My taxes have finally been filed. As it turns out, I’m not really late (since small businesses have until June 15 to file), but it feels late since I’ve been putting them off for way, way too long.
I have a confession to make – one that I’m only now fully admitting to myself…gulp… I have some major shame issues around money. They’re pretty deeply rooted in my psyche.
It all started so long ago, when I was growing up the daughter of a poor farmer, wearing hand-me-down clothes, never quite sure I’d be able to pay for the $2 field trip fees or the cost of the skirt that was mandatory for choir, and always afraid that I was “less than” because our car was always breaking down and we just couldn’t afford the nice things other families had. Shame, shame, shame. (My sister told me recently that she even thought the fact that our cats were always grey or black must be because we were too poor to be able to afford the multi-coloured or orange cats. The day we got an orange cat was a lucky day for her.)
I tried not to admit to myself that I still carry those shame stories. I’ve made a decent living in my life and I no longer drive a broken-down car and I’ve always been able to pay field trip fees and soccer fees for my kids, but… still the shame. “I’m not good enough because I don’t know how to manage my money properly. I’m a failure because I have credit card debt. And so on. And so on.”
The shame is always worse at tax time. I fret and I fuss and I beat myself over the head with lots of old stories. The day I finally do the taxes is usually one of the ugliest days in our house and I warn the family to stay out of the way of my snarly self.
This year was even harder. Since I’d started my business last year, I felt totally incompetent when it came time to figuring out what to deduct and all that other stuff. And yet I kept telling myself that I had to do them myself and couldn’t hire anyone because there was no way I could let someone inside the mess of my finances. Shame, shame, shame.
After a couple of failed attempts, though, I had to admit defeat. I couldn’t do them myself. What did I do then? I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I pushed them aside and played the avoidance game for a few more months. “Maybe if I don’t think about them they’ll go away and I won’t have to deal with the shame.” Of course, we all know that those are fools’ games and the shame ends up eating us for much longer than it would otherwise.
Finally, I swallowed my pride and called the accountant that our kind and supportive financial advisor had recommended. I arranged a meeting with him, and then I started to fret big time. “He’s going to think I’m a fool for quitting a good job to launch a silly dream. What will he say when he sees I hardly made any money in the last few months of the year after quitting my job? He’ll laugh at me when he sees I don’t have a business accounting system and I walk in with a file folder full of receipts.” Shame, shame, shame.
But then I met with him. And it turned out the fretting was for nothing. He was kind. Just like the financial advisor who had recommended him. And he didn’t judge me. And he told me that for a business like mine, he wouldn’t recommend anything more complicated than what I’ve done – just a big envelope full of receipts. (“Leave the complicated financial management systems for big businesses. It’s overkill for what you’re doing.”)
And now the taxes have been filed. He made it SO EASY! He took away the painful snarly don’t-bug-mom-on-tax-day stress. And he made the I’m-too-incompetent-to-run-a-business shame disappear with his friendly smile and non-judgemental advice.
Paying for his service was some of the BEST MONEY I have ever spent!
Here’s what I learned from the experience: (You can feel free to point me to this post the next time I need a reminder.)
1. It pays to hire something for those things that cause you the most stress and aren’t part of your giftedness.
2. Most people won’t judge you just because they shine in the areas you don’t. In fact, they’ll probably be happy to use their giftedness to help you.
3. If you hire someone who DOES judge you, it’s time to cut ties and find someone supportive instead. Life is too short to feel judged.
4. People don’t expect you to make a lot of money when you first start a business. Those that DO make a lot of money at the start are either lucky or they’re lying. Get over it and move on.
5. Limiting ourselves with our shame stories instead of letting someone step in to help will burn a lot of unnecessary energy. It will take energy away from those things that we are gifted in and that we are called to share.
6. God made some people accountants and some people writers. If you’re the writer, don’t expect yourself to be the accountant. Let people shine in their areas of giftedness and then get busy shining in yours!
Early in my career as a director in the public service (around a dozen years ago), I hired a keen young intern named Gabriela Klimes. She was what you would call a dream intern.
She was eager to learn, full of ideas and energy, and willing to try almost anything. It was a great deal of fun having her on the team, because she energized all of us with her enthusiasm. She was instrumental in getting some pretty significant projects off the ground that year, including getting some commemorative signs on downtown streets (that she had designed and asked the city to hang), and organizing a regional youth writing contest that got national attention. (Incidentally, she stuck around after her internship year because I couldn’t bear to let her go.)
Gabby is now a director in the public service herself, and, much like the stage I was at when I hired her, she is also a mom to two small girls.
Yesterday I got a note from Gabby, offering a blurb for my testimonials page. I got totally choked up when I read it.
“I interned for Heather straight out of University. To some, intern may mean coffee runs and photocopying. But that was certainly not the case working for Heather. She entrusted me with real projects and put faith and trust into my ability to accomplish those projects. I cannot express how empowering that was to a young person in her first real professional environment. When I think back on working with Heather, it’s not boss or manager that come to mind, but leader and mentor and friend. Heather’s gentle encouragement of me to spread my wings literally began charting my career in a direction I never planned or imagined. Today, I am a relatively new manager of people and I recently hired my first intern. I have literally aspired to be the same type of leader for this young person that Heather was for me. And that is perhaps the biggest compliment to Heather’s leadership.”
