Humanity
Cracking Nuts
Pecan pies, divinity candy, roasted and salted, or just plain – pecans are ubiquitous in the south. Whether you call them pea-CANs or pea-CAHNs is likely down to where you grew up as the pronunciation was passed down through the generations. When I was young, we never bought pecans that had already been shelled – not when my parents had free child labor readily available in the form of my siblings and me. I remember that there was a pecan tree where we rode our bikes, and we could take as many pecans as we could carry. I was really bummed when that tree was struck by lightning, bringing our free pecans to an end.
We learned how to crack pecans by putting two nuts in your palm and applying pressure with both hands then picking out the meat and leaving the shell. If you’ve ever mistakenly left even a tiny bit of the inner shell, the bitter taste served as a reminder to be more careful next time. I recall that we had a bowl of unshelled nuts with a nutcracker and picks to aid in getting to the good stuff. The bowl had some sort of fake bark on the outside. You know it’s from another time when it’s labeled vintage and you can buy it on eBay for almost $70!
Shelling pecans manually may never come back in vogue but there are some things from the past that are worth the labor to bring them back. Good old Americana in the form of family road trips seems to be making a bit of a comeback. I know that seems like a far-flung idea what with gas knocking on the door of $5/gallon, but I believe that the pandemic has awakened a desire to return to earlier family experiences. If there is one way for families to reconnect, it’s a road trip. If you can survive days 1-3, there is a tipping point where you start to communicate with each other. But brace yourself – the early days can be a grind and have you questioning what sort of crazy decision started this mess.
Thinking about those endless drives to see roadside attractions and national areas of interest reminds me of some of the roadway giants – Howard Johnson’s, Holiday Inn, and Stuckey’s. Among the many things I looked forward to were the Stuckey’s pecan logs. Light fluffy nougat dipped in caramel and rolled in pecans, the Stuckey’s pecan log was too much of everything – delicious, sweet, and sticky perfection.
Stuckey’s motto – Relax. Refresh. Refuel. – signaled their role as a precursor to the modern convenience store. The Stuckey’s story began in 1937 with a roadside stand and a family-owned pecan grove but its brand heyday was definitely in the 60s & 70s with 370 stores in 40 states, which makes sense because that was pretty much the peak of the family road trip.
Over time, the stores went into decline, and the family business was sold. Eventually, the brand was diluted and its future was grim. Enter Stephanie Stuckey, an environmental lawyer who decided to revive the brand and her grandfather’s vision. It is an uphill battle by any measure, but if it can be done – this dynamo will make it happen. If you aren’t connected to Stephanie on LinkedIn or following her on social media, stop right now and do it. You know she’s got something going for her if the massive views on TikTok are any indication.
Stuckey’s comeback story is a master class in the power of one person, the importance of candor-filled storytelling, and social media done right. Whatever obstacles you face – grit, humor, honesty, integrity, respect, and authenticity will go a long way to improving your lot. So, I’m not going to rewrite Stephanie’s story when she tells it so elegantly. She says, “I invested in storytelling, and I invested in beautiful design.” She believes that spending strategic dollars on design is the most important aspect of branding. AND she is hanging onto the company sacred cow – that pecan log roll. Smart thinking.
I would kick myself if I failed to mention that Stephanie Stuckey has a standing invitation to be a guest on our podcast “Collective Conversations” any time. I would consider it a high honor to hear her story firsthand. So, if any of you know Stephanie – please connect us!
Do you have a Stuckey’s story? Or a brand revival story? Share them with us here or on our social media. We all learn from each other.
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Business is Personal
Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash
Business IS Personal
In The Godfather (1972) Michael Corleone infamously says, “It’s nothing personal, Sonny – It’s strictly business” when referring to the shooting of a colleague’s father. Far be it from me to tangle with a mob family but given the chance, I’d like to say, “You’re (dead) wrong.”
When team members come to work, either to the physical business center or through virtual/digital systems, they bring their whole selves with them. There is no imaginary coat hook by the door where the problems of real life are parked until the end of the business day only to be picked up and loaded on again before going home.
Businesses serve these whole humans. Pressures, which were mounting long before, have intensified over the past two years as team members’ personal and professional lives merged (and often cracked) under the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic. The disruption of work-life balance, loss of workplace camaraderie, and lack of shared in-person experiences left many workers feeling disconnected from the business. Working parents experienced the additional burdens of juggling remote learning and feelings of constant guilt about not meeting the needs of either family or job.
As pandemic-related restrictions have eased and our lives returned to some new form of normalcy that never quite fit the original mold, businesses should be thoughtful about the path forward. Organizations better serve their people when they actively remove barriers to healthy, creative, mindful work including those physical, psychological, and cultural obstacles.
It is critically important to intentionally engage with team members and invite candid conversation. Develop an ear for what is not being said as much as what is. I encourage you to make it safe for team members to share pain points and develop strategies that adapt to meet the evolving needs of your teams.
Companies that invest in the true overall wellbeing of their workforce have better outcomes and higher retention. Team members feel the difference when the business views them holistically. In a time when talent is harder to source, companies have come to recognize the importance of working in service of the whole humans that make up their teams.
What are you doing to work in service of your team members and how has that changed in the past two years? Share your stories with us.
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Raindrops Keep Falling
Every week, I publish a morning vlog series as part of the Multifamily Collective content. As always, this week’s daily videos were each published as a stand-alone commentary, but in hindsight, it seems these particular videos may just be parts of the same story and I decided to connect those thoughts in today’s post.
