The Tip of the Iceberg

Some might describe me as having an affinity for watching documentaries.  That’s an understatement, but I’ll run with the subtlety and say that recently I was watching one about the great icy north.  While dazzled by the imagery on the screen, an iceberg was shown and I was reminded of a training I have done for my staff on how to work with others.  In the training session I compare the people we meet and interact with, to icebergs.

When we all look at icebergs we are typically seeing it from a perspective on land, looking at a majestic ice formation reaching into the sky.  With its many peaks, and points it can often be awe inspiring how it floats along in the water.  However if we were to look below the surface in the chilly water that it floats in, we would see something much more grand below the surface, dwarfing the size what we saw floating above it.  Therefore the entirety of the iceberg was more than what we initially saw when we were just looking at it on land.

As we think about the people in our lives, whether it’s a friend, a coworker, a family member or a significant other, what we see on the surface is typically just a small manifestation of who they really are deep down inside.  I’ve been reminded of this fact very recently while I go through my own life journey, and as I listen to some of the experiences that my friends are going through right now.

We can look at those that are wealthy, poor, happy and sad, and sometimes never truly know much more than just what we see on that surface.  Yet there is so much below what we see of someone’s persona, or the tip of the iceberg.  So much of what is below the surface is created from hard work, joy and pain, successes and failures, as well as instances of triumph and defeat.  Our experiences with others, the jobs we’ve had, and the roles we’ve played in family, friendships, relationships and the work environment are just some of the things that contribute to the entire make up of who we are, or in this case, the entire iceberg.  As I said these are just some of the things, but it can be comprised of so much more not listed, and we are all a summation of our experiences.

We all go through life making the best out of our situations, learning from the events in our life, but there is so much more to our personalities than the initial interactions we have with people.  That’s where treating people with empathy and patience can go a long way for sustaining friendships and relationships.  It’s being sensitive to that part of the iceberg we may not necessarily get a chance to see.

We don’t always know the journey that someone has taken to get to a certain point in their life, therefore we are not always aware of the rest of their iceberg that’s below the surface.  The smoothest iceberg we see, can have some of the roughest and most jagged edges below the surface and vice versa.  But if we take the time to holistically approach someone and genuinely show interest in them as a person we can ultimately be a better supervisor, co-worker, friend, romantic partner, and family member.  

A strong component of being able to do this is working on having a high level of empathy.  There has to be a certain level of compassion and willingness from within ourselves to want to learn about someone in order to have the ability to be empathetic.  The cliché “put yourself in their shoes” might come to mind, but this goes beyond just putting ourselves in their shoes.  It also requires wearing their hat, their coat, and their gloves to take the analogy further.  By this I mean don’t just look at it from our perspective trying to understand theirs, actively listen to what that person is sharing about their experience and try to learn and understand as much as possible about what they are feeling and experiencing.

Having this level of understanding is great, and it’s kind to be empathetic, but taking it a step further to treat someone from an empathetic standpoint is treating them as a whole person and not just what we see on the surface.  Understanding why they make their decisions, and how our decisions can affect them is something that can create a deeper more meaningful relationship and is truly a holistic approach to our interactions with others.

When we see and interact with someone quite often it’s just the tip of the iceberg that we’re getting.  So let’s change that and make an effort to see the entire person, or the entire iceberg.

Love Yourself

I know, I know, as if there wasn’t enough pink and red everywhere now this post is about love?  Gross! Well it’s not as limited to what you think, so hang around for a bit longer.  As a single-30-something-male who is a hopeless romantic, I understand that the love stuff at this time of year is overwhelming.  I’ve been inundated with marketing and images of Valentine’s Day just like you.  But that inevitable day sits at the end of this week with a smug grin on its face waiting for people to max out credit cards on flowers, dinner and jewelry.  For many of us, it’s enough bombardment that I’ve heard some people use a four letter expletive as an action verb towards the day.  If you’re in a relationship or newly dating, it might be different.  There’s a lot of pressure placed on you to make the day special with roses, chocolates, or going to a fictional store character named Jared to spend a hefty part of your pay check as a monetary confirmation of your love.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been guilty before of participating in the mass consumerism that has come with Valentine’s Day; but through relationships and dating (good and bad experiences) I have begun to see love differently.  Our society and media whips us into a frenzy of magical love whether it’s an episode of the ‘Bachelor’ or that woman who sings “Every kiss begins with Kay”.  It teaches us that to truly know love, is to have a significant other who sweeps us off our feet, as we melt in their arms the same way they melt into ours.  I disagree.  I’m not a cynic and it’s not that I think it’s impossible to find that kind of love, but love comes in so many different forms beyond just that of a relationship with a significant other.

The commercialized love leads many of us to forget that every day we feel love from our families, our friends and most importantly our self.  Yes.  Our self.  The most important person you can and will ever love is the person you see in the mirror every day.  This isn’t where I launch into a diatribe that sounds like a single person’s manifesto bringing solidarity among single folks, that’s not what this is about.  The reality is whether you are in a relationship or not, no one can validate you more than you can validate yourself.  You don’t need to and should never rely on someone else’s acceptance of you to make you feel good about yourself.