The fact that someone as talented and smart as Gabby is would model her leadership after me is the highest praise I could imagine. Years ago I remember reading something that said that we should always lead as though we assume (and hope) those we lead will some day out-shine us. That’s how I always felt about Gabby – totally honoured that I could be part of her journey to greatness, and quite certain she would out-shine me some day.
The truth is, I learned as much from Gabby as she learned from me. By responding so well to my leadership and my trust in her, she helped me see that I really could be a leader even when I didn’t yet know it myself. When she joined the team, I knew intuitively that I could trust her with big projects and she never let me down. In that experience, I learned that collaboration, trust, and intuition are some of the most valuable skills you can employ in leadership.
I also learned that the wisdom and vision in the room should never lie with the leader alone. If I hadn’t trusted Gabby with her amazing ideas and energy, we wouldn’t have accomplished nearly as much as we did. If I had insisted that my vision was the right one, she wouldn’t have produced half as much as she was capable of.
Whenever I teach classes or workshops, I tell my students some version of this: “Chances are you’ll be taking notes at some point in this class, and you’ll mostly be writing down the words that come out of my mouth – as though I have some exclusive claim on the wisdom in this room. Let me tell you up front – that is not the truth. I may have more experience in this area than you (and that’s why I’m getting paid to teach you), but I do not have all of the wisdom. The wisdom is shared by everyone in the room and I want you to take notes on every wise thing you hear in this classroom, whether it comes from a classmate’s mouth, your own, or mine.”
Whether you are the leader or the person being lead (or both, as most of us are), always remember that no one person could possibly hold all of the wisdom in the room. We ALL learn from each other and our collective wisdom is always greater than any of us could hold alone. Don’t even be fooled by people who publish books or have popular blogs – they don’t hold all of the wisdom either.
You learn from me and I will learn from you. You share your wisdom and I will share mine. Together we will shine brighter than we could alone.
Thank you Gabby for teaching me that so many years ago, and reminding me of it with your note yesterday.
Note: It is partly thanks to my experience with Gabby, and the many others who came after her, that I now serve as a Leadership Mentor. I would like to help you emerge into the leader you were called to be.
Guess what?! The KIDNEY RAFFLE has officially opened!!! There are $12k worth of prizes available from some of the coolest people on the internet. You can support a great cause AND be entered to win amazing prizes in the process. Plus your moral support will help give me the strength I need to walk 100 km. 🙂
We need your help. We want to CURE kidney disease, so that people like my friend Cath Duncan will live long healthy lives!
Check out this short video if you want to know more about why I’ll be walking 100 km. And then visit Kidney Raffle and make your donation. (Please?!)
After quitting my job last year, I was asked to teach a course in writing for public relations. Although I’d worked in senior communications/public relations roles for many years (and even won an award as Manitoba Communicator of the Year), I was a little reluctant to take on the class.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to teach (I really did). It was just that I’d grown tired of doing most of my communicating on other organizations’ behalf and I felt a burning desire to write and speak about my own stories and passions instead. I was done with writing press releases and wasn’t sure I wanted to teach others to write them either.
And yet, I knew that it would be good experience learning to teach at the university level, and it was steady income, and so I took the job.
Fortunately, the curriculum was flexible and the administration was supportive of my ideas, so I made a few commitments to myself before I started.
– I would teach people to be good writers FIRST and then good PR writers second.
– I would teach people to write from their own voices rather than simply trying to replicate the voices around them.
– I would teach people to be PR professionals with integrity and values and would NEVER teach them to be spin-doctors.
– I would encourage students to follow their hearts into work that they felt passionate about.
– I would teach from the heart and encourage students to be open to the world and to each other.
That meant that we started every day with journal exercises that were all about exploring their own voices instead of writing for PR, we created vision boards during the first class of the new year, we invited speakers with integrity and passion to speak to the class (including Pam Slim, who encouraged them to imagine their careers outside the box of traditional employment), we used a Tibetan singing bowl to ring us into and out of class, and we shared some pretty personal stories and fears with each other.
It wasn’t always easy bucking the trend. I don’t know how many times I heard “you teach SO differently from anyone else in this program!” I was an edge-walker, never quite sure I was living up to the expectations of the administration when they created the classes I taught. But I kept on, believing what I was doing was the right thing and what the students needed.
I often said to my students “if I only teach you the mechanics of writing a press release and don’t teach you to write with passion, personality, and integrity, then I believe I am doing you a disservice.”
This week, I received my reward. One of the students (who is a bright and talented communicator) submitted the following letter to the administration and sent me a copy.
“Heather has added great value to the Public Relations and Marketing Management Diploma Program by not only educating her students about Public Relations fundamentals, but by encouraging us and giving us the tools to be great communicators. Her rapport building abilities allowed us to go beyond communicating – she gave us the ability to communicate effectively and to connect.
“Heather’s superior verbal and written communication skills were definite assets that helped to build our knowledge about Public Relations; however, I believe that her strength was in imparting integrity and honesty to her students.“
You know what? It pays to buck the trend!
Live with your whole heart, teach with your whole heart, and break a few rules if you need to! The world needs change, the education system needs change, and you can be a part of making that change happen!
Early in the morning