in the day, she popped up in my boss's office on another matter, and he ended up being the one to tell her that she was being reassigned as a rank-and-file employee, that she did not have the skills at this time for being a manager. His involvement seemed like poetic justice. On Monday, she met with the senior manager and got the bad news -- again. (None of us knew what had transpired on Friday.) He said she was stoic, but it turns out that she was prepared. A little later, she wrote a note to all her employees, saying that she had decided to leave her position and had asked to be reassigned for reasons of health. Wow, she seemed to have taken it all very well, and if she wanted to save face by announcing that it was her decision and health-related, we were all willing to look the other way. I did not get a chance to talk to her on Monday, but Tuesday, before going home, I dropped by to say good-bye and was walking with her to go out the door when she started sobbing -- and sobbing and sobbing. So, I led her into my office and talked to her for more than two hours. She exhibited a complete inability to look at herself objectively, but I was able to bring her to peace with the decision to replace her. I don't know how I was able to do that, but it really helped that while talking to her I was very aware that God was with us and in her -- after all, a little piece of God is within all of us, that is what binds us as a body of believers, right? Clearly, guidance I had asked for was given, and I am very grateful to God for my sake and for hers.

2. I learned this week that my beloved Fr. Terry, whom I can consult for just about anything, is leaving the area. He will be working as a chaplain at a retirement colony for friars. I suppose it is an appropriate assignment since he is 82 years old, but he acts -- and clearly feels -- much younger and has been very active in our community, at Old Mission, and as director of the local retreat center. Everyone loves him; I cannot think of anyone who does not or who has not benefited from his years and years of experience in walking with God and advising God's people. When I called to say goodbye to him, he told me that I had been "a light" to him in the past three years he has been here." He certainly knows how to make someone feel happy. If these were more than kind words and this were really true, then I am infinitely grateful to God for allowing me to play this role!

3. A sad event took place on Sunday. The mother of Fr. E., our parish priest, died from breast cancer. Fortunately, Fr. E. was able to get home to Ireland before she died and be with her during her last hours. Today the funeral took place in Ireland, and concurrently we held a rosary for Fr. E's mother at Old Mission. People turned out in force, and various parishioners led the service. At the end, Fr. M, the Latin Mass priest, gave a final benediction. Sula, our parish feral cat, came in before the service, came up to me for some petting, then found herself a seat on the pew across from me between two men. Except for nestling on someone's coat during communion, she sat up proudly between the two of them during the entire service, just as if she fully understood what was going on and was participating. Fr. M went over at the end of the service to greet her. I love this parish! (Photo is of the statue of St. John the Baptist on the Old Mission grounds.)

4. I had very good news from my cardiologist today. I was down another two pounds, and he is happy with my rate of weight loss. I am down 13 pounds since mid-January. My blood pressure is also down, and he reneged on this threat to replace my very mild medication with a stronger one. He is also allowing me six weeks before my next visit. He is still concerned about my heart although I am certain all is fine. Anyway, I have never seen him quite so relaxed about it. Yes!

5. I also had a good Arabic lesson today. Since we have a visiting manager from Egypt, who is originally from Jordan and speaks the dialect of Arabic that I knew, I asked him to talk to me in Arabic for a half-hour each morning since I am losing my proficiency in it for lack of use. Often, it feels like pulling teeth to be able to communicate well. Today, however, I surprised him -- and myself -- by spending nearly the whole time, talking about the theology of St. Paul, in particular in regard to his propensity toward dialectic thinking (i.e. thesis, antithesis, synthesis). I was so pleased that I could actually handle a rather complex topic with my limited Arabic, which might become less limited if I had more opportunity to use it.

6. Shane, Lemony, and kids spent the weekend in San Francisco at the Chinese parade and other activities. They go there every year for this celebration and decided it might be okay this year, too. Things are looking up for them, and I will indeed soon get around to writing the Clan Rising post I promised for the Clan of Mahlou blog. It looks like Shane will have a job perhaps as soon as April. A former employer wants him back but cannot offer a job until he passes a security clearance. They have put the clearance process on the fast track and assume that it will be completed by some time in April. (Here is a good example of why it is never a good idea to burn bridges when leaving a job. Shane left under pleasant conditions, and so coming back was a possibility -- and, thank God, they just "happened" to have an opening.)

7. Well, I am going to have to wrap this up pretty quickly and get to bed before the midnight hour fully approaches. Tomorrow morning I have to get up at 5 a.m. in order to travel to north with a team of people from work to an all-day meeting in Los Altos Hills. Oh, joy! A bus ride! (I am packing dramamine!) I have no idea where Los Altos Hills is located other than in somewhat north of us, so I assumed that it must be somewhere around San Francisco (or perhaps closer, near San Jose). Since I am not driving, I suppose I don't need to know. That is good; I already have too much extraneous information in my little head!

