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Our Statement on Caring
Where are we as a company regarding race, equity, social justice, following the golden rule, caring, caring about “the least of these,” caring about anybody, caring and reaching out? There is the statement, “We do not discriminate on the basis of…” and “We hold these...
Bruce!
I went to see Bruce Springsteen for the 22nd time last year. Sounds like a lot until you realize that’s spread over 48 years. The first time in California I was 19. That list includes the time Andrew Lustig and I had our elbows on the stage in Charlotte in 2002 and we...
Maybe the next bite will be better
Long ago (50 years maybe?) when I had no car or other access to real—and genuinely delicious—pizza, I’d break down and buy a frozen one from a grocery within walking distance. The first bite (after baking, of course) was divine—the tang of tomato, the bite of...
Beyond the Comfort Zone
Years ago, way before he appeared in “Harry Potter,” I went to New York with a friend to see Alan Rickman in “Private Lives.” Waiting at the stage door afterwards, my friend asked, “Do you want his autograph?” I lied and said no and shrank back into the crowd when he...
So I Have Jokes…
Over the summer, I had the pleasure of working with a leader of a department of 40 employees. I sat in on a few meetings and noticed that he used comedy in lieu of small talk to break the ice and deal with awkward situations. While levity at work isn't a bad thing, I...
How Do You See the World?
I remember when Peter Yaholkovsky first read his essay on Candor to our Dwelling course with Fernando back in 2018 in San Francisco, and now it’s a whole book, Listening for Candor, arriving by Amazon at my house Monday. Peter gave me an unexpected revelation today...
Promises Promises!
I’ve been working on all of my integrity issues, making progress every week, except a month ago I went crazy on my promise to clean my desk (which was a bit like excavating Pompei) and then back-slid—so, now I’m totally out of integrity because part of my integrity...
New Beginnings
As I write this, the new owners of our house, whom I just met today, are doing a final walkthrough. The closing is today, in about 30 minutes. All the i’s are dotted, t’s crossed, it is a matter of filing now. The buyers are looking at their future, while I look at a...
Listening for Breakthroughs
“Listening for breakthroughs” isn’t listening to breakthroughs already out there to listen for and find. Listening for breakthroughs is a “build it and they will come” kind of listening. Great coaches and leaders intuitively listen this way.
OutREACH
Outreach is a way of BEING. You can BE outreach. Outreach is a way of life like breathing. Outreach is loving people. How far out can you reach? I bet it’s farther than you can imagine. It is giving oneself wholly and completely to another person. It is...
Wanted: Peaceful Warriors
When I entertain conversations about how we’re living in more dangerous times than ever before, it’s easy to let fear and uncertainty paralyze my thinking. I’ve found it more useful to ask, What can I bring to conversations that could help me see things in a new...
Her Last Day in the House
Sometimes the listening I need to tune up is my ability to hear what’s in the unsaid. There is something behind the words that is always being communicated, and the people I experience as truly listening to me get more from me than just my words. Melinda read a text...
Fast Car
"You got a fast car. . .Maybe we can make a deal. . . “ On Wednesday night at 9:30 p.m., I was pulling out jumper cables, trash, spare change, and my daughters’ car seats from my old SUV and hastily stuffing everything into my new metallic white 2024 Ford Explorer...
Listening, Not Listening
What gets in the way of my ability to be a good listener? I am taking another go at this timeless question. I am relating to this question as an exploration, an inquiry, a wondering, an opportunity to confess, or complete not listening, an opportunity to get...
Confronting Whiteness
In the Confronting Whiteness course, our facilitator played a video of “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye released in 1971. I don’t think I fully understood the meaning of the song until she played it. If nothing else, I completely heard it in a new way. Here we are 52...
Is anyone listening?
During this past Tuesday’s Being a Leader reading with two of my colleagues, we read slides related to authentic listening. This sentence showed me the depths to which I am not listening: This kind of listening requires you to be authentically committed to recreating...
The Facts of Life
I think I know the difference: Facts are what happens, and interpretations are the meanings I give to what happens. Except interpretations are not the meanings I give to what happens. The meanings simply arise. They exist automatically, with no effort—or...
