Caring Businesses

Sunday in many parts of the world is Mother’s Day. You hopefully came up with a great package or offer for moms or those buying for the moms in their life or have prepared for the moms that will shop with you on Mother’s Day. There are so many connections we could talk about when it comes to moms and business, but as I was thinking about it and some recent experiences, the one that came to mind was how caring mothers can be and how much of a difference make that can be for businesses too.

When you’re building and running a caring business you think about things differently and often make slightly or very different decisions based on that perspective or foundation. Caring businesses will put effort and heart into their communications so that they aren’t snotty or arrogant or dismissive or rude to the customers. Caring businesses won’t work on things like DEI and sustainability to put a check mark next to them, they’ll do it because it brings them to or makes sure they get the best team members for their organization (not the quickest or easiest), or because they know that having a planet here for people to live on so they can sell to for more than one generation matters. And when you have leaders that care about all their employees and their customers you’ve got an opportunity to make a lasting impact on people’s lives and build an incredible legacy.

Yes, a business exists to make money, otherwise it’s a hobby. But I don’t believe businesses can thrive for decades or generations if they aren’t built on and run by something other than money. Money is part of it, but I believe that people and humanity are necessary to really make a business not only successful but maybe even beloved by people. So as you maybe deal with some serious crowds over the next few days or are inundated with people that somehow didn’t get the message yet that Sunday is Mother’s Day, maybe you can be the voice of caring and patience and give them a bit of peace in all the chaos. How does your business and your leadership show you care?

A Little Respect for Learning

The start of a new school year always brings up a ton of emotions, lots of change, new and different responsibilities and new people. Even for the parents, there are new people and new experiences and new challenges. As I was watching a DIY tv show the other day the homeowner said that one of the biggest lessons they got out of the whole project was the amount of respect that needed to be given to a project of that type and scale. And it got me thinking about how this time of year is really one big lesson in respecting boundaries, respecting whatever emotions people feel, whatever space they need to adjust, and the support to navigate to this new stage in their life. And this respect needs to be for others as they navigate as well as yourself as you navigate too!

If we start with the understanding that it is a challenging season, and we accept it for what it is, rather than fighting it and being miserable about it, it will be a lot easier to find the ways that work for us, accept the support and help we need and get to enjoy at least some of the month of September, and just as important, we’ll hopefully set ourselves up for success for the entire rest of the school year. I don’t know about you, but as a kid I would have loved to get to June and not only be incredibly thankful that I made it and it was finally done, but that the school year really helped me grow and learn as a person with lessons that I felt confident and positive about taking into the future.

So where do we begin? First I think it begins with being open to trying something different. Yes, you’ve “done school” before, but with each new year you’re learning new things and with different people and have different teachers, and I know from my years of schooling and the learning I’ve done since then that there’s almost always more than one way, if not several ways, to do something. Take a simple math problem like ways to get to the number 10: you could add 5+5, you could subtract 10 from 20, you could multiply 5×2, you could divide 100 by 10. All gets you to the same result but there are reasons to do each of them. Sometimes it’s easier to do things one way and other times it’s easier to do it a different way, and you don’t know what options you have until you’ve been given the opportunity to learn all the different ways you can do it.

Second, it begins with something that is so quintessential classroom and school: remembering that you’re not alone in this journey. I’m thankful that most of my teachers were always open to hearing our questions and helping us understand or work through what we didn’t understand. The good news is that even if the teachers in your life or your kid’s lives aren’t the kind to help you/them through things, there are tons of tutors, coaches, consultants and even parents, grandparents and siblings who can step up and help get you and them to a place where you’re not only comfortable but confident too.

Finally, the answer is always patience. I think we do ourselves a disservice often by wrapping education and learning into the tests and finals and months that we do because it segments things in ways that don’t really help us build on what we’ve learned or understand the connections, or do anything but feel overwhelmed with all we’re trying to learn and process at the same time. So a big key to having a successful school year, or any successful learning endeavor, is to be patient with yourself and others who are involved. Part of that patience is about communication and learning how to express what you don’t understand or what you’re struggling with, as well as communicating the information or perspective in different ways that might help the other person learn or understand better.