Hoping that you have a great weekend and will get some more sleep than it seems that I am in for!

7 Quick Takes Friday #17

Back home! Back home! I've been home all week! What pleasure! And now it is time for this week's contribution to the Quick Takes meme hosted by Jennifer Futwiler at Conversion Diary.

1. Saturday morning I started out in Alaska. What a beautiful place! The view from my hotel window was spectacular, but even more spectacular were the views along the mountain roads between downtown Anchorage and the location of our branch office in a relatively rural area. (Sorry to disappoint any Alaskans reading this blog, but the mountains do not compare in any way to the Alps, where I have had many opportunities to hike and walk with friends!)

2. The trip back was far from without incident, and definitely tested my Lenten pledge to give up frustration. My backpack was taken from me in Seattle by the Alaskan Air gate area. It is a complex story, so I will write about it in a subsequent post. Essentially, I made it home just fine. My poor backpack was another story, as was my need to balance computer and breakable good on the airplanes without a backpack. Yi, ai!

3. On Sunday, we held a memorial for Ray. It was good to see Noelle get out of her apartment and gather together with friends to say goodbye to Ray. She has been quite depressed since his death in mid-January and has pretty much kept to herself, not even always wanting to see her parents, let alone her friends. Seeing her smile and laugh together with Ray's friends at the memorial was heartwarming -- and a relief. It was also heartwarming to see who came: representatives of most local ethnic groups (African-American, Native American, Hispanic, and Caucasian). That was Ray. He had a way of bringing together people of different ethnicities.

4. Our prayer group meeting on Monday was also heartwarming. We usually pray at the beginning and at the end. During the meeting, we sing, share experiences, ask for prayers, update each other, do some lectio divina, read scripture, do some spiritual exercises, and the like. The content varies week by week and mood by mood. Interestingly, on Monday night, the mood was very unusual. We spent nearly the whole evening in prayer, and no one wanted to stop. In fact, bringing the meeting to closure, which meant stopping the prayers, was almost painful. We all commented on it because it was not typical.

5. Yesterday I conducted new manager training. It is one of the most enjoyable things I do. New managers are so fresh. They are often new to management. They are certainly new to their positions and often to our organization. We have a wonderfully loving, supportive, and work-dedicated ambiance at work that I don't want to have corrupted by the introduction of managerial approaches that are autocratic or otherwise in direct opposition to our organizational ethos. So, when we start to gather a preponderance of new managers, I talk to them about the principles of servant leadership, which is the leadership philosophy that guides me. The new managers had interesting questions about applications to their current problems. Now those discussions are the meat and potatoes of my existence!

6. And then came this morning. I wrote the following on my face book page: "I don't want to go to work today. Will someone give me permission to stay home and hide out under the bed? I have to fire a friend, currently working as a junior manager, for poor performance. (I did not hire her; my boss forced her on me against my better judgment. Now, he has some embarrassment, too.) Ugh!" Unfortunately, this relatively new junior manager, in three months of training, was unable to learn even the basics of management. I had a team of six people mentoring her on various aspects of her job. All of them came to the conclusion in recent days that not only is she untrainable but also her pride and lack of self-awareness preclude anyone's ability to train her. So, the decision was made to fire now. The firing did not take the normal path, however, and since the story is not quite finished, I will wait and relate details when it is. I will comment, however, that it seems that my prayers for guidance and help in this matter have been answered.

7. Giving up frustration for Lent has been an extraordinary experience in a very short period of time. Once I made that decision, it seems that very trying circumstances come up more frequently now, such as the backpack problem on Saturday and the need to oversee the firing of a friend on Friday. What has been extraordinary has been the constant answer to prayer to hold my frustration at bay. I have also asked people at work to point out when I am getting frustrated; that gives me time to retire to my office and say a prayer before it becomes a full-fledged, unmanageable emotion. I think I made the right decision this year on what to give up. I am at peace (so far) under even trying circumstances. Thank You, God!

Wishing you a great weekend, much peace, and no frustration!

Monday Morning Meditation #30: Lead As Jesus Would

As I read about the successors to Solomon in the middle chapters of the book of I Kings, a clear pattern emerged: not only did these kings sin, but they also caused Israel to sin, much in the manner of Solomon sinning and causing Israel to sin at the end of his life, an act that caused God to be angry with him. With Solomon, it began (in earlier chapters of I Kings) with Solomon's taking of foreign wives against the commandment of God, a command with which God had sought to prevent Solomon being converted to foreign gods through the love of foreign wives and concubines.

