by Heather Plett | Oct 31, 2009 | Uncategorized
Shortly after writing the last post about first impressions, I remembered a fairly recent time when my first impressions were dead wrong. I was at an event where I knew few people. I started talking with one woman at my table, because I thought she was the seatmate I’d probably have the most in common with. There was another woman at the table that I barely gave a second glance because she didn’t look like someone I’d bond with. She was conservatively dressed, and, at first glance, she looked like she was a dutiful wife who let her husband take the lead. Boy was I wrong! When I started talking to her, I found out she was quite fascinating, was doing all kinds of interesting volunteer work in developing countries, and traveled a fair bit independently of her husband.
So there you go – as some suggested on the last post, first impressions can definitely be wrong!
by Heather Plett | Oct 30, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’m in the middle of hiring three new staff people for my team, so I’m doing a LOT of job interviews. (Approximately 6 first interviews for each position and then 2 or 3 second ones for each – that’s about 25 interviews in about 3 or 4 weeks!)
I’ve been in leadership positions for about 12 years, so I’ve sat through hoards of interviews and hired a lot of people. I’m happy to say that I have almost always hired people who end up being a joy to work with. I think I’m a fairly good judge of character. Or at least I know how to pick people who will fit well with my personality and the team I lead (which – truth be told – is often most critical).
Even though we (I usually do it as part of a panel) ask a lot of interview questions, and almost always interview people twice before hiring them, plus we check references carefully, the truth of the matter is, much of it boils down to first impressions or gut instinct. Yes, the person needs to be qualified to do the job, but when we’ve done the initial screening and we’re faced with two or three candidates with fairly equal qualifications, I’ll go with the one that I have the best gut feeling about.
It’s not that my opinion is fully formed in the first 30 seconds after I meet a person, but it’s not unusual that the person who impresses me the most throughout the interview process is the one that I felt a connection with almost instantly. If I were to try to quantify what it is I’m trying to pick up in the moment I shake the person’s hand (and if you’re doing interviews, I highly recommend shaking hands and looking the interviewer in the eye), I’d say that I have to see some evidence that the person is likeable, flexible, relational, pliable, attuned to their surroundings, self aware, eager to learn, and has a sense of humour. I know it’s a lot to try to pick up all at once, but it’s often surprising how accurate those 30 seconds can be. (For some interesting reading on this subject, I’d recommend Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. He’s got some interesting evidence for the power of first impressions.)
What about you – do you trust your first impressions? Have they ever steered you wrong? (In the interests of full disclosure, I do remember once when I was wrong and the person I liked at the beginning turned out to be a bit of a con artist.)
by Heather Plett | Oct 28, 2009 | calling, childhood, Passion
On her second birthday, Nikki spent about an hour trying on all of the clothes she’d just gotten as gifts, while the toys got brushed aside. She rarely wanted to ride in the stroller if she had the option of running. She scoffed at anyone who wasted her time with fairy tales or made-up entities like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. Now that she’s thirteen, her friends call her the “Tyra Banks” of her group because of her passion for fashion. She dreams of the day her knee heals so that she can run, run, and run some more. (She’s jealous of me when I run on the treadmill – can you imagine?) She’d rather read a biography than a work of fiction any day.
At two, Julie had a better command of the English language than most teenagers. She learned to negotiate (and sometimes manipulate) almost as quickly as she learned to talk, and before long, we couldn’t keep enough books in the house to keep her happy. Now that she’s twelve, she volunteers for every public speaking opportunity that’s available to her, she’s trying to get a student council set up in her school so that students have more of a voice, and she’s almost always lost in a book.
Some of Maddie’s first words were “can you imagine if…” She filled our house with her imaginary playmates and all of the stuffed toys and dolls her sisters had tossed aside. Her favourite game was a fanciful round of “would you rather?” Now that she’s seven, she still plays “would you rather”, writes story books, paints pictures, calls herself an artist, and creates elaborate play spaces for her dolls under tables or chairs. She loves 3D movies and insists that they’re much better when you reach out for the things that come flying at you.
I don’t know how these things will continue to manifest themselves in my daughters, but I suspect some of it will shape the way their lives unfold. I hope that we as their parents have instilled in them enough of a belief that those passions have worth.
In more than one book I’ve read recently, writers claim that “our youthful passions serve as a foreshadowing of our calling or life’s work.” I want to honour the foreshadowing I see in my children, and so (in my moments of attentive parenting) I buy books on fashion for one of them, help another one coax school leadership to consider a student council, and climb under the table with the third and help her spell out the words for her latest work of fiction.
I want to go back to the child I once was and tell her the same things I try to say to my children. “Those hobbies you have? Those things that make you happy? They’re not just a waste of time. They have value. Don’t set them aside in pursuit of a more practical career. Trust them to direct you into your path. Don’t try to fit into the boxes you think you’re supposed to fit into.”
