Behind the Mike

You have to love anyone who goes by the name of “Bubba”. Take Bubba Watson for example. He’s just one of the guys. After winning the Masters this year, he commented “I’ve never been that far in my dreams.” I found that very interesting.

Here’s a guy whose call name is Bubba. He reportedly never had a golf lesson in his life. It might be reasonable for him to think that winning the Masters was not necessarily an achievable goal. I choose to think that he did, in fact, have such dreams… but he was humble and gracious enough not to broadcast them.

I called my favorite uncles “uncle Bubba Arthur” and “uncle Bubba Junior”. Bubba is what we southerners use as an affectionate moniker.

Dreams of glory begin and are often extinguished early in life. From the earliest moments I can recall, I was influenced to dream in a positive way. My grandfather, the late Elias S. Mack, Sr., gave me a journal when I was only ten years old and told me to make a list of 500 things I wanted to do in my life. Get real! I’m ten. I don’t know 500 things.

However, that summer, his last on this earth, he mentored me to “dream.” So we went about the process of making the list of “dreams”.

He would often ask me “What do you think about?” In those days, it was mostly sports, so he suggested that I put down lofty sports goals, like playing college football and playing in the NFL or playing baseball on a major league level. None of that ever happened, but I did pursue those sports successfully on a much lower level.

He would ask me “Who inspires you?” The people I found most inspiring were the priests in St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Columbia, SC. He suggested that I take my journal to church and write down the things I found inspiring. It led me to consider the priesthood ever so briefly, but as soon as I learned about celibacy that dream went out the window.

We would look through the newspapers each day. In Lexington, SC, The State newspaper arrived in the morning, and in those days the now defunct Columbia Record was delivered in the afternoon. We would talk about people and events in the news. My grandfather was Mayor of Lexington in the late forties and his son, Eli Mack, Jr. (uncle Bubba Junior), would later serve in that some role.

So naturally, I put politics on my list. I’ll never be Governor and I’ll never be in Congress, but I would not have run for the House of Representatives had I not put Governor on the list. Mercifully, I got my clocked cleaned on my first and only attempt at elected office, eliminating that dream.

When I review, as I often do, that original journal (one of over 250 I now have), I have scratched off 487 of the original 500 things I dreamed about. No, many were not accomplishable, but I never considered getting beat in a political race as a defeat. Instead, I saw it as another great experience in my life. No, I’m not interested in repeating it.

I’ll never be a priest, but I do think I pursued motivational public speaking because I was motivated by a priest, leading me to win the South Carolina Oratorical Speech Contest in high school and later the World Championship of Public Speaking for Toastmasters International. Dreams establish goals in your life.

While Bubba Watson says “I never went that far in my dreams” I submit to you that he was simply too modest to tell us that he does dream deeply every day of his life. When he said he wanted to be a father and he learned that his wife could never produce a child, they adopted a baby. He dreams of being a loving, giving father and husband. You have to admire that.

You have to admire that golf is not the only thing in his life and that being the best father has significantly more importance than being the best on the links. You have to admire the “bubba’s” of the world.

I once had a client who literally wanted to hire me to get even with a former business partner. I had done other speaking for this man’s company, so we had a business relationship. I’ve never had to do the devil’s work. Long story short… my advice to this client was to forgive the partner, who stole literally millions of dollars from him. That forgiveness literally drove the former partner crazy, but more importantly, it empowered my client to move on with his life.

Forgiveness is a gift. You can’t forgive others until you first learn to forgive yourself. This client and his business partner were more than partners; they were best friends and fellow Deacons in their church. Forgiveness would not be easy, but then it never is. The client didn’t have to forgive the sins of the former partner. Hate the sin; love the sinner. There’s powerful evidence of this all through the manufacturer’s handbook, which is what I call the Bible.

