Superpowers & Disabling Ableism
As I dig into this week’s topic, I first want to encourage you to watch or listen to this week’s episode of Collective Conversations featuring TEDx Motivational Speaker Alycia Anderson. Born to an able-bodied identical twin sister, Alycia has a congenital disability that requires her to use a wheelchair for life. Alycia’s passion for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility makes her a profound advocate and expert. She is an inclusion superwoman and brings her expertise to the uncomfortable topic of ableism.
What is Ableism?
Ableism is defined as discrimination and social prejudice in favor of able-bodied people based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. It is so prevalent that we don’t even realize it exists. Ableism occurs when we look at someone with a disability as needing to be fixed in order to be whole or we define them solely by their disability and miss the person altogether. Saying “You don’t look disabled” as though it is a compliment or “You’re too beautiful to be in a wheelchair.” Those and so many other dehumanizing comments happen regularly throughout the life of a person living with a disability. Some disabilities are easily evident by the use of a wheelchair or other assistance device. According to accessibility.com, an estimated 20% (or more) Americans live with invisible disabilities.
Bold Strokes
Listening to Alycia share her experience, it quickly becomes evident that she brings significant talents to the table, some of which were honed because of her disability. A longtime member of the multifamily community, Alycia tells in her employment story that she never told a potential employer that she would arrive to the job interview in a wheelchair. Some time after she was hired, she asked her boss about the decision to hire her and he said, “I knew you had to be a planner. You had to plan how much earlier to leave, how to navigate the obstacles to arrive here on time for the interview.” He saw the skills she perfected because of her disability in addition to her formal education, experience, and infectious enthusiasm.
Anxieties into Assets
All of us have things we are insecure about and an internal story we tell ourselves about our limitations. Shifting your mindset to turn those anxieties into assets is a skill we can all take away from Alycia’s story. I think that also applies to how we engage with people who live with disabilities. I encourage you to move past any fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and engage human to human, laying aside any preconceived ideas about ability or inconvenience.
I will close with a call to action that we do the work to make accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion the pathway to developing the superpowers of those around us. It is fundamental to our businesses and in our work as providers of housing. Serving people. It’s what we do.
Let’s work together to flip the switch and disable ableism.
New Year – Same You
Another trip around the sun is done and across the globe, the ink has barely dried on a fresh list of new year’s resolutions. The “new you” is a concept driven by the marketers and newsy types who would sell you their magazines filled with ways to improve upon yourself. Lose some weight, start that program, sign up for the gym, pay for the class, and purchase the organizational tools that look so cool on your social media feed where everyone else’s pantry screams perfection (does any even cook or eat there?). In those same photos, all the beautiful people seem to live in perfectly curated spaces filled with white sofas, gauzy linens, and beautiful baubles. My friend used to say, “Where is the junk mail?”, a phrase that was intended to encompass all the accouterments of a lived-in space – the toys, the inevitable crayon marks, and handprints, laundry spilled out, and books piled precariously. The disparity between the fake utopia and your very real life leaves you feeling like you just don’t measure up.
The “new you” resolution setup is a gimmick that is almost certain to fail. It is designed that way for the very reason that it lures you into the next round of promotions to make your life more Instagrammable. I would offer you this perspective instead. It is unnecessary to create a “New You” when the current You is already just fine. There will always be opportunities to grow and evolve but I encourage you to first begin with some self-reflection and a hearty appreciation for the wondrous gifts of your existing body, mind, and soul.
Reflections
Here’s an exercise – take pen and paper and draft a list of good things you contributed last year to the world. It all counts – the big and small things – because every act of kindness, empathy, generosity, and love had a positive impact on someone else, a value that was generated by your existing good self. Not some imagined future You who might be ten pounds lighter or ten years younger or driving a better car. The now You. The real You. See, the real you was just the right person who was needed at that moment to bring comfort or joy or relief to someone else.
The other important things to consider are the acts that pay into you, that fill your tank, and enable you to have the bandwidth to feed into others. I know, “self-care” has become overused to the point that it has lost its meaning. People quickly equate self-care to bubble baths and pedicures, neither of which make my personal list. I like to think of self-care in terms of the promises I make to myself that I actually keep. Being honorable to myself serves to remind me that I am worth the investment of my time and resources such that in the end, it makes me a better man which is essential in my quest to be a better husband, father, friend, and leader.
