Did I Just Teach My Daughter to Blame the Victim?

I love the expression, “It floored me.” That’s probably because parenting floors me. All the time. One moment my daughter floors me by saying the wisest thing I can imagine. The next she floors me again by following it with a stunningly childish refusal to eat (anything, ever). Or so it seems.

A few months ago, she floored me when she responded exactly as I imagine my father would have. She reminds me of the sense of right and fairness my father taught me. I have long since buried that sense under a cynical brand of pragmatism that doubles as a shield to any blow the world hands me.

About a boy in her class she said, “He pinches me when we line up and I don’t like that.”

“So what can you do about it? What choices do you have?”

“None.”

“None? You could step out of line. You can tell him to stop. Use your words.”

“Mommy, I tried using words. He doesn’t stop.”

“Why do you stand near him?”

“Well, I like to be at the front of the line. So does he.” A very clear picture of The US Congress immediately comes across my mind.

“Is being at the front of the line worth getting pinched? You could stand somewhere else.” When I was a child, this solution would have been obvious to me. The front is a battle not worth fighting.

“Mommy, that’s not fair. I should be allowed to stand anywhere in line without worrying about being pinched.” In her words, I heard echoes of my father, for whom the time and place for for justice were always right now and right here. At first, I worried that she will never manage in a world constantly demanding compromise.

What message am I sending her?

Should a woman have to worry about what she wears when she goes out, lest she ask to be raped? Should a woman endure catcalls on the sidewalk simply for walking? Should a woman fear walking under a street light with a blown bulb? Should a girl walk through a high school hallway wearing a backpack so her bra strap isn’t snapped? Should a child hand over her lunch money to a bully?

Anyone should be allowed to wear what they want to, when they want to, wherever they want to. Moreover, no woman should worry that someone will blame her if some harm befalls her when she does.

At five, Ellie knows that her safety in the world is a basic human right and expectation. I hope I never teach her that the victim should have or could have anticipated their treatment. What’s more terrifying is that I think I almost did.

Handling Grief In the Workplace

This piece originally appeared on LinkedIN.

Today on LinkedIn, I clicked on a seemingly kind and lovely blog post one of my connections shared, “16 Signs You Have an Awesome Dad.” I did it because I don’t have an awesome dad. I had one. He died when I was eight. Innocuous posts like these can turn an average day into a flood of memories and emotion. Even thirty years later, little things hang around my world threatening to floor me at any moment. At work, most of the time you just have to breathe and move on. But that doesn't make it go away.

1 in 20 children lose a parent before adulthood. 800,000 Americans are widowed each year. Grieving people are everywhere, including at your workplace. Chances are you passed one in the hallway today. They don’t wear badges or signs. Often they won’t discuss this at work, ever. I know I certainly always avoided the topic.

So what does this have to do with your leadership and your EQ?

Everyone has something going on, including your best team members. Your highest performers rarely share life drama with managers. They simply “handle it” outside of work and move on. They aren’t the ones asking you for a box of Kleenex.

I was at an offsite where a dear friend and colleague received word that his father was dying. From that day, I remember the sun, the one particularly good speaker, and the gorgeous venue. Most of all, I remember my friend’s face when he thought no one was looking. After some prompting he left the offsite to be with his father. Luckily, some close colleagues encouraged him not to wait for an "appropriate exit time." Work could and should wait.

It left me wondering if the host of the offsite ever called him to offer support. I choose to believe so. When my friend came back to work, he picked up as if he’d been on vacation. He only shared with the few of us lucky enough to be considered his close friends. Those must have been some very lonely, difficult days. In that first year, every time someone talked about spending holidays with family or parents coming to visit, he was remembering that he was without.

The only way to help people through rough moments is to develop our Emotional Intelligence. Great people like Daniel Goleman, Travis Bradberry and Joshua Freedman are experts in this. One of the main competencies in the Six Seconds EQ model is to “Give Yourself.” And that’s precisely how to help the grieving at work.

How Do You Support Someone Who Isn’t Asking for Anything?

1. Use Your Non- Standard HR Data – Often, companies grant funeral leave and/or send flowers to funerals. Use this info. Reach out to the people who coordinate these programs and ask for notification when someone in your organization makes use of them. When the person returns, send them a note offering condolences and help. Even if the person never turns to you for help, they will always remember that you were thinking of them.
2. Include Grief Awareness in Manager Training – Like all people, managers deal directly with grieving employees. They may be afraid to say or do the wrong thing. If nothing else, remind them that their silence speaks louder than any awkward turn of phrase. Consider partnering with a local grief counseling organization for customized help crafting your training. Jeff Haden wrote a great piece about this for Inc.
3. Be Vulnerable - Remember that everyone, even the people who never complain, experience challenges outside of work. Share your own challenges as appropriate – teams need to see their leaders as being human. Just like they are. Sharing vulnerability is a great way to remain compassionate especially during stressful times.

How have you reached out to employees through rough times? Please share them in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

How I Learned to Ski: When the Fall the Saves You

It's a gorgeous morning in Park City, UT. As with all new things, especially ones that involve falling down, skiing fills my chest with anxiety. I’m in my second series of ski lessons. From the flag where we adult learners line up, I can see my fearless five-year-old Ellie balancing on tiny pink and white skis. When we set-off she passes me in the “first timer’s” lift line. She’s laughing and falls down. The ski instructor grabs the handle on the back of the red vest they put on all the little skiers and pulls her back up to standing. My parka has no such handle yet I have a lot farther to fall. She has all her people to pick her up. Ever since my father died, I do not.

