Author Archives: Sherri

The Power of “And”

The title of this essay, “The Power of ‘And,’” has been a bit of a business cliché for years.  There was some ad campaign by, I think, AT&T in the ‘90s and the theme rears its head regularly in both consumer and business advertising.  It usually refers in some way to the benefits of bringing together opposites, like a beer having great taste AND being lower calorie or bringing contrarian thinking to solving a problem.

I’ve been noodling on this concept partly because I’ve been writing more articles on Leadership for Lab Manager Magazine and this is an important leadership concept.  I’ve also been going on long walks outside again now that spring is sort of here.  That means more Brené Brown podcasts and “holding opposing truths” is a big theme of hers.  And I’ve been entirely exasperated with the news and how we as a populace seem to have completely lost the ability to hold two competing truths in our heads.  Let’s tackle those topics one at a time.

One of the first lessons you are taught in preparing for corporate brainstorming sessions is that you never critique ideas during the “storming” part of the work.  Even if you think an idea someone has proffered is totally idiotic, you don’t say so.  In fact, the second lesson you learn is to try to build on the ideas of others whether you think they are good ideas or not.  If one person suggests, say, a survey of existing customers to probe interest in a new offering, you might say, “we could also set up a kiosk at a trade show to survey people who aren’t customers yet” and someone else might say, “and we could offer a raffle drawing to encourage people to fill out surveys.”  One idea builds on another and even if the initial idea didn’t sound so great, those builds usually make it better.  Both of these lessons can be summarized in the maxim “do not say ‘yes, but’; say ‘yes, and.’”  The reason “yes, and” is so difficult, though, is that most people feel strongly about their own ideas and immediately dismiss ideas that are different or counter to their own.

As a leader, both of people and of ideas, the “power of and” is simultaneously one of the best tools in your tool box AND one of the most difficult to use.  One of the myths of leadership is that if you are at the top of the org chart then you know more than anyone else, make better decisions than anyone else, and have better ideas than anyone else.  A good leader knows that is a recipe for disaster but in practice it is difficult to resist pushing your own plan.  While there are a number of reasons why someone has attained a leadership position, hopefully one of them is that this is a person with good judgement who is constantly looking for new data to improve their knowledge, decisions, and ideas.  The best way to do that is to invite and listen to contrarian thinking.  And I mean really LISTEN.  Not listen-to-rebutt, but listen-to-learn.  Someone with a different background and set of experiences will see a problem or an opportunity in a totally different way—and that may make all the difference in actually solving the problem or capitalizing on the opportunity.  Just because an approach is different from your own does not by definition make it inferior or wrong.  Embracing different thinking is extremely powerful—AND extremely difficult.  A strong leader focuses efforts on building the judgement skills in the organization so that different ideas are not immediately dismissed.  Ideas are fragile things!  Even the best ones can be killed off with one negative comment and why “yes, AND” instead of “yes, BUT” is so important.

This brings us to the “Brené Brown” piece of this essay which takes “the power of and” into a slightly different direction.  One of her themes is around probing this concept of constructive paradox—the ability to hold competing truths in your head.  Intellectually, we all know that the world is more gray than it is black and white.  Emotionally, we would prefer simple and clean choices and that often means ignoring a “competing truth”.  For example, I do not want to get COVID-19, so I wanted to get vaccinated.  I also know that there are a range of side effects from the vaccines, some more prevalent than others and some more severe than others.  I had a pretty rough day after my second shot and I’m ok with that.  This sort of risk calculation is part of holding two competing truths:  I am protected from COVID-19 AND I suffered yesterday.  Not BUT.  AND.  The good from the shot was not diminished in my mind by the bad of the side effects.  The side effects were part of getting the protection.  I didn’t choose to get the vaccine in spite of the side effects.  I chose to embrace the side effects as part of getting the protection.

This concept is a bit more difficult when applied to people AND it’s even more powerful.  You will never like everything about your spouse or family or friends.  You will never like everything about yourself.  You will forever be evaluating that balance between the good and the bad.  Remember, we talked about “balance” in the concept of a pendulum and not a scale, so it is ever-changing.  As long as that balance point stays more to the positive, then it’s a relationship you will continue to value and nurture.  I could say, “Trish loads the dishwasher weird, but I love her.”  Instead, I choose to say, “Trish loads the dishwasher weird, AND I love her.”  See how different that sounds?  It shows I value the whole person.  I don’t ignore parts I may not like because everything about her adds up to the person I love.  Similarly, I value all the mistakes I’ve made in the past because they all have contributed to making me who I am. 

And that’s what brings us to current events.  Seeing people as whole and human is crucial to avoiding judgement based on just part of them and critical to not dehumanizing them.  None of us are without failings and flaws. It is important to look at the whole person and evaluate where that balance is between the things you judge as “good” and “bad”.  Someone can have drug issues or mental health issues or even a warrant out for their arrest AND not necessarily deserve to be shot.  They are a human being.  A politician or friend or relative can have positions you agree with AND have positions you don’t agree with.  No one deserves your unquestioning support.  You are allowed to disagree on something and still love and support that person.  Similarly, you are also allowed to agree on occasion with someone you normally disagree with and not change your fundamental positions.  You can hold those competing truths.

Here’s my challenge to you.  Avoid the word “but” as much as you can.  I’ve purposely done that in this essay and have been surprised at how often that choice comes up AND how using “and” has strengthened the thoughts.  It’s not easy.  It takes intention and effort.  AND it’s worth it.

Dose Makes the Poison

During my last couple of years working, I had the great luck to work with a Regulatory Services business that Intertek owned.  I say “great luck” for a couple of reasons: 1) this is a fascinating business that I knew very little about and I learned so much in my time working with them; and, 2) I had the pleasure of getting to know several fascinating people, including the person who inadvertently helped me write this essay and to whom it is dedicated.

