Learning is a never-ending journey. I've learned much from my mentors, from the wise sages in my life. I feel it is important to share and pass along some of what I have learned – and continue to learn. I believe we are all responsible for smoothing the path for those who come after us. And I know that we are all connected and here to support one another.
My purpose is to:
Improve organizational effectiveness through individual development
Improve individual effectiveness through organizational development
I came across these "five remembrances" from Thich Nhat Hanh in the book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation. They are embedded in Buddhist teaching, but important for all of us to remember regardless of religious preferences and practices.
1. We all grow old.
2. We all are prone to getting ill health.
3. We will all die.
4. Everything and everyone we cherish is prone to change.
5. The only thing we own are our actions.
These concepts are consistent with what I teach in leadership. They sound so simple, but yet they are so profound in how we think about life which influences how we live our life. If these are true principles, what might you want to do differently?
These remembrances remind me to:
Make the most of every minute
Accept that this is the only time I have
Not regret the past and not worry about the future
Be grateful for what I have
Look at the bright side by putting things in perspective
Remember that people are not perfect--especially me
Tell people how much they mean to me--either through notes or in person and this takes time, but is worth it
Navigating life's transitions is so important and even more important than I thought. Last week I shared these thoughts at the local chapter meeting of the Association for Women in Communications. While there were a few people there who read my blog (thank you), I thought I would highlight the main points for other readers:
So much emphasis in "retirement planning" is placed on MONEY. Yes, we have to have enough to get us through, but once we have ENOUGH, there is so much more to life!
Since there are four generations in the workforce, it is important to understand life transitions in order to relate with and influence a variety of age groups.
The older I get, the more I realize life is a series of transitions.
We are living in uncharted territory with no life map. The baby boomer generation has a different vision of aging than our parents. But too much emphasis placed on external aging—look younger, botox, plastic surgery of all kinds.
Most of our life is scripted for us--get married, have children. Elementary, middle school, high school, college. What should life scripts look like when most people spend as many years after a long career as they spent in a career?
I am on a mission to RETIRE the word RETIREMENT. We are not retiring, but we are moving on. This phase of life is being called: Third Act, Second Half, Mid-life transition, encore phase or encore career.
After 30 years of teaching at Central College in Pella, I “moved on” so that I can create a life and business in the Des Moines area. I am getting involved in activities that were impossible to me when I worked out of town. But figuring out what you want to do in this next 30 years, is not about having money or being smart. It is about intentional, conscious, decision making and planning. While life does not always go as planned, it helps one not drift through life.
Why is all of this important?
When is mid-life? The average life expectancy in the US is about 80 so 40. So mid-life is sooner than you think.
People go through life changes—mid life crises usually in their 50s. Empty nests, divorces, people losing jobs in this economy or given incentives to “retire” early, spouses die (we have lost three male friends all in their 50s in the last five years). Death reminds us that life does not last forever. Are we spending our time in ways that matter?
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People and When All You’ve Ever Wanted is Not Enough, said that mid-life is when people change their focus from looking ahead and asking how high can I climb on the ladder to looking behind and asking what difference am I making with my life?
With transition often comes loss of identity—married now single, parent now empty nester, employed now unemployed or self employed.
Between 1992 and 2008 substance abuse treatment admissions for those 50 and older more than doubled in the US. That number is expected to grow.
Older adults accounted for about one of every eight seeking help for substance abuse in 2008. While the 50 plus populations grew by 21% those seeking treatment in 50 plus increased by 70%. Treatment professionals believe the actual number of older people with substance abuses is many times larger than those seeking help. We have had two friends go through treatment programs this past year.
Family law experts who examine divorce trends at the National Center for Family & Marriage Research state that married partners over 50 divorce at a much higher rate than do married couples generally. Over the past 20 years, they say, the divorce rate for 50-plus couples has approximately doubled, whereas it has actually decreased slightly for America's married population overall.