Yes, learning is a necessary part of our lives, but it doesn’t have to be the necessary evil that it sometimes turns out to be. As you navigate this new school year with your kids, or maybe a new school year for yourself, or just a new learning opportunity that has come your way, I encourage you to have a healthy respect for the time, work, effort and end result that you hope to achieve.

Doing Your Part

This weekend I was reading about the Pope and how dramatically different His world, and all faith worlds, are right now, since no one can gather in their religious spaces with all of the requirements of staying at home to stop the spread of the virus. One article I read raised the question that some people ask, and that’s where’s the church been lately? To be fair, unlike with other world-challenging situations, those of religious backgrounds can’t do a whole lot and aren’t able to minster in their typical ways. But I digress, that’s not really what we’re here to talk about today. Instead I want to talk about a variation on that question, and that’s what do we do in this situation? What is ‘our part’ (from the saying “do your part”)?

Is it staying at home? Is it cheering for medical professionals at a certain time with open windows? Is it moving the economy along? Is it giving people time to heal before the world resumes activities? Is it bringing groceries to neighbors? Is it taking a job where you can? Is it panicking? With the exception of the last idea there, I don’t believe there is one right answer. This is true for many aspects of our lives: there isn’t only one right way to success, there isn’t always a single right relationship to be in for your whole adult life, there isn’t a best nutritional plan to follow for everyone, there isn’t only one good way to raise or educate children, there isn’t one thing that makes everyone happy universally.

But it does speak to one of the most universal truths, and that’s that we’re all human and should be respected and treated as such. It means accepting that everyone won’t love you and what you’re passionate about. It means you won’t always see eye to eye with everyone on every topic. It means we’ll all work through this challenge/trauma differently.  It means we’ve each had different life experiences. But it also means that, especially when situations like these present (but not exclusive to them), it’s always good to interact with each other with compassion, love, a patient heart and mind, and a willingness to listen.

To address the earlier question, there’s one thing all of us can do, and that’s share something encouraging or supportive or even funny with others in our realm of influence. Keep sending out newsletters and blogging in your (business/non-profit) community even if they’re of a little different topic than usual. Stay connected by sharing on social media and through text and phone calls and on online communities. Pass on knowledge you have that can help someone else through this challenge. And if you feel capable of doing something beyond that, then with appropriate investigation and planning, go ahead and do that.

The only way our communities will emerge from this intact is if we make the effort to stay connected and not shy away from the world or erect mental and emotional boundaries where there are currently physical ones.  How are you keeping your community strong?

A Little Compassion

For the next couple of weeks I’ll be beginning the week with a reflection on going back to school. Many of these insights can be applied to how we adults live our lives and how we interact with others, not just insights to help our kids navigate a new school year. Today I want to reflect on the words of the Dalai Lama:

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

It can be scary and intimidating to begin a new school year, even if you’ve been at that school before much has changed with the new year. There’s new people, new schedules, new homework, new topics to study to navigate, not to mention everything that goes on outside of the classroom. Stress tends to make people frustrated, raises tempers and increases fights and disagreements, and if we’re not careful we can easily pass that stress and those feelings on to others.

If instead we as adults chose to practice compassion, consideration and patience, we’d be able to ease some of the stress that kids go through. We wouldn’t over schedule them after school so that they didn’t have time to do their homework. We’d give reasonable amounts of homework. We’d better communicate with them about anticipated questions and issues, letting them know how we can work with them when issues arise. We’d work with them when issues, mistakes and failures happen, focusing less on guilt and more on doing better next time.

If compassion is a road that leads to happiness, it would serve everyone well to work on choosing compassion over other emotions when we’re faced with challenges and changes.

A Time of Reflection

I was reading yet another email after reading another blog post about someone hitting burnout the other day, and the news has shared that tragically several people connected to mass shootings have committed suicide in recent days. As equipped as I think we may be for all that life throws at us each day, the reality is we sometimes don’t realize how much we’re taking on, don’t ask for the help we need, don’t take time to deal with the overwhelm we’re feeling, and/or don’t realize how serious things have gotten. And then we hit that breaking point, unfortunately sometimes of no return.

Most people have developed coping mechanisms that help them deal with typical daily stresses (a fight with a friend or significant other, deadlines at work, children’s tantrums etc.), but as we know especially from the men and women who have been in the military, there’s no coping with some things, some things we’re just not equipped to deal with normally and that’s when we can get into trouble.

