Lives of Service

By Karey Love Shaffer D’Penha
April 24, 2008

Statically 80% of all employees in the workforce today are dealing with some major personal event in their lives - from health issues to serious family issues and everything in between. Given that businesses are run for and by people, this statistic is staggering. Successful companies are mindful of personal issues, yet find a way to accomplish their mission against the odds.

Our success in life has very little to do with our circumstances, yet has everything to do with how we chose to respond to events and people especially in the tough times. It is easy to be kind on our good days; the real difficulty in life is choosing kindness when everything inside of us feels angry, hurt or unappreciated. It is those times, when we have to dig deep to find the light within to chose kindness.

As we get older, the actual events on a particular day fade and we are left with memories and impressions from interactions with people. If we take a moment to reflect, I suspect that you will find as I have, countless people who made an impression or a memory from a simple act of kindness. Often those interactions occurred when we were experiencing one of those significant life events, which evidently is 80% of our existence. If we wait for the perfect time to serve one another, when we are doing well, we miss out on those priceless moments to truly experience our humanity with another.

I am fortunate to have the experiences of my youth in a not so perfect family with challenging circumstances. We all have family; some of the most interesting battles an individual will face in life are not on the world front, but on the home front. As we reflect on our family experiences, both good and bad, it is hard to argue for world peace until home peace is acquired. Does peace require that we always see eye-to-eye? Hardly. It does however require that we respect one another, no matter how tough the situation, when everything inside you wants to lash out. In those moments if we can just hold still long enough to feel our emotions run through us and identify them, we then have the ability to choose a response.

My cookie baking grandmother had two signs on her kitchen wall I remember growing up. One had a picture of Christ which said “I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it” the other was simply this “Chose Ye This Day Whom Ye Will Serve”. It didn’t say, chose this month, next year sometime in the future, it said; “Chose Today” all day whom you’ll serve. If we have a bad day, which we will, we do the best we can that day, then we get another chance to choose. She was the mother of fifteen children and the grandmother of lots. She managed to make us (all her granddaughters, daughters and daughter in-laws) porcelain dolls which she hand painted, not an easy task.

My swearing, drinking, smoking grandmother didn’t have signs in her kitchen; she had piles of plastic, news papers and cardboard. We knew better than to mess with grandma’s piles. She believed that we were all going to live in a garbage dump if we didn’t start getting serious about recycling. She wasn’t going to listen to us complain about what she did to contribute to the garbage pile we made planet earth. My grandmother would visit the elderly and sick weekly in her neighborhood (she was in her 70’s) spend sometime chatting, collect their recycling and drive her pick-up truck to the recycling center and make enough money to support her small social security check. The guys at the recycling center loved to see my grandma Velma, her loads were always so clean and well organized, they paid her extra for that and she let us know not to mess with her piles. Try slipping grandma some money to help ease her burden, she would find someone less fortune than herself and give it away.

My grandfather was called the candy man because he would give out suckers to all the children at church. He always had at least 100 suckers in his pockets at a given time and as soon as church broke a sea of children of all ages would swarm around grandpa. Disgusted parents would ask if we planned to pay for the dentist bill and he would say, “Come on, what can one sucker do?” In his youth, grandpa jumped the rails from Ohio to Montana to find work to support his family during the Depression. He was the only white guy on an all black minor league baseball team, only team in town so it didn’t much matter who the folks were. He was the pitcher and they called him “Monte”. Grandpa was a great story teller, no matter how many times he told the story; he would light up like it was the first time, with his arms swinging to emphasize a point. As we got older, we’d hear the same story that delighted us as small children and would challenge the facts of his story. He didn’t care, it happened just as he said it did, we were just happy to see him. He brought us boxes of suckers, which did do havoc to our teeth. Every so often, one of grandpa’s silly songs will come to mind and I can tell he’s checking in to let me know he is still around.

They go like this (my siblings can sing along)

“I don’t like work and work don’t like me, that’s why I’m a bum, bum and sing this melody. Halleluiah, I’m a bum. Halleluiah bum again. Halleluiah, give me a hand out and I will get in line again.”

“You got to kiss your mama, treat her right or she won’t be home when you call. (in a woman’s voice) I don’t like that kind of man, who lives on the installment plan. You got to kiss your mama, treat her right or she won’t be home when you call.”


My mother makes the best bread in town; she is famous for her bread rings, dinner rolls and baked treats. She has the ability to make something beautiful and useful from things that most would find ordinary. It isn’t until she brings her vision to life that people see what she saw in her mind a long time before they get it.

