Interview: Sylvia Lafair

Sylvia Lafair

Lafair is president of Creative Energy Options, Inc. (CEO), a global consulting company focused on optimizing workplace relationships through extraordinary leadership. With a doctorate in clinical psychology who was a practicing family therapist, she took her talents into the work world and has since revolutionized the way employees react and teams cooperate. In order to facilitate a much more rigorous and comprehensive examination of the complexities of conflict, The Center for Intercultural Dialogue was established and one of its objectives is to help Israelis and Palestinians increase their understanding of the human dynamics of their interaction. The focus is on the expressive arts as a means of communication. Lafair has taught in Europe, South Africa, India, and recently began a leadership program in Ghana. Her most recently published book is Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success.

Here is a brief excerpt from my interview of Lafair.

Morris: Given the current economy, many people are experiencing anxieties and self-doubts they never experienced before. There are forces limiting their career success over which they have little (if any) control. What is your advice to them?

Lafair: We are all being put into a caldron to really learn and understand how to be resilient in this ever-changing world. This is a time to take stock and reevaluate what matters to us. One man I know had to file Chapter 11 as head of a four-generation family business. He had to give up a very fancy car for one the custodian used to drive. He feels he has let down a long line of ancestors. He told me that what helped him was my suggestion he take a week and do something foreign to him. He volunteered at a hospital; he was a grown up candy stripper. It got him out of his small ego into a new frame of mind. Read a book, write a book, and learn to play an instrument, or paint a picture, sing! Just do something! It does not have to be expensive. This will engage your creative brain. More often that not, the colors of life begin to change to a more brilliant hue and new answers will come to old questions.

Morris: Is it possible to leave at home patterns of attitude and behavior that would other wise limit career success?

Lafair: I wish I could answer “Yes” to that. It would make life easier. However, I did not make up the rules. I just know how to explain them. I believe there is a wonderful opportunity to use work for growth, for becoming whole, for bringing all of our best potential to our business arena.

We all have been formed by family, culture, and crises. There is enough knowledge in neuro- psychology that indicates we can dig into the past, gain an understanding of conscious and unconscious choices, become more self aware and free our inner creativity.

In the past and even today, psychotherapy has been considered a weakness of character by many. I often wonder why so many bright, competent individuals will self-sabotage rather than look for the underlying reasons why their careers derailed. That can happen at every level, including the very top of a company. We have so many examples right now with failures in key industries.

I think executive coaching is a great start. However, most coaching insists that it is only the present and future that can be discussed. I say it is impossible to get a real read on what is needed without some knowledge of the past. Our motto is “clear the past to free the present”. That means get an understanding of the tendency to repeat situations and then look directly in the mirror so that old, outmoded reactions can be transformed.

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If you wish to read the complete interview, please contact me at interllect@mindspring.com.

You are invited to check out the wealth of resources at:

http://www.ceoptions.com/index.php

http://www.sylvialafair.com/

Q #253: Any really compelling examples of credibility?

One of the best occurred many years ago when Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith competed against each other in the final match of the men’s singles championship at the U.S. Open at lily-white Forest Hills Tennis Club. At that time, players were required to wear all-white, also. (Ashe was the only Afro-American in the entire tournament.) They were tied at two sets and 4 games each in the fifth and final set. Smith was serving to hold serve. He lost the game on a highly-controversial call and the court was immediately engulfed by shrill whistling for several minutes by the enraged fans. Finally, play resumed, Ashe held serve and won the match. During the awarding of trophies later, announcer Bud Collins asked Smith about the call. Was it the turning point? “Yeh, probably.” Collins then noted how unpopular the call was. What did Smith think? “Arthur said my shot was out. That’s good enough for me.”

Here’s another. Decades apart, golfers Bob Jones and Tom Kite both called penalties on themselves for violations that no one else saw while playing the final hole of a major tournament. They lost the tournament by one stroke. When each was later asked why he called a penalty on himself for a violation no one else saw, each replied, “I saw it.”

It is also worth noting that in Maine, folks have a unique way of expressing themselves.  Here’s one of my favorites. “Lived here all your life?” “Not yet.” As for commenting on those with dubious credibility: “Won’t say he’s dishonest but if he wants his cows to come home, he’s gotta get someone else to call ‘em.”

Comments? Please share.

