...The answer is, unequivocally, “Yes!” Perhaps your impinging friend helps you cultivate patience and set limits or your boss’s unreasonably high expectations do, maddeningly enough, make your work better. Or maybe the cold weather encourages you to spend more time with your family--whether that’s inside playing board games or outside shooting hoops to keep warm. The trick is to find the silver lining to your obstacles and be thankful for the whole package.

A life without difficulties isn’t very interesting. Think of all the classic stories that capitalize on problems to create things a character is thankful for. Without the betrayal of his friend in The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes would never have found the old priest’s treasure and become an educated, wealthy man of good standing in the community. Without Kitty’s embarrassing elopement in Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie would never have seen just how much Mr. Darcy loved her. Without a family in The Blind Side, Michael Oher would never have met Leigh Ann Tuoy and been inspired to become a star football player by capitalizing on his God-given gifts. The struggles in these stories make the endings sweet.

Perhaps that is why the struggles of a young woman in ancient times named Mary, who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, is so poignant even today. Luckily, her husband-to-be, Joseph, (who we all know is definitely not the father) takes her as his wife anyway but life still isn’t easy for them. With a census called, the young couple must travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem when Mary is nearing her pregnancy

term.

On a donkey and traveling slowly, they reach Bethlehem after an

arduous week of travel. As they near the little town, Mary goes into

labor. Unfortunately, many people have come to Bethlehem for the census and every inn is full. Joseph knocks on door after door looking for a place to stay but no one can spare them room. Finally, an innkeeper takes pity and offers them a place in his stable. While it’s no five star hotel, they can’t wait any longer and Mary gives birth surrounded by cattle, goats, and sheep.

For the birth of a healthy baby boy, Mary and Joseph, as normal parents would be thankful but they know there is much more to be grateful for. They know that their child is the son of God and they are the earthly parents of their Savior whom Mary names Jesus. But the true

payoff comes some thirty years later as Mary agonizes over her beloved

son’s crucifixion. Her pain is short-lived, though, when he is raised from the dead three days later. While she doesn’t understand the full implications of what has happened, her son has just saved every

believing person from the grips of Satan.

This isn’t just any story--it’s the story of redemption for the world. While it isn’t Christmas yet, we can still be thankful for the sacrifices Mary and Joseph made as the bewildered parents of our Savior. Without a “Parenting the Savior of the World for Dummies” guidebook, I imagine there were many times they were truly flummoxed. And we can be truly grateful for the life Jesus lived and surrendered to save us.

Being thankful isn’t always easy. I’m sure there were times when Mary and Joseph were at their wits end and not feeling especially grateful for the task God gave them of raising Jesus. But the silver lining never goes away. Our job is to find it and make sure we’re always thankful for that. Without struggles, the end result just wouldn’t be the same. So, while thankfulness is in season, remember to be thankful for the things driving you nuts because they’re just as important as the good things in life.

The New Life Group ~ Pleasant Hill

140 Gregory Lane, Ste. 250

Pleasant Hill, CA 94523

(925) 351 7240

Good leaders will bring the grieving process forward in the organizational milieu and in their own approach to leadership

Loss in organizations might be a simple as a person who dies, maybe favorite person or favorite boss gets sick, moves or transfers out of your organization. It could be layoffs or a huge change in products or projects and even a project failure. I can just imagine what it was like for carburetor manufacturers when suddenly fuel injection came into the picture and changed so much of the auto industry. Being made redundant or unnecessary can really be a hurt and big loss. With COVID 19 people can miss their friends from work, having coffee with them, hanging out and doing projects together face-to-face.

Make sure you can talk about loss as much as you can without overemphasizing it. Let people have their denial for a while. This is normal and actually healthy. Sometimes groups or people in the organization will collude together to deny the loss. What you can do though, is help them to work that through and actually support each other around the loss by talking about it or symbolizing things that helped them deal with the loss. On the other hand, my mentors company had a case where a group of bankers watched the 9/11 crisis and knew that they had lost loved ones and colleagues in the crash into the Twin Towers in New York City. Trying to fix the problem the CO of that division made everybody go back to work and avoid looking at the buildings burn and taking so many lives. It took several weeks to debrief him and the staff and get them to reconcile. In that case denial was not helpful.

The anger stage of grief might occur indirectly. It could come out with less patience with mistakes or passive aggressive things like showing up to work late or other things that would not directly indicate a person is mad about the loss. Working too much or not really working at all can also be a sign of grief not expressed or processed. People may take out their anger on leadership because they have no other place to put it. Frustration may build-up for what seems like minor issues.

The bargaining stage is where we try to get back some or all of what we have lost and is sometimes a good idea. In organizations this might even be facilitated by leadership and/or grow organically in some way out of the organization and its culture. Here is where creative ideas that even come from anybody in the organization can be really effective

As you move on you may want to create a memorial to the loss such as a poster or pictures, letters and other items that you remind you of the loss whether it's a person or a thing. I know at Argosy University where I worked as a professor, we lost a favorite student counsellor who was highly respected by the students and staff. We put up his pictures and some other items to remind us of him every time we walk by. It was really helpful.

Getting some outside help, especially when the loss is really tough, can bring much relief and help people move forward in the organization.

I remember the sign on a bumper sticker in Berkeley years ago. It said “Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.” Many of us are familiar with the story in the Wizard of Oz. We aligned with Dorothy, the young girl, who is swept up in a twister and ends up in a mysterious land with a yellow brick road, three main characters and a lot of others, some meaning her well and others not.

