Ringing Bells

This is taken from my recent speech at a Toastmaster's meeting.

Welcome. Thank you Toastmaster, fellow toastmasters, and honored guests. I’m pleased to present to you today.

I have a question for you to ponder - How many times have you facilitated a workshop or made a presentation– and at the end, despite all your preparation and practice, things don’t go according to plan and you wonder what went wrong?

I found myself asking this question after our recent workshop.

Here's the story --

Recently, Eric and I presented our workshop at the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of the American Society of Training and Development’s Fall Conference. It did not go as well as we had hoped or planned.

When we applied and were accepted to be one of 9 workshop presenters – I was excited for the opportunity to present our workshop, Powerful Complaining – Revealing Your Immunity to Change” – My hope was we would do a wonderful job, everyone would want to attend our workshop, and that after the workshop we would be overwhelmed with offers to come present the workshop for their company or coach them individually.

Warning Bell #1 – the first indicator of trouble (and one of many we ignored) we were told we had 75 minutes for our workshop. Wow! How to reduce a workshop that should be at least 3 ½ hours (210 minutes) into 75 minutes, but we knew we could do it.

Warning Bell #2 - our practice workshop that ran 105 minutes. Looking at that realized that we needed to cut 30 minutes was a little troubling. But, we thought if we just reduced the amount of time we gave for each small group activity, and harvesting feedback, we could get it under 75 minutes. Not perfect, but it would work.

Warning Bell #3 – my anxiety began to increase when a few days before the event the organizers notified us that the last 5 minutes of our time would be used by participants to evaluate our presentation with electronic response cards. And also a reminder they would be introducing us – another few minutes chopped off of our valuable time.

What had seemed like marginally doable at 75 minutes – now began to seem impossible.

However, still living in denial, we moved ahead with our plan in tact thinking we would shave off a minute here and there and it would be alright.

Warning Bell #4 - The night before our workshop Eric and I attended the Organizational Development Networks’ monthly meeting. We watched an experienced presenter take us through her workshop in 75 minutes. I was exhausted by how fast it moved and how much information was packed into that 75 minutes AND I realized also that she had a full 75 minutes.

Did all these ringing bells trigger me suggest to Eric, we rethink our presentation?

NO!

Would there have been time to redesign the presentation – maybe.

You may be wondering what happened the day of the conference?

Reality – the person before us ran late and cut into our time. People were late arriving in the room.

Our time which was to start at 2:45 began at 2:55 and had to end at 3:55 – we eliminated some of the experiential aspects of the workshop. As we neared the end of our time and only had 15 minutes left - we delivered the remaining content to them without any small group activity.

We delivered this content and ran over by about 2 minutes.

The good news was that somehow within these time constraints, people got it. People came up to us afterwards and asked good questions. One person said she was going to recommend to her company that they hire us to present the workshop to them.

What were are learnings?

1. The big learning for us: in the future when we are asked to present a workshop in such a short time frame to think outside the box and not be married to “what we want to do” vs. what we can do.

2. And if the bells start ringing, stop what we are doing and re-examine our plans.

Transparency and Dissent

Transparency is the capacity to share relevant information, to have transparent systems and processes – to be authentic and more. (You can’t really hide things, no matter how hard you try – it will always manifest itself.)

Dissent is the capacity of an organization or relationship to allow each other to express a different point of view. If you are not allowed to say NO (dissent), does your YES have any real meaning?

When these 2 characteristics are present, whatever the dysfunctions, issues, differences – we can talk about it. There is a possibility of creating something new.

Where ever I show up, I use these 2 values to determine if this is a place I can be myself.

Since it is true, the only person I can change is myself; being with a group that does not allow for T&D taps into my unhealthy side. I have to remind myself of this - a LOT. If I'm not allowed to say NO, my NO will manifest in a passive agressive way.

