An Open Letter to 2019 (12-11-19)

The year is coming to a close and I often find myself in a reflective mood. I spend the hours hanging out on my couch, basking in the glow of my Christmas tree, thinking about everything that’s happened this past year. With this in mind, this entry will be a little different. It’s an open letter to 2019.

Dear 2019,

I don’t exactly know where to start with you. If I described you in a word I could use humbling, complicated, roller-coaster, intriguing, or challenging. The more I think about it the more I realize the word that best sums you up “needed”. You were all the lessons I needed, but didn’t know I wanted.

You gave my wife a new job, and proved to me that some people are put on this earth for specific reasons. It’s beautiful to see the stars align in this way and to see her this way.
You gave me another year with two daughters filled with belly hurting laughs, gentle smiles, the softest of strong hugs, movie watching snuggles, skinned knees, new journeys as a parent, and reminded me that my world is my family.
You constantly showed me that sickness is real, and that having my health and the health of my family is precious.
You reminded me that despite my efforts and my previous successes in life, I am still in fact human. I am weak, flawed, breakable, mistake prone, and there is deep power in embracing this.
You knocked me down and at times made life an ugly run in a 95 degree hail storm. You also reminded me that I’ll find a way to get back up and if I believe hard enough my legs will keep going.
And I know that a 95 degree hail storm doesn’t make sense, but 2019 you didn’t always make sense either, which taught me sometimes patience is the only thing that will help you see what you’ve been given.
You blessed with me a great team and tough challenges, just so we could see the amazing hearts we have inside of each other.
You were humbling, complicated, a roller-coaster, challenging, joyous, chaotic, growth-inducing, filled with love and every other emotion, and you gave me all the things I needed and never asked for. Thank you.

Kind of corny, but 100% true. The challenge: If you haven’t taken the time, take a few moments to reflect on 2019 and the lessons it taught you that you never asked for. If you look deep enough, you might find a little magic.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Dusting Off Shelves and Skills (9-6-17)

Last week was about taking out the trash and letting go. This week we will reflect on dusting, and taking the time to brush off your skills (and your shoulders if you are Jay-Z). By the way, this week is dedicated to Hannah Short, because she is the one who said we need to do something on dusting.

You may not know this about me, but I’m a cleaner. I’m not obsessive about cleaning, but I do enjoy keeping everything relatively clean, which means I am definitely someone who dusts. I dust in order to keep things clean, tidy, and functioning. Not only do I dust, but where I come from, there are two kinds of dusting (#dustingsnob). There is feather dusting, which is a relatively quick exercise, where you use the feather dusting to brush off things where they are. It takes minimal time and effort, and is best suited as something that is done between serious cleaning. Feather dusting keeps things from getting too dirty. Then, there is real dusting where you bust out some pledge, take EVERYTHING off the shelves, and go after dust bunnies like you were a fox. This is more labor intensive, but it also helps you achieve a deeper clean and isn’t that what everyone wants in life? It’s not that one kind of dusting is necessarily better than the other, but each one has different purposes and uses.

So what does this have to do with work? It’s really easy to avoid dusting. Then, all of a sudden when you do look at stuff you realize there are dust bunnies, gunk, and grime covering everything and messing stuff up. I feel the same can be said about work. It’s really easy to get so lost in the day to day stuff that we ignore the dirt and grime that find a way to bog down our skills and capabilities. When we ignore dusting, we ignore ourselves, and we take away our chance to get better. Seriously, how often do you stop and take a few moments to think about you and brushing off your skills? Just like at home, I feel that there are a couple of different ways of dusting things off at work. You can feather dust, which to me is taking a few minutes to stop and reflect on something you’ve recently experienced, read, watched, etc. You can also roll up your sleeves and do some deep cleaning, whether that is going to workshops, deep diving with a trusted mentor/coach/colleague, or some other activity that requires you to go to a deeper level.