My mother took some college classes she did well in the classes that she wanted to learn about, doesn’t need a piece of paper telling her that she is smart. With eleven children of her own, she is the master program manager. She could manage to feed us all on what ever was left after my Dad paid the bills. She is a master as finding a deal. She created a sophisticated coupon system combined it with weekly store specials and would make a list and navigation route to acquire all the best deals in town to feed her family. If we went with her for this mass shopping experience (a lot of shluping), we’d get to eat at our favorite Mexican restaurant or at Wendy’s. She taught us to take care of ourselves (without a doctor visit unless it was life threatening) and younger siblings at a very young age, partly for sanity partly because life is tough and it is good to learn while you are young to stand on your own two feet.

My mother was always the one that defended our need to be kids and play once in awhile. We always enjoyed those Saturday morning cartoons, when she scolded my dad for making us work to often on the weekends. The neighbor kids would love to come to our house after chores were done, mom’s only rule for our massive water fight, no water in the house. Everyone, everything that could hold water and everything outside was fair game.

My dad is known by everyone in town as Mr. Shaffer. Everyone had to go through one of Mr. Shaffer’s math classes at least once if they attended Junior High or High School. He was the Math gate keeper for our small town in Montana. His reputation is legendary, ask anyone who attended school in our town, they know Mr. Shaffer and that he likes Bananas, not Apples. He has a collection of Bananas; stuff related to Bananas that students gave him through the years. When you gave oral board presentations, you didn’t get a grade you got “Nice Work”, “Banana” or an “A for Effort”, yah, effort doesn’t start with an A, his favorite joke.

When we had him as our Math teacher, he made us call him dad in front of all of our classmates, which was so embarrassing. He also made us give him a hug and a kiss before we left the van each day before school, which also was embarrassing, more so as we got older. He taught us stuff like “Moss Grows on the North Side of a Tree” and the “Shortest Distance between Two Points IS a Straight Line”. Both of which I have used to get out of some sticky situations in life, work and school.

My Dad taught us to work not just for the family but for others less fortunate than ourselves. When we cut wood for the winter, we’d bring wood to one of our neighbors whose husband passed away. That wasn’t just the first year; it was every year for as long as we cut wood and could bring it to her. We had a big garden and my dad would always give food to anyone who passed by or was in need. Only rule, you needed to pick the food yourself and help with some weeds while you were there.

I’ve been surrounded by examples of ordinary people managing to do extraordinary things one day at a time.

Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ

By Daniel Goleman
Highlights: June 3, 2006


"It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

"Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel." - Horace Walpole

"Anyone can become angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – this is not easy." - Aristotle

1. Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness

• Recognizing a feeling as it happens – is the keystone of emotional intelligence.
  
• The ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. The inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy.
• People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take.

2. Managing emotions.

• Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness.
  
• Chapter 5 of the book examines the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake of rampant anxiety, gloom or irritability – and the consequences of failure at this very basic emotional skill.
  
• People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets.

3. Motivating oneself.

• Marshaling emotions in the service of goals is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity.
  
• Emotional self-control – delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness – underlines accomplishment of every sort.
  
• People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake.

4. Recognizing emotions in others.

• Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill”.
  
• Chapter 7 of the book investigates the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reasons empathy kindles altruism.
  
• People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want.

5. Handling relationships.

• The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others.
  
• Chapter 8 of the book looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that build popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness.
  
• People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.

Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way

By Robin Gerber
Excerpts: June 9, 2006


Learn from Your Past

• Your childhood is a leadership legacy. Reflect on it and use it to build your leadership.
• Be honest with yourself as you think back to your earliest memories.
• Be as curious about exploring your memories as you are about making new discoveries
• Connect your memories to your leadership goals and values.
• As you draw on your memories, focus on the positive lessons that can help you reach your goals.

Find Mentors and Advisors

• Be proactive about finding mentors. Don’t make excuses that stop you from pursuing opportunities.
• Recognize that you can’t know everything. Look for a mentor who can help in your weaker areas or with a new challenge.
• Remember that mentoring is a reciprocal experience. Look for ways to use your growing leadership skills to help your mentor.
• As you learn, grow, and change, as you become more secure and powerful in your ability to lead, look for opportunities to be a mentor to others.
• Your mentor may be older or younger than you; you may have more than one mentor at a time and will likely have more than one mentor over the course of your career.

Mothering: Training for Leadership

• To talk about leadership, women need to use language authentic to their experiences.
• Mother-leaders are great at multitasking, a key skill for any leader.
• Mothering is a testing ground for the leadership required to foster strong interpersonal relationships and collaboration.

