by Heather Plett | Oct 1, 2010 | Uncategorized
Today is my last day of work as the Director, Resources & Public Engagement at Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Time to let go of that title, recycle the business cards, and start a new journey.
It’s a full day, with all the packing and wrapping up and saying good-bye. I don’t have a lot of time to process my thoughts or write about them right now, but that will come next week when I’m sitting on my couch, sipping my tea, and letting the transition fully take shape.
For now, I’ll share with you a short piece I wrote as a farewell for our donor newsletter, complete with a picture of me touring a grain elevator in Alberta where generous Canadians had donated grain for the cause of ending hunger. I can hardly tell you how often I was moved by the incredible commitment and generosity of so many. I have definitely been changed by this experience.
As I write this, I am in my last week of employment at Canadian Foodgrains Bank. It is with mixed emotions that I make my departure. The six years I’ve spent here have been truly incredible. I’ve learned so much and met so many fascinating people across Canada and around the world. Though I feel a calling into something new, I leave with some sadness that I will no longer be a part of such an incredible organization.
I will carry with me many incredible memories of the times I have spent with you, the faithful supporters and friends of Canadian Foodgrains Bank. I remember bidding for homemade cottage cheese at the annual auction at Osler, Saskatchewan; gathering pumpkins in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia; participating in a cattle auction in Abbotsford, B.C.; working at the booth at the annual farm show in Red Deer, Alberta; sitting at the world’s largest picnic table at the annual plowing match in Ontario; attending a growing project harvest in Landmark, Manitoba; speaking to a church group in Charlottetown, PEI where they sell Christmas cards as a fundraiser every year; attending an art show in St. John, New Brunswick; and speaking to educators in Montreal, Quebec. How blessed I have been to be part of all of these incredible experiences!
On my first trip to Africa, I slept in a tent on a farm in Kenya near a herd of goats. The farm was owned by the local church, and so it puzzled us where the goats came from. We were told by the pastor that the goats were the tithes of the parishioners. Many of them couldn’t afford to give money, so they gave of their herds. That story has stuck with me ever since as it reflects what I have seen many of you do as well. You might not be able to write large cheques in support of the work of ending hunger, but you give of your time, your energy, your fields, your grain, your handiwork, your food, your commitment, and your passion.
May you be blessed for the way that you have blessed so many others! Farewell and God be with you.
by Heather Plett | Sep 29, 2010 | Uncategorized
Earlier this week, as I entered my last week in this job, I was hit by a giant tsunami wave of my own failure.
In a series of meetings, I was reminded again and again of all of the things I wanted to accomplish, back in the early days when I was fresh and enthusiastic and just a tad idealistic in this job. New staff kept bringing up the things we should be doing around here, and almost every time they did, I had a flashback reminding me of when I was saying exactly those same things – back when I believed I could change the world. And now, six years later, I’m walking away with the realization that many of those things never happened.
Walking out of those meetings, I felt beaten down and discouraged. My gremlins had a hey-day with this information, dancing a jig and chanting “your team is just as dysfunctional as it always was and you were SO sure you could change the dynamic and conquer the world. And that social marketing plan that you sold to the board and got all that funding for? Yeah, it fell flat on its face when your relationship with that consulting company fell apart. You’re walking away with egg on your face on that one. Oh… and what about that media tour that never happened?”
And then those ugly gremlins got even more nasty… “You suck. Big time. Six years you spent in this job, and just what have you got to show for it? A bunch of good intentions and only minimal successes. You’re going to fail in this consulting business you want to start. And then you’ll go broke and your kids will hate you. Big ol’ loser.”
Blech. What a ball of crap I felt like for the next few hours.
But then the words of Palker Palmer came back to me. “…as pilgrims must discover if they are to complete their quest, we are led to truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths.”
With those words ringing in my ear, I looked those gremlins right in the eye and said “Hold it right there. Stop your partying. You’re only telling half of the truth and you know it.”
And then I turned to the list of failures and disappointments and said “Okay failure, what have you got to teach me today?”
With the gremlins slinking away into the corner, failure gently sat me down and said “Remember – I’m here as a companion to success. I do not come alone – we work hand in hand as your teachers. Just as you have been going over the list of things you have accomplished in this job, you must also review the list of the ways you’ve failed. It’s the only way you’ll step into the next part of your journey with greater strength and self-awareness.”