Forgiveness of others, however, is worthless to you emotionally unless and until you learn to forgive yourself. The God I worship totally and freely forgives all our sins. However until we learn to forgive ourselves, we can’t forgive others. You can’t give away that which you don’t own!

Our sins don’t disappear when we cleanse our souls with forgiveness, but we have to take responsibility for that process, whether it’s forgiving ourselves or forgiving another.

The process of forgiving involves more than just turning the other cheek. Ensure privacy between you and the other person, never sharing what someone said about you or did to you. 80% don’t care; the other 20% figure you had it coming to you. Privacy is critical.

Do not allow anyone to be intimidated by you or afraid of you. We teach kids about bullying today. Adults should learn about it as well. Nothing is accomplished when someone uses their power over others. Some corporations are notorious for their bullying management style. They use management by threat and intimidation or they do “ambush management.” Shame on these corporate bullies, who themselves would scream if the same injustices applied to them.

When someone injures you with bad news or with harmful behavior, it’s human nature to strike back, mentally or physically. Don’t do it. In fact, forgiving them is the best way to proceed. Moreover, we shouldn’t just forgive them; we should allow them to save face as well.

In ancient Rome, it was the custom to shoot the messenger who brought the bad news. Don’t do it. Adopt the philosophy: “Be wrong so that others may be right,” even if they aren’t. You are doing what the prayer to St. Francis calls for: “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

When we harm others with our behavior, we’ve effectively damaged the trust relationship that previously existed, sometimes irrevocably. Trust, once violated, negates a relationship. We won’t ever earn the forgiveness of someone we damaged until we address the behavior that caused the damage. That starts with changing the behavior that got us into trouble in the first place.

It’s all about making bad choices. My daughter-in-law, Casey, is constantly admonishing my beautiful grandbabies to make good decisions. I’ll hear her asking them about their day and if they made good choices. She is subtly reminding them that they are in charge of their own choices. If you want help others make good choices, speaking up against injustice and doing wrong must be a first priority. When it’s right in your own heart, it’s easier to make good choices.

Generally speaking, the person who is hardest on himself or herself will probably be gentlest with others. When one helps another, you meet their N-E-E-D, an acronym for forgiveness.

The “N” is for necessary. Ask yourself: “Is it necessary to say this?” The first “E” represents encouragement. Will it make them feel better? The second “E” is for educating, enlightening and edifying the other person. What can we say to them to make them stronger? The “D” represents dignity, decorum and distinction. One of Christ’s major gifts to others in his brief life on earth was to treat people with a sense of dignity.

When couples fight or bicker, terms like “all’s fair in love and war” emerge, as if they are a solution to the issue of fighting fair. They aren’t.

There are rules for engagement between “loving couples” who have a disagreement about something. First and foremost, no physical violence should ever be part of the process. It simply shows one or both of you are out of control.

Always avoid the S-B-D’s, which is what I like to refer to as the Silent But Deadly approach to conflict management. SBD does nothing and only furthers the frustration by one party or the other.

Don’t bank your “paybacks.”  Women typically have the memories of elephants and can bank away every misdeed we males ever thought of committing, bringing them up decades later for ammunition in the new battle. Men do it too; they just have lousier memories.

Always prepare the battlefield for settling the disagreement. It should never be over dinner, in bed or at the end of what was otherwise a crappy day for one or both of you. It’s a recipe for disaster. Why ruin a good meal or a decent night’s sleep!

Attack the problem, not each other. It’s okay to be mad at problem, not your partner. Stick to the facts. Unfound accusations are like a runaway train.  And don’t bring those irritating friends or relatives onto the battlefield.  They would probably enjoy watching you bludgeon one another.

Avoid name calling and dramatics. Men like to hurl curse words and women love to grease the wheel with tears. These dramatics have no place in a fair fight.  Don’t throw your feelings like stones and never bring up past misdeeds. In short, stay on the subject.

In the corporate world, we train our audiences to use a four part formula when dealing with a conflict with an internal customer (fellow worker) or an external customer (the people who buy your product or service).