Learning the Hard Way

• You can not avoid your share of personal challenges, difficulties and disasters. It is how you handle them that will determine how your leadership develops.
• Understand that you cannot change or control others; you can only change and control yourself.
• Strive for self-mastery – the ability to help and heal yourself by your own actions.
• Search for optimism and affirmation in even the darkest experiences.
• Use the strength that develops from your sorrow to act. Be a leader in command of yourself, sustained and driven by the power of your experience.

Find Your Leadership Passion

• Finding your leadership passion will depend on clarifying your values. Values motivate great leadership, underpin the actions that you take to build your leadership, and lead to lasting and transforming change.
• Take the phrase “I can’t” out of your vocabulary. Nobody succeeds by expecting to fail.
• Take the word “should” out of your vocabulary. Act on your authentic wants and needs, not on those imposed by others.
• Leaders act within their environment. Every act of leadership based on your mission builds your capacity for making change on a larger and more transforming scale.

Your Leadership Your Way

• Women often lead differently than men. Follow your authentic instincts for leadership.
• Your leadership will be most effective if you stick to the mission of your organization.
• Like all good leaders, you must “challenge the process” by questioning the status quo, looking for ways to be innovative, and exercising creativity. In this way, you can help your organization succeed.
• Stick to your principles and inspire others by acting on them. Demonstrate that you can be trusted and you will get the trust of those around you.

Give Voice to Your Leadership

• Learn to be an effective personal communicator by getting honest feedback and honestly assessing your communications skills. Then use practice to improve.
• Show your sincerity and passion as you communicate in both words and images. If you don’t have the conviction to support your idea no one else will either.
• Don’t hide your light behind anything or anyone.

Face Criticism with Courage

• Build your firsthand knowledge around the issues and ideas where you want to take leadership.
• Reach out to people. Listen and learn about their concerns.
• Be a leader that knows the way before you show the way.
• Understand that leadership comes with criticism. Expect it and be ready for it.
• Handle criticism with less emotion and more intelligence. Be open to constructive ideas. Be strong in the face on unjust attacks.
• Distinguish between criticism that you value and can use versus criticism that is best to ignore.

Keep Your Focus

• Remain true to your leadership passion even when you face drastically changed circumstances. You can adjust your vision to fit the times.
• Embrace change. See it as an opportunity not a setback. Be the person who steps up to the new challenge and brings others along.
• Use every avenue, every method, and every opportunity to advance your vision.
• Build loyalty and a legacy to carry on transforming change by encouraging leadership in other people.

Contacts, Networks and Connections

• Look for opportunities to network wherever you can. Take the initiative in meeting new people and looking for ways that you can help each other.
• Be broad and inclusive in building your network. Sometimes the most helpful contact is the least obvious.
• Understand that networks and alliances are built over time. Be intentional about developing the right networks and alliances for your goals – and be patient.
• Be a “connector” linking people in your networks to each other.

Embrace Risk

• Leaders are risk takers who seek out and accept new challenges.
• Focus on your abilities, your talents, your strengths.
• Accept that there are problems you can’t control and focus on what you can do.
• Lead by example.
• Understand that thinking and talking must lead to action – from yourself and others whom you inspire to act.

Never Stop Learning

• Learn from everyone by inviting others to teach you.
• Be curious. Curiosity nurtures the souls and spirits of people.
• Learn and listen. Leaders who are the best learners are the best listeners.
• Empower others by honoring their ideas with your serious attention and interest.

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

By Don Miguel Ruiz

Excerpts

Be Impeccable With Your Word

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

"Your word is the power that you have to create"

"You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything"

"When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself."

Don't Take Anything Personally

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

"Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me."

"Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves"

"You can choose to follow your heart always"


Don't Make Assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

"The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth"

"We only see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear"

"We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do"


Always Do Your Best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

"Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward."

"If we like what we do, if we always do our best, then we are really enjoying life. We are having fun, we don't get bore, and we don't have frustrations."

"When you do your best you learn to accept yourself"

One Thing…

By Karey Love Shaffer D’Penha
July 2002

One statement.
One action.
One thought.
One idea.
One person.
One thing… to push us to reach our potential.

One action.
One thought.
One idea.
One person.
One thing… to push us.

One thought.
One idea.
One person.
One thing… to reach us.

One idea.
One person.
One thing… to push us to reach.

One person.
One thing… to reach our potential.

One person…

Reach your potential.

Simply Simple

By Karey Love Shaffer D’Penha
May 2002


Black, white, yellow, blue –
Which of these makes up you?