Part of the reason I think we struggle with coping and hit burnout is because instead of taking a step back we pile on the activities, work, people and things. Maybe we think we do it because it means we won’t be able to think about how we really feel or what’s really going on, and that may work for the short term, but it rarely does anything about the actual situation or how you feel.

You may not know it, but we’re in the middle of the spiritual season called Lent which leads to the celebration of Easter. Lent is a time of reflection, for people to get right with themselves and with God. Anytime is a great time to get right with God, but today I’d encourage you to spend some time on self reflection, really considering where your life is at and what you need most. Asking for help and knowing when you need to take a break (and taking one) actually show how strong you are, not how weak.  A little reflection and taking a time-out today can positively shape your future if you let it.  I’d encourage you to make it a regular practice as well since life shows no plans of slowing down or becoming a cake walk anytime soon.

Personal VS Public

Recently I’ve been thinking about how blurry the lines are between many public and private things. We expect to hear about what’s going on in the lives of celebrities, we expect to hear about how things are developing in natural disasters in great detail, we expect to know everything about the officials we elect, and we expect that what we see or hear is what we get. But for most of us, we’re not supposed to be living our full lives in the public eye. It’s uncomfortable to do so. It’s healthy to live some of your life in the public eye, and for that reason all of the advances in technology are great, but there’s something important about having a personal life too.

Our personal life is where we work through our personal challenges, enjoy being alone with ourselves, enjoy being with family and friends, try new things, and work on our inner self mentally and spiritually. It’s our time to be quiet, to laugh, to love, to be the person that only those who we trust most can see. It’s our time to grieve and work through the growing pains. It’s our time to come to terms with changes in our lives and in the world around us. It’s not a time for us to hurt others or ourselves, that’s not something we should do in personal or private.

Sometimes we bring what’s in our personal lives to the public eye, especially when it something we want support on, want to raise awareness for, or want to share our story with others so they’re comfortable sharing their story and/or getting the help they need in a similar situation. But we should never judge people for not sharing their personal lives with the greater public, especially if it’s a painful situation and they were getting the help and support they needed.

So my encouragement to you today would be that before you jump to judge someone over something they didn’t share or did share, that you take a moment to remember that it’s their story and their life and they have to do what they think is right when they think it’s right. Your job is to support them and love them, especially when they’re being brave enough to share their story with you.

Thankful to be Alive

Second chances are a powerful thing. This week we learned that the boys and their soccer coach who went missing while visiting a cave in Thailand were still alive. They were in the cave for 9 days before they were found, and in the days since then people from around the world have been providing the expertise they have in caves and engineering to try to help and get the kids out before they run out of oxygen or the cave floods. Of course many of us are reminded of the Chilean miners who were trapped in a cave for 69 days in 2010. It took a serious effort to get them all out, and while the situation is different, it’s no less overwhelming or scary for the family members of the children and the soccer coach.

I believe that blame does have a place, but not here and now. It can come after we know how the story ends, hopefully with tales of rescue. This week for the kids and parents has been an opportunity to reconnect and share messages that may never have gotten out if they weren’t found. It’s an opportunity for them to talk again and see each other again.

Every day we deal with tragedies, and the loss of people who are killed accidentally or intentionally. There are very few cases of people who have absolutely no one who will miss them, there’s almost always someone left behind who will have to deal with the loss. In so many of those cases there wasn’t the opportunity for last messages, for apologies, for anything except to deal with the loss. But these families have had the chance this week to reconnect, even if it’s with a lot of earth between them.

We’re not guaranteed anything but today. You can’t predict or control what others do, you only have control over yourself. Don’t make light of second chances. Live and love today not because it might be your last day, but because you’re alive today.

The Business of Respect

We’re getting into another holiday season, with Good Friday today, Passover starting tonight and Easter on Sunday. With some of the recent events and these holidays coming up I thought it would be a good idea to talk about something we as business owners can struggle with: the human side of things. I get it, we all want sales, we all want to grow our businesses, but I don’t think that has to happen at the expense of others, or without regard of others. Let’s talk about a few specific examples.

Easter/Passover: there’s a large percentage of the population who will celebrate one of these holidays, and anytime there’s a holiday it means increased stress levels, even if you don’t celebrate the holiday personally because many other people around you will be stressing out. A little more patience and a little consideration can go a long way to diffusing potential tensions and reducing the general stress level.