Reading: I Kings 15: 33-34

Meditation: It may seem like a bit of a stretch to apply this history to modern leadership, but since modern leadership is the stuff of my every day life, I do see parallels and lessons nearly everywhere, including in I Kings. As was written about Baasa, he "did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin," so can it be that leaders of all sorts do evil in the sight of the Lord and in their sin make their followers to sin.

As a senior leader, it is easy to forget the influence that one has over the thinking and beliefs of one's subordinates. More than one display of anger, and some junior leaders will consider that heavy-handed approaches are permissible ways to manage. After all, it is easier to demand and to be angry when one's demands are not met than to share governance, listen patiently to someone you just know is wrong, and to compromise when you just know you are right. A lax interpretation of rules and regulations for self benefit tells both junior leaders and employees that cheating is okay if it is only "a little thing." Remembering that deeds speak louder than words can keep one from self-exemption in acting in accordance with moral and ethical standards especially when one thinks one is not being seen. It is much like with our children. If our words and deeds do not match, our children are more likely to emulate what we do than to follow the principles we hope to inculcate in them through education.

It is far easier than we think to lead those who follow us astray, whether that be astray from moral standards, scrupulous adherence to regulations, or willing obedience of God's commands and taskings. For that reason, I ask God to help me at the beginning of every day (often several times during the day as events unfold) to keep me not only from hurting anyone but also from leading anyone astray. I also ask that His love flow through me and splash onto those around me, that both my words and deeds honor Him, and that I set the kind of example for junior leaders and employees that He would have me set. (Of course, even with God's help, I do not always succeed for human emotions intervene from time to time, causing me to forget to refer the given situation back to God.)

In trying to lead as God would have me lead, I find two sources of leadership development helpful. One is the Bible. Just as the passage from I Kings can provide excellent guidance, so can much throughout the Bible -- those situations where leaders excelled and those where they failed. There is another book that I have found to be quite helpful and that I recommend to any leader: Jesus on Leadership (C. Gene Wilkes). For leaders who are not Christians, a very similar book is put out by the Greenleaf Center, The Case for Servant Leadership (Kent Keith, the author of the Paradoxical Commandments that Mother Theresa loved, otherwise known as "Do It Anyway"); while foot-washing is not mentioned in it, it does reflect principles that God taught to leaders and hoped and expected from them throughout the Bible.

These books help me a lot. God (and prayer) help me even more. And the rest I mess up all by myself -- and go running to God to help me fix it!

And that is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to continue to ask for guidance every minute of every day as I interact with junior leaders and rank-and-file employees, to repent for those times that I have set a bad example, to thank God for so often setting straight with my employees what I do wrong, and to give praise for the way in which He leads me and my subordinate leaders to assist and support those who work for us, the ways in which he ensures that we do not harm any of them exceedingly much, and the way in which He has brought much spirituality into our workplace. After that, I will spend time in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

A Lenten Gift

I had great plans for Ash Wednesday. I was going to take off work, even had the vacation time approved by my boss, who is currently out of town. I planned to spend the morning at the St. Francis Retreat Center where Days of Lenten Recollection are offered every Wednesday during Lent. It has been such an overwhelmingly stressful couple of months that a day off at the retreat center seemed like a wonderful gift to myself. I went to bed, happily ready to start dreaming about a day of peace, with no fires to put out, no high visibility projects to shepherd through obstacle courses, and no static-filled environment, intruding into the silence I often desperately seek in vain for conversation with God.

I had difficulty falling asleep Tuesday evening (actually, early Wednesday morning), however. I felt tugged toward email even though I had read the last incoming missive of the day only a half-hour earlier and had closed down the computer. Sleepily, I pushed the on button. Oh, no! There was a slate of new email from work! After midnight?! I had better read it. With a bit of trepidation, I looked at the latest note. It came from our Washington office and demanded to know why a planned business trip from one of my subordinates had been cancelled. Cancelled? I had not cancelled it. It was essential that she be in Washington Thursday afternoon. I looked at the next note. It was from a senior manager, who had been out sick, and the supervisor of the employee with the cancelled trip. He said he would come in to work on Wednesday, sick or not, and wanted to know why I had cancelled this important trip. Cancelled? I had not cancelled it. Now I was very awake! I started reading through a rash of messages between the employee and the Washington office. After wending my way through one particular thread, I found what I was looking for: a comment from her to him that I had cancelled the trip. What? Cancelled? I had not cancelled her trip. So much for the rest of the night. I sent notes to my assistant and the assistant to the senior manager, asking if they had authorized trip cancellation. I had to wait until 6 in the morning to get their negative response. I also wrote to the senior manager and suggested that he not come in if he were sick. (He came in.)