The tin woodsman, the cowardly lion, and the scarecrow are her companions along the journey to go to the land of Oz perhaps as a path back to home. The tin woodsmen represents kindness and the cowardly lion, oddly enough, represents courage and the scarecrow represents wisdom. Every one of these characteristics are very important for leadership and life. Without them we will tend to tip towards failure and difficult relationships. Sure, there are many characteristics needed for leadership and life but I believe that these are key and what Frank Baum was emphasizing as a part of growth and development even if he didn't know that.

The yellow brick road represents the journey and demonstrates that sometimes the journey is as important or more important than the destination. This is shown when the good witch tells Dorothy that she could have clicked her heels at any time and gone home.
I think the evil characters such as the wicked witch and the flying monkeys represent the things in leadership in life that will oppose us even if they sometimes come from within. Glinda the good witch, the munchkins and our three main characters and even the Wizard of Oz are flawed in some way sometimes but are, metaphorically, important positives that can lead us back to where we belong.

In leadership and life you will need courage to take risks and to communicate what you want and what you feel as well as confront difficult situations. You also need wisdom to understand what is most important in general or at any particular moment. Kindness can modify both courage and wisdom and make sure that grace and mercy are part of the equation. This helps create good relationships as you move forward.

Note that each of these three characters did not necessarily manifest these qualities in the first part of the story yet because of their desire for these characteristics they found that they really did have them. This is a forward-looking attitude of intentionality that makes space for us when we want to adapt new positive characteristics for ourselves. We are who we are in our hearts long before that ever manifests in behavior. Dorothy's seeking home is a metaphor for the importance of belonging, which in leadership and life is very important. You cannot have an organization or an individual where belonging does not exist. This simply results in failure.
The other three characters find the things they're looking for as a result of going down the yellow brick road on a journey that creates an opportunity for them to find themselves.

The Munchkins and Glinda and the good witch point Dorothy and the other three characters in the right direction. You will find in leadership and life there are individuals and or situations along the way that point you in the right direction and give you opportunities to lead and to grow.

How are you doing on the yellow brick road? Do you have a Glinda and some Munchkins to help guide you? Who and what is opposing you along the way? Are you adopting courage and wisdom as well as kindness along with grace and mercy? Are some of the characters along your journey flawed but still manifesting good intentions? Are you finding a place to belong both at work and in life? Are you making a place for others to belong? Answering some of these questions may help you find your own place in the journey as well as help you reach out for help and guidance along the way.

If you have ever experienced any of the following, you have had a career crisis:
• Losing your job
• Being fired
• Burning out
• Not wanting to do your job for one more day
• Redefined job or seismic shift in career. (Staff quits/Kids go away to college)

A career crisis can be caused either by someone else (being laid off) or by your own feelings (burning out).

Common Causes of Career Crises
There are many reasons why people experience career crises. Here are a few:
• Corporate downsizing
• Burnout
• Relocating for your spouse’s career
• Being fired
• Making the wrong career move
• Corporate politics
• Not fitting in
• Lost calling

Why a Career Crisis Is So Devastating
A career crisis is almost always devastating because it can impact your life in so many ways. Here are a few examples:
1. Money: Losing your income with no warning can be financially devastating.
2. Status: If your job gives you status or a professional identity, you may feel devastated without it.
3. Surprise: If the job loss happens without warning, you will probably feel shocked.
4. Self-esteem: You may feel embarrassed by what has happened.
5. Feeling alone: You are likely to lose friends and companions when you no longer work in the same place.
6. Feeling out of synch: Your regular routine may be disrupted.
7. Confusion: If the crisis happens because of burnout or for reasons inside yourself, you may feel confused about what to do next.
8. Effect on others: If people around you depend on your income and need you to be predictable, they may react negatively to your crisis.

9. Loss of Identity: Many times a career will help define who you are as a person especially if you see it as a calling. “ 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.” – Ecclesiastes 3:12 – 13. The loss can create a lack of interest, satisfaction and enjoyment in life.

Career Crisis: Who It Hurts the Most
A career crisis hurts you because it is devastating to your ego. The hurt tends to be greater when one gets a sense of identity and self-esteem from his or her job title, status, and income.
A crisis hurts your family because they must experience the emotional fallout that follows a crisis. Your family may also experience a feeling of lost self-esteem and status, especially if you were fired or laid off.

The Flashback Effect
A major loss like this sometimes can cause you to reach back into the past and reactivate unfinished business from a major loss, or a crisis from an earlier time.
For example, when Sharon was terminated after seven months at her dream job, she became very depressed. While depression is a normal reaction to such a loss, Sharon was reacting to losing her job and the similar feelings she had when she flunked out of a top university 12 years earlier. When she finally saw a therapist after a few weeks of depression following the job loss, she saw that she had never fully resolved her feelings about failing in college.......ws6posts/kit-hill-ed-d-21953a_burnout-leadership-layoff-activity-ph66105217-Q5wt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Since this is a season where we celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day I'd like to look at what that relationship does for us and how we can make a difference in the lives of our kids and or staff.

Mom does a lot of the bonding part especially when we're young she helps us belong and matter as well as connect to other people in appropriate ways. She helps create a solid base and a place where we can make mistakes, receive grace and learn how to do things better. This is a place where we begin to learn creativity.

Then as dad enters our life around 4 or 5 years old he begins to take his out of orbit around mom and put the lion in our heart or the fire in our belly. He begins to help us have good aggression as well as help us bridge into the world not to be of the world but to be in the world. As we've been internalizing mom's love we internalized dad's love so we can be independent and know that even though our parents aren't there at the moment we know we are loved and worthwhile.

Of course I'm talking about the ideal situation and sometimes we need uncles and grandfather's and others to help us to come that full distance into adulthood.