Social media: I was talking recently with several people who have used social media for their business but really didn’t get it or know how to use it for their business. Yes, businesses do get sales from social media, but it can’t be ignored that it’s social media, not sales media, and that the social aspect is often the missing link between the engagement numbers they have and those they want.

Facebook’s data issue: in some ways it may not seem like a big issue, because “they’re just numbers” but behind that data is a lot more than just numbers on a page, they’re little bits of many people’s lives. At this point the mistakes have happened so changes should be made as a result of the issue and the companies involved need to take responsibility, and then apologies should be issued, with sensitivity to the fears, frustrations, and concerns that people are experiencing.

Feelings and relationships: I was reading an email from one of the business coaches I’ve connected with and she was sharing about her birthday last year and last few months with her father before he died. It was a sweet email and reminded me about the stories and relationships that each of us have, and how as businesses if we’re able to build even a fraction of that kind of relationship with our customers we’re lucky.

No, not every moment in business is a touchy-feely one, there’s a lot of business that is very cut and dried. But behind each and every sale there’s a person, someone who will use the product you’ve created, someone who will share that product with someone they love, someone who will apply your wisdom to their life, someone who will use your service to help someone else, which means it’s not just something you’re creating for and selling to one person, it’s something that can affect many. So how can you make this weekend special for the people you help in your business?

Love is Considerate

This month as we’ve talked and thought about love I was reflecting on what is really one of the central aspects to love and relationships, both romantic and other types: other people. I know it sounds really obvious and yes, it’s important to love yourself, but for a relationship, romantic or otherwise, to really be successful you have to love the other person. Maybe that love is the passionate-fairy-tale-love kind, maybe that love is more of a respectful love, maybe it’s more of a compassionate love, or maybe it’s a mutual love of a sports team or hobby that makes you love another person. There’s a lot more to love than just saying “I love you” or wanting someone else in your life so you’re not alone.

Relationships are about more than just us and what we want or get out of them, there’s a whole ‘nother person to consider, and without that other person there would be no relationship. So where do you stand on your relationships including your relationship with your significant other, your family members, your work colleagues and your friends? Do you really take time to consider them and their needs, capabilities and needs as part of your relationship with them?

I think one of the biggest secrets to showing love to others is just being considerate. There’s nothing fancy or complicated really about it, it’s just you taking the time to open your eyes, mind, and heart to the other person. Sometimes that consideration means being extra patient with them, sometimes it’s about showing them in dramatic form how much you care, sometimes it’s just a touch on the shoulder or text message to let them know you’re there and you support them, and sometimes it’s connecting them to a great opportunity or resource that you hear about.

Have you taken the time to dive into love this month and explore the relationships that are important in your life? Which relationships have you realized need work and which are you most committed to exploring and strengthening?

Mother Teresa on Life, Love, Loneliness and Hurt

Over 100 years ago this month Mother Teresa was born. She was a woman who had incredible wisdom, dedicated her life to a very selfless mission, and taught the world a lot about love. As I was considering her life, I happened upon a few quotes that speak to some insights on how we may be able to help the world heal from the tragic events that have unfolded around the US and world in the past few weeks, not to mention those that are ongoing situations. These situations can’t be resolved with a simple shaking of hands or trading of objects, these are issues that have remained and repeated in one way or another for decades, if not centuries. Resolution will take time, effort on everyone’s part and ultimately a decision that the world is a better place if things were different. Mother Teresa said:

“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”

“If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.”

“I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”

“Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.”

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”

“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

“Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.”

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”

“Peace begins with a smile.”

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

“Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”

No war is won or lost by the actions of one person. No one person could have won WW2 or the Civil War or the Trojan War by themselves. But without each of the individuals who participated in those wars on the winning side, the history may have happened much differently, likely creating a much different today. If the world is to become a healthy, fulfilling, thriving place, we have to start doing something different and treating each other different, starting with ending the violence. Yes, there will always be violence, but in the majority of the time, a simple, quiet word can do more than an abrasive, violent tantrum.  I encourage you to take a deep breath the next time your first reaction is to be nasty or overreact, and see if you can’t communicate with a little more patience, peace, respect and love first.