Depression. Lost. Despair. Suicide rates among middle aged people are going up. Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, Idler and her colleagues tracked suicide rates between 1979 and 2005. By 2000, most people ages 40 to 59 were Baby Boomers and the suicide rate started climbing steadily for these middle-age ranges. The researchers found significant increases of more than 2 percent per year for men, and more than 3 percent per year for women, from 1999 to 2005. (By 2005, all those in the middle-age group were baby boomers, defined as those born between 1945 and 1964.)
Thoughts on transitioning
Have a plan. Similar to when we were planning out daycare. Always have to think ahead. Once I got daycare figured out, where would they go to school and what do to about after school. You can’t start thinking college as a senior in high school. But so many people do not plan for the next phase. My parents: Time to move to a place that offers assisted living. Can’t wait too long. Have to be able to walk in. And if you wait too long, who cares where you go or what services are offered?
Have as much control in the next phase as possible. Script it out. Network. How to use your creativity. Some professions naturally allow people to stay engaged and involved—artists can continue to do their work. When you are self-employed, no one is going to tell you to stop doing what you are doing. I know a lawyer who took early retirement from the state of Iowa so that she can be a full-time self-employed potter. Professors can read, write, and teach. Peter Drucker the Father of Modern Management was still writing and speaking until he died at age 94. But corporations and governments are cutting costs and people who are vulnerable are people more towards the top who are making more money.
Metaphor: Imagine yourself in a jungle swinging on vines. It is easier to let go of one vine when you see another vine within reach. Where is that next vine for you? Can you find it now while you are still employed? Actually I understand why people have affairs because most people do not want to be alone!
Marc Freedman is the author of Encore and The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Mid-Life. Jane Pauley has a segment on the Today Show called My Life Calling. She also writes a column for AARP magazine on how people have discovered their calling or encore career. Even the popular book in its 40th anniversary What Color is your Parachute has a new section at the end titled: Finding Your Mission in Life. We are stronger, healthier, and smarter and living an average of 30 years longer. What are we going to do with this time?
Bottom-line: Think about your skills and talents and ask yourself how you want to be using them. How do you want to spend your time? What would give you meaning? Pleasure? Joy? How would you know your life mattered?
Next week on Monday, November 7 from 7-9 PM at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, I am leading a class called: Download Second Half of Life Class. Please think about coming or recommending this to your family and friends.
This is uncharted territory for most people. Since we are healthier than people in the past and we are living longer, the model of "retirement" for most of us is changing. Marc Friedman is calling this our "encore years" and many people are starting encore careers for money or not for money, but it is all about purpose and meaning.
Knowing what to do between the ages of 60-90 is not based on having money or being smart. Sure, we need to have "enough" money--whatever that means to you. But it helps to have a life plan that guides our way and this does not magically happen. It takes some work by making some intentional decisions about what you want to do with your time.
Jane Fonda has a new book out on this topic called Prime Time. Jane Pauley has a show on the Today Show titled: Your Life Calling. Rita Wilson, married to Tom Hanks, has a program on the Huffington Post on aging for boomers. And I am teaching a class next week in Des Moines on the second half of life. While I am not Jane, Jane, or Rita, I want to share what I have learned about growing in life experience.
Richard Leider, one of my role models in this work, likes to ask:
"Are you living the good life? Are you living with the people you love, in the place that's right, doing good work, with a sense of purpose?"
Come explore the second half of life next Monday. I look forward to seeing you there. Registration is preferred although you can walk in and register that night.
Recently, I spoke at a conference for women leaders and I summarized some of the lessons I have learned over the past few years from my Sage research. Integrated into my comments were themes from Sally Helgesen's books since she is an leading authority on leadership and particularly women's leadership. My lessons reinforced her themes that in the past would have been considered “feminine leadership qualities” and are now just leadership qualities for everyone.
Ten lessons from my leadership Sages:
1. Know thyself. Self-knowledge is empowering. Emotional intelligence. The fluff is the stuff. The soft stuff is the hard stuff. Leadership is a relationship not a position.