This Regulatory Services business is a consultancy that assists companies in navigating a range of regulations often focused on public health.  The part of the business I worked most closely with was Chemical Services, which helps companies understand the regulations associated with chemicals in their products and how to comply with said regulations.  I had worked with this type of business in my earlier days as a bench chemist when I was developing specialty chemicals used in Industrial paints and coatings.  I, of course, felt that because I had this cursory exposure to the industry that I was “knowledgeable”.  Unsurprisingly, I found out very quickly that I was not.  Or, rather, that I knew just enough to be dangerous.  We’ve touched on this topic before.  Thanks to Karen, I know much more.  Which only seems to make me more dangerous.

The Principals in this business were very kind and patient with me.  Maybe it was because the business is located in Canada and Canadians are pathologically nice.  Maybe it was just because they were incredible people.  During one of my early trips, my host planned a half day of hookey with me.  We spent the morning in the office outside of Toronto, filling my brain.  At lunch time, we took off and headed south.  We drove through the adorable town of Niagra-on-the-Lake.  Had lunch; did a little shopping.  We drove through wine country (alas, no tastings) and down to the Canadian side of Niagra Falls (clearly more beautiful than the American side).  Karen and I talked all along the way about a zillion things, including more about the business and building my understanding.  It was during this trip that Karen fed me that immortal line that titles this essay: A chemical in and of itself is not safe or dangerous.  It’s the dose that makes the poison.  Depending on the characteristics of the chemical and how it interacts with human systems, a “safe” dose can vary.  Determining that dose, both in the acute and chronic sense, is a difficult undertaking and fraught with conflicting interpretations.  It just ain’t that simple.

That lesson clearly had a big impact on me.  It is partly about risk assessment and, in fact, this essay is a good companion to the one I wrote a few months ago on risk.  It’s a follow on that I’ve been mulling over since that writing.  This idea of “how much of something makes it a bad thing” is an idea we wrestle with daily in all aspects of our lives.  It’s further complicated by the companion question of “is the risk worth it?”  As I wrote in that essay on risk, it’s a wonder that we aren’t paralyzed daily by indecision, but we usually take these quickie risk assessments in stride. 

The aspect of this subject that I’ve been ruminating on a lot lately is this idea that some thing or person or idea is not—cannot be—all good or all bad.  It’s the dose that makes the poison.  In the realm of toxicology, Karen spoke about a few ways of looking at this.  There is the classical S-shaped response curve where something is not dangerous until you reach a critical threshold level—this is what most of us think about when we think of something as a “poison”.  There is the proverbial Goldilocks dilemma—where too little of something is bad and too much is bad, but there is a sweet spot in the middle.  Exposure to oxygen is a good example.  And there is even an instance, called hormesis, where something is beneficial in smaller doses, no more beneficial but not dangerous at some intermediate level, and then toxic above a threshold. Exercise and alcohol are good examples here.

Why am I bringing all this up (besides the fact that I love discussing this kind of thing with Karen)? Well, we’ve had a lot of mental whiplash over this past year of pandemic as the pace of new information has caused changes in the guidance we’ve gotten from experts on how to best protect ourselves and squash the spread of the virus.  (Their often-poor risk communication has not helped.)  I think as Americans (as humans?) we like to have nice, clear cut, unchangeable answers on how to address serious problems.  Mask are good or masks are worthless; the vaccines are safe or they are not; the virus lives on surfaces or it doesn’t; it’s safe to open schools or it’s not.  We just don’t like “It depends” as an answer even though we know, realistically, that’s the case most of the time.  It doesn’t help that we have the companion problem of “if a little of this is good, then a lot must be better!”  If you believe wearing masks helps reduce spread of the virus, then you want to see everyone in a mask everywhere all the time.  And if you think they don’t really help, then you never want to see one anywhere on anyone.  Absolutism helps reinforce our beliefs but it’s the dose that makes the poison.  “Never” and “always” are dangerous words.

Think about sunshine.  Nothing feels better than warm sun on winter-tired skin in springtime.  Doctors even tell us we need sunshine to manufacture Vitamin D!  But spend more than, say, 15 unprotected minutes in direct, strong sun and your skin begins to burn.  (OK, for me it’s 15 minutes; for Trish it’s about an hour.)  That doesn’t mean I should spend zero time in the sun because I will burn.  It means I need to limit the time and/or wear sunscreen.  Think about that one friend or family member who you love dearly but who drinks too much or talks too loudly or keeps bringing up that topic.  It doesn’t mean you never want to see them; it just means you can’t spend too much time together (classic risk management!).  It’s the dose that makes the poison.

I’ve struggled mightily lately with how to put this thinking to work in evaluating our societal conflicts, be they over the pandemic, racial injustice and inequality, or even (ick) politics.  My risk assessment is going to be different than yours. Remember that there are two components of this analysis:  the intrinsic danger/hazard/toxicity of what you are considering, matched against your assessment of the probability of exposure.  We often miscalculate on both!  How can I effectively respect your context and still remain true to mine?  It’s a lot of work to challenge your own assumptions and see the world through someone else’s eyes and experiences.  Even in the data-driven world of toxicology, it can be difficult to put the health risks of certain chemicals into effective safe ranges of exposure.  In our ever-fractured world, we are quick to condemn products or people or even ideas over an instance of negative impact—irrespective of the balance of good vs. bad or the probability of negative impact or even the time and context of said negativity.  We have zero tolerance (ok, now I’m getting into engineering).  But zero tolerance never works.  It’s the dose that makes the poison.

The Junk Drawer and the Cat

This is a story about a farkakt kitchen drawer and a cat with food insecurity issues.  It’s also a story about patience and frustration, with a dash of procrastination, along with figuring out the right problem to solve and then actually solving it the right way.  Then we throw in a little about temper and compassion.  In short, this is a story about life.  I hope it has a happy ending.