            At the end of my lessons, my husband and father-in-law agree to ski down on a green run with me. It’s terrifying - not only might I fall and experience a broken bone or torn ACL, I could slow them down, or they could leave me behind, alone.

On the big lift, I breathe in and out. From my lips, puffs of air form small clouds which tempt me to move my glove off the safety bar to touch them. Below my skis, the tree line changes from bare birch branches, to evergreens, until there is only purple-white snow glistening as it melts in the overwarm March day. The impossibly blue sky deepens through the lens of my goggles. I congratulate myself on my ability to calm my fears, to be present in the moment, and to handle my instinct favoring panic. We reach the top of the lift. I slide down the ramp and glide to a safe stop. So far, so good.

 “Why don’t you go and I’ll follow?” I am back in the state of mind that questions why anyone would find hurling themselves down the side of a mountain at 12 mph fun. Instead, I feel reckless and stupid.

“Six lessons, you can do this,” I tell myself. Pause and breathe again. In that moment, I stop and look to my right. The view from the top of the Earth is miraculous – I feel freedom. Now I understand, people do this for the chance to see the world through Zeus’ eyes.

“Just don’t leave me, ok?”

“Of course, not. We’ll just take our time,” My husband reassures me.

            About six minutes into the run, my husband has taken a different turn. He’s gone. “And there it is,” I sigh.

My father-in-law stays a few yards ahead of me, I follow his tracks until a narrow part of the run where I fall forward trying to avoid two girls who couldn’t be a day older than Ellie. The snow sneaks into the space between my sleeve and my glove. Its cold burns the inside of my wrist enough to distract me. My brain pushes out the failure and humiliation trying to ignite my amygdala – no time for that now. I’m on my side in the middle of a ski run. All I can do is get up.

I recount the steps I learned:

Step one: Skis across the mountain.

Step two: Dig your poles into the mountain above you

Step three: Rise up and lean on your downhill ski.

Step four:  Keep on keeping on

We reach an intersection on the mountain. One direction is blue and the other green. Somehow we end up on the blue. I see my father-in-law scoot over to the “Rest Area.” The pitch, as far as I’m concerned, is vertical. The first obscenity emerges from my mouth. It’s only 100 yards, right?

             As soon as I make my slow, wide, round turn, my body betrays me and leans back. On my side, I am sliding down the mountain. Once I come to a complete stop, I look over to the rest area. My father-in-law has also disappeared from view

“Are you kidding me?” I say out loud. A passing man gives me a look as his impossibly small child zips past me.

I make it to the rest area. By now, I’ve lost control. Frustration lights her match igniting the lonely tinder in my veins. Tears run down my face. Where do I go? Whose tracks can I follow? What if I just can’t do this? How am I supposed to continue?

I head out across the steep slope with my skis almost perpendicular to the mountain. A snowboarder comes close behind me as I turn to the right again. My ski slips, I lean back from my fall and I am down again, flat on my back. I’ve moved no more than 15 yards form the previous fall. “So that’s how this is gonna’ be. Might as well get on with it.”

New instructions for getting up from a fall:

Step One: Breathe.

Step Two: Don’t cry. It won’t help you get out of this.

Step Three: Accept that you are all alone and they aren’t going to help you up. If tears fall anyway, return to Step 2.

Step Four: Breathe again. Decide to get up. Keep on keeping on.

I am up and down again in less than five seconds. Get Up, turn left, fall down. Get up, turn right, fall down. I repeat this at least four more times. Anger, fear, frustration, and abandonment overcome me. “How could they do this to me? They left me here, all by myself. By myself. I have to do this alone – again!” Luckily no one seems to notice that I’m literally talking to myself on the piste.

This is the loneliness of keep on keeping on. It never goes away. It comes back when you’re scared for life, miles from civilization. When you need your own sense of self-worth, when you need to know people love you, when you asked them above all else, “Please don’t leave me.”

They don’t know. They don’t understand what it means to be left behind. And you know they will always leave you. The worst thing that’s ever happened to you and people do it over and over again every single day. Even the ones who are supposed to love you – they forget and leave you by yourself, to find your own way down, even if it means rolling down a mountain and starting an avalanche. That is what it feels like to grieve.

            I channel my anger and play the words I will say to them at the bottom of the mountain, in my mind “You are dead to me.” I charge all the way down the rest of the mountain, falling once or twice until I reach the slower, flatter slope at the end. The foam on my mask is soaked with tears. When I finally get to the bottom, I don’t see them.

Finally, I see my husband. “You left me. Then your dad left me. Then I fell. And I fell and I fell.”

            “Where did you guys go? You must have turned the wrong way.”

Be careful of the words you imagine yourself saying. You may say them. “You’re dead to me.” He laughs until he sees my tears. How can you trust anyone when even the ones who know and love you leave you with your skis in the air, flat on your back on the side of a mountain?

            The next day, in my lesson, I ski that same run with an instructor. When I fall, he tells me to get up and lean forward. Go with the feeling of falling. Use it to pull you down the mountain. Keep on keeping on. I don’t fall again. I carve my ski deeper into each turn. You can’t resist the fall – you have to embrace it.

Learning to ski is learning to live after someone you love, who was supposed to take care of you dies. Only you can trust yourself to finish the run. You have to lean toward the fall - it’s the only way down the mountain.