If mom and dad had done a good job it's relatively easy for us to be a parent as well as a manager or leader. We know how to bond with our kids or staff. We know how to individuate from them and we know how to help them individuate from us and from others. We know how to empower them. We know how to bond to them as part of helping them feel included in a part of a team. We have a sense of where they are developmentally given their age, their maturity and the tasks in front of them.

No parent is perfect just like no leader is perfect but you can find out a lot about your leadership through understanding how you are parented. This is where coaching, therapy and mentoring can come in to really help. They can encourage what's working, understand what's not and help you grow into a more effective parent and leader

Kit Hill Ed.D., LMFT
The New Life Group
Counseling and Executive Coaching
ph6

There are many types of fathers and combinations of types that affect us still even today.This list can tell us a lot about our lives and relationships in the here and now.

The workaholic father: you don't see this dad very much as a child. he believes that his family it's best served by him working all the time. Sometimes this is how he expresses his love. But as King Solomon says, “Better is open rebuke than love that has concealed.” Frankly he is using work as a way of avoiding hard emotions. so, vulnerability with mom and closeness to his kids is something that doesn't really happen. Unfortunately, he is modeling poor behavior for leaders and future workers

The silent father: Absent in spirit and in actions, this father lacks the ability to express thoughts or feelings with the mom and or children. Beyond what is standard in his culture this father lacks most expressions of any connection or love.

The alcoholic father: Alcohol and or drugs have taken over this man's life. perhaps passive or perhaps aggressive, this father is irresponsible to his spouse and to his kids.

The abusive father: Using physical or verbal violence this dad tends to abuse his power or his children controlling them and helping them feel fearful and insecure.

The idealized father: Perhaps with image management or even absence this dad creates a fantasy for the children that misleads them into thinking that he's all good.
The tyrannical father. Much like the abusive father, this dad frequently has personality characteristics that helped him act controlling and hostile towards the children and or mother. He has high desire to control

The seductive father: “Seductive” refers to a set of behaviors that do not include molestation. The key feature of a seductive father is that he has ill-defined personal boundaries—both his own and those of others. He exhibits a higher degree of intimacy toward people, especially his children, than they are comfortable with, or that matches the relationship, and often expects the same in return. In many ways, the seductive father is too open with his nurturing feelings.

The competitive father. This dad cannot let his children win and he sees them as competition and consistently one down from him even as they grow into adults. He is hyper masculine and inside very insecure.

The triangulating or fusing father: This dad redirects emotions and thoughts meant for the mother to one or more of the children. these thoughts or emotions can be negative or positive or some combination of the two. Children usually get mad or confused when they observe this in their relationship with their parents. Sometimes he invites the children into the middle of the relationship with his spouse or sometimes even his own parents.

The Good- Enough father. This is the father that does just about everything right. He's not perfect but he's faithful and the children know that he's trying hard. He is a servant leader while holding his children accountable with good boundaries and lots of grace. He understands what developmental stage his children are in and acts accordingly.

( Continue reading - ws62022/09/06/father-wound-father-blessing-ii/

See Making Peace With Your Father by Dave Stoop

You're burned out, mad, tired and thinking about becoming a short-order cook. Is this your life as a leader? Parents, pastors, and all leaders get frazzled at some point. Here's a way to find renewal.

The Troubled Leader: Seven Keys To Leadership Renewal
1. Surrender. Seek out God and safe others and surrender to them by being vulnerable about what you're struggling with as a leader.
2. Acceptance. See the truth about who you are and your difficulties as a leader and a person. Asking for honest feedback is an important part of this process.
3. Confession. Speaking the truth about what you're struggling with to trusted others and going to God and asking him to help make a fearless inventory is a key to finding healing and growth.
4. Ownership. Taking responsibility for your part in whatever trouble you're having is a leader is another key to turning things around. Not that you're responsible for people but you are responsible to people no matter what type of stakeholder they are.
5. Forgiveness. Forgiving others, forgiving yourself, grieving and letting go are important steps again for moving forward. Forgiving is merely cancelling debt and it does not mean trusting and it comes before the feeling of forgiveness.
6. Transformation. This is where we really start to work on ourselves and our character as a leader. Here we go to God and others and begin to look at how we can make real changes.
7. Preservation. Staying at it or persistence is key to this step. Preserving the new changes you've made by consistently practicing the other steps will keep you on the road to recovery. Remember that recovery is not a destination: it's a journey.

--
Kit Hill, Ed.D., LMFT
Director, The New Life Group, Pleasant Hill
Founding Partner & Consultant - John C. Maxwell Team
140 Gregory Lane, Suite 250
Pleasant Hill, Ca, 94523
ph6 Cell- ph6
Psychotherapy & Consulting to Business
New Life Ministries ws6
Consulting ws6
Counseling ws6
Pastor's Leadership ws6 John Maxwell Team ws6

How to Help Someone in a Career Crisis
Here are a few ideas for being helpful to people going through career crises:
1. People need support when they are having a career crisis, even though they may seem to push you away.
2. Ask how you can help.
3. Don’t give advice unless asked. Listen, listen, and listen some more!
4. Check in regularly with the crisis victim; let him or her know you’re there.
5. Remind the crisis victim of what a good person he or she is, even without the identity and status that the job provided.
6. Sometimes a career crisis sends a person into a serious depression for which help is needed. If you sense danger, urge the crisis victim to seek help.