2. Be present. To thrive in a 24.7 world, be mindful not mindless. Take time to listen and hear others and your inner voice. Find ways to slow down and renewal. When the phone rings, use it to remind you to take a breath. Church bells used to do this. Make a conscious effort to be here now.
3. Recognize the dark side.Understanding ego development is important. We need our ego, but don’t lead from the ego. The dark side (shadow) can manifest as greed, envy, fear, manipulation, and jealousy. When these behaviors are displayed, a toxic environment is created.
4. Understand death, loss, and grief. We are living and working at a time when people are losing money, jobs, equity, and companies. Those who survive layoffs also grieve. If you don’t learn how to handle grief, you can’t help others who are grieving.
5. Have an attitude of gratitude. In a concentration camp, Viktor Frankl realized that “life is not primarily a quest for pleasure or power, but a quest for meaning. You can’t control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
6. Vulnerability is strength. Leaders can’t have all of the answers so surround yourself with people who complement your skill set to build strong teams. Admitting mistakes, showing compassion, forgiving, and demonstrating empathy are skills needed in a world with pain.
7. Understand life’s transitions. We are working with four generations in the workplace and this is easier when you understand life’s transitions. Most of life is made of transitions—beginnings and endings—seek to understand the feelings and emotions.
8. Disconnect to connect. Instead of Facebook, we need more face time. While we may have more connections because of technology, the relationships are likely shallow. It is hard to build a community when people don’t know each other very well. The definition of a good neighbor has changed from one where we hang out together on the front porch or borrow a cup of sugar to one where we build “privacy fences” and consider someone who does not bother us as a good neighbor!
9. Model resilience. You build resilience through renewal. Burn-out can result in unhealthy behaviors. Find ways of re-energizing yourself. Have a sacred time and space for reflecting on what’s most important to you.
10. Live and leave a legacy. We leave a legacy every time we leave a meeting, room, conversation—after each decision or encounter. As leaders, people notice how we behave, what we say, and how we say it. Focus on what matters most as we are living our legacy daily.
I am still processing the data and I continue to interview Sage leaders because there is so much to learn from wise people with rich life experiences. Connie Wimer, Chairperson of Business Publications Corporation, added an 11th lesson that she has learned from experience. Wimer said:
"Don't be afraid of to be afraid. Don't fear having fear." She told the audience that some of her courage came at times when she had experienced major challenges. But her fear and being afraid motivated her to make some of the best decisions for her life and work.
If you have been reading my blog, you probably know that after 30 years of college teaching, I decided it was time to "retire" in order to move on. But it has been an emotional year contemplating when I should decide to move on and to be open to possibilities. When Meredith Viera said that there were some other things she wanted to do so she better get doing them, her comments resonated with me. I have loved my career and I plan to continue teaching and learning in some fashion. In fact, we should all be learning and sharing what we are learning with others. It was just time for me to stop driving two hours a day because there are other things in my community for which I could use that time.
But the college has been great to me. For the three of us who "retired," they are hosting celebrations with former students, faculty, family, and friends. They created a youtube clip and honestly reflecting on the past three decades has been extremely emotional.
I am sharing this information as a way of saying "thank you" to everyone who was involved. It has been a great career--a wonderful ride. I have grown in so many ways, had a variety of interesting experiences, and I have had so many great students. Made a lot of friends both personal and professional.
For years I have been saying that since I work for a not-for-profit, there is no profit sharing plan. But I concluded that my profit sharing plan is the success of my students. The more they succeed, the more I profit.
I am grateful for my career and for the wonderful "send-off." A big surprise was when my last class of seniors had a surprise party for me. I was surprised and I have never had a surprise party before so that was a first!