What is the attraction in these places? I'm guessing it is because I have not fully let go of my desire to fix others and change others. It seems easier to fix others, than fix myself. BUT being in a dysfuntional environment/relationship is guaranteed to drown out the small voice saying - "you can only change yourself".

Writing this today was me remembering my struggles these last few years with church. You would think that church would be the one place where they would value transparency and dissent...AND you’d be wrong.

I’ve talked with enough former church staff and members to know that this is what has driven many of us to the position of “church alumni”. (Read unChristian by David Kinnaman or Jim and Casper Go To Church by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper.)

We (church alumni) still love Jesus’s Bride – but we’re in pain because of how church leadership has allowed their egos to harm The Bride and the people they are supposed to be serving. We’ve tried working within the system to help make it better, but after being beat up pretty bad (spiritual, emotional abuse) – we are going to try from the outside.

A few of the wounded have started their own churches and are doing well – they are small churches – but very powerful in how they are serving the community. I’m sure there must be one of these in Cincinnati – maybe I haven’t looked in the right place.

What has been your experience with transparency and dissent?

Promptings - our story continues

It has been a long, short week for me. So much stimulation. So much to think about…Christina Baldwin’s workshop, Phyllis Tickle’s talk on the Great Emergence, a new project and training with Sweeten Life Systems, and of course, the monthly A Small Group gathering at Peaslee. I’m feeling exhausted (and strangely energized) this morning. And, as if that wasn’t enough – we’ve switched to daylight savings time. Ugh!

How long will it take me assimilate all of this? Here is a piece.

After reviewing the materials and suggested process from Christina Baldwin's Story as Leadership workshop, I wrote several more stories. She asked us to think of turning points in our lives and our stories about those events.

This reminded me of the trauma I experienced at 9 years old, when our family moved to a new community. While moving is a trauma for many of us, it was compounded by the fact I had to leave my cousin, Diane. We had lived 1 block from each other for 6 years (2/3 of our lives).

We did almost everything together. Diane and I were like twins in many ways.

We have been separated for a long time now. She has lived in Germany for almost 20 years. Her visits home have been few and far between. And, we have not always been able to connect.

Despite all of that, when we are together with family, we have these side conversations. It is like we are 9 years old again. We connect at a heart level – like immediately. I’d walk away and think, that was weird – how did we do that?

Even my sister and I have to do some warm up to get to the hard stuff, but bam! Diane would dig right in telling me her hard stuff.

We have taken such different paths – it would seem we have less and less in common AND yet, there we are having these heartfelt conversations.

Even though I have not seen or heard from Diane in almost 2 years – since her mother’s funeral – I had this strong desire to share my story with Diane of our time together as children and the pain of leaving her in 3rd grade. My intent was to say this is how I’ve experienced the trauma – how did you cope with it?

I send the email off on Saturday night. Sunday morning, there in my inbox was a reply from Diane.

“Lainie, you made me cry.” She went on to tell me that she has not contacted any of us since the funeral. She now realizes she has been hiding in Germany not dealing with her mother’s death. She then went on to tell me that she was in the midst of preparing to come to the USA for a 2 month visit. She had been dreading coming home and the feelings that will come. My email had broken something lose in her – she was now looking forward to coming home to see me and connecting with the rest of the family. She was glad I had written.

When she gets here, I will hold her hand and walk with her through the pain and memories and some laughter.

It is strange how things unfold – frequently in ways you would never imagine. For me, I think it was part of God’s plan. My part was to be obedient to the promptings.

Timing was everything in creating the opportunity for this story to unfold...

If I had not gone to the workshop in Columbus (and there are if’s before this)
If I had not been so moved by the workshop to write my stories
If I had not emailed the story to Diane
If Diane had not been flying home 2 days later….

I sent my story off to her with no expectation of recognition or reward. And yet, if I had not been obedient to the promptings…

My challenge is to maintain this current awareness of “promptings” and act upon them with wisdom.

More random chaos…