How to Turn a Crisis into a Victory

Here are some suggestions for turning a career crisis into a victory:
1. Give yourself time to heal. If recovery is rushed or interrupted, the crisis victim will not fully heal and a victory is not possible.
2. Remind yourself as often as necessary that your pain will end and you will eventually feel happy again.
3. Avoid jumping into something new on the rebound; let yourself experience all the stages of grief.
4. Accept that many people will not understand the depth of your grief. They will not understand why this is so difficult for you, and they will say stupid things.
5. Use the opportunity to stop and consider other options.
6. Explore what meaning your feelings have for you. If we pay attention to them, our feelings can lead us places we would otherwise never visit.
7. Keep a journal of your experiences. Make it your intention to see what there is to be learned from this experience.
8. A loss such as a career crisis can be viewed as both a door-closer and a door-opener. Start thinking about what you are learning and gaining from this experience.
9. Create a ceremony of letting go. Yours will be as unique as your experience.
10. Despite some people's misunderstanding do find people that are safe to share with where you can talk about your feelings and beliefs.

The Career Crisis Recovery Exercise

Write out your answers to the following questions. This self-help exercise can help you process your feelings about what has happened to you.
1. Describe what happened when your career crisis happened.
2. Describe the job or career. Where did you work? What was it like? Who did you work with? What do you miss the most? What do you not miss at all?
3. Describe your feelings about the loss of the job or career to others.
4. What has the impact of this crisis been on your life? What else have you lost because of your career crisis?
5. What barriers stop you from moving on?
6. What are 10 things you can do starting today to continue the recovery process?

Please pass this newsletter along to a friend.

Suggested Reading

Cloud, Henry, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward Harper Business, 2011

William Bridges, Job Shift: How To Prosper In A Workplace Without Jobs. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Barry Glassner, Career Crash: The New Crisis—and Who Survives. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
Ayala Pines and Elliot Aronson, Career Burnout: Causes and Cures. New York: The Free Press, 1988.

How to Recover from a Career Crisis

If you have ever experienced any of the following, you have had a career crisis:
• Losing your job
• Being fired
• Burning out
• Not wanting to do your job for one more day
• Redefined job or seismic shift in career.

A career crisis can be caused either by someone else (being laid off) or by your own feelings (burning out).
Common Causes of Career Crises
There are many reasons why people experience career crises. Here are a few:
• Corporate downsizing
• Burnout
• Relocating for your spouse’s career
• Being fired
• Making the wrong career move
• Corporate politics
• Not fitting in
• Lost calling

Why a Career Crisis Is So Devastating
A career crisis is almost always devastating because it can impact your life in so many ways. Here are a few examples:
1. Money: Losing your income with no warning can be financially devastating.
2. Status: If your job gives you status or a professional identity, you may feel devastated without it.
3. Surprise: If the job loss happens without warning, you will probably feel shocked.
4. Self-esteem: You may feel embarrassed by what has happened.
5. Feeling alone: You are likely to lose friends and companions when you no longer work in the same place.
6. Feeling out of synch: Your regular routine may be disrupted.
7. Confusion: If the crisis happens because of burnout or for reasons inside yourself, you may feel confused about what to do next.
8. Effect on others: If people around you depend on your income and need you to be predictable, they may react negatively to your crisis.

9. Loss of Identity: Many times a career will help define who you are as a person especially if you see it as a calling. “ 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.” – Ecclesiastes 3:12 – 13. The loss can create a lack of interest, satisfaction and enjoyment in life.

Career Crisis: Who It Hurts the Most

A career crisis hurts you because it is devastating to your ego. The hurt tends to be greater when one gets a sense of identity and self-esteem from his or her job title, status, and income.

A crisis hurts your family because they must experience the emotional fallout that follows a crisis. Your family may also experience a feeling of lost self-esteem and status, especially if you were fired or laid off.

The Flashback Effect

A major loss like this sometimes can cause you to reach back into the past and reactivate unfinished business from a major loss, or a crisis from an earlier time.

For example, when Sharon was terminated after seven months at her dream job, she became very depressed. While depression is a normal reaction to such a loss, Sharon was reacting to losing her job and the similar feelings she had when she flunked out of a top university 12 years earlier. When she finally saw a therapist after a few weeks of depression following the job loss, she saw that she had never fully resolved her feelings about failing in college.

Here are some other points about recovery:
1. The process of recovering from a career crisis will happen on its own schedule. It can’t be rushed.
2. Every person responds to a career crisis differently. There is no right way to respond or to deal with it.
3. Depending on the circumstances, processing a career crisis can take years.
4. Build and use a support system. People need other people when they are experiencing such a crisis. A group of people who have experienced similar losses is especially helpful.
5. It is a good idea to find support outside of your family and friends. Even the most supportive may grow tired of hearing about your situation, or you may find yourself censoring your behavior to avoid alienating them. However, you still need help and a place to let your feelings out.

The holidays bring up more intense feelings as we bond and try to set boundaries with ourselves and others during this special season. Now we may want to do more bonding because we see more opportunities to be around friends and or loved ones. This is important and we should take advantage of it. It's also important that we be careful of our own entitlement as well as getting too close to people where it might become enmeshment or what therapists call pseudo-mutuality. This is where boundaries come in and may be important for us to have as we look at our obligations, expectations, and even other people's entitlement.

Good memories, fun times, sincere gift giving and receiving as well as the opportunity to spend time with loved ones and friends can be a great part of bonding during the holidays. Sharing, talking and just hanging out can sometimes be the richest experience for this time of year. The biblical word for knowing somebody is really more about close connection and having emotional intimacy. Look for this in some form during the holidays because it can become very rewarding. It's important to ask questions to catch up with your relatives and friends. Find out what their experiences have been in the last year.

At the same time, you may need to set boundaries with Uncle Frank who gets drunk on most holidays. Or maybe your relatives have huge expectations of you and others. Or you may need to set boundaries with your boss who expects you to work overtime for a holiday rush or even as a leader in a company you may need to set limits with stakeholders that have large expectations of your staff. Or even getting burned out at church by doing too much Christmas stuff and you're thinking about giving up your denomination for lent.