Short-Term
In Short Term Memory, I encouraged our listeners to develop a short-term memory as it relates to adversities in their lives and instead to focus on your purpose.
We all tend to sometimes hyper-focus on our short-comings or mistakes – worrying over them as though they have some value when actually no amount of constant self-flagellation will erase those events. On the contrary, constantly beating yourself up only serves to distract you from your true objectives. Ultimately, your goals are starved for want of your attention while your missteps live only in history and pay you no dividends at all.
If your hours in each day were translated to dollars and you put all your money into the backward-facing bucket, how much is left at the end of the day to invest in your future? None. Exactly. But, if forgetting our personal mistakes were easy, none of us would waste our time thinking about them.
Unhappy
In Unhappy, I recount the startling results of a survey that stated that one in four Americans (25%!) classify themselves as unhappy. Those numbers are hardly surprising given the extended impact of the pandemic, increasing political division, loss of traditional social support systems, and more. Indeed, a troubling sense of dissatisfaction seems to be commonplace.
Once again, there are no easy surefire solutions. If there were, I would encourage you to join me on the rooftop because that is the perch from whence I would be shouting. While not a cure-all, it doesn’t feel like a stretch to say that intentional acts of kindness go a long way towards alleviating some of the world’s pain even if by just one person at a time. Finding opportunities to curate encouragement, joy, acknowledgment, and celebration seem to offer a plus-one scenario wherein you make someone else’s day better and yours is improved in the process.
Like A Kid
Finally, in Like A Kid Again, I tell the story of a recent miserable rainy winter’s morning in Georgia. It had rained all night and the roads were wet, puddles abounded, and I had every plausible reason to forgo my morning run. Except, my morning run is important not just to my physical health but to my mood and psychological wellbeing.
Once I made up my mind to run in the rain, unsurprisingly, I was soon splashed by cars, and every footfall caused a splatter. When you are out in a pouring rain, there soon comes a point where you can’t get any wetter. Instead of shaking my fist at the skies, I felt something akin to childhood well up in me, a remembrance of a time when playing in puddles was a joy-filled experience. My mood was elevated, my shoes were drenched, my heart felt happy, and my energy was through the roof.
The #3 Combo
In the exercise of sharing these stories this week, the combination may have answered my own questions – at least somewhat. Maybe it is possible to release the hold my mistakes can have on me and to shake off that feeling of discouragement by simply letting the rain fall on my face wholly invited and appreciated. The problems we face are complex and, while there are no simple cures, it turns out that there are countless opportunities for simple joy.
When was the last time you felt the rain, danced in the puddles and breathed in the moment for all its bliss? Somehow it seems that we have bought into the idea that happiness is found in expensive vacations at rodent-themed parks. Those can be fun – but so can the rain.
Share your joyful stories with us here or on our social media pages.
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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.
Mirror Mirror
Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash
Have you listened to our episode of Collective Conversations last week featuring Rommel Anacan? If not, I encourage you to check it out because this was an interview filled with pearls of relationship wisdom. Rommel is passionate about helping people win in relationships and in life.
He spoke about the cultural pervasiveness of sarcasm or snark and how those behaviors are perceived as a good thing on social media and even in person. It’s true – what began as fodder for comedians is now often weaponized as posts and comments vie to outwit all prior commenters, seizing “likes” as prizes that validate the writer’s rapier wit. Then Rommel said something that was so powerful in its truth. “Sarcasm is a relational killer.”
That statement is worth a pause. Take a moment and embrace the honesty of those words.
Another form or purpose behind sarcasm is found in self-deprecating statements. People who make those comments often have an internal message center that says something like “I will make the joke about my weakness, body size, past failures, and mistakes so that I say it first. No one can hurt me if I make the joke before they can.” Inside that dark humor lies a bundle of genuine vulnerabilities.
Turn the Mirror Around
When seeking to craft honest connections that benefit everyone involved, it is essential to develop the skills to create and hold safe spaces in those relationships. Before you run headlong into an attempt to force psychological safety, I encourage you to stop and turn the mirror around and do the deep character work within yourself. Carl Jung is quoted as saying “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” There is truth in that statement. I remember being young and arguing with a sibling, only to hear an adult say, “You two don’t get along because you’re just alike.” – a homestyle version of Jung’s quote that I was to hear many more times before I was grown.
Part of that critical self-assessment includes some honest reflection with questions like these:
- What impact does my behavior have on others? People are generally quick to tell someone in a leadership position all the good things but rarely wade into problematic areas.
- Am I actively working to create a safe space? Am I intentional about it?
- What are my blind spots? Even the most self-aware among us have behaviors or catchphrases that fail to serve the people we interact with. It may sound innocuous in your head, but if it causes discomfort to others, then it damages relationship and interpersonal safety.
- Do I invite people to give me candid and even uncomfortable feedback?
- In what ways do I undermine the thing I say I want/believe?
Safe Spaces
Some of the most effective safe spaces start with vulnerable honesty. When a leader says, “The most important work we will do today is to create an environment where everyone feels heard and safe and where we gift each other with our honest and caring feedback. When I do or say something that puts your trust at risk, I ask you to please speak up. I need to learn from those blind spots, and I am humbly asking you to help me.” Modeling what it looks like when someone calls you out and how you react to it is powerful. People trust what they see far more than what they hear.
The honor of leading a team comes with so much more than an impressive title. It brings the responsibility to genuinely recognize the whole human in your care. Educate yourself about the many ways to create safe spaces that protect the sanctity of your relationships and ensure that everyone feels valued and respected.