Marjorie R. Barlow, Ph.D.

LMNOP  (I love the alphabet)

I had a really big experience this week.  Interface Flor brought me in to New York for some workshops on “How Full Is Your Bucket?”    The Interface showroom is a beautiful facility with great design and all the stunning new products displayed.  That, in itself, was a treat.  The new carpet tiles are so beautiful and still are meeting the Zero Footprint goal of environmental Sustainability.  Congratulations to David Oakey and his design team.  I especially admired the pattern called “Vermont”.  Beautiful!!

But, the real reason I am writing is to tell you about an organization that I learned about during the meetings.   People have been losing jobs all across the country.  This story is about a group that came together in New York to meet the crucial need of some of those people who are without employment temporarily.  Specifically, these are designers and architects willing to help each other in the down-turn of this economic time.

LMNOP is the result of the innovative brainstorming of that small group.  I met several of them on this trip and wish I could meet all of them, for they are the kind of people who face “what is” and meet the need, no matter what their own discouraging situation might be.  That is the kind of pluck and courage that impresses everyone.  Kristen Mucci and co-founder Stephanie Chiuminatto were there at the beginning of LMNOP, along with the other co-founder, Jennifer Graham.  These women were at an event where they joined in the sharing of their loss of jobs.  As a result of that conversation, they came up with this stunning idea, “Why not create an organization where we can help one another while we are looking for work?”   After brainstorming awhile (wish I knew all the details of the birth of this project), they arrived at the brilliant idea–naming it LMNOP.  The acronym stands for Leadership, Mentoring, Networking, Opportunity for A&D Professionals.  You may know how much I love the alphabet, so this is the greatest idea ever, to me!  (Also, my new great grandson is named Lawson Paul, so that spans the series of letters from L to P.  Really hit me hard as a great thing.)

They are talking now of making it a non-profit organization, where people in the Architecture and Design Industry can turn to one another for help.  When you want to learn; when you need a mentor; when you want to spread the word about what you do; or when you want to search out new opportunities for jobs and services, LMNOP is there for you.

I grew up in the great depression and this is reminding me of the ways in which families, friends, and communities “made do” with what was, and we all got through it by being in it together.

We ARE all in it together.  If my neighbor is unemployed; if my friend has a need; if my family calls, then I am called to respond.  That’s the way I want to be.

One other conversation on this trip was interesting for me:  Someone asked if the Strengths based approach to life means that I can like everybody.  I respect such a question for it sort of suggests that my beliefs might be more like PollyAnna wearing rose colored glasses and not facing up to the hard facts of reality .  My reply was that I am a person who wants to “like”.  In other words, I do not want my credo, or my beliefs, or my manner of being, to be determined by someone else’s behavior.  So, whenever someone seems to be unlikeable, I go to that place of decision and choice.  I ask myself, how do I want to respond to this person?  My answer is that I want to be in the mode of liking–meaning, I want to give the benefit of the doubt without judgment.  I want to be coming from a loving heart, not a suspicious mind.  And, I have come to believe that when someone is being unlikeable, it usually means that they are off-track in their own purpose in life.  Being likeable or lovable is not the same as having to compulsively please everyone.  The neurotic drivers to be pleasing, be strong, or be perfect are conditions for false well-being.  Surely, I don’t have to convince you that you won’t please everyone, you are OK even if you are weak, and you can give up needing to be perfect.  It is really OK to make mistakes.  As Abraham-Hicks tells us, we weren’t wrong or bad, we just weren’t done yet.  So, every moment is a new beginning.

As a bonus, I discovered at the end of our meeting that Stephanie Chiuminatto, co-founder of LMNOP, is from Kingsville, TX.  I lived there many years and knew Stephanie’s grandparents and her parents!  I can remember that little girl, Stephanie, who now has grown up and is pursuing her career in New York City.  A small world!  Less than 3 degrees to that connectedness with each other.  We really are all in this together.

In all these years of working with people, the last fifteen in the life of corporate relationships, I can say that the best leadership has a quality of development of employees, rather than domination or control.  Working with families, I can say that the best parents are developers, not controllers.  Working with marriage and other relationships, I truly believe that the best possible husband, wife, or lover is interested in the development of the partner, not control or domination of that partner.

I admire anyone in a leadership position who exercises the skill and discipline it takes to “grow” a team of people into a cohesive, productive unit.  When the leaders at Interface FLOR, Inc., introduced Strengths concepts into the culture, a spiral of expansion and growth became possible.  I have enjoyed being a Strengths Coach in that model.  My fellow coaches are each very different, unique, and one of a kind.  The same is true for leaders, be they managers, parents, or spouses.  Sometimes, leaders are counselors; sometimes they are teachers; sometimes they are like coaches of sports teams–encouraging, entertaining, acknowledging, and keeping the momentum going.  Each one has placed his or her stamp on their style of coaching just as anyone who leads will do it best from authenticity of Self.