Boundaries might be setting limits on your own holiday eating pattern. Besides which you can probably take some of it home and store it in the refrigerator. It may also be good to set limits on how much you talk about memories or people who have passed on. As a leader you can distribute information on how to cope with holiday stress and depression. You can also train your staff to recognize signs of holiday letdown in their employees. You can also coordinate holiday support groups especially for the newly relocated or single employees who may not have relatives to go to the holidays with. A good trick is to set limits on your motives as well of course as your own expectations or entitlement. Pray before you go to a holiday event at work or at church or even at home even if you have to pray for the desire of your heart so you help lay out your expectations with God before you go which can help you both with bonding and boundaries.

What is gone in your life? What have you lost? What has gone away? What seems irretrievable?

Have your kids gone away to college?, Have one of your staff left? Has your status changed?, Are you grieving the way things used to be in life and at work?

All these questions are, in a sense, rhetorical in that they deal with losses that we have in life. It is important for us to grieve the stuff to understand the loss and the feelings around them.

Next step: Have you buried your loss? Given it away? Given it up? Given it over to God? Let it go?, Put it out of reach?, Let go of control?, Given responsibility away?, Let go of your freedom and privilege?, Let go of your entitlement? This important step allows for a clean break from your loss, at least for a season.

Last step. This is where we allow for resurrection. Perhaps the Phoenix bird arises from the ashes as it did after the Oakland fire. If you have any doubts go back and look at the beautiful houses in that neighborhood. Perhaps it's redemption or vindication for you or some you know. Perhaps you reinvent your career and reinvent yourself. Maybe you take on a new role at work. I know of a guy who was involved in a scandal at church. Today he helps ministers avoid finding themselves in that hot water. What resurrection are you waiting for? God is God of resurrection so don't forget to ask. Joseph, in Genisis, let's his old life die and be buried and then it's resurrected in his life in Egypt as VP of the country and reunification with his family.

Find help in identifying what may need to be grieved, buried and resurrected in some new form or another. A good friend, counselor or coach can help you do that.

Frank Reagan, the family assistant patriarch and chief of police for NYPD (played by Tom Selleck) on Blue Bloods, displays great qualities of leadership with balance and poise.

Frank knows the difference between grace and truth and keeps a good balance as a leader and family man.

He also knows the difference between the letter of law and the spirit of the law.

He has possessed with great patience but knows when he's been patient enough.

Frank stands behind his people.

You will frequently find him seeking and listening to good counsel from his family or his staff.

He does not see people as all good or all bad

He tries to avoid nepotism and favorites.

You will find him being true to himself and having good boundaries.

Balancing work and family is one of his most important priorities.

He invites and listens to disagreement.

Although he certainly could be, he is not intrusive with his wants or desires.

His honor and morals is what keeps him afloat in a murky environment.

He listens to problems without giving immediate solutions.

He has a low respect for image management.

The people he admires are good leaders themselves.

Only when needed will he do close-in leadership

He has a sense of humor about himself and life as well as spirit of celebration.

Walking in grace, he can hear the truth about himself and try to make corrections.

Do you possess some of these qualities? Would you like to? Ask for help to grow these characteristics. They may be ideal, but the more of them you have as leader the more effective you will be.

How does dad’s interaction with mom makes the difference?
We are born symbiotic with our mother. and at about two years old we learn the word no. This is our first attempt at individuation. But then around five years old dad is, hopefully, there to reach into our life and take us out of orbit around mom and bridge us into the world. He then puts the fire in our belly and or the lion in our heart. Dad also helps us learn to love two people at the same time. This process also helps us have boundaries, lead and not shrink back from challenges in the world. It helps us have appropriate aggression
Identity and self-esteem: how dad contributes to these important building blocks.
Our self-esteem comes from our opposite gender parent and our identity comes from our same gender parent. that self esteem or identity is enhanced or shut down by what our parents say about each other and about themselves. this can happen either implicitly or explicitly.
Four Roles of fathers and how it relates to our developmental stages and can give us great blessings
Nurturer: This role is of primary importance to the child between birth and age five.
Law Giver: This role is of primary importance to the child between the ages of six and twelve.
Warrior/Protector: The role is of primary importance to the child between the ages of twelve and eighteen.
Spiritual Mentor: This role is of primary importance to the older child as he or she moves into adulthood.

With Mother’s Day behind us, I thought this could help moms or other leaders in charge of an organization. Whether you are a domestic engineer (mom) or CEO of a corporation you can learn about leadership by flipping The Mom Factor on it’s head. This book by Henry Cloud and John Townsend listed six different areas that can be problematic for mothers. By looking at the opposite of these characteristics you can find good ways for moms and other leaders to act towards their charges that can really make a difference.

1 Be present but not intrusive,
2 Be stable and be able to take problems and crisis in stride.
3 Know where your staff (or kids) are developmentally (See Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Model)
4 Be able to lift up your staff and help them be the best employee that can be for them.
5 Realize when an person needs to have more independence from you.
6 Allow an individual under you to experience natural consequences of both their good and irresponsible behavior.

Need help making this happen? Reach out and get feed back about how you lead (or parent). We’re here to help.

by Caroline McMillan

The New Life Group

Thankfulness is in season right now. The leaves turn color, the air is crisp, and everyone begins to think of family and home as the holidays approach. Thanksgiving, in particular, highlights those wonderful things in our lives we are grateful for. But sometimes we forget to be thankful for more than just the easy basics: food, shelter, and love.

