My membership for a particular organization was due to expire.  I thanked them for their friendly reminder email, telling them I was not sure of the exact date that my membership would be up.  Their response was:

Our records show that a hard copy of a letter was sent to you on January 5, 2010  to inform you that you were to expire in 90 days.  It was never returned to us.

This immediately threw me back to my grade school days when I, in vain, tried to explain to the nuns why I could not understand the chapters in the textbook well enough to complete the homework assignment.  You know, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you indeed you are going to fail and to fail miserably, and getting chastised in front of the entire class.  Afterwards, the class would tease me mercilessly ….

Fast forward to today … if I read between the lines, did they [also] call me a liar?  Are they telling me that I did indeed receive their hardcopy letter?  Much like the nun telling me that I didn’t even try to understand the importance of some minor battle in the Civil War.

This is a great example of how email messages can be misconstrued, taken out of context and begin feelings of irritation and resentment.

Rationally I don’t believe the writer intended for her words to come across as harsh as they did.   I felt her index finger jab my chest.  I felt my defenses rise — I felt my credibility and my reputation being attacked.  My caveman brain wanted to take over and fight for my own self-esteem.  Luckily I took a deep breath and my rational mind took over.

It wasn’t what she wrote, it was what I thought I read.

According to the History Channel’s program “The Universe – Light Speed” ….

Laura Danly, Griffith Park Observatory Curator in LA:

Because it takes time to travel, we’re able to look back in time, the further out we look in distance, the further back in time we look.  We would have no idea what our cosmic history was if the speed of light travelled instantaneously.

What a concept!  To look in the sky and see the stars, knowing that what we see is not what exists at this moment!

if you did not know that it takes years and years for what happens in the sky to be visible to us, and if you did not know that you did not know that, you would think you are watching the comet racing through the sky in real-time.  It’s your perception.  And your perception is your reality.

It’s not what you saw, it’s what you think you saw.

You probably read the word ME in brown, but…….
when you look through “ME” you will see “YOU!” Do you need to look again?

This one is quite tricky! The word TEACH reflects as LEARN!

What do

These next four blogs come to you by way of my good friend and colleague, Jason Cordoba, Manager of Small Business Systems -Aviation Industry at Component Control. I met Jason several years ago at an ACPC conference … he was instrumental in keeping the break-out session crowd under control.

In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter). It’s all very physiological too, because use it visualize the concept that good can’t exist without evil (or the absence of good is evil)

On May 20, I posted a blog about an interesting conversation I had with David Sanders on Conflict. Seems we should have a face-to-face …. I think we are saying the same thing! Here is his response, and you can decide:

Your take was that some people like conflict while others avoid conflict, both behaviors being identified as “bad.” I will allow that conflict avoidance is typically not positive because someone generally suppresses thoughts or desires to avoid conflict. But, again, inciting conflict is not inherently bad. The reason for the conflict, the way conflict resolution is managed, and the conflict resolution itself are the key points.

My transition team is writing a Statement of Work (SOW) that will lay the foundation for how the Project Management Office (PMO) team will manage the client’s operations going forward. The PMO director does not want to be involved with crafting the SOW, saying that the transition team should do it. I told the account executive to repeat these words to the director: “You will be held accountable for your performance against the SOW. Do you want the opportunity to write the guidelines against which you will be judged?”

Now by doing that, I have just introduced conflict into our team dynamic. I could have let it slide, tossed the SOW to him at the end of transition, and walked away without a care in the world because it is not my job to run the PMO. But I intentionally incited the conflict so that the PMO director will begin to think about how to manage this client effectively post-transition, and to put that vision into the SOW that is still being developed.

Granted, there are people who argue just to argue. My point was that conflict is neutral, even for people who thrive on it, but conflict management is where “good” and “bad” labels can be applied.

It’s not what he said; it’s what I think I heard!