Rewind
The last two years have been a blur of evolution at warp speed. It almost feels like a science fiction movie, somehow not real. Times like these make self-reflection even more important. But, if you didn’t keep a journal as part of your routine to capture your experiences, the age of technology will lend you quite a hand. From your social media posts to your Outlook sent folder, you will find the fertile soil of your life as it unfolded, and the photos app on your phone literally tracks the images of your days and weeks.
Summarize
A period of reflection on the past year as viewed through those lenses will bring clarity about where you spent your time and what you prioritized. It will also start to become obvious where your life is out of kilter – where what you say is important to you doesn’t align with how you actually apply your time. Therein lies the secret of the areas that will benefit from intentional evolution in your life.
Forget about the fad of “new you” and instead seize the opportunity to move the needle of your actions in line with your intentions. Baby steps.
Hopeful Struggles
If you subscribe to my newsletter The Weekly Rundown, you might have noticed my book recommendation for Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to begin engaging with Brené’s content. She is a prolific writer, speaker, and social scientist with an incredible ability to put language to truth that brings perspective and speaks directly to the soul. I found this nugget while reading her book; “Hope is a function of struggle.” Woah.
Sense of Scarcity
Many of us learned a sense of scarcity from our own lived experiences. When there was never enough food, clothes, time with parents, or a sense of belonging with peer groups, we learned not to trust in our worthiness. It follows then that we might seek to avoid the pain associated with those unmet needs and to prevent our children from the feeling of not having whatever it is they need or want. Check out Instagram children’s birthday party images for proof of just how over the top we are willing to go in this pursuit.
The fear of scarcity fuels a host of helicopter parenting behavior that ultimately harms our children more than it helps. When we intervene to protect hurt feelings or negative consequences, we deny our children their opportunity to learn from experiences. Brené says that hope is a function of struggle. People with the highest hopefulness have the knowledge that they can move through adversity, therefore when we take adversity away from our children, we diminish their capacity for hope. Yikes! The best intentions often meet unexpected ends.
Cheating Others
In one of my daily vlogs recently, I posited that we cheat others out of the opportunity to be better versions of themselves. In that particular context, it was about holding everyone in the room accountable to the shared values of the group. For example, if one person is not listening but instead spending all their time on the phone or is otherwise distracted, that person is obviously cheating the others in the room. But the harder task remains. The person or people who saw that behavior and failed to address it were cheating the offender out of the chance to improve and cheating themselves out of the chance to become better leaders and learn the art of healthy confrontation.
Just as helicopter parenting hurts our kids, ignoring poor behavior at work hurts everyone. In another vlog, I propose the value in these four words, “What do you think?” When an employee or direct report asks you a question, the easy thing is to answer it. Your years of experience mean you can quickly respond and move on to other things. But your real responsibility is to help that person grow. Ask clarifying questions, help them hone down to the real problem, then ask, “What do YOU think?” Teaching that team member how to talk through problems and arrive at their own decision empowers and fortifies them for the next challenge.
We are all made better by the struggle. It isn’t always easy, but it is the only way to truly grow your personal and professional relationships.
In what ways has struggle made you a more effective leader, partner, or parent? Share your stories with us!
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All the Right Answers
In our earliest educational experiences, we learn the value of knowing all the answers. The delight of being the first to raise your hand and give the correct response is a simple thrill that reinforces the quest to study hard, fill in the blanks, and make good grades. I recall being reminded of the dangers ahead if you screwed up and scarred your permanent record. Where is that record anyway? Who keeps it and will it really be pulled out and held up as evidence of my value? Or the lack thereof? Somehow, I doubt it.
In grades K-12 followed by college or trade school, each includes its own forms of testing. Students cram their brains chock full of facts and theories, some valuable and others not so much. As you grow in your career and earn promotions based on your knowledge, skills, and ability to generate results, there comes a time when it is no longer possible to know all the answers. The best leaders do not even try to know them all.