1- Soften the complaint using the feel, felt, found approach, i.e. I know how you feel, this is what I felt when that happened and I found that this was the best approach to the issue.

2- Isolate the complaint and agree on what the issue is.

3- Rephrase it to one another so you both are clear on the issue.

4- Work toward a win-win solution. Remember, you are not enemies.

It’s important to stay on subject and not ramble. When people don’t fight fair, they bring up a myriad of previous missteps and misdeeds from the in-laws to the nosey neighbors. Don’t go there; you’re just rambling and nothing good comes from this approach.

Look for and offer solutions and give the other party a chance to talk without interrupting them. You might even take notes. When you write notes, you’re in effect saying to the other person “What you’re saying to me is very important and I want to write it down.”

Never hit below the belt with terms like “You never…” or “You always…” Name calling and unrelated accusations lead nowhere. Turn down the volume and the high levels of exaggeration! If you’re truly looking for a solution, volume and exaggeration is not part of the solution.

A favorite manipulative defense mechanism is to lead with “It’s all my fault.” Don’t do it, even if it is. Be humble because you could be wrong. Usually there’s enough fault on both sides to share some of the blame.

Check your psychological weapons at the door and make sure they are not deadly. The damage we do to others with our words can come back to haunt you later.

Never quarrel or fight in public or reveal private matters to your friends or buddies in search of sympathy. 80% don’t care and the other 20% glad it’s your problem and not theirs!

Whenever you come to terms, put the matter away until you both agree it needs more discussing, keeping a solution in mind along the way.

Finish the fight! It’s not fair to “hit and run” or open old wounds. Once it’s over, move on.

Finally, remember to forget.

“Love Story” was an enormously successful movie made in 1970 starring Ali MacGraw, Ryan O’Neil and John Marley among others. The classic line in the movie was “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” But is that true?

I suspect we alpha males have the biggest problem apologizing for something mainly because we’re alpha males. We tend to view apologies as a sign of weakness, when in fact an apology requires great strength. Alpha males have it all wrong. They don’t know what they don’t know because it’s out of character for them.

As I read and study the characteristics of a true apology, it boils down to several things. First, the social scientists say you have to take responsibility for the mistakes you made, another trait that is uncharacteristic of the alpha male.

Secondly, one must make a commitment never to repeat that behavior that caused hurt to others. Third, you do have to say you’re sorry, unlike the advice of the movie “Love Story” which suggested that it wasn’t necessary.

This is easier said than done because when you hurt someone else, you have not just hurt them, but you have violated their trust, perhaps forever. One must regain other’s trust and that may be the toughest part of it all.

The late, great John Savage, one of the pioneers in the insurance industry, once made the observation that “Trust, once violated, negates a relationship. It takes a very forgiving person to allow you a second chance.”

Since I admittedly am the king of screw-ups, you would think I have a wealth of experience in saying “I’m sorry” for this or that. When you have a relationship with another person, business or personal, part of the benefits of that relationship is a partner or colleague that will help monitor destructive behavior and to stop things that are potentially harmful to the relationship.

“When you’re green you grow, when you’re ripe you rot,” as the old saying goes. The toughest thing is actually saying “I’m sorry” to another. Why is this? First, it’s clear they haven’t taken responsibility for their actions a therefore they are “ripe” and “rotting” in their old behavior.

One must prune the tree of bad habits or those very things that are not changed may cause the tree to ultimately die. Trust is significant because one says to another “I have confidence in you to be honest and faithful and to keep your promises.” The other side of trust is forgiveness and it will never be given until trust is restored.

While trust is generally eroded over time, it stands to reason that regaining it may also take time, if ever at all. Issues such as anger, compulsion and other abnormal behavior are symptoms of the lost trust and drive the behavior.

So it starts with sincerely saying one is sorry for the behavior they committed and pledging to never repeat it ever again. A sincere apology gives you credibility. More importantly, I have found the hard way that it takes personal integrity to do this.