I tumbled into bed around 4, planning to get up at 6 to find out if there were any responses. So much for taking Wednesday off. I made plans to go to work. There was no alternative, especially since that would be my last day before leaving for Alaska.

I got up early, took a shortened period of time for prayer, and then checked the email. The negative responses were not enlightening. I had to get to work and get the employee on the plane. Or did I? I had planned to go to the Ash Wednesday Mass at the retreat center, but since I could not go there after all, I had changed those plans to attend the Spanish Mass in the evening. However, Fr. Ed was offering an early morning Mass in English. I would be considerably late to work were I to go to it. However, I needed more than my shortened prayer time, so I put aside my time-essential concern over the employee with the cancelled trip, sent a note to the assistant senior manager re getting her on a plane somehow, and informed him and my assistant that I would be in, but late. Then I went to Mass, where I found peace, prayed for wisdom, received the ashes, and left for work.

I really did need wisdom because the senior manager had been failing at one high visibility project after another, not getting the people hired that we needed, and not supervising well the people he had. He has talent and is dedicated. He is also very loyal to me and does anything I ask of him. The problem is that he did not get his second-level set of supervisors hired in a timely fashion -- we do not yet have them. So, he has to supervise by himself all the new projects, and he simply does not have time. Last week, I pressed him to fill behind his assistant manager who is leaving soon for another position. He said that he wanted to wait and see if an incoming intern could do the job. (No!) At the time, my arguments held no sway, and I left his office frustrated. I remained frustrated until Monday, when the senior manager was out ill and I found him an assistant, someone I could promote from another division who could start immediately. I had already talked to that other person and his supervisor, and the position had been accepted. I have never gone around a senior manager and hired someone for her or him before. Now I had to break the news to the senior manager -- along with trying to resolve the dilemma of the cancelled trip and deal with an employee who took undelegated authority upon herself to cancel her own trip. Oh, Lord! I needed help!

I am so glad I went to Mass. My frustrations melted away. I found enough inner peace that I could listen. I needed to listen.

"How do I handle this?" I asked, more to myself than anything else. This manager is very sensitive, and if all the issues I had to discuss with him (there were others beyond just the cancelled trip and the new assistant manager) were not handled well, I could end up with more problems, not fewer, and a very unhappy and offended senior manager.

"Oh, Lord," I repeated, "How do I handle this?"

And then I heard: "with kindness, gently." Now those are not my strongest traits, but at least I had a direction in which to work.

When I got to work, nothing had been done about the cancelled trip, so I accompanied the assistant manager to talk to the employee who needed to go to Washington. To make a long story short, she has now reached Washington. We ticketed and planed her within minutes.

Then the senior manager came in, and it was time to confess my "sins" to him. I said a quick prayer for that gentleness that is not second nature to me and dove through his door. I could tell that he was hurting -- overwhelmed, sick, feeling like he had failed me and the organization, and pretty much at wit's end. There was no defensiveness. I asked about his health and talked about the other problems, looking for some solutions. Then I broached the topic of the new assistant manager, telling him that I had done something that he might not like but that I had done for him, to rescue him from his own willingness to take on too much with too little help. When I pronounced the name of the new assistant manager, the senior manager broke out in a big smile.

"I am so pleased," he said. "That is the perfect person. I can't believe he agreed. I would have been hesitant to approach him. Thank you!"

Wow! I floated back to my office (maybe I actually took a little skip). I had a dental appointment and had to leave in just a few minutes, but decided to do a final check of email before leaving for the day. There was an enote from an employee in Texas. She is very ill and had run out of sick leave. I had sent out a note to all 400 employees, asking anyone who could afford to do so to join me in donating some of our vacation time to her so that she would not be without income. People have been donating. She had found out about it, and wrote the following to me:

"Since you came, I have felt that we are just one big family. Big and spread out around the world, but supportive of each other. Today that feeling has been confirmed as reality. Thank you!"

I got up this morning, feeling discouraged. I came home after work, feeling elated. Thanks to the guidance of God, the right words somehow came to me at the right time, my bull-in-a-china-shop directness was somehow blunted, the people I touched were affected positively, and I realized that I really love my job, a job that God insisted I take and keep. (I wrote a post about that once.)