Above all, Strengths Coaching is about building relationships.  Leadership is about relationships.  Relationships that set the stage for the highest development of both coach and “coachee” are the best for any company.  I was remembering recently my childhood training in Sunday School.  We were taught by loving people and some were able to foster enthusiasm.  Others were more into admonishment and control.  My memory goes back to one teacher who laughed a lot.  Mrs. Cornelius was jolly and welcoming.  She could motivate her whole class of eight year olds to memorize verses from the Bible.  I can hear them now, saying “God is Love” or other short verses.  One of the boys in the class always quoted the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.”  That teacher never ever scolded or made fun of him.  She had a way of accepting with a smile what he offered.  He loved that class and was there every Sunday.  Mrs. Cornelius held the field of hope for each of us, warmly welcoming and supporting our efforts.  Her classes always had high attendance and lots of activity.  Some frowned on it, saying seriously, “Those children are having too much fun.”

Fun?  Is that a bad word?  When I wanted my children to learn how to do laundry, Paul suggested that it could be fun.  That was a foreign concept to me.  My childhood didn’t allow that work could be fun.  Work was serious.  Today, I know that work can be the greatest fun of all.  I observe that the teams who are most creative and most productive are also the teams that seem to have a lot of fun.  High, positive energy is creative.  Openness, conviviality, and friendliness are hallmarks of great teams.  Leaders who foster these qualities are developmental.  People grow into more of what they can be under open conditions.

I believe that individuals are Love-Energy.  People are energy in motion.  The best form of that energy is the energy of love.  Love is the warm acceptance of people just as they are.  Love is positive emotion.  People are created in the Image and Likeness of God.  God is Love.

To make this more personal, YOU are the energy of love.  You are stardust.  You are sunlight.  You are a person, a Godling, to be unfolded, not some object to be molded, shaped, or pruned.  You have a seed of potential which can be fostered, nurtured, encouraged, and released to become the highest and best version of who you really are, your essential Self, not created in our limited version of God, but brought into your individual spiral of growth through space-time to something higher, brighter, better, and more noble.

You deserve to have a Strengths Coach who will see you as a Possible Human and will be a developer of your best talents.

An attitude of development, not remediation, sets the stage for great leadership.

How is your portfolio doing?  If your 401K looks like mine, it has been severely reduced in the last few weeks.  I am looking at a different kind of portfolio.  This one is suggested in a brilliant new book, POSITIVITY, by Barbara Fredericks, Ph.D., who deals in research into positive psychology.  That is right down my alley, since I am totally convinced that the Strengths-Based approach is the best way to go through life.

The Economic Portfolio can be very different from an Emotional Portfolio.  What if you also kept files on your emotions?  And, especially on your positive emotions?  Fredericks shows us how to do that in her book.  So, I am today setting up an Emotional 401K, with shares that are named Joy, Gratitude, Serenity, Interest, Hope, Pride, Amusement, Inspiration, Awe, and Love.  Out of that will come more expansion in my mind and my imagination.  It will also bring forth more creativity, not to mention better feeling tones.  The charts can plot my experience on a daily, minute-by-minute flow.  Gratitude is easy to keep in the upper levels.  Amusement is a great emotional stock for everything tragic can also be quite comical.  Serenity can be purchased with meditative thinking….  You get the gist of this, I hope.

Make your own chart of emotions and remember, you can choose the positive ones.  All it takes is to change your thinking and your believing!  Yes, that’s hard to do, but in this day of worry and stress, it is worth the doing.

A song from my past
was “Accentuate the Positive; Eliminate the Negative”. One of the lines said, “Don’t mess with Mister In-Between”. We have had many years of remediation of weaknesses, attempting to eliminate the negative. We look at the negative and follow a disease model where we catch people when they are wrong. If pointing out mistakes was effective, how many parents would never repeat themselves when they say, “Stop doing that!” The unfortunate truth is that whatever that parent wanted the child to stop is probably now going to be done again. If nothing else, the child now knows how to get the parents’ attention.

SHIFT HAPPENS
This article is about a shift in what we accentuate–what we focus on–what we pay attention to. We have known for a long time that whatever we pay attention is likely to be repeated. Therefore, we will do better in our attempt to practice great human development if we focus on what is good, what is positive, what is right about our fellow human beings. Since people don’t really change that much, why not find what is positive and build on that?
A TURNING POINT
The Positive Approach describes a monumental change that has taken place in the last fifty years. This change has happened in all the human sciences (biology, anthropology, psychology, sociology, theology, physiology, etc.). The big turn around reveals that we are no longer fixated on faults and failing. We are not looking at disease to discover health; not studying divorce to create happy marriages; and no longer trying to correct our weaknesses in the workplace.