Covid Got Me!
Well, Covid finally got me right in the midst of being in the Wake Up Grateful workshop at Kripalu with author, Kristi Nelson. It is really quite amazing the irony of that. A MIRACLE REALLY. The first session of the workshop was Friday night and I felt fine then...
Completion
For the past three weeks or so the distinction completion has been rolling around in my mind. I’ve been paying attention to all the areas where I start something and don’t finish (defined as completely done or arriving at a predetermined stopping point). Some...
Congratulations Kevin Bullard!
On January 1st Kevin Bullard will become one of the newest members of the Garland Chamber of Commerce in Garland, Texas. Dorrier Underwood joined the Chamber when Kevin came onboard two years ago. Since then Kevin has led workshops for the Chamber, participated in...
A Good Girlfriend
I am going to London for three days starting September 17, and that is a miracle. It’s for no reason other than that I want to, and without any intention “to get better” or learn anything or make a contribution or be a more evolved person. I had been thinking about it...
Claiming Our Power
Storm. From light to dark in a second. Thunder but no rain. I wonder if this is what it sounds like in Kyiv—except my only worry is if the power goes out and kills my a/c. So no, people in Ukraine probably have a different occurring. Our questions might be...
My Family, Too
I woke up all last week in Tennessee, and somewhere along the way I woke up to the fact that I am part of a new family. That’s my miracle this week, realizing that I am a Kramer, in addition to being a McVadon which I’ve known all my life. What I didn’t know was what...
Errol Garner and Willie Nelson
The next session for Writing to be Fully Alive is Wednesday, September 20th. In our May session, the assignment was to write an essay that included a place you lived, a season, 2 colors, something you learned to do, and a regret. A teaching I got from Stuart...
Arlington
I picked up the wooden case today to hold and preserve and display the flag that was on the casket with my parents inside the day we buried them in Arlington last summer. The whole thing had miracle written all over it. First the way Mom’s cremated remains fit inside...
Migraine? What Does That Have To Do With Anything?
I've been thinking about our last staff retreat. We were highly focused on the first day and showed up in a state of disarray on the second. Our offsite participants were not on Zoom. One person groaned and grabbed her head as she entered the room. Another (who was...
Wrong Question
First you have to understand that I am committed to Melinda’s wellbeing. I have declared it, and after her series of falls and injuries especially, I am committed to protecting her, which means being vigilant for when she is walking and not looking and talking on the...
Unflappable Me
This afternoon my month and a half-old remarkable 2 tablet fell three feet onto the power button, jammed it, and rendered the machine useless. Thank God it was in its case or it could have been worse! My immediate thought was regret for where I had laid it. That was...
The Discipline of Reflection
Creating practices has been an integral part of my Dorrier Underwood training and I include them in my coaching with clients. What I’ve gotten clearer about over the last year is how a practice can interrupt “my drift”, that which reliably keeps me small, and has the...
Persistance or Insanity
Already at the end of the first quarter of 2023, president of Dorrier Underwood for seven years (!) and after all this time (66 years and 4 months, my exact age for Social Security eligibility) I find myself arguing with Rita Mae Brown. One of her characters famously...
When Strengths Become Limits
I have been thinking about..and I invite you to think with me…the distinction Success Strategy/Winning Formula and styles of leadership/being in the world. Are they distinct, if so in what ways? What can we impact and what do we simply want to own and enhance? A...
Fact vs Interpretation
I think I know the difference: Facts are what happens, and interpretations are the meanings I give to what happens. Except interpretations are not the meanings I give to what happens. The meanings simply arise. They exist automatically, with no effort—or...
My Well-Being is a Miracle
Nothing hurts! I have been waking up every morning and noticing that I feel fine. My right shoulder doesn't hurt. My left knee doesn't hurt. My lower back doesn’t hurt. My eyes are not dried out. I don’t have a slight headache. It had seemed like I had one ailment...
Waking Up!
I awoke on Monday morning to a sore, scratchy throat. Oh no, not now. I can’t be sick. So I nursed it all day. Gargled, drank water, multiple sinus rinses, drank more water, all day until bed. Tuesday, now this thing has moved; it’s throughout my sinuses and...