Being grateful for all the good things we have can be easy. We fill up our lists with warmth, joy, a good bed, health, our favorite celebrity, and our paycheck (even if we’re not so hot about our job). But what about that friend who takes advantage of your hospitality, or the boss who’s never happy no matter what you do? What about the cold weather ramping up your energy bill? Can we be grateful for these things too?

Read on: https://conta.cc/3CGArKP

Anxiety can weigh us down and help us to freeze up or run away as well as be aggressive. That's what you call overwhelming or non-adaptive anxiety. On the other hand, adoptive anxiety can be a real asset. My old boss John Townsend explains it this way.

“I once worked with an executive who felt such great anxiety about meeting with his board that he could hardly speak to them coherently. We had to work on reducing his anxiety from the overwhelming level to the adaptive level. After that, he presented himself well.”

This relates something that happens to us a lot at New Life. We see this both in counseling and in executive coaching as people try to function in their life. Most of us are pretty familiar with overwhelming or non-adaptive anxiety. We may have experienced this a lot as a child, as a young adult and continued to experience it in adulthood.

On the other hand, there's adaptive anxiety. This anxiety acts like a stimulus and helps motivate us on to good things. You could even say that this anxiety is excitement or a more positive anticipation.

An example of adaptive anxiety might be anxiety you get when your staff is holding you accountable about that Death By Power Point presentation you're going to be giving in an hour. Or a senior manager has giving you a huge project and asked you to report to her every week on the progress you're making. Or you know it's important to confront a difficult employee or staff member who needs a correction that will really help them do a better job.

Which one do you have: adaptive anxiety or non-adaptive anxiety? Write out the negative and positive things you’re anticipating. Also, by telling someone you trust about your thoughts you will shine light on whatever anxiety it is and empower yourself to handle it better.

Townsend, John. The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success in Doing Hard Things the Right Way (p. 18). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Further on the book deals with maturing into adulthood. Within the rules and structure of the workplace, both the leaders and the staff must rise to the level of maturity and beyond to be able to be effective in their tasks and relationships. This on one hand requires respect and appropriate working together with leaders. On the other hand, it also means that we must not be in a complete one down one up relationship with our authorities or our staff at work. To put it simply, it means that we are to require respect from others as well as to make sure that we respect them.

It’s also important to learn to work from the spirit of the law (or rules) rather than the letter of the law. Understanding the principle or values behind the law allows leaders and staff to operate as adults and not of either compulsion or impulse.

Some leaders see themselves as one up and believe they have absolute authority over all things and that they don’t have to respect anybody. It is not uncommon for these leaders to be failing in some way. For other leaders they still feel like they are one down with people, even their own staff. This is where it is important to work on our personal bonding so we can grow up to a role that we are called to. Bonding gives us a “launching pad” with which we can form our boundaries.

As part of this growth and maturity it’s important that we disagree sometimes with the first leaders that we ever met (i.e. our parents). And likewise, it’s important that your staff and peers can appropriately disagree with you. It is also important to recognize and pursue our talents and abilities as well as our creative instincts so as to find the right role in our leadership and help others do the same. Maybe you're a creative boss or perhaps maybe you're a boss that's very good about sticking to facts and figures. So, it's important to expand these gifts while at the same time finding people who can help you with the areas you're not so strong in.

Changes That Heal For Leadership was not a book Henry necessarily intended but do understand that the real book originated as part of a project to stop burn out in a campus ministry. With that said it can do much to help us develop us as leaders and help us develop our staff. Reach out if you need help with these stages with yourself and or your team.

Everyone of us comes to work with baggage and a need to grow and develop. We symbolically bring in our family of origin to the workplace. We’re human! Few of us have our act totally together when we start a new job. While work is not therapy and it should not be, it can be a powerful catalyst to help us develop in and out of our roles at the job. Many have read Changes That Heal by Henry Cloud, Ph.D. Here I look at the book as a leadership tool to help develop ourselves and our people and maybe give them an opportunity to make changes that heal and grow.

Time is what you need to wait for people to manifest the behavior of learning the job. An illustration of this is when a scientist teaches a lab animal a trick that they know it should be able to do, it is actually learning but maybe not showing its learning. The next morning they come in and run the experiment and the animal does it like it's known the behavior all its life. This is manifest learning as opposed to what was happening before which was latent learning which you can't see.

Grace is the second part of the equation where you allow people to make mistakes and give them grace as they need it to learn the new job or action. Handling this right helps them make good sense of their learning experiences.

Truth is where we begin to have a little bit more firmness in that we hold them accountable to certain standards that they need to perform the job well. We evaluate their performance (but not judge them as people) after raising expectations.

Next Henry talks about bonding and bonding is important in the workplace because it gives people a sense of belonging and connection as well as meaning. Without good bonding in a workplace people will not feel like they are part of a team or that they belong. Research indicates this bonding for staff is even more important than pay. Although good bonding needs to be established well outside the workplace, it is still important so that people learn to trust their leaders and fellow staff.

Next are boundaries which are very important to establish in leadership so that you can define roles and expectations. Henry has a whole book written about this subject called Boundaries And Leaders. Defining Vision, Mission and Goals are other parts a boundaries in leadership. While boundaries are not walls, they help our staff and ourselves define our responsibilities, what is and is not in our bailiwicks as well as keeping people challenged without overwhelming them.

The next part of the book talks about sorting out the bad and good in ourselves and others. We want to get away from black or white thinking. This is important in leadership because we want to be able discern between a bad action or attitude and the actual person. Judging a person from an all bad-all good perspective is counterproductive. The leader that sees a person as all good will be blind to their problem areas and not hold them accountable. The leader that sees a person as all bad will judge the person and not see their good parts or their talents or assets. It is also important to be careful of the ideal other or self as well as the despised other or self. These four positions can distort our thinking and lead us to expectations and or judgements that benefit no one. (continued)

It was a dark and stormy night...really! Off Cape Horn winter waves had reached 50 feet. Sir Francis Chichester was there sailing the 53 ft yacht Gypsy Moth solo attempting to circumnavigate the world in record time when he was caught in a nightmare of gigantic waves and howling wind.