STORY
The Positive Approach is a call to discover and share the true stories of people and organizations at their best, finding the joy of success rather than the pathology of abuses and restraints.

DREAMS
The Positive Approach invites the expression of your hopes and dreams, with the realization that what we focus on becomes our reality

NOW
The Positive Approach claims the power of now, recognizes quantum reality; and “gets it” : that we create successful living from our true essence.

WHO ARE YOU?
The Positive Approach is your invitation to continue unfolding your essential true self. Looking at joy and success, our uniquely individual stories unfold in the light of our best potential, our highest thought, and our grandest feelings. Expressing our hopes and dreams in the positive form is the call to creation of what we can be. Creation of the your best possible self is actually possible. That possibility can be realized through the genius management of managers, parents, or bosses who follow the positive approach to human development. Those guiding lights can, on a daily basis, invite you to know your strengths and manage your weaknesses.

MANAGE WEAKNESSES
We are learning to manage the weaknesses and give the primary energy to building on the strengths, envisioning and creating success. When we are trying to operate outside our strengths, we can do three things. First, we can use the Strengths we do have. Second, we can enlist the help of a friend or co-worker who has the needed Strengths. Third, we can ignore the weakness and simply go forward. Trying to remediate the weakness is the negative approach and it does not work any better than any other system of punishment for mistakes. I heard Donald O. Clifton say many times, “The absence of disease is not the same as the presence of health.” Health is very different from just not being sick. Strengths are very different from just not making mistakes or fixing weaknesses. Positive growth and development helps us play from our strengths instead of pursuing impossible perfectionistic behavior where we get everything right!

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO HAVE A HAPPY CHILDHOOD
I cut my therapist’s teeth on a theory called Transactional Analysis. We learned that the injunctions set us up to believe we were not enough. These injunctions were stated as Don’ts (Don’t feel, Don’t think, Don’t be yourself, etc.) and they were not spoken but were sent by the non-verbal expressions from parents reacting to misbehavior; the counter-injunctions were taught, usually spoken, to compensate for all those “Don’ts”. The counter-injunctions were also neurotic even though they were expressed as “Do’s”. They were the basic rules to live by so that we could alleviate our self doubt and all our fears. These counter-injunctions were false promises but we desperately attempted to obey them. The implied message was:
“You will be in favor if you will DO this: 1)Be Perfect; 2) Be Pleasing; 3) Be Strong; 4) Be Careful; 5)Try Hard; and 6) Hurry Up.

HOW
Here is an encouraging word: New positive permission says 1) You are OK even when you make mistakes; 2) you can learn what pleases you; 3)you can lighten up and not carry the whole load; 4) you can take risks; 5) you are free to stop “trying” and go ahead and just do it; and 6) you have the right to live your life according to your own time table. These permissions can come from inside you instead of coming from some new parent person on the outside.
THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS
The Positive Approach claims the power of now, recognizes quantum reality; and “gets it” : that we create successful living from our true essence. Our beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behavior are 100% our own individual responsibility. Awareness of these four major parts of who we are will open the door to success in becoming all we can be.  You and you alone own your beliefs, your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior.  That is both the good news and the bad!

YOUR ENTELECHY
The Positive Approach says that your true essence is something good. A Greek word, entelechy, is used to describe our dynamic purposiveness. It is the entelechy of a pear seed to become a fruitful pear tree.  Jean Houston says, “Entelechy is all about the possibilities encoded in each of us. For example it is the entelechy of an acorn to be an oak tree, of a baby to be a grown-up, of a popcorn kernel to be a fully popped entity, and of you and me to be God only knows what. ”

The Positive Approach is your invitation to continue unfolding your essential true self. Looking at joy and success, our uniquely individual stories unfold in the light of our best potential, our highest thought, and our grandest feelings. Expressing our hopes and dreams in the positive form is the call to creation of what we can be. What we can be takes positive form through the organizations we serve. We can discover and create wisdom in the workplace, based on stories from the past, the creative genius of the future, and the power of now. We have realized the futility of the old path, where we searched out weakness, faults and failure. The disease model is crumbling and we are on the cutting edge of a positive revolution.

POSITIVE OPTIMISM
This revolution will facilitate the coming of the next industrial age. It can usher in a Strengths Based Culture in all institutions and organizations. A Strengths Based Culture will harness the inventive imagination of engaged workers and managers to achieve revolutionary cultural goals.  We have enough talent to heal this planet.  We can optimistically and positively draw out the best in each other and achieve the next era of human evolution, where we might just learn to live together in peace.