On the bus yesterday, I read “…just scribble your recollections of childhood passions in the margins here.” And so I did. This is what I wrote:
I loved to go places, either on my horse, my bike, or (on rare occasions when our family went on an adventure) in the car. I loved to wander all over the farm and thought of myself as an explorer in the woods. I had a special little hideaway in the middle of a bramble bush that you had to know how to navigate your way through to avoid the sharp thorns.
I was always creating something – macramé plant hangers, doll beds, decoupaged memory boxes – you name it. I learned to sew and was forever digging through my mom’s fabric closet for interesting scraps of fabric. I was happiest when I had a creative project on the go.
I wrote endless journals, stories, poems, one-act plays, or whatever tickled my fancy. My very first drama was a little play my friend Julie and I wrote and performed in our living room as a fundraiser for a mission organization. I wanted to speak and have people listen. I wanted to influence.
I would walk to the farthest field on the farm if I thought that Dad would give me a chance to drive the tractor. It felt like freedom to me, to be able to drive and to be trusted with something that was usually reserved for my big brothers. I thrilled at the little grin my Dad got when he was proud of my independence and determination.
I loved to be active. I would join almost any team or group activity that was available to me. I played ringette, soccer, volleyball, and baseball. I joined the drama club and the choir. I was never a star but I was always a joiner.
I gravitated toward positions of leadership and influence. I was student council president in grade 9. (After that, though, I had to go to the ‘big’ school in a much bigger town. I lost my confidence and didn’t run for student council again until college.)
What would that little girl tell me if only she could? What were the dreams she had that got set aside when bills had to be paid and careers had to be chosen?
I haven’t totally abandoned those things I loved to do. Even in the practicality of life, I’ve usually found some small way of honouring them. But sometimes we believe other voices rather than our own, we follow someone else’s idea of what our calling should be, and we set aside fanciful things for those that seem more pragmatic and realistic.
Somewhere along the line, most of the passions got relegated to “hobbies” rather than “life’s work”.
What about you?
by Heather Plett | Oct 27, 2009 | Uncategorized
Okay, so what do a fried green egg (the Dr. Suess variety), a carton of milk, a box of oreo cookies, a tootsie roll, a can of Campbell’s soup, a punk rocker, a monkey, a sheep, a rabbit, an elephant, Einstein, a chef, a princess, M&M candy, and a couple of angels have in common? They’re all costumes that I have, at some past or current point, slaved over in the week leading up to Halloween. The first three in the list happen to be the ones I’ve given my life to this week.
Notice how much more complicated and obscure they are the beginning of the list then at the end? Yeah, it seems that three things have been happening over the years: a.) I like to challenge myself creatively and delight in sending my kids out in costumes nobody else on the block has, b.) I’m a sucker for punishment and every year I have a lapse in memory when I forget the stream of curse words that escaped my lips somewhere around midnight on the 30th, and c.) my kids have more confidence in my costume-making ability than I do and they’re bound and determined to come up with something that will stump me.
“Hello, my name is Heather Plett and I’m a Halloween costume (only the unique, hand-made variety – none of that cheap plastic crap) addict. It’s been 360 days since my last fix and last night I gave in to the little demon whispering in my ear once again. I’ve fallen off the wagon.”
I’ve spent way too much money this year (foam is frickin’ expensive!), I’ve over-promised again, I’ve already made one major blunder (gluing the fabric to the WRONG side of the foam – sigh), and… AND… (oh the shame!) I made the fatal blunder of agreeing to make a costume for my daughter’s friend!!! Because, well, if one is cookies and the other is milk, shouldn’t they kinda sorta match? Oh dear… what momentary madness told me it was a good idea to open THAT door? It was the flattery, I tell you… FLATTERY! To listen to my children rave about how “mom makes the BEST costumes”, well, it weakened my defenses and I gave in. Isn’t every mother weakened by the wiley charm of the offspring?
I just can’t help it! I’m weak! There’s just something about hot glue guns, foam and fabric that makes me weak in the knees.
Truth is, I think it also has something to do with the fact that this is one small area that I can live up to my own expectations of “what makes a good mother”. They may have to dig through laundry baskets for clean (or “gently used”) socks, live through the humiliation of telling their teachers “my mom forgot to sign the form – AGAIN”, put up with crappy meals (or make their own), but AT LEAST THEY’LL HAVE THE BEST DAMN HALLOWEEN COSTUMES ON THE BLOCK! Just give me that little thread to hang onto and I’ll get through the failures that litter the rest of the year.
(Rather ironically – and somewhat ungratefully, I might add – my children complain every year about the rather pathetic lack of Halloween decorations at our house. It seems my creative expression hasn’t extended down that particular avenue.)