Now I am going into the territory that William Bridges, author of The Way of Transition, refers to as the "neutral zone." Bridges says that most people do not like the neutral zone. We prefer to start things and to end things, but we don't like to be hanging in between--not knowing what we are going to do. This is why many people rebound from one bad job to another from one bad marriage to another. He maintains we don't like to be in unknown territory. So I must be patient and see what happens. As I process this experience, I will share what I am learning.
What if the rest of life is the best? If we don't think this, then what is the point?
Linda, a friend of mine from Florida from the Sage-ing Guild, recommended that I subscribe to this website called Intentional Leadership. I highly recommend it. Michael Hyatt writes succinctly and he has posts on how to effectively blog, how important headlines are, how to attract readers, ... I spent more than an hour just reading his posts on how to improve my own blog. Since we both blog about leadership, he reinforced what I already knew--that I still have so much to learn.
But since I encouraged my students to develop more of an online presence, I wanted to share his site because we can all benefit from the wisdom and experience Hyatt is sharing. I would encourage anyone who has a blog to read his advice about blogging and increasing readership in his posts which are listed on the right hand side of his home page under "popular" posts.
Hyatt is very good at linking out to others. His photos are interesting. His posts are well written.
I am going to practice what Hyatt preaches. Let me if you think my blog has improved.
A few weeks ago, I attended the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference where I had the chance to listen to Dr. Andre Delbecq, Professor of Management at Santa Clara University and one of the sages I have interviewed in the past. Just being in the same room with him was a gift and I was not alone in thinking this way. There were several people in the room who are well known in the field and they, too, wanted to hear the wisdom shared by Dr. Delbecq. He has a powerful and unique approach to teaching leadership to MBAs and executives. Since Delbecq talks a lot about the connection between leading and living (and he is a living sage), I am going to summarize what I gained from his comments.
Delbecq began by sharing a quote about "finding our calling" that was similar to this quote:
In What Color Is Your Parachute?my mentor, Dick Bolles, quotes Fred Buechner, who writes, "There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work . . . (and) the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." [2001 Edition, page 57.]
But Delbecq reminded us that "life unfolds and it can be a series of surprises." He said that we get so caught up in climbing the ladder that "we might be climbing the wrong ladder or maybe it is leaning against the wrong wall." He said he often returns to review the lives and wisdom of the great leaders from the past. What he has concluded is that for which we remember them they did not even consider as something they set out to do. Life just happened. And he said that is the mystery of life.
"The great spiritual traditions say, "You are in the perfect place right now. Therefore, we must be fully present to our present state because the future unfolds in the present tense." Delbecq said that if you review your own resume, you can see how life unfolds. He asked us, "How did you feel at the time you accepted a position, agreed to take on a community task, or accomplished that goal?"
Since Delbecq was talking to college professors, he directed his comments to us in terms of students. But I thought his comments could be applied to anyone at any place in life. "Discovering our calling, is not about a job, career, or place. We need to help students (people) find their giftedness."
While he shared many thoughtful and wise insights, Delbecq summarized his main points as follows:
1. Our essential calling is on becoming not on doing.
2. We need to be patient and not expect instant gratification. (practice watchful waiting)
3. Our calling is a life sequence unfolding day by day and hour by hour. Pay attention.
4. When we are present, we are in a place of privilege.
5. Intention is required, not perfection. Sense the intention of goodness--the purity of intention.
Now it is time for me to practice these points and wait for life to unfold. And I need to pay attention.
I am way behind on blogging, but I have been doing a lot of slogging. May was a busy month and I have been trying to get into a new routine. The month of May included "retiring," traveling to my sons' college graduations (one on each coast), and moving out of my office after 30 years of a career. In June, they both moved home to reconnect, relax, and make a plan for the future. I traveled to Milwaukee for a professional conference where I conducted a leadership workshop and I will be sharing what I learned at the conference. For these reasons, I am just now getting back to writing. Thank you for hanging in there with me because it certainly has been a time of transitions.