Somewhere in the gap between knowing how to do everything to leading a broader team lies the biggest stumbling ground for new leaders. Even the most successful managers can struggle to let go of the intricate details and learn to keep an eye on the bigger picture upon moving up the leadership ladder, a delicate and endless balancing act where results are always important but need to be achieved through the work of others.
The failure doesn’t fall on these leaders of tomorrow, it lands squarely on the leaders of today. We have a responsibility for the long-term success of these rising leaders. The talent development path requires hard and soft skills – including the humanities. The industry is so focused on keeping up with the tech wars that the anthropological subjects get pushed to the side.
In 1989, Sydney Yoshida posed the “Iceberg of Ignorance” to easily identify the depth of understanding the front line problems in an organization. Sydney was a consultant who worked for a Japanese car manufacturer and discovered a lack of knowledge within the classic hierarchy. It shows the clear disconnect between front-line staff and upper management. The Iceberg of Ignorance breaks down like this:
- Front line staff see 100% of the problems
- Team leads see 74% of the problems
- Team managers see 9% of the problems
- Executives see 4% of the problems
I should note that these findings are related to the specific Japanese car manufacturer Sydney studied and are not necessarily identical to other companies, but my experience tells me that his results are within a fair margin of many other industries. For our purposes today, I want to lean away from the specific hierarchical percentages and into the opportunity found in his report.
I anticipate that the knee jerk reaction of a novice regional level manager might be to feel embarrassment about not having all the answers and to revert back to what they know, that is to get into the details to such an extent that the workers on the ground might feel judged, unheard, and usurped. The knock-on effect might then be for staff members to learn the lesson that speaking up only brings more intrusion, more burden, and no real assistance. Silencing your front-line teams is a real shame. It is a missed opportunity to use your best resources to solve genuine hurdles that impede performance, to properly support a novice leader, and worst of all, it leads to a dangerous erosion of your company’s culture.
If 100% (or any number that approaches it) of your front-line team members know the challenges they face in producing their work, therein lies your best resource to offer solutions. Honest, open-hearted conversations can lead to genuine responses that include “This is the problem. I think this is the solution.” The answer might be mechanical, or procedural, or some other fairly straightforward fix. You will never know if you don’t ask the right questions and train up your next-generation leaders in how to listen, move the boulders upstream, and execute real solutions through working with and supporting others.
What powerful iceberg-type lessons have you learned in your career? Please share them with the Multifamily Collective community!
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Over the River
It’s that time of year when holiday tunes ring forth from every store, elevator, playlist, and television show. “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go.” It’s a great lyric filled with nostalgia and recalls images of a loving nuclear family gathering for food and celebration.
People labor long hours to recreate those childhood memories – shopping, cooking, wrapping, and traveling to spend time with extended family. Multiple celebratory events such as school, office, and social holiday gatherings load the December calendar, packed to the gills with things to do – ugly sweaters to create, gifts to give, cookies to bake, trees to trim, and lights to hang.
Work does not stop, and the labor related to employment also fills the calendar. For some people, the workload increases to cover the absence of teammates who are away on well-deserved PTO, and for those in the supply chain and delivery business, there is no time to pause for more than a breath. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, right?
Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher born in 544 BC, and therefore never had to worry about the frenetic demands we place on modern-day holidays. He is quoted as saying, “No man steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”Heraclitus’ quote is deep and powerful, and it has always resonated with me like an acknowledgment of the constancy of change. In this season, and with the added constraints of the last two years, the quote seems even more apropos.
As the restrictions of the pandemic appear to be waning, and we are coming out of what feels like a national chrysalis, we look toward the gathering with extended family with a sense of longing for what was. But for some reason, the family of puzzle pieces never quite fits together the way they once did. To apply Heraclitus’ great quote in my own words – there is no return to seasons past. I am different from who I was. My extended family members have changed, as has the family unit. And the world we inhabit is different. We are all constantly evolving.
Change is the only constant. I encourage you to embrace the honesty of change and look to whatever form of celebration you choose with an eye towards what is without the expectation of recreating what was. It is good to remember the past while we enjoy the present. Tomorrow will bring change yet again.
Not the same river. Not the same man.