Reefing back his sails and trying to use only a storm jib, he crawled up to the bow and attempted to attach and raise this small jib. Unfortunately, even though it was attached to the bow, he found it was dragged overboard by the huge waves breaking over him and his seemingly tiny boat in the middle of this monster storm. (I know from personal experience how small a giant 10 foot surfboard can feel in large waves.)

Strapped to the boat for safety, he tried again, in vain, crawling to the bow of the boat to get the jib up from under the keel and attach the line to where it belonged. Another monster wave washed over him, washed the jib overboard and pushed him back frustrating his attempt to attach this storm jib.

Then a thought struck him. What was he doing? He was already two weeks ahead of the world record, the boat would be fine in it`s current configuration plus he was wet and tired. What was truly important? He broadened his perspective. The vision for this voyage was to successfully circumnavigate the world in record time: that's what mattered most. Suddenly he thought, "Why worry about a silly storm jib?"

Soon he retired back in his cabin after setting his self steering gear. Getting out of his storm gear, he poured himself a beer and went back to studying one of his favorite books about the Cutty Sark. The next morning, he woke up in calmer seas with the sun shining and a new perspective.

What matters most in your life or in your organization? Are you "majoring in the minors" or are you "majoring in the majors" as a leader? What is distracting you from what is really most important? Is your strategic vision stuck in the weeds?

The Gospel of Luke tells about Mary and Martha and how Jesus responds to Martha's anxiety (Luke 10:38–42). Even though it seems like serving and making sure that everybody has food is the most important thing Jesus speaks to her feelings and then corrects her to help her to realize that listening to him is truly the most important thing.

Defining the most important thing can be found by writing down what comes to mind and heart as well as talking to a mentor, peer, coach or counselor. Our coaching and John Maxwell MasterMind Groups on leadership can do so much to help you find that most important thing.

The Process

Job analysis
The job in question is evaluated with that job’s immediate boss. We identify the job’s critical success factors and understand who succeeds and who fails in this role.

Interview
The candidate spends two to three hours in a structured interview with a consulting psychologist.

Computerized testing: Cognitive abilities
The candidate is administered a battery of tests, tailored for the job in question. Tests used assess numeracy, verbal skills, critical thinking abilities, and mental alertness. Norms used by our expert systems are specific to the job class.

Computerized testing: Personality and vocational inventories
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The cost of training one technician averages $70,000 and averages $200,000 for an air traffic controller.

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The other portion of the tailored assessment battery generates insights into goodness-of-fit issues such as thinking style, motivators, emotional maturity, work style, interpersonal orientation, and influence style. Norms used by our expert system are specific to the job class.

The Information You’ll Have About The Candidate

Career outlook: evaluation of career history, personal mission, and job motivators and de-motivators.
Cognitive abilities: in-depth description of critical analytic skills, reasoning abilities, verbal and numeric skills, and mental quickness.
Use of cognitive abilities: receptivity to ideas, problem-solving aptitude, and practicality/creativity of thought process.
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“We’ve found your assessment to be extremely reliable in determining critical competencies. Your expert system is a tremendous tool for determining the strengths and weaknesses of our applicants. We wouldn’t make a hiring decision without it.”

– Vice President of Human Resources Financial services corporation

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“When staffing key positions, we feel it is absolutely essential – for the best results for our company and the highest probability of success for the new hire – to use all available information, including your expert system (ASSESS), which is an in-depth psychological evaluation system. This is also a tool that’s been invaluable as a developmental instrument to help ensure the availability of qualified personnel to meet our future staffing needs.”

– Chief Executive Officer National retail organization



Work style: energy, pace, approach to planning and thinking, need for recognition, need for organizational freedom, attention to detail, orientation to action, work ethic and conscientiousness.

Emotional style: optimism, restraint over feelings, objectivity about feedback, handling stress, management of strong emotions, resilience and composure.
Interpersonal factors: sociability, assertiveness, first and lasting impressions, perceptiveness, competitiveness, agreeableness, acceptance of diversity, and service orientation.
Management and leadership style: desire to persuade and influence, approach to persuasion and influence, approach to managing relationships and conflict, communication style, and adverse factors that could impact relationships.
And more: a graphic profile of 21 personality traits plus selected cognitive ability measures; topics for special consideration and their implications; management advice; specific follow-up interview probes to pose to the candidate and another set of questions to ask of references; and the ability to reanalyze the same data set and produce an in-depth developmental report.


Hire by design. Improve the odds.



Rule of thumb: There are no “bad” or “good” employees. But, there are people who end up in the wrong job, which does a disservice to everyone. Consequently, the hiring process is better viewed as a compatibility study than a thumbs up or thumbs down process

The Brilliant Disaster [Part one}

Resumes were strewn all over the floor and couches of the living room. My father was desperately searching for a new senior executive in his organization. I was in college at the time and had no idea about executive selection. I struggled seeing his desperation and confusion with all the hundreds of resumes he had received. After reading resumes and talking to hundreds of candidates my father made his selection.

The final candidate, Angela, was a brilliant attorney in the main division of the organization. She seemed wise and knew the system well. Looking good on paper made Angela look like the best of many candidates. Interviews with her seemed to go well.

She was a disaster! Rigid and uncompromising Angela didn’t last for more than a year. She knew the rules all right and she could spew them back to you verbatim. She loved the book and she went by it. She was a poor fit for an organization that went more with the spirit of law than the letter of the law.