We have a wonky drawer in our kitchen that just happens to be our junk drawer.  I’m guessing you have one of these drawers, too.  You’re not really sure all that’s in it but there are a few things in there that you need to access on a regular basis.  If you are unlucky like us then that drawer sticks and jams consistently.  This drawer has been like this for the five years I’ve lived in this house.  Under questioning, Trish admits that the drawer has been like this since she moved in—approximately 30 years ago.  The drawer is just pathetic.  It is literally held together with wood glue and duct tape.  There have been attempts to fix it countless times.  Sometimes it has been a half-hearted effort.  Sometimes it has been a well-intention full assault—a project, if you will—that involved emptying the drawer and using an array of fasteners that THIS time will fix it for good.  Within one hour, it is always sticking again.  We have been so frustrated that we have actually discussed remodeling our kitchen—spending tens of thousands of dollars—to get rid of this drawer.

Our story begins one unremarkable day when I said, “How would you feel if I found a carpenter who would be willing to rebuild that drawer?”  Trish was immensely pleased that I was actually willing to take on a task that required picking up the phone, possibly more than once, to call a person I did not know.  (Yes, it is a wonder I ever held a job.)  One Facebook post on the Township Page, one Messenger conversation, and one phone call later, I had our man.  I was VERY pleased with myself.  Jack came the very next day, surveyed the problem child and took it with him to rebuild.  A few days later, he brought back to us a bunch of dried wood glue with some drawer in it, with a new bottom and a bunch of metal L clips at each joint.  And did I mention a ton of wood glue?  Never mind, he was able to salvage the frontispiece and return a drawer that seemed to work.  We were thrilled!  We loaded all the crap back in the drawer and went about our business.  Within a couple of days, the drawer started to stick again.

The fateful day in question dawned bright and sunny and comparatively warm.  It was The Spring of Deception in Pennsylvania.  Soon we would plunge back into the darkness and cold of Third Winter, to be followed by The Pollening.  But it was The Spring of Deception and we were feeling good!  It had been a nice day.  We were out and about, wearing only lightweight facemasks and no jackets.  Around 4:00-ish, I made the damning statement:  I think I’m going to try and fix the drawer.  Trish recoiled in horror before collecting herself and bravely saying, “OK.”  She then slinked off into another room.

“It has to be something simple,” I thought.  “The drawer has been FIXED.  Probably just need to center the drawer in the rails better.”  Thus, began the yanking.  And the more stubborn jamming.  And more yanking.  And cursing.  HOW?!  How is this happening?!  We FIXED the drawer!  I hauled off and whacked the drawer but good, trying to get it to reseat on its rails.  A little voice in my head screamed, “Oh good lord, don’t break the drawer again!”  It made a pained crunching sound but did slam shut.  It would not reopen.  I backed up a step, expelled an expletive, and stepped on the cat.

First, you have to understand a little about Bridget.  She was found as a tiny kitten on a concrete barrier in the middle of a bridge (hence her name) over South Philly in the middle of rush hour.  The daughter of a friend was stopped in rush hour traffic and saw her little eyes.  One allergic fiancée later, we had ourselves a sister for Beau the Wonder Cat.  I am convinced she retains food insecurity issues from those traumatic early days.  Every day she acts as if she has not eaten in weeks.  Come feeding time, she weaves in and out of legs, supervising the feeding process:  first the fresh water, now the cans of wet food, now the dry food.  Hurry hurry hurry!  In fact, I swear the cat can tell time.  We feed them at 5:00.  Starting around 4:00, she starts bugging us.  Then she starts doing things she knows will annoy us, hoping we’ll give in and just feed her.  It was dinner time, but all of my moving around in the kitchen was not producing dinner and she was beside herself.  She kept trying to supervise and I wasn’t getting the job done!  Then I stepped on her.

Anyone who has ever stepped on a cat or a small dog knows the pain/fear/heartbreak/guilt of that high pitched scream.  I, however, was in no mood for this and I yelled at her.  Then I decided that I needed to fold the laundry and stomped upstairs.  Poor little girl!  She didn’t understand the drawer thing!  I was in the kitchen.  It was near feeding time.  Her job was to follow or lead me around and make sure I fed her.  It wasn’t HER fault that the damn drawer still jammed, nor that I stepped back suddenly.  You always hurt the ones you love.

By the time I finished folding, Trish had fed the cats.  I fiddled more with the drawer and got it open and emptied.  Then I finally discovered the real problem:  the cabinet was not square.  It was ever so slightly wider at the top than at the bottom.  The top drawer was always going to fall off the rails.  They were just too far apart.  The drawer falling apart was a symptom, not the cause.  It was yanked on so much over the years it just fell to pieces.  Upon interrogation, the long-time homeowner admitted she KNEW that was the problem, hence the paper shims behind the rails that worked for a few days but kept falling off.  Yours truly just never put those facts together.  (And Trish never got the drawer fixed properly.)

How many times have I done that?  Gotten so frustrated over a “problem” that I never took the time to ask myself, “Is this really the problem?  Or just a symptom?”  And in my anger and frustration, I ended up taking it out on this innocent little being who just wanted dinner.  What a mess!

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.  Bridget did, indeed, get fed that night and every night since.  She still doubts that it will always happen.  Jack called to see if the drawer was fixed to our satisfaction and agreed to come back and fix the REAL problem.  Is it perfect?  No, but there is only so much you can do with 1980’s era original construction cabinetry.  It’s still a tad wonky, but it doesn’t jam anymore.  So, as you can see, I am continuing to learn and relearn all the lessons I write about.  I’m here to “get it right, not BE right”.  We are all works in progress!

EDITORS NOTE: As said “long-time homeowner,” I wish to explain that the drawer was never THAT much of a problem until the author moved in. My Southern Peach is a delicate flower until she isn’t.  Her longshoreman swearing scared not only Bridget, but also Beau and me.  And the laundry she went to fold?  It looked like I had folded it—small balls of fabric and mismatched socks.  *Sigh* Thank goodness Jack came back.

Good Enough

Last time, we explored the Myth of Competence—this feeling we have that most everyone around us is capable and competent and, often, that we are not.  This Imposter Syndrome (yes, I’m spelling it with the more common “e” this time; both are correct) can be paralyzing.  If you feel that you are really just faking it and that you’ll be found out as a fraud at any moment, then every decision you make becomes critical and every action you take must be perfect.  That kind of thinking is an absolute recipe for disaster.