One by one, I looked over the list for the things I needed to learn. Some of the things that showed up were:
- I cannot change the world single-handedly. It’s like pushing a bus up a hill alone.
- I was not always true to my own leadership abilities, trying instead to wiggle into a mold that didn’t fit.
- Sixteen people is too many people to lead single-handedly – at least for me. I don’t want to do that again. I want meaningful relationships.
- I don’t think I ever want to lead remote staff again. It’s hard, especially when there are conflicts.
- I am better at leadership, idea-generation, visioning, etc. than I am at human resource management. I get bogged down with details and meaningless conflict.
- I need to trust my instincts more. I knew there were problems in the social marketing plan, and yet I forged ahead and ignored my gut on that one.
- If people don’t want to be led, not even I can change their minds.
- I am not good at maintaining routine. When things start to feel like the same ol’, same ol’ year in and year out, I lose my energy quickly.
- When I had to step away from the creative work I loved and into more of an administrative role, I lost some of my enthusiasm. More creativity, less administration.
Truthfully, I could come up with an even longer list of the things I learned from the success I had in this job, but that list is for another post. Right now I’m learning from failure’s wisdom, and once I took the self-judgement out of the equation, it was a good and healthy learning.
There are elements of this job I no longer want to do. More importantly, there are things that I really shouldn’t do if I am to be true to myself. Another Parker Palmer quote helps me see the wisdom in this clarity.
One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess – the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.
Note: I welcome your comments, but would prefer not to get a bunch of comments trying to convince me of my successes in this job. I am pretty confident of those things. This post is more about the OTHER things I had to learn than it is about me saying “poor me – somebody please stroke my back and remind me how wonderful I am”. Does that make sense?
by Heather Plett | Sep 24, 2010 | Uncategorized
“He’s gone.” Just those two little words on my cell phone screen. A message that seemed too big, too permanent for the fleeting impermanence of digital text. The end of a life marked by nothing more than a series of dots. Followed so soon after the message that said “He’s almost gone,” and the one headed the other direction saying “I’m coming home.”
Even worse, I was in a hotel room bathroom when the cell phone vibrated in my pocket to notify me that life has changed and I no longer have a father-in-law. It doesn’t seem like the kind of message you should get when you’re about to pull your pants down.
Death. It doesn’t wait for convenient, meaningful, or spiritual times to make its appearance. It shows up in the middle of the mundane, the ordinary, the every-day. While you’re at a management retreat. While you’re at 7-11 buying Slurpees.
Suddenly, in the time it takes for a heart to beat its last beat, for a text message to vibrate in a pocket, for a phone call to come from the hospital, life is no longer ordinary.
And now, forever after, September will be the month in which we lost both a son and a father.
by Heather Plett | Sep 22, 2010 | Uncategorized
Networking gives me hives.
I hate it. Seriously. I have been known to run screaming from the room after only 15 minutes at a wine and cheese networking party at a big fundraising conference in Dallas. (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t an audible scream, but it sure FELT like a scream.) Surrounded by so many pleasant, business-card-in-hand professionals, I felt like a complete loser.
It’s that forced, artificial, cheesy-smiled “must give ten people my business card at this conference or I’m a failure” kind of networking that I’m talking about. Ugh. I HATE small talk and lame conversation-starters (don’t even get me started about how much I dislike the “what do you do for a living?” question) and I almost always forget my business cards at home. Fail.
I am especially aware of my failings because I work for a boss who is a master at it and we have been at way too many public events together. There’s always a major glint in his eyes when he walks into a conference lobby – you can almost smell his brain working as he checks out the crowd and makes a mental checklist of all the people he needs to rub shoulders with. After the conference, he takes great delight in reporting all of the important people he met and is forever reminding us (his management team) that the most valuable thing about a conference is the coffee breaks and networking opportunities.
Ugh. Fail. (For me, that is, not for him – in truth, I have great admiration for his abilities and don’t mean to diss him.)
You can imagine that building a business brings with it some measure of fear and trepidation when I think about having to network with the right people to sell myself. Makes me want to hide away in my tiny basement studio, or maybe just get a job counting widgets.
But… as I’m reminded again and again, sometimes you just have to change your definition of success.