To Judith, my dear departed cofounder, business partner, friend, fellow traveler
There is so much I want to tell you So I will do three in this writing and save the rest Kind of like how it is now with my mother, I want to tell her In death, there is more life You are more alive now and I have you with me No longer limited by your physical form...
Going Against the Grain
Since coming off of what seemed like 3 solid months of traveling (for work and pleasure), it seems like this year has gone by so quickly. I’d forgotten what it takes to handle the details of my life, including all that goes into maintaining my health and wellbeing...
Miracles!
I am peaceful. I am grounded. I am not caught up in my circumstances. My circumstances are what they are; they are not who I am. Circumstances are a part of being a human being. We can’t get rid of them. We all have them. I desire to be the best version of myself....
No Blaming Allowed
Love is the greatest gift we can give to others. On one hand it seems easy and on the other, we as humans make it harder than it should be. I am calling myself out on this one! Sometimes it ain’t easy to love… Love our enemies, What?!?! Love our...
Noticing Where You Get Stopped
Have you ever been in a conversation with a person who works for you or with a peer when something they say, or even some random facial expression hits you wrong? Maybe you have a history with the person that the moment evokes, or maybe the situation reminds you of...
“I Have No Idea…”
From Derek Thompson’s recent Atlantic column, “Work in Progress”: “Last week, I asked readers to tell me what people don’t get about their job. In an economy with thousands of occupations and hundreds of sectors, and where many people within the same large company...
Infinity and Beyond
Infinity Beyond the beyond In both directions out to the universe that is endless and to the smallest cell, plant, organism, infinity and beauty. Look below for images The first image is plankton magnified 2000 times And the second image is a galaxy...
Readjustment Never Stops
Talking to an engineer today, I realized (again) how much I love engineers. I first realized it when I was creating a module for an engineering client years ago. They understood, in their bones, integrity as “whole and complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect...
Get Over Yourself
I had a zoom meeting today, and logged in 10 minutes early so I’d be ready to roll when the other person joined. Three minutes after the start time, I realized that the person was in the waiting room, and had been waiting for me to admit them into the meeting. Doh!...
Give Me a Break!
At Dorrier Underwood, one of our leadership practices is to take a phrase from a novel or poem, use it as a first line, and write flat out for 5 minutes, without pausing or editing. It’s a way of discovering what we have to say to ourselves, and we often read what...
Your Song
Part 1 Morning Contemplation think of these things for your morning contemplation, with your coffee or tea, not the news or the movie you are binging don’t start with email and messages start with considering the great mystery of time that is all we have we say...
You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog!
Elvis showed up at a country music show, where slow tangy songs were played by boring men in cowboy hats. Then Elvis comes to the stage. Here is what happened. (Tip: Go full screen and turn it up as loud as you can) ELVIS - Elvis Presley First Perfomance Movie Clip...
Pocketful of Miracles
It was one of those things I consider doing each time I’m in the Big Apple: going to the Garden for a hockey game, dropping in at MoMA, seeing a Broadway show, seeing live music in a small club, or. . . going to a Yankees game at the Stadium. Baseball aside,...
A Trip to Montpelier
My trip to Montpelier started a few weeks ago as I began listening to the audio book The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family by Dr. Bettye Kearse, a descendant of Africans enslaved at Montpelier and a Madison family member. The book prepared...
Simple Things
Julia and I just got back from a 23 1/2 hour whirlwind trip. What was supposed to be an overnight trip to New York to see Jon Batiste on the Today Show Plaza turned into an overnight trip to Charlotte. We learned that our flight to New York had been...
The Wedding
The big event, the biggest one since Phil’s stroke happened – Phil’s granddaughter, his first blood granddaughter, got married on Saturday at Carolina Grove, between Durham and Hillsborough. Really between, like woods and farms between, a rural setting. ...
To My Younger Self
I have a leadership practice called “free writing.” Let myself go wherever I go. Don’t try to get it right or even make sense. Just pick up my pen and start and keep going for 10 to 20 minutes. This is a leadership practice for listening deeply and learning what you...