Family Matters

Imagine for a minute that you decide to manage your kids like you manage your employees, providing a performance review once a year.Let’s play out the script…Well, Patrick, it’s been a year. For starters, I’d like to point out a couple things you’ve done well. First, you passed your exams and are on to the next grade, congratulations! Second, we love that you and your sister are getting along so well. It is great to see, and we can’t thank you enough for being so sweet to her.

In 1996, the musical Rent won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Its creator won Best Book of a Musical as well as Best Original Score. Cast members were nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical, Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical, Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography, and Best Lighting Design. It was also nominated for 10 Drama Desk Awards, the highest honors for a New York theater production, and won six of them. And perhaps most notably, Rent also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, only one of four Pulitzer’s awarded that year. Rent was one of the longest-running productions on Broadway, grossing over $280,000,000.

We were sitting around a large, custom-designed table in a beautifully appointed boardroom. You could see the cold autumn wind blowing the trees outside the office as a single, well-placed comment heated up the room. The topic was one individual’s decision related to his family business and the remark came from a member of the peer group comprised of family business executives whose storied family companies are staples of their industries in the US and around the world. The group meets quarterly to discuss topics germane to family businesses – family dynamics, succession planning, estate planning, etc. – as well as topics germane to any organization – how to grow, how to inspire teams and leaders, and how to build cultures that will last. This group of family leaders has been meeting for years with a single aim: support one another through family and organizational dynamics with the goal of sharing knowl

Mornings. Man do I love mornings. I am a notoriously early riser. I bask in the dark of the early dawn of day. I roll around in mornings like a kid in grass. I never set out to be an early riser, nope, the morning chose me. It started when I was young and had to clean horse stalls before going to school. I used to pull on my boots, trudge through the snow uphill (both ways) to the barn in the freezing cold of Wisconsin winters to feed and water the horses and clean their stalls. In college it was no different. As a walk-on, I was relegated to the earliest workout time, requiring me to ride my bike uphill (both ways) through the freezing cold South Bend winters only to be screamed at by our strength and conditioning staff who hated the fact that they had to be awake at an ungodly hour to scream at walk-ons. Good times.

It was a shocking 20 minutes of tennis. The world’s greatest, Novak Djokovic was getting pummeled by a relatively unknown American, Jensan Brooksby. Volley after volley proved challenging for Djokovic as unforced errors piled up under the lights of the world’s largest tennis venue on a warm, clear New York evening. It was the round of 16 at the US Open and Djokovic was the hands-down favorite. However, that was quickly coming into question as Brooksby smashed point after point, with unforced errors mounting for Djokovic, 11 in total that set.

Much of my client work is focused on the future, however the concerns they share with me are frequently predicated on a cloudy perspective of the present. Many tend to vacillate somewhere in the ether – unable to focus on the present, what I’ll call Here, nor on the future what I’ll call There.

If you’ve read my previous newsletters, you know I draw a lot of inspiration from my kids, Henry (4) and Juliette (2). They are a never-ending source of insight without even knowing it. Little sayings. Small gestures. Unassuming humor. Being with kids can provide a window into the perspectives we often need the most. The more time I spend with my kids, the more I realize that their simplicity can unlock amazing lessons we (adults) often forget.

My son came home from school the other day with a splinter in his finger. It was both a badge of honor and, concurrently, a source of annoyance and pain. This splinter dominated his day as he worked relentlessly to avoid succumbing to its pain. Simultaneously, he refused its removal. The fear of dealing constructively with the splinter brought him to tears and so he continued wincing in pain when his pesky splinter was brushed, bumped, or otherwise disturbed. He tried riding his scooter, but one-handed scooting created other issues far greater than the splinter. He tried playing with his trains, but with each push down the track he quickly pulled his hand away leaving Thomas and Friends sitting idle. Dinner was a hot mess as holding a fork bothered him, and bath time was a bore as he didn’t want to zoom boats around the tub. Poor rubber ducky bobbed helplessly in the bubbles. This little irritant impacted his life in unimaginable ways, and guess what, like Henry, we all have splinters we refuse to pluck that are impacting our lives.

January 19th is Quitter’s Day. What does that mean, you ask? Research conducted by Strava using over 800 million user-logged activities in 2019 predicts the day most people are likely to give up on their New Year's Resolution is January 19th. So, get ready to quit. Seriously, 80% of people will quit those big plans they crafted for 2021. Odds are, you’re one of them.

Most people will chalk this year up as a loss. Between a global pandemic, a polarizing election, racial conflict and who can forget, murder hornets, it’s hard to see how we can be thankful for what will go down as one of the most miserable years (generally speaking) in most of our lives. Truly. However, with a simple twist of perspective, it is not hard to find opportunities to be thankful for all this year had to offer.

I find that the single greatest challenge with my coaching clients is a reluctance to act. When we grown ups were young, it wasn’t hard for us to act, it was instinctual. See a tree – climb it. Find a hill – bomb down it. Meet a similarly sized human – say hi. We didn’t calculate, we were too busy acting, and while this may have led to some skinned knees and bruises, we survived all of the action.

I’ve got a nut problem. Truly. My driveway is covered in nuts. The squirrels sit in the trees that tower over my property and they nibble away, tossing down the shells and debris. In the grand scheme of life, the nuts are not a major issue, but when my kids hop on their scooters and cruise full speed down the driveway, they hit the nuts and crash. So, while the nuts are not the issue themselves, they are catalysts for skinned knees, bruised legs, and tears. We go from happily scooting around the driveway to blood curdling cries and streams of tears followed by the drama of band aids, and their eventual removal days later. The squirrels don’t recognize that their beefing up for winter creates days of chaos around my house. Days.