What had gone wrong? My dad had worked so hard on those hundreds of resumes. He had hired by gut instinct mostly but not by design really at all. Later I would find out about hiring by design through some excellent teaching by one of my mentors in executive coaching.

Hiring By Design

The Benefits

It’s objective, cost-effective, legal, and it works.
Candidates are uniformly impressed that the organization takes its mission so seriously that it uses such a systematic and thorough approach to the acquisition of human resources.
Testing significantly reduces turnover and the high costs associated with it.
When the best-fit applicants are hired, they settle into the new position more quickly and travel the learning curve faster.
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“Poor hiring shows up not merely in poor decisions but also in poor morale. When the less competent employees reach critical mass, their low performance standards become the de facto standards of the organization. The longer established employees who are well equipped for the job abandon their old high standards and conform to the new, lower ones.”

– Frank Schmidt, Ph.D. University of Iowa

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The hiring evaluation report becomes a working document for the individual and their manager. With the evaluation report in hand, the manager has a much clearer understanding of how to motivate, develop, and coach the new hire.

When correctly matched to a job, individuals perform for the satisfaction of mastery and achievement.
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The last applicant seen is three times more likely to be hired when testing is not used

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[See part two]

Loss in leadership is inevitable. Certainly leadership is about gain in so many ways which is why we forget sometimes that it is commonplace for us to have loss in leadership.

What do we lose in leadership? You might be surprised about some of the things that we lose along the way.

1. As John Maxwell says few of us end up with a people that we started off with. It is normal and perfectly healthy for us to lose people along the way. Not in the bad sense but because people move on, change careers, move on with their life perhaps to a different area and even get promoted to a different area in the same company or organization.

2. Even if we have members of the same original team sometimes the loss of certain key people may make your team a very different one. There are times when the same team will be given a new assignment or purpose that wasn't the same as the old one and everybody feels loss at the same time.

3. There are also times when you make mistakes or have failures or members of your team or group blow it and you have to deal with the losses that come from that. Maybe even as part of that your sense of ideal around the other person or persons has been hurt.

4. Loss is connected to hurt and anger. It can be all kinds of things like losing a chance or losing an ideal. Maybe somehow you've lost some sort of value or values. Perhaps you or your team have lost motivation at least for a season.

5. Unmet expectations, disappointments and a loss of purpose can help us feel frustrated as leaders but also can cause hurt and grief. The loss of opportunity can be a big issue. Not recognizing these can cause dissonance in our leadership.

6. Of course when you have to let somebody go you can grieve even if it's a mutual agreement for them to leave. The whole process of letting somebody go can be a huge loss too. Your loss feelings might be mixed in with your confusion and your anxiety around conflict.

7. In order to deal with grief as a leader first understand that loss is part of the role. Next make sure you express your feelings to God, others and even yourself. Writing out what comes up can be very helpful as well as writing out a letter to someone you lost as if they were far, far away. Only send the letter if it is wise to do so.

8. Writing out your ideal if the situation warrants that can also be helpful. For example, writing out how a sales project or team building experience was expected to go after a failure or mission creep makes the whole thing go sideways can be very helpful.

Debriefing and a “post-mortem” with a coach can do much to clarify and reset things. Resolving the grief feelings and renewing a sense of purpose can be very helpful.

Creating, building, and sustaining a family business is not only a fundamental American dream (over 20 million family businesses in the U.S.– 92% of all U.S. businesses), but is also a powerful dream in most other modern capitalist economies (for example, over 75% of all U.K. businesses are family owned). The benefits of family businesses are manifold, genuine, and in many cases psychologically profound.

Consider WIIFF (What's in it for the family). A family business:

1. Creates a heritage for the family and serves as a medium for perpetuating a family's history, traditions, pride, and core values and belief

2. Serves as a powerful testimonial to the success and potency of a family

3.Provides the ultimate career and financial safety net one’s children and grandchildren

4. Offers participating family members greater independence and control of their fate than a more traditional career path

5.Establishes a very special glue (a bonding material, as it were) that can hold a family together around a common set of interests, activities, challenges, opportunities, threats, milestones, relationships, and daily schedules

6. Demonstrates to an entire community (and various sub-communities) that this is a family to be admired and respected

7. Makes it more certain that individual family members will have the fullest opportunities as adults to “stretch“ developmentally and to self-actualize

8.Improves the chances that family members will be able to involve themselves in meaningful philanthropic activities and become pillars of their communities

9 Makes it more likely that financial advantages, non-trivial net worth (a.k.a. wealth), and “security“ will accrue to the family

10. Provides greater stability and welfare for its employees and for the community in which it operates
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Some downsides:
Average life span for an FOB is less than 25 years... which just happens to be the average tenure for a founder.
• Fewer than 33% of FOBs make it to the second generation.

• Only about 15% make it to the third generation and just 3% beyond that.

• By the year 2005, virtually all FOBs will have lost their primary owner to retirement or death.

• Managing growth can be especially challenging in a family firm, and more and more FOBs are turning to psychologists versed not only in psychology but in business consulting "... because the stakes are huge in terms of passing a business along from one generation to the next." – Time, 03.17.2001

•“Successful continuity management is a complex and demanding womb-to-tomb process (literally), which requires great psychological skills and psychological finesse.”

– Mark Brenner, PhD Chairman, TGCP

How can you continue the legacy and make sure that individuals can be their own person and still benefit from the family business and culture? Do you have someone to talk to outside of the family that can help you have an excellent perspective? There are many upsides to a family business as well as complications. Coaching from a Family Therapist can be an excellent way to navigate the different benefits and challenges that are inherent in a family owned business.