I’ve talked before about decision making.  Particularly when you are young, it seems like every decision you make will determine your long-term success or failure, and your happiness or misery in life.  Many parents don’t help this by obsessing over their child’s decisions even more than the kid!  They may want to shield their child from the pain of making what looks to be a mistake or they may be trying to assuage their own regrets, but the kid picks up on the emotions of the parent and gets even more stressed!  I’m glad I was raised during the more hand’s off 1960’s and ‘70s. It’s not that my parents didn’t worry or stress about my decisions; they just kept that worry to themselves.

Let’s talk about a Really Big Decision—choosing your college or university.  And it’s not just THIS decision. There are parents that fret about getting their toddlers into the “right” preschool because that starts a cascade of choices and opportunities that they believe will define their kid’s life.  Good lord!  In his book, David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the concept of “threshold” or “good enough” with respect to choosing a college.  There is so much pressure on getting into the best schools!  True, there are certain advantages to Ivy League educations.  The biggest one, and the one most unique to those environments, is the network of people you develop, first met as fellow students and professors.  “Who you know” is important throughout your career and life and the tight networks at the Ivy’s can make a big difference.  But it’s a differentiator, not a requirement for success.  You just need to go to a school that is Good Enough—over a threshold in educational quality that will get you the grounding you need to be successful.  The rest is up to you and your hard work.  In fact, an Ivy League school may be all wrong from a culture perspective for you and you might shrivel!  A different school might provide the right environment for you to thrive.  It just needs to be Good Enough.

That phrase, “Good Enough,” has a bad connotation associated with it, though, and one that needs to be minimalized.  Good Enough is often interpreted as “barely acceptable”.  That’s why I like the concept of “Threshold” better.  If there are 10 schools that meet your qualifications, then they all pass your threshold and are all acceptable.  Each may have its own advantages and disadvantages compared to each other, but they all meet your requirements.  Remember:  the decision you make on which college to attend (above that threshold) is way less important that what you do once you’ve made the decision.  As long as you work hard and apply yourself, you stand a good chance of success after attending any of those schools.  It makes more sense to spend the time really defining your requirements, not on picking The One.  This thought process holds for jobs, for what city you live in, for volunteer activities—almost any “multiple choice” decision.  At the risk of wading into a hornet’s nest, this same philosophy holds with relationships.  There are many, many people out there that any one of us could spend our lives with, happily.  There is no single ONE.  You just need to find one of those people who share your threshold requirements and who is ready to commit and work on the relationship at the same time as you are.  Took me 50 years to figure THAT one out.

So, let’s talk a bit about success and happiness and decisions and regrets.  I believe that I have previously established that I’m a “no regrets” kind of girl.  It’s not that I think I’ve never made a bad decision.  I’ve got a long list of decisions I’ve made that have led to pain and suffering.  It’s just that I have no real regrets—nothing I would necessarily do differently, given the chance.  Why?  Because I needed all those experiences to become the person that I am today, and I kind of like that person.  But also, because I know that if I’d made a different decision, there is no guarantee that the outcome would have been preferable to what actually happened.  We are reading a book right now in our Family Book Club called Midnight Library that explores this premise.  While it takes a more negative approach of “other choices could have been just as bad”, I prefer the more positive approach of “you can still make the outcome of your choices into a good thing.”  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  There is no one pathway to success and happiness.  There are decisions you make and actions that you choose to take based on those decisions.  You can take actions to improve your situation or not.  Those actions are not always easy for you to stomach (meaning you need courage) or easy for you to accomplish (you will need help and time), but there are always actions you can take.  Similarly, you CHOOSE whether to be happy or miserable.  Again, not always easy to choose to be happy, but it’s a choice.  Or, you can choose to be miserable and to play the victim and blame the world or others for your situation—and we all know how I feel about THAT.  There are certainly true victims out there and they deserve our outreach and support.  I’m talking above about those people who refuse to take responsibility for their lives.

Phew!  That was a bit of a rant!  Let me pull this back a bit.  Imposter Syndrome is real and it’s very common.  Like I said last time, it can be humbling and motivating or it can be paralyzing.  I know it is a safe bet to say that most of you reading this who might feel a bit of Imposter Syndrome are not imposters at all.  You are also not perfect.  You will miss deadlines.  You will produce an output that is not your best work.  You will let people and yourself down.  Your goal is, first, to own your mistakes even if no one else sees them and, most importantly, to learn from them and try to do better next time.  This is a never-ending journey.  We’ll all be trying to get better every day of our lives (except for those hopefully short periods of time when we go on vacation from self-betterment and wallow in laziness and crankiness for a bit).  Give yourself a break.  Give others a break.  It’s ok to have high expectations but not to expect perfection.  We are all “above threshold”.  We are all Good Enough.

The Myth of Competence

When I was much younger, I thought the world was run by competent mature adults and I was very intimidated.  As I grew older, I realized that the world was run by people just like me and I became very scared.  Why?  Because I never felt I was competent enough to be an Adult in a Responsible Position.  Then I became even more scared because I realized that I was no less capable than most other adults I knew.  Finally, I started to relax when I saw that most of what needed to get done got done anyway.  Maybe this Myth of Competence needs to be explored.

Let’s start at the beginning.  When we were little children, we thought our parents knew what they were doing.  They sure acted like they did!  Many of us even thought our parents were perfect.  Those of you reading this who are parents are probably laughing at that thought.  You most likely had continual crises of confidence, wondering if you were totally messing your kids up because you rarely felt like you knew what you were doing.  At a certain point, most of us swung that pendulum way to the other side and decided our parents knew nothing and were totally incompetent.  This usually started in the preteen years and went until you were about 30 or had your first child.  Then, suddenly, your parents became human.  They weren’t perfect but they did a pretty darn good job.

