Fight for the positive.

I’m a negative guy.  After almost a decade playing in the dining rooms of fine restaurants, training myself to look for small flaws - a fork that is not exactly one inch from the table edge, a drip on the edge of a plate coming out of the kitchen, a table corner that is slightly off ninety degrees, a water glass half full – I realized that I had trained myself to be a negative guy.

I like to think that I am not unpleasant when I go out to dinner with friends, or partaking of home-cooked meals.  But it leaks out.   Every few years, my siblings and I gather around our mom somewhere for a reunion.  On one of these trips, I spent an afternoon making dinner.  From all outward appearances it was probably fine (actually it was probably very good; not like the failed carrot soup from an earlier reunion).  However, it didn’t quite hit the mark that I was aiming for, and as I began my deconstruction of it, my brother said to me, 'are you ever happy with anything that you cook?' 

Of course in the moment, I explained all of the reasons and defended all of my compulsions.  But later… it hit me harder than I would have liked.

Recently as I met with a client, he was finishing up writing thank you notes to various employees from around the hospital.  As it turns out, each Friday he writes short notes to a handful of employees whose names have been passed along to him from his directors, and mails them to their homes.  He told me about one note.  A woman from the housekeeping department had approached him in the hall to thank him for it.  She had worked for the hospital for almost eighteen years.  She had a teenage son.  When she opened the card at home, she said, it was the first time that she could remember her son ever looking at her with pride for the work that she did at the hospital. 

It is a small gesture, to recognize something positive.  You just never know what the real impact of that small gesture is.

I pay attention to details.  I am a horizon scanner.  I anticipate issues.  This tendency makes me very good at some things. It makes me a good operator.  It makes me a capable consultant.  However, it does not make me a great manager of people.  It makes me difficult to work for.   So now, I write thank you notes.  And,  I fight for the positives.