by Heather Plett | Mar 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
“Now that the party’s over, can I create a world under the table again?” Maddie asked.
She’d been rather hard-done-by when she’d had to pack up her little imaginary home under the dining room table when her sister’s birthday warranted two separate parties in two consecutive weekends. Dolls, stuffed animals, her plastic stool/anything-she-wants-it-to-be, magical boxes full of treasure – all had to be stashed into her bedroom until the rest of the family members stopped caring about the messes that guests weren’t supposed to see.
“Sure you can,” I said, wanting to encourage her imagination and knowing that these magical worlds always equal hours of independent play and less need for Mommy’s attention.
An hour later, I found her there, lying still on the floor, staring up at the bottom of the table. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m daydreaming,” she said. “I have to do it here because I’m not allowed to do it at school.”
“You’re not allowed to?”
“No, Madame says we’re supposed to read, not daydream.”
“Well,” I said, “in my experience, if you pretend you’re reading, you can still daydream without anyone knowing you’re doing it! I still do it and I’m 43 years old!”
Her eyes twinkled at the thought of mildly deceiving Madame – with her mom’s permission.
“Yeah, I do that sometimes,” she grinned.
It might not make me Mom-of-the-year where the education system is concerned, but I’m much more interested in Mom-of-the-year where Maddie is concerned.
True to form, she spent the rest of the afternoon under the table. Later I found her curled up in a ball completely covered in a table cloth. When I asked what she was doing, she let me peek under the table cloth. She’d hauled the battery-operated camping lantern out of the basement and was pretending it was her campfire under the tent.
It’s good to have a 7 year old around to remind me of magical worlds in ordinary places, the wonders of a plastic stool, and the value of daydreaming.
When’s the last time you created a magical world under the table? And when’s the last time you lay on your back just to daydream? Maybe you should stop what you’re doing and try it, just for awhile.
Take it from my 7 year old artist/guru – it’s a wonderful way to pass a Sunday afternoon!
(And in case you’re an educator and you’re worried that her daydreaming is keeping her from reading, she dove into her very first chapter book this weekend and proudly and delightfully read 137 pages!)
by Heather Plett | Mar 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
I had a post (or two) all ready to be written for today. But then my daughter got her heart broken, and, well… the words just dried up. All of the blog posts in the world mean nothing when your daughter is sobbing uncontrollably in your arms.
In the end, all I could write was a long and impassioned letter to the powers that be in the soccer world, imploring them to please, please reconsider and let her play her beloved sport this summer. And just for good measure, I let them know just how it feels to watch helplessly as your daughter suffers through a year of injury, surgery, and endless agonizing days watching her sisters and friends play the sports that mean almost as much to her as life itself.
All year, the thing that compelled her forward, the thing that motivated her to do nightly strengthening exercises and drag me to the gym at 6:00 a.m. was one simple dream… to play competitive soccer again in the Spring.
Last night that dream was dashed when the team roster came out and her name was not on it. Her injury (more precisely, the critical recovery period) prevented her from participating in the tryouts and nobody saw it in their hearts to give her a shot based on past performance.
Life can be cruel. It seems even more cruel when it happens to your 14 year old daughter.
by Heather Plett | Feb 27, 2010 | Leadership, navel-gazing, Uncategorized
Guess what? My failings are being made more and more evident these days and… I couldn’t be happier!
I recently hired staff into two brand new positions and both of them took tasks away from me so that we could grow in the areas of fundraising and communications (especially online) and so that I would have more time to twiddle my thumbs and get lost in online rabbit holes. Oops… I mean so that I could focus on the leadership part of my job since I now have 17 people on my team (gulp).
They’ve only been here for a short time, but within a few weeks of their arrival, both have made some fairly significant improvements to the way we do things. To be honest, it didn’t take long for both to out-shine me and put my past efforts in certain areas to shame.
Now, if I were feeling vulnerable and insecure, I might have taken this personally and gotten caught up in self-deprecation about how I wasn’t really good enough at this job, blah, blah, blah. (And there have been days when I could have done just that, trust me.)
But you wanna know how it made me feel? HUGE and utter relief!
For starters, things are getting done and I don’t have to do them!
But more than that, they’re moving the markers on things that I honestly didn’t have the capacity or sufficient interest to master. I’m not great at fundraising and database management, and yet it’s part of our team’s responsibility, and so I would slog my way through some of it and mostly fail at it. I’m not all that good at website maintenance and analysis, and so mostly I would ignore it and pretend it didn’t need to be done.
Now I’ve hired two people who shine in those areas and it doesn’t make me feel badly for the ways I’ve failed, it makes me feel GREAT about all the things we’re now able to do as a team!
Here’s a revolutionary thought…
You don’t have to be good at everything!
Let that sink in for a moment. It’s true – you don’t have to master every task that you tackle or that you’re responsible for. Early in my leadership days I didn’t really get that and I would try to do a good job at every task our team needed to perform because I was sure that otherwise my staff and boss would think I was underqualified to lead the team. You’ve heard the term “micro-managing”, right? Yeah, well, I may have been guilty of that a time or two in the past.
But somewhere along the line I realized – HEY, there are some people on the team who are WAY better than me in these areas and if I just trust them to do what they’re capable of, we’ll all be further ahead in the long run.
Take administration and organization, for example. I kinda suck in those areas. But I’ve learned to hire people who really shine – the kind of people whose cheque books are ALWAYS balanced! (Go figure.) When we interviewed my current assistant for the position, she told us that when she was a kid, she used to line up her Barbie doll shoes because she needed to have order around her. As soon as I heard that, I thought “BINGO! We need to hire her!” It turns out my instincts were right – she’s good at all the areas that I lack and she makes the whole team look good!
Here’s another revolutionary thought:
Letting other people shine in the areas of their giftedness is good for everyone!
If you let your ego get in the way and you think you have to show yourself to be capable in every area and you don’t let people have their spot in the sun, well the truth is that you’ll all suffer. You’ll look bad because you’ll perform in a sub-par fashion, and they’ll look bad because they won’t have a chance to perform at all.
My new staff are raising the caliber of the whole team and they’re making all of us look good. What’s not to like? Plus I get to spend more time doing the things I actually AM good at – leadership, visioning, planning, directing… and delegating! Woot!
This isn’t just a leadership lesson, this is a life lesson. Sometimes we put expectations on ourselves that are unrealistic and by slogging through all the things we’re just not good at, we’re not allowing other people to shine and we’re wasting the energy we could focus on the areas where we’re gifted. I have no trouble, for example, letting Marcel look after car maintenance. And I’m quite happy to pass my cell phone to my daughters to let one of them adjust the settings, etc. (Even though they tease me about being a techno-ludite.) And you can bet that if Marcel’s teaching term is extended, we’ll be hiring a cleaning person as quickly as I can pick up a phone.
Now, I realize that we don’t always have the luxury of hiring people to do things, and sometimes you have no choice but to step up to the plate (like I’ve done for the last five and a half years before the board approved these new positions, or all those years of cleaning our own house while we’ve lived on a single income), but sometimes there are creative ways to let other people shine in the areas we’re not good at – like doing a “skills swap”, or looking for willing volunteers or youth interns.
My point is this…
Admitting that people outshine you in some areas doesn’t decrease your personal value.
The truth is, it might actually increase it, because you’ll have more opportunity for the areas in which you shine.
(Says the girl who is fumbling her way through figuring out what it means to be a full time leader/director, rather than a leader/fundraiser/database manager/communicator/web manager.)
by Heather Plett | Feb 25, 2010 | Uncategorized
Who doesn’t like getting fun things in the mail? Nobody – right?
A few weeks ago, I spotted a tweet by Kaileen about a gift swap she was hosting. I don’t often join that kind of thing, because I’m not very diligent about getting stuff into the mail on a timely basis and too often end up feeling badly about letting people down. But this time I thought it would be fun, and really… who doesn’t need a little good karma now and then?
True to form, I was late mailing my package (sigh – I could use travel and 101 other things as excuses, but let’s face it – it’s just not my strong suit to be organized) but it’s on its way now, so hopefully my swap buddy won’t mind the delay.
In the meantime…. oh my! What a treat I got in the mail today! Amy from Dish on Design sent me such a cool package, I just have to brag about it.
Cookies, chocolates (from a local sweet shop in Cincinnati), tea, a lovely candle (mmmm… it smells SO good!), and some word art to adhere to the wall (“Live, Love, Laugh”) in a very cool little fake-book box.
But… the very best part… oh you’ve GOT to see this up close!!
She did a bunch of research on my blog to find out what she could about me, and she created this amazing framed art work to celebrate ME! Using one of my own photos (of my feet) as a backdrop! Is that not the coolest thing EVER?! She called me a “global fumbler”! I think I may need to use that as my new tagline! And check out the way she used the letters in “fumbler” to define me:
- Friend & mother
- Unbridled creative
- Mentor to many
- Beautiful soul
- Leader of all things are possible
- Exceptional person (doesn’t give herself enough credit)
- Risk taker… fearless explorer
I feel so special! Thanks Amy!
And just so you don’t think I was greedy with the treats (she mentioned they were for sharing with my girls), here’s proof that they were enjoyed by them…
by Heather Plett | Feb 25, 2010 | random, Thursday thirteen
Reading all of Michele’s happy posts has inspired me, so here’s a Thursday Thirteen about all the things that are making me happy this week:
1. Marcel got a job! Wait… I need to say that again…MARCEL GOT A JOB! It’s a term position, but that’s the best anyone is getting these days, so we are all ecstatic for him!
2. He got a job because he put in extra effort in a substitute job he had, creating worksheets and impressing the administration with his initiative. I’m so proud of him I could burst!
3. Speaking of jobs… the 4 new staff I hired this year and the new volunteer that joined the team are working out BRILLIANTLY! It looks like we hired well and that makes me very, very happy.
4. I get to delegate more and, you know what? I’m kinda lovin’ it.
5. Nikki got a new cell phone, and now she sends me cute little text messages like “how was your day at work, mom?” I kinda like it.
6. The book “Refuse to Choose” by Barbara Sher is just SO GOOD! I feel so understood! And inspired!
7. Chai latte. I only let myself buy one once a week, and with a Starbucks in my office building, I’d say that’s pretty remarkable restraint. But when I have one… happy!
8. Last night’s documentary night at church. A cozy little group of us watched Etre et Avoir, a gentle little movie about a teacher in a one room school house. I’m so happy that Pam was inspired to start this!
9. I get to go to Chicago in April. A trip on the horizon ALWAYS makes me happy.
10. Online friends. I have some great ones!
11. Clara Hughes wins a bronze. At 37. Her sixth Olympic medal – in summer AND winter Olympics! She’s amazing!
12. Writing. I’m always happy when I’ve had some time to do some good writing.
13. Did I mention… Marcel got a JOB?! Oh yeah – I said that already. Oh well – it deserves at least two points on the list.
14. Bonus point… this banner in Toronto made me smile. Anyone want to go see a play with me?