When I was in college, a new professor joined the Chemistry Department in my sophomore year.  She was right out of grad school.  We were all amazingly impressed by her!  Knew her stuff; great teacher.  We’d hit the jackpot.  As she and I got to know each other, she confessed this to me:  “You know, Sherri, I am staying just one lecture ahead of you guys.”  She had never taught Physical Chemistry before.  She was up late into the night developing her lectures and materials, staying one lecture ahead.  We assumed she was so knowledgeable that she could teach us in her sleep!

It’s generally comforting to think that the people around you are competent.  With competency comes confidence.  We see this in the medical field in particular.  We expect our doctors to be competent to the point of perfection.  We expect them to be able to diagnose any ailments on the first try, to know what to look for with virtually no clues from us, and to be able to fix whatever is wrong.  Amazingly, that actually happens a good percentage of the time.  Sure, there are totally incompetent quacks and we have a vibrant personal injury law industry that proves that point.  However, most doctors are fairly competent and we rely on that.  Unfortunately, we want to rely on that to the point of abdicating our responsibilities as the patient.  We forget that doctors are human and that competence does not mean perfection.  Or omniscience!

In the workplace, misplaced expectations of competence get us into trouble all the time.  It is natural to believe that the people around you in any decent organization know what they are doing and will get done what they are supposed to get done.  (I hear more laughter….)  The reality is that no one is as good as you think they are.  No one knows as much about a topic as you think they know.  No one is as organized as you think they are.  No one is as perfectly dependable as you think they are.  I am not saying this to diss on people who have let me down or vent some bitterness toward the workplace.  I’m just giving you a reality check to, first, not get down on yourself about your own imperfections (we’ll get to that in a bit) and, second, to remind you that those around you are human.  You need to not trust too implicitly and you need to give people a little grace and support when they mess up.  I remember a time when I was working with a person in our financial organization to develop data to support a business plan.  When he ran the financial projections based on our assumptions about the business, his work showed revenue growth that just seemed out of whack to me.  I immediately assumed that I was wrong about my understanding of certain financial terms.  He, after all, was the finance guy!  He knew this stuff better than I did, right?  Clearly my understanding of a compound annual growth rate was wrong.  When we went over the financials in a business meeting, no one raised a concern.  We went through with the investment, which was not small.  I made a mental note to do a little reading.  Long story short, I was right.  That guy lost his job (not just because of that plan).  And I lost confidence in the rest of the business team.  I never spoke up, though.  Who else was thinking, “That just doesn’t look right”?

I talk about this myth of competence in leadership coaching because it’s important to speak up and gently ask those questions.  As I became more experienced, I learned that most of the time others were thinking the same thing and appreciated someone asking a question that they were afraid to ask.  Afraid because they didn’t want to embarrass the person or didn’t want to look incompetent themselves.  There is an art to it, of course.  You need to be kind and authentic and maybe even self-deprecating.  But there is nothing wrong with asking someone to define or clarify a term.  There is nothing wrong with following up on the details of a task.  There is nothing wrong with offering to help.  Sometimes people get in over their head or don’t know what they don’t know.  Most people feel compelled to project this air of confidence and competence even when they don’t feel it.  If you can approach people as humans, you have a better chance of heading off a disaster or just ensuring that things get done that need to get done.

Another important aspect of the Myth of Competence is to remember that you, as well, are often not as good as you think you are.  I have written before that the most important characteristic of a good leader is humility and I need to emphasize that, here.  We can all get over confident.  We can all get full of ourselves, especially when we’ve had success.  Stop it.  Just stop it.  Remember that you are strongest when you know your limits and when you surround yourself with people who have strengths where you don’t.  And as important as this is in the workplace, it’s even more important in your personal relationships.  When you already think you know it all, you never learn anything.  And there is so much out there to learn!

While not blindly trusting in the competence of others is important, this “all people are human and deserve a little grace” applies especially to yourself.  It is natural to become overly critical of your own shortcomings when you see everyone around you as unfailingly competent. At three different leadership webinars that I’ve recently been involved in, this question of Impostor Syndrome has come up.  Impostor Syndrome is feeling that you are totally unqualified to do the job you are doing, professionally or personally, and that at any moment you will be found out as a fraud.  I have felt a bit (sometimes more than a bit) of Impostor Syndrome at every stage of my professional career and at a good many key moments in my personal life!  It’s natural.  It helps you stay humble.  It can motivate you to be better.  To paraphrase Brene Brown (again), we are here to GET it right, not to BE right.  I am constantly amazed at the number of very famous and accomplished people across all kinds of professions who readily admit to Impostor Syndrome.  I feel in good company.  The risk, though, is that feeling unqualified and like a fraud can become paralyzing.  How do you stop that?  Well, that’s where the concept of “threshold” or “good enough” comes in.  And we’ll talk about that next time.

Pioneers and Settlers

In one of my first essays, I told you about one of my early bosses at Air Products.  I was lucky enough to have, at the beginning of my career, someone who taught me (and modeled for me) the importance of being a good, thoughtful human being first and a manager second.  I have many “Tom-ism’s” swirling in my head and they are a staple of my coaching repertoire. 

The topic of today’s essay has its origins in a discussion that I honestly cannot remember.  I struggled early in my career (and many would say later in my career) navigating corporate politics.  The issue when I was younger was more around naivete and a dedicated sense of meritocracy.  Later on, I suffered from a lack of patience with incompetence.  But that’s a story for another time.  Tom and I must have been discussing some attempt I made at pitching an idea that seemed utterly sensible to me at the time and that was summarily and quickly shot down by The Powers That Be.  I must have been disheartened.  Tom, not wanting me to get discouraged, told me this: “Sherri,” he said, “remember that pioneers get shot at and settlers get the land.” 

I’ve been thinking about this Tom-ism lately for a couple of reasons.  As I have shamelessly promoted before, I have given a few webinars for Lab Manager Magazine.  In December I gave a webinar as part of their Women in Science series and this month participated in a panel discussion with the other presenters.  In both my personal webinar and in the panel discussion, listeners asked about what they could do to change their work environment to speed advancement opportunities for women.  In both webinars, I shared the sentiment of this essay.  The other reason I’ve been thinking about this truism is the change in our Federal Administration and the inevitable flip flop that adherents of both main political parties are now taking toward change.  While the hypocrisy of these public figures is a topic for another time (or maybe never because it just drives me nuts that much), it is instructive to see how reactionary they can be toward proposals of change.  A proposal made by one party is immediately met by resistance from the other, even if said proposal was essentially made by the resistant party when THEY were in power (and thus shot down by the party that just proposed it this time).