I did not get my planned gift to myself today: a morning at the retreat center. I got something better: happy employees, thanks to divine help. Thank You, God, for my gift today!

Tickled Pink with Embarrassment

I spend a fair amount of time teaching the principles of servant leadership to new managers and working with all levels of managers on implementing my leadership policies of servant leadership, reverse evaluation, and shared governance. I try very hard to practice what I preach, and I ask God for help every day. However, it is not easy to practice what you preach when it is in the area of servant leadership.

Like anyone else, I am vulnerable to stress upon occasion, and currently there is an inordinate amount of stress as we are poised for explosive growth. Right before Christmas, we reached the zenith of need for new personnel to be identified and the hiring process started and a nadir of activity. Learning the latter, I went in search of the manager of a particularly needy division and found his door locked. The associate manager told me that he was on vacation. I sort of remember approving the time off, but that was much earlier and before we knew that we would need globs of new people in January and February. I was furious that he would take vacation without having completed the hiring that needed to be done and without even bringing me up to date about it.

"Please call him in," I instructed the associate manager, "and, unfortunately, you will not be able to take vacation next week as you planned; no one can be away until we have an adequate number of personnel for the taskings that will appear right after Christmas." After that and until the manager showed up, I proceeded to take over the hiring process for one of the understaffed programs among several growing ones in this particular division, looking over the resumes and recommendations of applicants, and setting the program director about arranging interviews.

I understood from interactions after his arrival that the manager was upset, but I did not know how much until he sent me a note on Christmas Eve, telling me that he had been too distressed to attend Christmas Eve Mass with his family. I wrote back, urging him to go to Christmas Day Mass, that we could discuss issues of work at work on Monday, and that God can often put right what man has messed up. The short story is that he did go to Mass, and he said it brought him some inner peace

After everything had quieted down and we had all returned from the New Year holiday, I had a chance to talk to the associate manager about training some of the new supervisory staff brought in for some of the projects and emphasized the need to help them understand the concepts of servant leadership.

"Let me ask you a question," he said. "Do you consider your behavior last week appropriate to the servant leader model?"

When I queried what he meant, he referred to my calling in his boss from vacation and those rather difficult days between Christmas and New Year when we all had to work.

"Was there some kind of resentment about being called in from vacation?" I asked.

"No," he replied. "It was your reaction."

"Was I rude?" I am not without the capacity to be rude, never intentionally, but, you know, in a work world, things you don't want to happen do happen.

"No, you were polite," he said. "It was your body language. We could tell that you were angry with us and that made it difficult to work as effectively, well, certainly as efficiently."

I had not even realized how I had let that stress level take me over and then splash onto them. The associate manager was right; it was not a good example of servant leadership. Every day I begin my morning prayer by asking God to prevent me from harming anyone. Hm...I guess I was not listening to God that day. I wonder how many times He tried to reach me!

The conversation with the association manager reminded me of the time that 12-year-old Lizzie, having started a course in psychology at Northern Virginia Community College under a gifted student option, sat me down at the kitchen table and said, "Mom, we must talk."

"And what must we talk about?" I asked her.

"Your disciplinary techniques," she replied.

"And what is wrong with them?"

"Well, Mom, they are pretty haphazard, chaotic, and really nearly nonexistent."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for example, when you punish us you should not expect us to remember that we are being grounded or doing some other punishment. You should remember, too!"

Guilty as charged, I supposed she was right, and she left, happy that I seemed to understand the error of my ways but not at all convinced that I would be able to change. She was right on both counts.

I hope, though, with my managers that, with God's help, I can change.

Back to the associate manager, he was clearly aware of my willingness to discuss the situation with him, both from the point of view of appropriateness on my part and as an example of how managers should not handle stress. He was, though, very unlikely aware of my real emotional reaction. I was tickled pink that he was not afraid to address the issue with me, to tell me how what I had done made him feel, and to suggest how I might better have handled the situation. So, in spite of the somewhat embarrassing and uncomfortable feeling I had from not having practiced what I preached, I had something important: proof that I have indeed established an ambiance of servant leadership; otherwise he would not have presumed to correct my behavior.

Should I have had any doubt about that, the morning after came the clincher. I apologized to the manager while it just happened that the associate manager was in the room. The manager accepted my apology with grace: "We have to work together as a team, or we will never survive this avalanche of new tasks." Just exactly what I have been teaching (but apparently not quite so well modeling)!

I am very proud of my managers although I am less proud of myself. Perhaps what happened was a gift from God in spite of my not listening to Him very well that day. I was given the opportunity to develop greater humility. And that is always a useful and needed opportunity.