During the past two months, I have continually been thinking about this quote by John Lennon in "Beautiful Boy":
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
Not everything has gone as planned, but that is part of "letting life unfold." I am trying to become more comfortable with ambiguity and to reframe this as being "open to possibilities." I will be sharing what I am learning about this transitioning phase, but I welcome any suggestions you may have.
Again, I am open to possibilities! Please send your ideas my way. What should I be doing now?
I really don't like surprise parties as evidenced by the fact that I have never planned one and I have never had one planned for me. I can't quite explain it other than I don't want to be the center of attention and it makes me nervous trying to surprise others.
In my strategic management course where students analyze and present case analyses in teams, they get to plan where they want to hold class for the presentations. For example, we had a case on Jet Blue so we met at the airport. So when students suggested we have class at the Pella Opera House where two of my students had internships, it made perfect sense. In fact, I spent an hour preparing for class when papers and projects were overflowing on my desk.
We decided to walk uptown as a class and I stopped to get a cup of java on the way. When I walked upstairs, the students had planned a party and I was surprised for sure. They invited other faculty members and students from all three of my classes. They had popcorn, music, decorations, and an open bar at 2:15 in the afternoon! I kept thinking that I was going to get kicked off campus since Central is a dry campus and no drinking is allowed. But that is why they had it off campus!
I got very emotional because all of a sudden leaving and moving on was real. Then I looked on the wall. My student worker arranged to get many of my postcards and had passed them out to anyone and everyone. These are cards that have "I am grateful." printed on the front. These are the cards I give to all of my classes right before Thanksgiving and the assignment is for them to hand write a note to someone who has made a difference in their life and to hand it to them or mail it. Then we talk about the reactions to this assignment.
So on the wall were all of these cards with notes on them for me. I was moved to say the least and I plan to put all of the cards into a notebook. What a special gift--a taste of my own medicine--and I loved it.
The next day was my last official teaching day at Central. On the way to work, I called one of my college roommates and my mentor in Illinois and started crying about my "last day." So I had to wear sunglasses to leadership class, but the students did not mind. They know me so well. They are understanding, compassionate, and forgiving.
In organizational behavior we talk about how valuable it is to understand the phases of team development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. But for decades, I have added another phase: adjourning. While it does not rhyme, I stress how important it is to plan to let go--particularly if the team was cohesive and productive. For that reason, traditions such as graduations, reunions, and "retirement" parties are important. They help people let go in order to move on.
Since the whole year has been emotional, this was just another way to let go.
The time has come for me to "walk the talk." For several years, I have been blogging and teaching about sage-ing which is another word for positively aging or conscious aging. I have been on a mission to retire the word "retirement" since it is an antiquated term. So in April, I announced my "retirement" from working at Central College. Time for reinvention--not retirement. Baby boomers are moving on ...
After 30 years, I feel it is time to move to the next phase of life. While I have a plan that I will be sharing as it unfolds, there are some other things I want to do. It became clear to me that if I want to do them, I need to get doing them! It is a risk, but I feel prepared to take some risks. All three of my sons will be done with college after this weekend. Last weekend, we were in California at Claremont McKenna College for one son's graduation. This weekend we are in New York at Skidmore College for his twin brother's graduation. In fact, we are all commencing!
I feel comforted knowing that I am in good company. Katie Couric, Meredith Viera, and Orpah are making big life changes and that makes me more confident as I make this significant change too. Since I have spent more than half of my life at Central College, this has been an emotional decision.
But sage-ing is about embracing change and preparing for the next stage before you are actually in it and I have been doing that as much as possible. Even Peter Drucker wrote about preparing for the second half of life. If you will indulge me, I will be blogging about the process as a way to process and share what I have learned about this transition.
One of the speakers shared an Irish blessing at my son's commencement last week that resonated with me:
"May you have the hindsight to know where you've been. The foresight to know where you are going. And the insight to know when you have gone too far."
Cover of Thich Nhat Hanh
A few weeks ago, I attended the Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference where I had the chance to listen to 