The essence of the sage advice herein is that if you are someone who wants to bring new ideas or thinking into an organization or environment, expect to get shot down.  The severity of the rejection and its speed will be in direct proportion to how big a change from the norm you are proposing.  Human beings resist change under all but the direst conditions (and even then).  I don’t care how obvious it may seem to you; how beneficial the change would be to whomever you are proposing it; or, how well you’ve thought through your argument and presentation.  Pioneers get shot at.  It’s only after the long hard slog of continuing to push your argument, working your influence, cajoling and needling, that people start to come over to your idea.  And by then everyone forgets it was even your idea.  As the change takes root, everyone forgets that this was such a big deal.  Settlers then get the land.

I’ve written about “change” before, but that was more in the context of what drives change and acceptance of it.  This essay is more about the effect on the “changer”.  All throughout my life, I have felt a constant pull toward agitating for change.  I am not really sure what drives that discomfort with the status quo, but I do know that the discomfort is asymmetric.  I have agitated for change when there is something I’ve wanted and could not get or when I’ve seen others unfairly held back.  I have stood squarely against change, I am somewhat ashamed to say, when I’ve felt I’ve had something to lose. Everyone has felt both sides of this change dynamic.

I am a big fan, as you know, of “owning your own stuff.”  Personal Accountability is, and always will be, my Number One hot button.  I get very annoyed when I hear someone expressing frustration with a situation yet refusing to own what they, themselves, can do to change said situation.  Part of that desire to play the victim, unconscious though it may usually be, comes sometimes from not wanting to put in the effort to create change but sometimes also from the fear of being shot at (figuratively, I hope) while trying.  Putting yourself out there, being that Pioneer, means making yourself vulnerable.  And being vulnerable requires extraordinary courage.  And being courageous requires energy.  And a willingness to be shot at multiple times.  And, sometimes, an acceptance that when the shooting finally stops, others get to settle the land and reap the rewards.  That is really hard. 

To be willing to repeatedly expose yourself to these difficulties requires steadfast intrinsic motivation—taking action because you know it is the right thing to do and the action itself is its own reward.  Remember that while there are some people out there who like agitating for the sake of agitating, most of us don’t like getting shot at.  Ask yourself, as a wise person I know says, “Is this the hill I want to die on?”  We’ve all been told to pick our battles.  Know that there is nothing wrong with choosing to back off to fight another day, but remember that you DID make a choice.  Maybe the time wasn’t right or you didn’t build enough support or maybe you need an old General to retire. Don’t play the victim. Learn from that battle and when the time comes to fight again you may be more successful.

I want you also to remember what it feels like to gin up the courage to agitate for change when the tables are turned and you are on the comfortable end reactively resisting change agitated for by others.  Remember what it’s like to be that Pioneer.  Remember that those Pioneers are trying to improve a situation that is intolerable for them.  Just because you are comfortable does not mean everyone is.  Think also about all the times you’ve been the Settler, enjoying the Pioneering efforts of others.  We all benefit, for example, from the pioneering efforts of those who agitated in the 1970’s for regulations around clean air and water.  Not sure any of us would want to go back to those days.  Ask yourself if you really do have something to lose.  A candle does not become less bright by lighting another candle.  Accept that while the benefits of change are always asymmetric, as someone in the position of power you can take steps to minimize the negative impacts. Force yourself to stay open to the need for change. Try not to unleash too many shots on those pioneers. Remember that you will surely again be in the position of Pioneer, dodging bullets yourself. 

Role Models Part II

Last time, we started a discussion about role models.  I talked about what role models are, how you choose them and the importance of intentionality in choosing them.  This time, I want to discuss more about BEING a role model, how your role models evolve over time and a little bit about someone who is a really important role model for me now.

I mentioned last time that most people don’t look at themselves as role models for others.  We are just living our lives, doing our thing.  But we impact people every day with the choices we make with respect to our behavior.  Trish told me a story about a conversation she had at a high school reunion.  This was a fairly recent reunion, meaning she had been out of high school for a long time.  Decades.  A woman who Trish remembered as an acquaintance came up to her.  Not a dear friend, just someone she kind of knew.  As they were chatting, this woman said to her, “You know, I will never forget how you stood up for me.”  Trish masked her surprise as this woman told a story of how she was being bullied one day and Trish defended her.  I’m not surprised.  Trish is like a mama bear when it comes to protecting those she cares about.  But Trish did not remember the incident at all.  This woman sure did, though.  She remembered it, with such gratitude, decades later.  It made an impact.  Remember that: your words, your actions can impact others in a significant way.  Choose those words and actions well.

One of the “leadership lessons” that I often share when coaching is to remember the importance of showing a consistence “face” to your organization.  As the leader, others look to you to determine how they should be feeling and acting.  If you are calm, focused and directed, they will be as well.  And they will focus their energies on getting their jobs done.  If you are volatile, emotional and ranting, they will spend their energy focused on what might be bugging you instead of on what they control.  And if your mood changes day to day, they will ride that rollercoaster along with you.  Believe me, that is not productive for anyone.  I was not perfect at keeping that constant countenance, but I tried my best to go into my office and scream into a proverbial pillow as much as possible.

Remember, then, that people are always looking and watching.  Even if you are not running a large organization, people are observing you: family, friends, acquaintances, even strangers with whom you cross paths.  And that brings us to our next topic—how my role models have changed as I’ve gotten older and wiser.  I look, now, for examples and guidance on the kind of person I want to be, not how to achieve some goal or status or level.  In this day of social media influencers across politics, sports and entertainment, the desire to emulate heavily curated lives has gone into overdrive.  What we are being encouraged to value is, frankly, misleading at best and dangerous at worst.  That’s why I want to tell you about Lynn.

