Happy Thanksgiving Rituals

The Thanksgiving holiday is steeped in ritual and meaning. We gather family and friends in a single location to remember we are part of a nurturing community. We tell each other stories about what is happening in our lives. Stories are a uniquely human way to communicate. Long before to-do lists there were stories that instructed us where to find food, guided us about community norms and values and warned us of dangers to avoid.

The Thanksgiving dinner is highly ritualistic. Beyond the settlers and Indians story, sharing food is a way of spreading abundance among the people in our inner circles. Feeding each other at the start of the darkest season harkens back to needing nourishment to face certain struggle during the cold and fruitless winter.

We watch games and use them to foster communication. Football games mimic the battle between good (the team we root for) and evil (the team we want them to beat.) We learn by watching, like reading pictographs or watching the tribal leader perform a gratitude dance. And, for those among us who find it hard to talk with our family members, we can at least talk about the game.

We hug and high five, modern ways of meeting the need for physical touch, thereby affirming our bonds to one another.

As we enter this holiday weekend, let's remember the meaning in every little ritual. That is one surefire way to feel not only full in the belly, but fulfilled in your heart come Sunday night.

God Bless Us Everyone?

Now is the time of year we "give thanks" for all our blessings, right? Even in the office we tell each other stories about how we celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family. We talk of our favorite foods, favorite football teams, favorite ways to spend an afternoon, our favorite relatives. How pretty it all is.

We feel good about ourselves when we feel thankful for the abundance in our lives. We feel strong when we take time to share that abundance with others. We feel closer to God when we act God-like and warmly embrace the people in our lives we enjoy most and who enrich us. What do we do with the people we dislike and who dislike us?

What has me thinking is how we will express our thanks to the people who made us wildly uncomfortable this year. Will we only be grateful for azure blue skies with marshmallow clouds? Or will we also see the people who pushed us and demanded more than we could deliver, and who maybe even wrote us off (or who we wrote off) as deserving our gratitude, too?

Oh, I don't mean the kind of gratitude that comes out like mock magnanimity. "I'm so grateful you made me so much stronger. Without you I wouldn't have become such a great leader throughout the year. You really showed me how badly people could act and I learned how to deal with difficult people because of you. Thank you so much." It is not about egotism masquerading as gratitude. I'm talking about a kind of thanks that recognizes with humility and goes maybe like this: "I sometimes use behaviors that cause problems between people and since you showed them to me, I'm better able to see them and work to eliminate them. Thanks for not letting me get away with that stuff."

Hmmm. It's easy to be grateful for our good jobs, our good friends, our good bank balances, our good shoes, good cars and houses, our good and well-behaved kids. Do we have the humility and fortitude to be grateful for the people who bruised us? Can I be humbly grateful for someone's intolerance of my unacceptable behavior? Am I strong enough to be grateful for the whole work and life experience?

I wonder: Do I have the ego strength to be grateful for the icky stuff, too?

I hope so. Because if I - or we - don't, we're just not that strong. And I want to be stronger and more mature and a better leader of myself in communion with others each and every year.

The phrase is God Bless Us Everyone. It's not, God Bless Only Those of Us Who Agree with Me and Whom I Like. E V E R Y O N E. If you're a believer in God...isn't it likely that she blesses everyone? If God blesses everyone forward, shouldn't we, too?

Are we...are you and am I...strong enough, mature enough, BIG enough, leader enough to be thankful in that way?

Falling Behind the Listening Curve

Yesterday our defense secretary was fired because of the election results. Our president said he had heard what people had said by voting out a significant number of republicans and in a significant number of democrats for local, state and federal offices. And since the exit poll research said the primary issue for voters was their dissatisfaction with how the Iraq war was being handled, our president decided to fire the man (almost) at the helm of the program, Donald Rumsfeld.

Then President Bush went on to say he would work to establish good bipartisan relations with the people in the majority party who had supplanted the folks from the now minority party.

Now, this brief analysis is not about politics; it is about listening. It seems to me that what has happened is that as long as the nation's leader had around him more people who agreed than disagreed with him, he would not have to listen much, if at all, to the dissenting opinions of those who did not agree with him. This is dangerous. When a leader surrounds himself or herself with so many agreeable people that the dissenting opinions of equally passionate and skilled people (and in this case, equally empowered representatives of "the people"), sooner or later, the leader will miss an important trend - and be blindsided.

Blindsided by what? By decisions those ignored people took precisely because they were not listened to. Blindsided by actions borne of dismissiveness, at worst, or a slightly-too-focused pursuit of one's goals, on the brighter side.

Leaders should be insatiably curious. Insatiably curious. Not just a little curious, unrelentingly curious. While I am not a George Bush fan, the point here is not about the man. It is about how a leader solicited, weighed and set aside the views of people who saw a different reality than he was seeing...and, importantly, wanted to talk about it more openly - and what can happen as a result.

Falling behind the listening curve really means not listening well at all. Sooner or later, those who are not listened to, those whose views are not equally weighed with the prevailing views will take matters in their own hands. In this case, it was by firing a bunch of people and hiring a bunch of others. For followers of poor-listening executives the workplace, it often is by firing the company (and the person) they were working with and hiring a new company and leader to go work with.

Being ahead of the listening curve means openly and actively seeking the views, both logical and emotional, of everyone involved. It means thoroughly considering dissenting views and working to understand their merit. Sometimes there is no merit. Sometimes there is. Perhaps those with alternative views see things invisible to the majority's eyes. And besides, the effect good listening has on those being listened to proves the action is worthwhile no matter the end result. Listening is one process that has very little downside, even if the idea I am putting forth is deemed unsuitable for further consideration or action. Listening is about the process more than the "result" or "value" of what is being voiced.

Business leaders who listen well, invite open dialogue and participate in vigorous debate, posit alternative strategies and entertain seemingly harebrained ideas are much more likely to end up with not only well-considered programs, but programs that are more fully embraced by the people being led - if only because those people feel they were fully heard out.

People are substantially motivated by being listened to. It's time to really get that!