I’m aware that much of this comes down to self-confidence.  Your self-confidence can be assembled through a variety of different forms whether it’s an outward physical appearance, the way you dress, your personality type, the hobbies that you have, etc.   We are judged every day by these things, and unless you meet a socially constructed stereotypical deal in all of them, there is a great chance that your self-confidence might be a bit damaged.  Perhaps you’ve been shamed into thinking you’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, tall enough, feminine enough, masculine enough and the list goes on and on.  At the end of the day however it’s vital to your own happiness that you find validation from within, and block out the negativity ridiculing you, or making you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.  You need to love you, for being you.

Take the time to perfect the things about yourself that you enjoy and love, instead of trying to do the things you think someone else will like about you.  There is nothing wrong with a little self-improvement and wanting to make ourselves a better person, but do it for you.  We are in a constant state of change through maturing, and learning new things.  It works very similar to home improvement.  We find something we don’t like about ourselves and put in the time, work, and effort to make it better.  The caveat is not getting caught up in curb appeal.  Don’t change yourself to live up to someone else’s standard, change yourself to live up to your own standard.  Remember, the most important person you can ever love is yourself.  Without loving yourself, you can easily fall victim to losing yourself.  With such a loss, the talents, ideas, hopes and dreams that you have can be lost as well.    

Some of you might still be caught up in the romance of Valentine’s Day and the idea of searching for Mr. or Mrs. Right.  I see a wife in my future as well, and that magical everlasting romance is something I want for myself, but the reality is that that type of love is hard.  Even in romance you need to love yourself first.  If you can’t get through the challenge of loving yourself first, then you’re never truly ready or secure enough to meet the challenge of loving someone else and you will settle.  You will inevitably settle for someone who you shouldn’t be with.  You need to reach a high level of self-love so that when someone else loves you, you can recognize that it’s not just your bank account, a fleeting infatuation, or lust awakening their loins that makes them love you.  You can be secure in the fact that it’s genuine love for who you are as a person.  You need to know yourself to know the love that you expect and deserve.

You’re the only you.  So through all your uniqueness, you need to see how beautiful you are in all your multifaceted ways.  Love yourself first and foremost and then be willing to accept the love of those around you.

A Thought on Leadership

There is a myth about being a great leader that has permeated what many people associate with leadership.  Through many different training sessions for supervisors that I have done, I find it is common that people believe you have to be famous or have some major accomplishments under your belt to be a great leader.  In reality all you really have to do is treat those that you lead with dignity and respect.  An integral part of the formula for good leadership, as well as getting effective results from your team can be as simple as that.  While it is true that there are great leaders who have accomplished something major, it is not a pre-requisite for being a great leader.  It is also unnecessary to have a wall of awards and trophies to serve as a leader who people adore and have come to identify as a leader who has made a difference.  It might come with the territory that an award is granted, but all too often those in positions of leadership pressure themselves to meet an imagined and arbitrary standard of being an awarded leader before they focus on how they treat those that they lead.

Let me walk you through a brief exercise I’ve done during a supervisor training session to illustrate what I’m talking about.  Try to name the past 5 Super Bowl MVP winners.  Try to name the past 3 Miss Universe winners. Try to name the last 4 Nobel Peace Prize Award winners.  Last but not least name the last 4 Oscar Winners for Best Director.

Now try to name 5 people who have been supportive of you.  Try to name 3 people who are great listeners.  Try to name 4 people whose honesty serves as a role model for you. Try to name 4 people who you’ve watched be kind to others regularly.

The first set of lists is remarkably more difficult.  Through that process we are listing people based on their awards, and while they have achieved some really amazing things, we do not remember them for their awards.  We do however remember people who have touched our lives in meaningful ways, and been there for us.  What’s more remarkable is that the traits they conveyed and are remembered for are traits that we generally associate with describing a good leader. 

The flipside is that as a good leader the respect from those you lead is commonly what resonates as more rewarding.  A recent example of this is listening to someone like Tom Brady who is a very accomplished quarterback in the NFL for the New England Patriots.  Recently he addressed college football players at the University of Michigan where he played as a quarterback.  He told these players that the accomplishment he was most proud of were not his Super Bowl rings, or a Super Bowl MVP award, but that his teammates voted him captain of the team in college.  He had earned the respect of his teammates and they looked up to him enough to select him to be their representative and leader.

This is exactly the crux of the matter.  Being a good leader is something that is earned from those that you lead.  Accomplishments while great and fantastic do not by default make someone a good leader.  Instead it is the way you treat those that you lead that make you a good leader.  Someone cannot be a leader without followers in any environment (work, sports team, volunteering, etc.).  The best way to be a memorable leader, as well as an effective one, is to be someone that people admire for the way that they treat their followers.  Just like in the exercise above, would you rather have someone struggle to remember you because of an award you won, or would you rather be someone who is easy to recall because you treated those you lead in a way that they appreciated?  It is in the latter where good leaders are created and how they earn the respect of those that they lead.