When you first meet Lynn, she will not strike you immediately as a person you’d want to emulate.  She’s unassuming.  She’s quiet (until she gets her Jersey Girl going).  She’s kind.  In fact, she’s got that sort of demeanor that puts you at ease right away.  As you get to know her, though, you realize that she is an extraordinary person.  The best way I can think of to describe her is that she embodies what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as a “life of service”.  So little of what she does is about herself!  I have simply never met someone so authentic and compassionate, so tuned into the people around her (friend or stranger), so focused on the need for doing what’s right simply because it’s what is right.  Lynn started her own electric services business in good part because she was troubled by the scruples of her employers.  It was important to her to spend the proper amount of time with a customer; to do only what needed to be done; and, to recognize when she could do something a little extra, without a cost attached, that would really help someone out.  And before you think that this is a losing business model, know that after a few years of establishing herself, Lynn is outrageously successful and has to turn business away.  Or, rather, she should be turning business away, but instead, works crazy hours because she doesn’t want to let down those who depend on her.

This does not mean that Lynn has no backbone or that she has had it easy.  Suffice it to say that her childhood was very difficult and she deals with the fallout of that still.  It’s the sort of background that could easily have made her bitter and selfish but instead has made her even more devoted to her family.  She is loyal to those she loves and will back them forcefully when warranted.  She had to overcome dyslexia to pass her licensing exams.  I cannot even begin to comprehend that difficulty!  Every barrier she came up against, she found a way around or through.  She never gave up.  She has never failed to recognize the criticality of support from those around her, particularly her equally amazing wife.  Even though she worked tirelessly to build her business, she will fire customers in a heartbeat when it is called for—no one is allowed to take advantage of her good nature. 

I’m sure she has less admirable qualities.  She is, after all, a Patriots fan.  Even THAT allegiance is driven by loyalty to a long ago group of co-workers!  But either I’ve never been allowed to see those faults or they are so minimized by the rest of her that I can’t think of them right now.  I know it sounds like I’m putting her up on a pedestal but I’m really trying to NOT do that.  Her humility is a good part of what I admire.  Life continually challenges us to be more, do more, want more, get more.  It’s always about us, about what someone else has or achieves.  But what I really want is to be able to NOT make it about me.  I want my life to be about compassion. I want to focus more on doing for those I love, strangers who need a hand, doing what’s right simply because it’s right.  And isn’t that what role models really should be about?  Encouraging us to be better people?  Some people cross your path and change your life.  A few people come into your life and change YOU.  I want to be more like Lynn.  YOU should want to be more like Lynn.  And that’s why she should be a role model for all of us.

Role Models Part I

Watching the Inauguration yesterday of President Biden and Vice-President Harris, I found myself thinking a lot about role models.  Hard not to do with so much discussion about VP Harris:  the adorable pictures all over social media with little Black and Brown girls taking the oath along with her and the media focusing on the importance of her achievements in the context of being a role model.  But there has been other news, most of if distressing, that has me thinking about role models, as well.  In this first essay of a two-parter, I want to introduce the topic of Role Models—what are they?  Why are they important?  How do you choose your role models and how can they change throughout your life?  In part two, I will discuss the importance of being a role model and share with you a bit about someone who is a very important role model right now in my own life.

I think most people know what a role model is.  It is someone who embodies some characteristic that you admire and strive to emulate.  Sometimes you may focus on that one characteristic or skill, like someone’s humility or persistence or scholarship.  Sometimes you admire and try to emulate the whole person—or, at least, what you view as that “whole” person—the totality of what they have achieved and how they have gotten there.  Many people tout parents or relatives or neighbors or teachers as their role models—people who are in their lives on a regular basis, directly influencing them and impacting their development holistically.  Others note role models that they’ve never met: historical figures or politicians or movie stars or athletes.  All are valid since you need many different role models to help form who you become as a person.  And while we would like all role models to exhibit positive properties, there also is such a thing as a negative role model—either someone who provides an example that you know you should avoid or someone whom you tried to emulate and realized later that, well, it wasn’t such a smart thing. 

You choose role models whether you realize it or not, which is why making this a conscious process is important.  So do your children, which is why you need to discuss role models with them.  This is also why representation—seeing people who are like you—in various roles is so critical to keeping your mind wide open to what’s possible for you.  I remember reading an article by the “back page” columnist of Fortune back in the late 80’s.  This columnist had been a long-time contributor to Fortune and wrote with humor and broad business knowledge.  I looked forward to his article every issue.  This one time, though, he wrote an article ridiculing the need for role models and particularly for representation.  His thesis was basically that he didn’t need any role models to convince him he could be anything he wanted to be.  He certainly felt that if he’d wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or even President of the United States that he could have gone in that direction.  Yes, he was a white man.  No, he did not recognize that every career he may have wished for was dominated by white males so he didn’t even realize he had role models aplenty.  Yes, that ended up being his last column on the back page.  There was a price to pay for tone deafness, even 30 years ago.

I would bet that most people don’t even realize that they are being looked upon as role models.  In most cases that is probably because they don’t see themselves as a role model material so why should someone else?  While that kind of humility can be admirable it can also be dangerous.  Any parent who has muttered “Do as I say and not as I do” to their children knows this, as does any parent who warily watches which public figures their kids obsessively follow on social media.  This is why intentionality on choosing role models is so important, as well as understanding which parts of that person you want to model and which you don’t! 

It’s interesting to me that while we often choose role models for a particular skill or behavior, we tend to put them up on a pedestal that judges their whole person.  That can either lead us to pick up less desirable traits (the sports star that beats his wife) or discount a ton of positive traits because of one negative one.  I struggle, for instance, with balancing my admiration for Jimmy Carter’s amazing humanitarian nature against parts of his stance on Israel and Middle East peace with which I disagree.  It can be hard to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  None of us can be perfect in every way.  Why we feel we can’t admire some parts of someone while simultaneously not admiring other parts is a mystery to me.  I would like to think that there are parts of me that others admire, recognizing that there is no way they could admire it all.  There are parts of my past that I sure don’t consider a clinic on how to live an admirable life.  And many of you could certainly clog up the comments section of this blog with examples of my behaviors that fit into the “negative role model” category.  (Please don’t.  My thin skin is one of those less admirable characteristics.)