A recent conversation with my wise friend Desiree Adaway, helped me shift my paradigm on this. She’s launching a consulting career too, and she has a much better perspective on networking than I do. She reminded me of how easy it can be to connect with like-minded, authentic people, and how it’s really THOSE people (and not the cheesy-smiled business suits at a wine and cheese party) who should be part of my network tribe.
It’s true. When you put yourself out there in an authentic, passionate way that is true to who you are, you will attract like-minded people wherever you go. THOSE are the people who matter.
Case in point – Desiree and I bonded in 140 characters or less on Twitter when we both discovered we were leaving nonprofit jobs to launch consulting businesses. I’m not exactly sure what drew us to each other, but we were like moths to a flame. In a relatively short time, we’ve developed a really lovely friendship and mutual support system.
Desiree is not the only one. I’ve found a myriad of beautiful, like-minded people on social networking sites. Several of them have become phone/Skype friends, and some I have met in person.
In fact, when I look back at the last six months in particular, I can’t help but marvel at how many incredible people I’ve met and bonded with. One really good example of a successful tribe-building experience was my time at ALIA in Halifax in June. I met several really incredible people from all over the world and many of them have since become Facebook/Twitter/blog friends. Some of them are coming together in ongoing support circles, and at least one of them is becoming a client! (Let me tell you, it is just SO easy to bond with people at an event that has drawn people who think like you and was organized by people who understand how important a good “container” is, as opposed to a forced networking event.)
So you won’t see me at too many wine and cheese events, and I’m going to throw away that fake smile I never got very good at using. But if you bump into me (in person or online) and want to engage in a meaningful, authentic (or even meaningless and light-hearted, but PLEASE not fake and cheesy!) conversation, I’m all ears!
by Heather Plett | Sep 21, 2010 | Uncategorized
On Saturday I facilitated a workshop on Leadership and Personality for a diverse group of emerging leaders. The essence of it was my deep belief that by letting our unique personalities shine, we will be stronger and more effective leaders. I spent too many years of my leadership career trying to fit into a box that wasn’t my size, so now I’m trying to help other people bust out of those boxes into new ways of being.
I started the session with a series of questions.
- What are the stories you’ve been lead to believe about your personality? What did/do your parents/siblings/teachers/friends tell you – verbally or non-verbally – about who you are and who you are supposed to be?
- Setting aside the stories others have told you, what do YOU believe to be true about your personality and your place in the world?
- Which story are you allowing to shape who you are today? And what do you do with the disconnect?
After that introduction, all of the participants in the workshop spent some time exploring their personalities through a True Colors analysis. In True Colors, aspects of your personality are revealed through a rainbow of colours, some of which are stronger than others. (Side note: I am not a strong believer that personality type tests tell the WHOLE story or that we should read them as gospel truth, but I do believe they help us understand ourselves better, especially if we’re early on the journey to self-discovery.)
An aboriginal woman in the group identified herself as most strongly Orange, the colour that represents spontaneity, action, and a love of adventure.
“I see it as the fire in me,” she said. “An orange fire. A fire that others tried to put out. When I was growing up in residential schools, they were always trying to stamp out my energy, my creativity, and my spontaneity. They wanted me to conform to their model of what a ‘good girl’ was. But they couldn’t put the fire out. It will always burn in me and now that I’m grown, I’m learning to trust it and let it shine brighter and brighter.”
Her words were so powerful. I know I will remember them for a long, long time.
Most of us haven’t gone through the hell of residential schools, nor do we know the deep injuries that have been done to our Aboriginal people in the name of “making them more like us”. But almost all of us have stories of how people – most of them well-meaning but wrong-headed – tried to stamp out our fire.
What is it in you that is trying to emerge despite the stories you’ve been lead to believe about yourself?
Maybe it’s burning brightly, or maybe it’s just a tiny spark that needs some air to help it burst into a roaring flame.
I welcome you to answer the questions above to help you rekindle your flame.
by Heather Plett | Sep 19, 2010 | Uncategorized
My father-in-law, in better days
He’s going away
one breath
one touch
one aching whisper
at a time.
He lies there in that hospital bed
aged a dozen years
in only one.
We don’t know him anymore
this weathered shell
this frailness
this lost look in his eyes.
This man
whose strong hands
once reached for grandchildren
snuggled them close
carried them out the door to ride
on his John Deere tractors.
This home-spun inventor
who crafted one-of-a-kind tools
to make his gardening work
a little easier.
He’s going away
and nobody knows how
to say good-bye.