Book Review: The Power of Small

The Power of Small: Why Little Things Make All the Difference
Linda Thaler Kaplan and Robin Koval
Broadway Business (2009)

The great value of Kaplan and Koval’s book is derived from their pragmatic approach to all manner of situations and circumstances in which recognition and accommodation of the right details can indeed have a significant, beneficial impact. They cite basketball coach John Wooden for whom no detail was insignificant. Throughout his career, devoted all of his first pre-season meeting with each squad to explaining how to put on socks properly. The tradition continued until his last season at U.C.L.A. when his team that year won the last of ten NCAA titles during his last 12 seasons, including seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. By the way, not one of his players ever had any problems with blisters. I really appreciate the informal, almost conversational tone that Kaplan and Koval immediately establish with their reader before they work their way through an especially lively and eloquent narrative. The chapter titles are clever (e.g. “Go the Extra Inch”) but not cute.

They take the subject (i.e. the power of small) seriously because of the potentially enormous implications and consequences of neglecting or ignoring “the right details” but, that said, I think they should have provided an occasional qualification to temper an otherwise strident comment. For example, some (but not all) “little mistakes spell disaster”; there are times when it is possible to “make it big by thinking small” but there other times when thinking small makes “it” even smaller; and when “small changes the world,” the results are not necessarily beneficial. I think the subtitle should have been “Why Little Things Can Make All the Difference.” With both skill and passion, Kaplan and Koval urge their readers to be alert for the important details that others miss, to become an effective problem finder, to make “going above and beyond the call of duty” their standard operating procedure, to be a more inquisitive and attentive listener, to take advantage of every opportunity to tell others how much they are appreciated, and in countless other ways to apply and leverage “the power of small” whenever and wherever appropriate. Well-done!

Q #252: What business lessons can be learned from films about preparing a great meal?

Julia and Julie

Babette’s Feast
Big Night
Julia and Julie
Like Water for Chocolate
Ratatouille
Tampopo

As films such as these so effectively demonstrate, there are important business lessons to be learned from the preparation of a great meal:

1. Be passionate about the results that you intend to produce.
2. Have a detailed game plan (“recipe”) that allows for improvisation.
3. Use only the very best materials available.
4. Have all ingredients near-at-hand (i.e. Mis en Place).
5. Expect to make mistakes. The most valuable are those from which you learn the most.
6. Preparing as well as eating a great meal should be a delightful multi-sensory experience.
7. Timing is (almost) everything. If you rush or dawdle, you will fail.
8. Take a team approach and involve only those who are zealous about points 1-7.

Bon appetit!

A $2.00 steal, or a waste of $2.00 — Technological Change Marches On

A technological marvel -- of days gone by

From wkikpedia:  Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when a person, object, or service is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order. Obsolescence frequently occurs because a replacement has become available that is superior in one or more aspects.

I have written many posts on innovation.  Business books love this theme.  I think it is safe to put it this way:  a failure to innovate, or at least to keep up with innovation, leads to absolute failure in business.  Once a pradigm shifts, once a change is implemented, the old ways are dead and gone.  If  a company is selling yesterday’s products, using yesterday’s organizational structure, serving customers in yesterday’s ways, the company will disappear before too many additonal yesterdays pile up.

I saw this come to life at a garage sale this wekend.  I don’t go garage sale shopping, but if there is such a sale on my block, I might walk over to check it out.  There, in the stack of old computer keyboards and obsolete cell phone charge cords was a Kodak Slide Projector.  It was in its original box, looked in immaculate condition, and it sold for — $2.00.  I don’t know what it sold for originally, but I think it’s safe to say that the person who bought it originally would have never guessed that it would sell in a garage sale for $2.00.  (The photo to the left is not the actual projector — I should have taken my own photo, but simply did not think quickly enough).

It did sell.  As I was there, a man bought it.  His English skills were not good, and I’m not really sure he know what it was.  If he actually has slides, $2.00 might be a steal.  If not, it was $2.00 down the drain.  But there, in one graphic illustration, I saw the clear truth — yesterday’s innovations, regardless of how valuable they were and how long they served, can be tomorrow’s obsolete products in the blink of an eye.

{News item:  Kodachrome is the trademarked brand name of a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak from 1935 to 2009.}

Are we being creative, innovative enough?  And will we be tomorrow?