The challenge: Are you taking the time to dust? Do you have a specific skill or competency you want to dust off?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Holding up a Mirror (4-8-15)

Last week was about sharing your reflection. This week is about holding up a mirror to help people reflect. Overall, it’s a story about a mistake I made and how someone coached me to think about why I do what I do.

Imagine that we are working together and I’m doing pretty good work. Then, one day I send you something and say, “This is rough, but give me your thoughts.” You quickly see that it is complete garbage. You ask yourself, “How could he be so far off? I’ve never seen him do stuff that is so bad.” You give me a suggestion to go in another direction. Then I come back to you with something that’s really good. You’re left wondering, “Why did he go from sending me crap to sending me something really good? How does he miss so badly and then turn around and get it right?”

Fast forward. I’m sitting down with a co-worker and asking for some feedback. She highlights a few good things and then tells me the above story. Her fear is that I might do this with other folks, and they’ll be left asking themselves the same questions. A lesser coach would have just pointed it out and told me to fix it. Instead, she holds up a mirror to me and says, “Can you help me understand why you do this?”

I think and realize that I’m not communicating my intent well. What is happening in these situations is that I’m trying to figure out which of two problems I need to address. Problem 1 is that it is a good idea, but I’m having problems executing it. Problem 2 is that the idea isn’t good, so I need to change course altogether. The way I move forward really depends on what the problem is. Our email exchange told me I was dealing with Problem 2, so I switched to a different idea and that’s why the work was better. Now she knows my thought process and why I did what I did. She says that this makes sense, but without this rationale it just looks like I missed the boat by a mile and half.

Here’s the thing. I’ve made this mistake before. I’ve made it with peers and higher up folks including VPs. If she would have just pointed this out and told me to fix it, then nothing would have changed. I would have fixed it once, but probably made the same mistake over and over again. However, since she asked the question and held the mirror up to help me reflect, I am more cognizant of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and how I can be better in the future.

Are you holding up a mirror to help others reflect or are you just pointing everything out?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Sharing your Reflection (4-1-15)

I don’t meant to brag, but I’m at least a 9.5 on a scale from 1 to 10 when it comes to attractiveness, because of my beard, beautiful hair, and a physique so chiseled people call me David (sculpture reference, what?) Luckily, I don’t really think of myself that way. As we’ve been talking about reflecting, it’s also important to take the time to share the way you see yourself with others to make sure that other people see a lion and not a kitten like the photo on the right.

Recently I set up time and talked to someone about how I’m perceived. We talked about strengths (my beard, which is the only thing we could come up with) and my improvement areas (knowing when to flex my style and pull back a little bit, coming across as brash/obnoxious/silly, etc.) After I shared I shut my mouth, listened, and only asked questions to better understand her perspective. I learned some important nuggets that day from her.

When it came to my strengths, she agreed with what I shared, but she also talked to me about other things I do well that I just took for granted. She helped me see how these are unique things I can leverage in the future. Without her help, I wouldn’t have realized that other people were seeing these things in me and how important those things I are for my current and future success.

When it came to areas of improvement, she told me that she found me annoying when we first worked together because we clashed, there was bad communication, and we were put in a difficult situation. I almost hugged her. Yes, you read that right. I wanted to hug her, because she cared enough about me to be that honest. By the way, I agree and totally saw how I came across that way. Anyway, she also told me about something I do that I wasn’t aware of. Sometimes when I’m working with folks and I have an idea or a question that’s a little different I’ll preface things with, “Weird comment/question for you…” The people who know me laugh, and chime in with something like, “Big surprise.” However, she explained that the people who don’t know me could take this as me apologizing for being different. It gives them an opportunity to hold the uniqueness against me. Instead of making the joke, I could just go in with, “I’m looking at this from a different perspective. Here’s my thought…” I walked away from that conversation after learning a few more things about myself and reaffirming that there is another person who cares enough about me to be really honest. You can imagine how much more I think of her now.

Anyway, since I’ve shared a bit of my reflection consider this an open invitation. If you ever have feedback for me you think I should know, send it my way. On the flip side, if you ever want to share your reflection with someone and gather feedback, I’ll be happy to do that too.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry