Superhero Team Blog

Greetings Superheroes!

If you can see the almost indistinguishably green glow from your computer screen, please don’t be alarmed…  you are reading the Kryptonite Special, a blog entry so powerful, so potentially devastating,  you just might end up melting into a glob of ineffective procrastination.  Or perhaps you’ll suddenly find yourself gnawing through the strap of your laptop bag as you manage seven simultaneous Dungeons & Dragons logins.  Or…. Well, yes you are the only one who knows what your Kryptonite is…

The question is:  Do you have the courage to face it?

Historically, the most well-known of all Superheroes is Superman.  And the most well-known of all kryptonites is, well.. Kryptonite.   Superman, the man of steel!  The extraordinary baby boy who fell to Earth from Krypton, and began one of the most relevant human experiences of all time.  A baby who grew into a man.  A man who also happens to have the most well-known psychosis of all time!  Superman!  Felled by Kryptonite!

I mean, talk about therapy bills!  Superman’s issues are so realistic, the whole world pays attention.  When he faces his issues, his “Kryptonite”, Superman surrenders completely.  He gives up all strength. He is suddenly powerless.

These are huge psychosis issues.  When Superman gets on the couch, there is no turning back..  He’s going deep, and this particular patient has the ability to take whole cities with him!  Easy on that venting, Oh Man Of Steel..    Yes, this is co-dependence on a municipal scale!  And guess what?  His enemies know exactly how to open that lid.  They use Superman’s issues against him every chance they get.  Superman, and his Kryptonite…   a modern mythos embedded in countless forms of literature.

Superman’s history is a fascinating study of post-industrial Western cultural expression.  Um… what I mean is, the story of Superman has lessons for us all.  In fact, that is the reason Superman exists!  To provide a mirror for us mere mortals, that we might see ourselves as deeply powerful, capable, honest, fearless and true.  And vulnerable. 

Superman represents our Mighty Inner Selves, that ideal figure we so long to experience.  You know it well… the one you are in touch with through your quiet inner voices, the misty images we allow to be present when we are alone, when no one is watching who might proclaim judgment.

My fellow Superheroes, here is our chance, the opportunity of a lifetime!  Can you bring your greatest gifts to your Teams, to the people around you?  What would result?  How much more productive and aligned would you be?  

Are you willing to face your Kryptonite?

David Ferrera

The Meeting Guy

Aka “The Mighty Phoenix!”

September, 2008

Oh Eight Oh Eight Oh Eight  -  Surely an auspicious roll around the rolodex.  This is a good time to evaluate your connections, your peers, your network.   This is a good time to ask yourself the following questions: 

·          How well do you “take care of” people who are most important in your life?

·          To what degree does your communication style and content vary from person to person?

·          How much awareness to you bring to the way you communicate to each individual, to the fine-tuning you could bring to really open them up, so that they feel heard and empowered in your presence?

The answer to that question directly relates to your effectiveness as a business leader.

Adoring fans, the rubber really does meet the road someplace, and that place is in HOW YOU COMMUNICATE.  Notice this is very different from “what” you communicate.   Content is everywhere, all the time, Google-enabled and voluminous.  “How” you communicate is different…  How you communicate occurs only once, every time.  It is unique to the moment, and has everything to do with your own inner strength, your sense of self, and your compassion for your audience.  It happens to be the key to success in today’s lightning-bolt business environment.

Notice also how this holds true if you are speaking to one trusted confidant, or 1,000 audience members. Its as old and tested as any rule can be:  How you listen to people, is how they listen to you.  It’s the Golden Rule, and it’s absolutely infallible in business conversations.  Infallibly valuable if you get it right.. and infallibly devastating if you get it wrong.

Why?  Because communication can be so very damaging when we neglect to consider the emotions of our audience, and begin making assumptions about their listening skills.  If there is one place where business breaks down, it’s the place where assumptions obliterate clarity.  Oh!  What did he say?  Yes people, your content can be the clearest, most significant information known to humanity, yet your “message” that delivers that content can be rife with false assumptions, thereby rendering the content meaningless.

This is such a strange, mysterious and macabe blessing:  To be solely responsible for the effectiveness of business communications.  Only with great faith and enduring fortitude will you find the grit and grist to grow these muscles. You must know by now that you are surrounded by idiots, incompetents, braggarts and bone-heads.  People that barely make it into the general category homo sapiens, let along contribute to what YOU are up to!  They primp and preen and puff up their Ty Bo chests, but to what end?  To serve themselves, to further their own agenda.  And guess what?  You are surrounding THEM!

You’re in the same category.  And so am I.

This blog entry comes from the honest coals of life’s all-you-can-eat bar be que.  It’s always been too hot in here.  And only our dedicated conscious awareness can cool it down…   Yes, you guessed it:  This is your chance to be cool…    to chill out and ice the joint.  Or not.  It’s up to you, every time.  The question is:  Will you ask yourself the question?  Will you step up and dig in and take the time to prepare?  Will you devote yourself to the sacred obligation to deliver your communications to real, deeply feeling human beings?  We’re counting on you to say “yes”.  We’re counting on you to lead.

Why do I posture such obscure writing in a business column?  Because my great discovery is that there is no such thing as a business column  There are only intelligent people striving to further their own interests, as best as they define, them.  That is the first priority.  That is the prime objective.  What happens next is up to both the audience and the author.  Let’s all remember:  The come-from is as important as the go-to.    So… where are you going?

The Meeting Guy

August, 2008

The Deputy did nothing, just stood there with his maniacal grin. This served to punctuate my position. I was alone. I had no power. The Calvary wasn’t coming. It was then that I noticed the clock: 2:00 AM. Huh? I had been “processed” at approximately 9:30 PM and there was no way I had been there for 4.5 hours! Things were getting weirder by the minute. I mean, this is America, right? I have rights! But I had not been given a phone call. I had no access to the outside world. And no one inside was listening to me. I was hung-over from bad beer, my mouth was coated with filmy, tasteless grunge. I was miserable. And my trials were just beginning…

Now, my readers may be thinking to themselves: “What is The Meeting Guy talking about? How does any of this relate to improving business performance?” To these questions, I answer: Please be patient. This tale is critically important to business people everywhere. As Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote: “All good things in all good time.”

Yes, the trials were just beginning. I had become hopeful, as another Deputy arrived on the scene. But that hope only lasted an instant. The new Deputy was different from the first, but also exactly the same. Shorter, with darker hair, he displayed the same maniacal grin that by now I associated with abject evil. He pointed at me and said: “You want a phone call? OK, come on…” and he unlocked the cell door and beckoned me to come out.

Feeling righteous and vindicated, I looked him straight in the eye, as if I had won a fight. He walked me down a long white hallway covered in cold tiles. We passed the original intake office, where I saw the clock there read 11:30 PM. The intake officer looked up and grinned as we passed. It all just felt wrong, but I just kept walking. As we turned a corner, the Deputy tapped my shoulder. I stopped. We were in front of another cell. He reached forward with his keys, unlocked the door, and opened it. Inside was another prisoner, a large, muscular African American male in dirty shorts and a tank top. Suddenly, I felt a boot kick me in the small of my back, and I was propelled into the open cell, sprawling onto the floor. Again, I heard the deeply sinister clank of a cell door locking closed. Both Deputies were now standing in front of the cell, laughing but not happy. I heard: “There’s your phone call, punk!”

I started screaming obscenities and shaking the bars…I was out of control, a pent up animal so full of rage that I could have… ! Um, well… I guess I wasn’t really so tough. Because at that moment, I heard a noise from behind me. “Hey! HEY! If you don’t shut the _ _ _ _ up, I’m going to CUT you, PUNK.”

I turned, remembering the other person in my cell. He was now on his feet, standing above me. He was tall, the most menacing person I have ever laid eyes on. My stomach dropped. I stopped yelling and in fact became very small and silent. I thought I was about to die.

At this point, we need to compare our inner and outer worlds. We’re blessed to live in North America, right? We’re monumentally blessed to have personal computers, to have an Internet so we can read this Blog, to have organic food waiting for us at the local grocery store, and etc., etc. From the 1^st Amendment to GPS systems that speak English, we’re living the Dream… Freedom, abundance, and potential. That’s what it’s all about, right? We’re the richest society in all of human history. Products of a miraculous goodness, drunk and happy we spin and dance out of control towards a better future filled with everything we could ask for, including customized whoopee cushions, Botox lip implants, iMax theatres, nano-bikinis, vertical tanning booths and gravity boots. We have it all, more than anyone can imagine. We are satisfied, the greatest society the world has ever known.

But if all that is true for everyone, if that is true for me, why do I complain like a pirate whose peg is stuck in a knothole?

The answer is simple: My cage is on the inside.

This man in my cell, he must have had a very poor upbringing. I mean, talk about bad manners. He was just plain ugly in every way, and I could basically read his mind: He was evaluating whether to squish my skull or pull my underwear up through my throat. I had only one option: I had to make him laugh. I had to break my cage so I could climb around on his.

I stepped boldly towards him, threw my arms open wide, and exclaimed: “Thank you, man! Can you believe these a-holes?! I’m just glad you’re here, man… ” And then I just started laughing and shaking my head. I dropped my eyes from his and just kept chuckling, walking slowly, right by him to the back wall, laughing softly at the cosmic joke of it all.

My lack of fear disarmed this fearful being. He started laughing too, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In that moment, we created freedom for each other. We had broken the cage that was around us. And I had learned the most valuable lesson of all time: The cage is inside all of us.

I’ve been to jail.

It was the single most frightening experience of my life, by FAR. Nothing that I’ve witnessed on this Earth has been truly horrifying… nothing has been incomprehensible and paralyzing. But to be trapped, to have no way out, to lose my freedom … that brought me to the edge of sanity.

I had moved away from home to university. Finally on my own! Like riding a rocket-rail through a warm windstorm, my Tom Selleck mustache tangled up in my post-70’s hair-mop, I was finally as free as a bird! After several hard-won weeks of acclimation, during which I learned the ins and outs of bike paths, office hours, how to obsequiously bow to the Juniors in our dorm, and especially how to say anything other than ”What classes are you taking?” to older women, my parents decided it was time to come down to visit their precious son.

So what did I do the day before their visit? The same thing all wanna-be frat boys did during the mid-80’s Me-Generation… Co-ed volleyball and beer! At the end of the kegger party, I was feeling invincible and just possibly a bit too happy. While listening to the B-52’s and backing up in the parking lot, I scraped someone’s car door. Whoops.

Like a responsible young man, I decided to wait for the owner to appear. Within a half- hour, I was balancing on one leg with my nose pointing towards the Heavens, trying to recite the alphabet backwards. I ended up in Santa Barbara County Jail. And that began the experience of a lifetime.

Maybe there is some part of your personality that can relate to my rebellious nature. Maybe there is some tiny bit, like1% of you that resists authority. The heavy, metal cell door clanging shut sounded like a coffin lid. The finality of the moment, as my bloodshot eyes focused on the five other prisoners in our 14×14 cage, was unforgettable. THREAT. Fear. Survival. I couldn’t breathe; I lost all sense of myself. Total disorientation. Anything could happen. Trapped.

At least the Sheriff’s Deputies would protect me, right? Wrong. In fact, the opposite was true. I turned and held the bars and shook with all my chaotic, hysterical strength and demanded my phone call! Demanded my phone call! Demanded my phone call!! For 5 minutes I shook and raged at the world, until finally the Deputy came. Young, muscular, shirt at least a size too small, his crew-cut hair blazed like a solid flat brick of nothing-you-want-to-deal-with. This Deputy grinned at me through the bars, just leaned close to my face and grinned…. and did nothing.

More in the next issue, and…

Onward to Greatness!

David Ferrera - The Meeting Guy

If you want to be on a winning team, if you want your organization to succeed, you’ll need to develop your ability to discover your Worth It. A good place to start is your honest assessment of how you show up during business meetings. Are you in your power? Are you open and willing to learn? Or, are you empty and discouraged…

Perhaps you are already indoctrinated into that pernicious and mighty breed: The Disparaged Co-Worker.

Have you heard the Mating Call of the Disparaged Co-Worker?

It sounds like this: “What?! Another meeting?!”

The mating call of the Disparaged Co-Worker is always accompanied by facial contortions. That’s one of the easiest ways to spot ‘em. The most common facial contortion is known as The Vally Girl `Oh I’m Soo Sure’ Eye Roll. You’ve seen that one, right? Where the person’s eyes roll so far back in their head, they look like a dead carp? This display is usually followed by the “Knowing Look”. Particularly nasty is the “Knowing Look” combined with the “We’re In This Together And It’s Going To Totally Suck” fake smile. When confronted with this level of false empathy, it’s almost impossible to avoid coupling. It just feels so goooood!

The Disparaged Co-Worker is genetically programmed to conduct negativity throughout organizations. Their survival depends on attracting mates through a combination of trendy clothes, nastiness, obviously-displayed health magazines, cologne and bad humor. I mean, how many times have you been hit on this week? How many invitations to blame and complain? How many exquisitely formed arguments for limitation? They’re multiplying like rabbits out there, people… and it’s our job to curb the population.

Let’s get real. Business meetings don’t just happen. They are not random events which victimize the powerless hordes. Nor are they dangerous, evil, or mal-intended. No one in your organization is being forced into a cold room by hooded abductors. Meetings are made up of YOUR team mates! They are created and delivered by you! I think we need a new bumper sticker: “I am the meeting I loathe.” Would that make the difference? How can we change the tidal wave of negativity? We need to discover our Worth It.

Please answer the following question: How many individuals does it take to ruin a meeting? Answer: Everyone in the room! If only one person allows themselves to be seduced by The Disparaged Co-Worker, soon everyone will drink from the cup. We love the dance, the surrender, the silky invitation to be right, to be RIGHT and to taste the forbidden fruit of supreme knowledge. Yes, yes come over here baby, it’s not your fault… we did the best we could, right? MMmmm Yesssssss…..

Whoops! There I go again. I was ready to give up writing the rest of this article, and just head for happy hour. It happens THAT fast. Unless you STAY STRONG, you will just be another floozy on the bar stool of business, another desperate wanna-be knocked around by life, full of one-liners and sad stories of reduced budgets, accelerated deadlines, or “poor training”.

Don’t do it! Don’t flex your pecs, don’t show your hem! Even if you really want to, you can stay strong. It takes effort. We must learn to wipe the sweat from our brow, hit “pause” on the Barry White cd, and say “No” to the seduction of blame and comfort. We can choose to keep our vows. We must, if we are to evolve… if our organizations are to win.

Hey, Business Superheroes, listen up: WE CAN WIN! It’s up to ALL of us to try. The first step is to realize that business meetings ARE the people in the room. They are a direct reflection of integrity, skill, professionalism, and intentions of the people on your team.

Most importantly, we must realize that business meetings are the primal ground of productivity. They are the arena where champions practice and demonstrate mastery of themselves. Meetings are where all of us, every one, practices with the tools, information and materials necessary to succeed. They one of the most important aspects of your professional careers. And only YOU can discover if you’re willing to do the work necessary to make meetings Worth It.

This begins when you are willing to FEEL what is most important to you. Bring your long-term vision with you to your next meeting. Align your actions with your vision. Speak from your true and giving heart. Listen with a keenness informed by kindness, and offer those things that help you to grow.

It’s Worth It.

David Ferrera

The Meeting Guy

Welcome to The Meeting Guy’s Blog!

We’re going to have some fun here together, some hilarious fun, along with learning, tools, insights and prognostications.

Enjoy!

And… If you spotted this blog as a personalized, self-centered exercise, you’re correct.

I need to learn all the time, and this little message, this funicular ride through the hanging gardens of truth-blossoms and prickly information-age brambles, is a gift to myself.

It is also my offer to you, the teachers and the learners of the world.

What if we could identify the fundamental tenet of transformation in business?   What if we could reduce it to one sentence?

“You learn best what you teach.”

Teachers and learners, learners and teachers in an ever-exchanging role-reversality of deals and no-deals.   Every one of us leaning back on some personalized version of “I’m doing my best!” and then moving on to the next collision, or the next embrace.

All of us seeking the same thing:  To feel good about ourselves.  To profit.  To express ourselves so others understand what we stand for.  To live according to what we care about.  To live according to our deepest values.

Have you had the following experience?  Something happens.  You recognize your part in it.  You are aware of a pattern.  You’re aware you’ve been in a similar situation before, probably often.  Only this time you chose differently:  You chose a strong, clear action.

And it works! Then, your inner voice says:  I just learned something.  I just learned a huge lesson!”

And now you have a secret.

It’s your secret.  You get to carry it around with you as long as you like.  It remains your secret until you share it…

So, share it!  By talking about what you learned, you begin to know this lesson much more deeply than you ever imagined. You realize you have mastered that particular life experience! You know you have mastered it, because you can describe the learning and how you have changed, how you’ve grown.  And, best of all, in talking about yourself this way, you realize you are being a contribution to others.

It’s one of the best feelings a person can have.  And doesn’t it always come as sort of a lovely surprise?  It’s a gentle, clear sense that says:  “Oh Wow!  I guess I really AM who I say I am.   I’m powerful after all!”

When we’re truly in touch with our deepest values, we succeed. We contribute. We live clean, with no frayed edges.

I want that for everybody.

David Ferrera

The Meeting Guy