Karen Friedman Enterprises
Creating compelling communicators.
I have spent many years in communications. Beginning with a career as journalist, followed by more than two decades heading my own leadership communications firm, I have coached thousands of people on four continents. I am not telling you this to brag, but rather because I found myself in a unique situation when preparing for a recent speaking engagement.
[Read more…] about What is an Expert?
I have a client who has been cancelling meetings at the last minute. A few weeks ago, she said she was sick. After that, her dog needed attention. And last week, just minutes before our scheduled meeting, she emailed me to say she needs to go to her doctor. When she does show up, she’s often late.
Clearly, I was irritated given this has happened several times in a few weeks. I decided when she rescheduled, I was going to tell her this was unacceptable, that my time is valuable and if it continued, it would not be productive to work together. I had it all planned out.
A few days later she reschedules. I log onto Zoom expecting her to be late and there she is. Early. Before I have a chance to say a word, she launches into an apology and bursts into tears. Not sure what is going on, I ask what’s wrong and if she wants to talk about it.
Silence.
Then she says, I’m pregnant. I say that’s great, not understanding why she’s crying. She says well I mean I was pregnant. She explains when we were supposed to meet last week, she felt funny which is why she went to the doctor. She had a miscarriage.
I felt so sad for her. I was also so thankful that I didn’t scold her.
When you don’t know someone well which can be the case in business situations, it’s hard to know what’s going on in their lives that causes them to act or speak the way they do. It’s typically not about you even though it may affect you.
Think about the waitress who seems to have an attitude every time you ask why your order is taking so long. What you might not consider is because of staffing shortages, she is working overtime, feels unappreciated and harassed by customers who constantly blame her for order issues.
Or what about the guy who cut you off in traffic? Maybe he has a sick child or is dealing with a family emergency. He may not be thinking clearly.
It’s natural to react when we think we’ve been wronged. But it’s also important to identify situations where we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes to understand what they’re going through.
I work with a group of city health officials who are intimately involved in the COVID-19 crisis. They have to deliver positive test results to people and advise them to quarantine or take precautions. Frequently, people are resistant and lash out at the workers, refusing to heed their advice. As we were role-playing some of these difficult conversations recently, it’s eye-opening to see what might seem like such an obvious course of action to many of us poses significant difficulties to others.
Some people are single parents and can’t afford to miss work. Others have spent years saving every penny they could to visit a loved one and refused to cancel their trips. Another worried taking too much time off would cost him his job.
The healthcare workers were great. They approached every interaction with compassion and kindness. When meeting resistance, they focused on other proactive behaviors such as the importance of mask wearing, hygiene and ventilation when gathering indoors.
As we were discussing best communication practices, one of the case workers advised looking beyond someone’s words and reactions. She said often people aren’t upset that they tested positive. They’re scared and worried about other pressing issues. She said there are three things you must do to establish rapport and foster more productive conversations.
When we fail to understand and acknowledge what someone else is feeling, we risk inflaming the situation even further and closing the door on important interactions. However, behaviorists say when we’re kind, it can actually set off a positive chain of reactions.
I recall the day my father died. It was snowing but I had to get out of the house and get some fresh air. So, in a bit of a daze, I went to my local Wawa and almost cut someone off in the parking lot. I was too self-absorbed to realize what I did and didn’t even wave an apology.
As I stood in line to pay my coffee, the cashier pointed to the man in front of me and said, he paid for you. I thanked him and asked why he was buying coffee for a stranger to which he replied, “You look like you’re having a bad day.”
That little act of kindness didn’t take away my pain, but it made me smile through my tears.
As I think back to my client who lost her baby, I know I can’t ease her pain. But I decided to share that I understood what she was going through because I too lost a baby while pregnant. That shared experience prompted a very open and raw conversation that connected us and has likely transformed our professional relationship.
While it’s not possible to know why a stranger cut you off in traffic or someone snaps at you for apparently no reason, simply recognizing that there may be something more behind their words and actions that might make you think twice about reacting back.
Years ago, my husband and I bought a decorative clock that hangs in our kitchen. It broke. We’ve tried to repair it but haven’t had any luck. Because we like it and consider it more than just a clock, we’ve left it on the wall. After all, at least twice a day, it’s right.
Over the years, we’ve looked for big ornate clocks to replace it, but never found anything we liked as much. Until now. Over the holidays, we walked into a store to return something and there on the wall was a large, beautiful clock that looked perfect for our kitchen. We bought it.
Once home, my husband carefully hung it on the wall, and we were delighted to see it was the perfect size and accented the kitchen as nicely as the old clock. There was only one problem. It didn’t work. I’m not joking.
We checked to make sure we hadn’t missed something obvious like flipping a switch. We even went to the store and bought new batteries just in case ours were too old. It still didn’t work. Like the old clock, the hands were riveted in place, making time standstill, or so it seemed.
I started to think about the idea of time standing still which for the past two years has seemed more than just an idea. Since the pandemic, for many of us time has been at a standstill. Isolated at home with so much on hold, like the movie Groundhog Day sometimes it seemed every day was the same. We watched the ticktock of our clocks as if they were in slow motion or had stopped. Time appeared to move so slowly as if was trying to stand still or even go backwards to the way things used to be.
Stuck in this endless loop of sickness and death has been depressing and overwhelming. For so many, the unimaginable and untimely losses of loved ones have made us wish we could turn back our clocks.