A label here, a label there –
It really seems to go no where.

Why can’t we just accept –?
What makes us happy can not be kept.

On a shelf, in a box or bound in a book –
Why is it so hard to stop and look?

Beyond what we think we see –
Is a person, a soul just wanting to be free.

To express who they are and do as they do –
Why should it matter to me and you?

Why burden other with our opinions and such –?
When all that in needed is kindness – or gentle touch?

Can we celebrate the triumphs of the human soul –?
As valued success, a bit closer to the goal.

To love what is human – tapping the divine
Found in a moment not a bottle of wine.

The beauties of life can be so simple –
Like someone to love and warm food for example.

To conquer fears as required, to truly live –
As one so desires – to allow others the same and give –

Love, life – the very thing that sets us free –
Freedom from labels and the ability to be –

Not what you think, but as I think –
Why is it so hard to understand the kink?

I was born to be me, in a land of the free –
Where eagles still fly – hope to those who see.

Our unity in hope for a world of peace –
Could really be something – but it isn’t for lease.

Enough to believe, but still not willing –
To give up pettiness or the glass ceiling

The struggle for peace, not only a world issue
When neighbors need more than a lousy tissue

Look beyond the labels, the differences and colors –
To the eyes, the soul and no other.

Simple acts of kindness, not only cure the soul –
But a world of blindness, now that is a worthy goal.

CHAPTER 7 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Teaching vs. Talking

“Virtually all students, those with and without exceptionalities, will have difficulty learning or remembering classroom material at times. All students stand to benefit from instructional strategies that will assist them to process information more effectively.” (Banikowski & Mehring, 1999, p.16, emphasis added)

The theme "learning is not a spectators’ sport" appeared in more than one place in the research I conducted. Based on my classroom experience as an adult learner, some academic professionals fail to cognitively realize what that means: active engagement enhances memory and learning. While cognitive memorization has its place to lay the foundation on which to build “knowledge,” it should not replace active engagement.

Bloom (1987) confirms that by engaging individuals actively in learning, most learners will retain:

10% of what they READ
20% of what they HEAR
30% of what they SEE
50% of what they SEE & HEAR
70% of what they SAY
90% of what they SAY & DO

It appears that by using teaching methods beyond traditional lecture (see 20% above), academic professional do indeed have the ability to improve retention and learning. In other words, the fact that we remember how to spell means our elementary teachers knew what they were doing with those alphabet blocks. Applicational learning is vital to comprehension. If one can not apply what is learned, in my opinion, true knowledge is not acquired.

As Albert Einstein is quoted to say; “If you can't explain a concept to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.” It isn’t until we embrace a concept, take it for a spin and are able to teach that same concept in a way a young child could understand, do we truly become a master of the concept.

Drs. Alison K. Banikowski and Teresa A. Mehring put it this way in their article, “Strategies to Enhance the Memory Based on Brain-Research”:

For educators, what's the point? If teaching occurs without learning, we might as well skip the teaching in the first place! Educators must ensure that students attend to learning, attach new learning to previous learning, actively engage in learning, construct meaning, and demonstrate their learning. All of this requires memory. No true educator simply wants to "teach"; educators want students to "learn." Educators want learners to be able to organize, store, and retrieve knowledge and skills. By applying what we know about how the brain learns and remembers, educators can focus on the "learning" aspect of the teaching/learning process. (1999, p. 1, emphasis added)

It seems Banikowski and Mehring agree with Gardiner: there is more to teaching than talking at students. Educators must attend to actually imparting knowledge by giving students information in formats their brains can accept, recall and utilize.

Dr. Anita E. Woolfolk, an expert in educational psychology, explains that there is more to education than lecturing. "Knowledge is more than the end product of previous learning; it also guides new learning […] What we already know determines to a great extent what we will pay attention to, perceive, learn, remember, and forget" (Woolfolk, 1998, p. 247). Banikowski and Mehring agree. They affirm, “The research is clear on the role of prior knowledge to memory and learning. Having prior knowledge or experience which relates to the current learning enhances memory and conversely, lacking prior knowledge or experience with the current learning reduces memory” (1999, p. 13).

Banikowski and Mehring feel that:

Educators [really] have two choices.

1. They can find the knowledge and experience the student currently has and "hook" the new learning to it. [The] goal is to help students recall what they know about a topic and help them use this knowledge gained previously to guide their comprehension of the new learning.

2. If no prior knowledge or experience exists or cannot be tapped, educators can create the prior experience. (Banikowski & Mehring, 1999, p. 9, emphasis added)