Personal integrity consists of a number of things. It’s about our actions, which do speak louder than words. It expresses our values, which are often compromised when we make bad choices in life. It’s about the methods we use to cope with the good, the bad and the ugly of our lives. It’s about the principles we espouse. When we veer from what we believe, because we’re human, we can return to those principles they should guide the outcome. In the end, the expectations are there and we must return to our values.

Love, in fact, is “having to say I’m sorry” to those you hurt. Ali MacGraw had it wrong in wrong in Love Story. Take if from someone who has learned that the hard way. Among other things, it helps you to take full responsibility for the things for which you are expressing your sorrow. Tell the people in your life today. It will help you to take ownership of your shortcomings. I know this from personal experience.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the air returning from a speaking engagement in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida when the Captain came over the radio to tell us that our path would be diverted because of a major malfunction with the NASA space shuttle, Challenger.

The shuttle was coincidentally taking off as we were to pass over Kennedy Space Center heading north to my home at the time in Lexington, SC. We would later learn the rest of the tragic story.

I had just spoken to NASA some six months prior to that catastrophic event and I later learned that some of those astronauts, Ron McNair, Christa McAuliffe and Michael Smith were part of that audience.

It would be six months after the Challenger disaster that I would receive a return phone call to come back to speak to NASA and her many contractors again, this time to shore up their confidence and help them to refocus on their mission after such a terrible tragedy.

I recall vividly that was one of the most difficult presentations I ever had to prepare. What do you say to people who have lost a loved one? What do you say to an industry that has lost an integral part of its mission and now must find the courage to continue the task?

I speak a lot on the subject of change. The title of my favorite presentation on change is a quote from the great Italian philosopher Yogi Berra. He once said “The trouble with the future is it ain’t what it used to be!” Could there be a better way of describing the mess in which NASA now found itself? Their future could never be defined the way it had.

Fast forward to the Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, resulting from a punctured hole in the wing that allowed searing gases generated by reentry into earth’s atmosphere. Just when it seemed like NASA was finally recovering from its earlier loss, this one, some critics would argue, would end the space program altogether.

Again, I was called on by United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor, to come back and address NASA and many of the folks who had put Columbia together. This message was even more difficult to construct. Many of the same folks involved with Challenger were also on board for the construction and launch of Columbia.

Today, NASA engineers and their contractors walk on egg shells, hoping to learn from their past and never replicate the errors of yesteryear. One needs only to look at the many delays in the final three missions. Discovery was to have launched in early November, but many flaws that have been identified by NASA’s engineers and contractors, has pushed the tentative launch date up.

One must study one’s mistakes to prevent the repetition of those errors, a lesson that NASA learned after Challenger loss. Many engineers, whom I confidentially interviewed in preparation for the presentation following the loss of Challenger, privately shared with me that their colleagues had become gun shy… and this was stalling the entire rebuilding process.

History is cluttered with millions stories about failure being a learning tool. Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before he finally invented the light bulb. And make no mistake; failure is the process by which we succeed in life. It should therefore follow that in order to have more success, we need more failure. From a pure management perspective, we should be encouraging people to fail faster.

I realize that this philosophy flies in the face of traditional thinking. I’m not suggesting that we need to crash this shuttle to learn how to make the next one a success. We should learn as much as we can from our failures and move on. If we wait until everything is perfect in life, I submit we might never start the process at all.

Courage is therefore as an important an ingredient to the achievement process as creativity and knowledge and all the other things that make success possible. I’m fond of telling my sales people, who service some 35,000 Knights of Columbus policy holders from our 16 offices in central Florida, that if you’re selling them all you aren’t seeing them all. Selling, like medicine and many professions, is a business that presupposes a frequent amount of failure.

No matter what you do in life, never be afraid to fail. If you’re afraid of that, perhaps another profession in government is more suitable.