As we begin 2022, we can’t and shouldn’t forget what we’ve been through as the pandemic has affected every aspect of our lives. That’s why it’s so important to start the new year by moving our clocks forward. As we push the hands of time, we will undoubtedly be frustrated with the “new norm” that’s forced us to change how we live. However, focusing on the future can allow us to rethink priorities, look at opportunities and count our blessings.
Over the past two years, millions of people have quit their jobs, taken up hobbies and spent more quality time with family than ever before. Some of us discovered we like zooming better than commuting. Being forced to learn new technologies has allowed many of us to continue working. Expanded telemedicine and videoconferencing has led to record levels of innovation as so many people and businesses had to reinvent themselves online. And while social distancing has gotten old, it may have reminded us how important human touch is to our emotional well-being.
For more than a year, I was not able to see my mother in person. The isolation and absence of family and friends has taken its toll on her. I realize I’m not alone. I’m incredibly grateful she is still with us which is not the case for so many others.
Karestan Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health says the effects of the pandemic are similar to those created by economic depression and war. She says it’s hard to measure the long-term impact and missed opportunities, especially on today’s young adults, yet moving forward, they may think of health and education differently from earlier generations. Even though so many of these changes such as virtual education was not by choice, additional online and remote self-learning may expand the way we teach and learn in the future.
While we can argue we didn’t want any of these things, epidemics and historical events have been changing the way we live since the beginning of time. As humans became more civilized and started building cities and crossing borders, smallpox, measles, the bubonic plague, Influenza and more have killed off populations and defined future generations.
From inventions to political movements, significant events have always altered our lives for better and for worse. Martin Luther King Jr spawned the civil rights movement. Actress Hedy Lamarr invented technologies used in GPS during the second world war which ultimately led to Wi-Fi. The September 11th attack on the World Trade Center led to the “War on Terror” and the Spanish flu of 1918 which reportedly killed 50 million worldwide sparked protests and strikes demanding improvements in working and living conditions.
Through every life-altering event, we humans developed a greater sense of gratitude and appreciation for things we’ve taken for granted. Freedom. Touch. Travel. Celebrations. Family. Friends. Time.
There are many wonderful quotes about thankfulness and gratitude however one I like the best is from writer William Faulkner. He says, “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: It must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”
Time is similar. If you don’t make the most of it while it exists, it will simply stand still.
Most of us here in the Tri-state area have never really been affected by tornadoes and hurricanes. At least not the kind that obliterate towns like folding dominoes and destroy life as we know it.
So, when we saw the pictures of devastating destruction that ravaged Kentucky and four other states this month, undoubtedly, we were sad for the thousands of people in its path. Yet, as the coverage fades and time moves on, we probably won’t think much about something so many miles away that doesn’t seem to affect us.
I will.
Every time there is a tornado or hurricane, I am transported back to August 1992. A reporter for 6ABC in Philadelphia at the time, I was sent to Homestead Florida to cover Hurricane Andrew, a category five storm that leveled over 63,000 homes and killed sixty-five people.
I recall interviewing a new mother who couldn’t breastfeed. She had run out of infant formula but couldn’t get to the store because there were no stores. Even if she could have made it to a Red Cross tent, the streets were piled high with twisted metal and dangerous debris that blanketed the ground where houses and businesses once stood.
When I went on the air that night to tell her story, I became teary eyed, caught up in the enormity of what happened. Back in Philadelphia, the phones wouldn’t stop ringing as hundreds of viewers continually called asking how they could help.
The images of first responders crawling through debris and over casualties is still haunting. Almost thirty years later, I still wonder what happened to that mother, her newborn and so many others I met. While I imagine they’ve rebuilt homes, churches and have found ways to move on, I’m certain the memories remain just as vivid for those who survived.
My father used to tell my brothers and me that we were lucky to live where we did. He said here in PA, we didn’t have extreme weather like tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. My father is no longer alive to have witnessed the twisted metal that still lines streets in Upper Dublin township from the September tornadoes that tore through the region. The images of the Vine Street Expressway under fifteen feet of water and historic flooding throughout the city he grew up in would have left him speechless.
While significant weather events and temperature instability at this time of year are not unprecedented, our region still dodges more bullets than other areas of the country. However, it seems our local weathercasters repeatedly call temperatures “above normal” when mild temperatures hang on during the winter and summer nights aren’t as cool as they once were.
According to a senior spokesperson at the Prediction Storm Center in Norman Oklahoma “it is hard to attribute any one particular event to climate change.”
While climate change may not be solely to blame for more frequent weather events here in the northeast, it is hard to ignore it. The National Weather Service reports the decade from 2011-2020 was one of the hottest on record in the U.S. Regardless of the political divide and varying opinions on the importance of global warming, researchers at Yale University have reported that Americans continue to rank climate change as a critically important area of public concern.
While there are those who claim changing weather patterns are harmless, science continually tells us our planet is warming at an alarming rate and human activity is the principal cause.
Regardless of where you stand on whether climate change contributed to the recent storms, there are ways to answer the call for help in Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee and Arkansas like so many did when I covered Hurricane Andrew.
If you are concerned about global warming and wondering what you can do moving forward without making sweeping expensive time consuming changes, Conservation International shares little behavior tweaks that can make a big difference.
As 2021 ends, there are so many divisive issues that Americans can’t agree on. Healthcare, immigration, climate change, vaccine and mask mandates, public education, gay marriage and more.
Perhaps when it comes to helping others however, we can find a way to agree that inaction is not an option.
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