Role models can and do change throughout your life, based on what you need to learn and develop at the time.  I plowed headlong into a traditionally male dominated career because of my earliest role models:  my parents and my high school chemistry teacher.  My parents supported me in everything I tried and I can never remember a “you can’t” in any of those discussions.  (Well, at least in regards to a career.  There were plenty of other “you can’t” discussions.  I grew up with plenty of boundaries.  Thank goodness!)  My Mom had initially majored in Chemistry in college, which was a pretty powerful role model in itself!  And my high school chemistry teacher expected more and more and more out of me, never giving me any hint that this was not a typical interest for a girl in the ‘70s.  (One of my greatest thrills in life was sending her a letter of thanks after I finished graduate school, including my new business card as a PhD researcher at a big chemical company.)

Throughout my professional career, my role models changed as I advanced.  The few women in my direct field were mostly my peers, but even those just a grade level or two above mine showed me the meaning of courage and persistence, as well as the importance of competence.  As I moved into management, I had a TON of (mostly male) role models but, honestly, few I would consider positive ones.  Perhaps the most important set of role models I had were a group of highly accomplished senior women who worked tirelessly to push the system and open up opportunities for younger, junior women in the company.  It’s not like they weren’t extremely busy or that they no longer had to deal with their own challenges in the work environment.  It was important to them, though, that they help smooth the way for the next generation.  I would bet that most of the women who moved into senior roles over the next decade had no idea how hard this group of battle-weary women advocated for them.  We all stand on the shoulders of giants, which is why I tried to do the same to pay forward their example.

So, back to the Inauguration.  I want to model Biden’s empathy and decency; I want to model Harris’s competence and persistence in the face of nay-sayers; I want to model Bernie’s fashion independence.  And I want to model the incredible grace, authenticity and general fierceness of Amanda Gorman.  There are lots of excellent role models out there, folks.  Next time, we’ll discuss BEING a role model and how my choice of role models has evolved.

A Day in the Life

The new year has finally begun!  So much to do!  I have a growing list of Serious Essays that I want to write, but I’m just not ready to be serious yet.  So, I thought I’d take you along on a recent Trying Journey:  getting new cell phones.  Let me say right up front that I recognize that what you are about to read fits squarely into the category of First World Problems.  But it’s still funny.

The Monday after Christmas dawned bright and sunny.  Or it may have been raining.  All I know is that my agenda was to go on a Costco run, something I normally do alone.  I shared this plan with Trish and asked the obligatory, “Do you want to go along?”  She answered, “Yeah, I think I might!”  That was our first mistake.  We arrived at 10:15, list in hand, and entered.  As we headed down toward the Brita replacement filter aisle, we saw a kiosk for cell phones representing all the major carriers.  We’d been working up the energy to get new cell phones because I had an iPhone 6 and Trish a 6s.  Hers was “more current” only because the cats dumped her 6 into their water bowl.  It was time.  But we both hate spending the money only slightly less than we hate the “process”.

Drew was a really nice guy and told us that the “process” would take no more than 30 minutes.  Believing him was our second mistake.  We flew through our shopping list and were back at Drew’s side in 15 minutes, but now had to wait for three other people in front of us to finish.  One person wasn’t quite sure how a cell phone worked.  One was trying to complete a complicated transaction that seemed sure to threaten national security.  One kept having to go back and forth through check out and The Cage.  Ultimately, we got Drew’s attention and began the “quick process” to buy our iPhone 12’s.  Except we couldn’t just buy them.  We had to put them on our plan and pay them off over 12 months.  I left Trish to manage the transaction while I checked out and took our purchases to the car.  Good thing it was cold out.

When I got back to the kiosk, Trish had That Look on her face.  That “I knew this was not going to be easy” look.  Drew was trying really hard to keep a very neutral semi-smile on his face, but the panic in his eyes betrayed him.  He was typing slowly on his keyboard, a key here and there, while talking on his cell to the first of, I don’t know, 20 different people at HQ.  Trish and I took turns watching Drew and sitting on a surprisingly comfortable couch, people watching.  I calculated the percentage of people wearing either sweats or leggings at 90%.  An interesting factoid.  Anyway, The System was requiring us to put a down payment on the phones that we would have preferred to pay for outright.  $100 didn’t work.  Neither did $250.  Ultimately, we put down $750 “deposits” on phones that cost $769.  We went through the line, paid our “deposit” (and bought phone protector sets, which becomes important later), retrieved our phones from The Cage and were escorted back to Drew.  He went to complete the transaction, deactivating our old phones and activating the new ones and….the final transaction just would not clear.  It just would NOT.  Exasperated and without his commission, Drew told us we needed to go to a Verizon store, apologized profusely and escorted us to the Returns line.  Not the front of the Returns line.  The back of the Returns line.  On the first business day after Christmas.

We finally got home around 1:00 and were both hangry.  People who know me know how dangerous this is.  “The First Rule of Sherri” is to feed me on time and at regular intervals.  I was not happy.  Trish knew not to even try to talk to me until my blood sugar had stabilized.  Then came our third mistake:  we are both Virgos who, once we get something in our mind, cannot let go of it.  So after we ate we said, “Let’s just get this done and go to a Verizon store.”  We knew enough to go to a REAL Verizon store and not a Verizon Authorized Dealer, but that’s a story for another time.  Trish smartly said, “Let me call first and make sure they have phones.”  Store number one had no 12’s in stock.  When she called store number two, they transferred her to a national sales rep.  Trish was introduced to Alberto, who lives in Seattle, and thus began a relationship none of us expected.  They became friends fast, so I went into the other room to try to read.  At some indeterminant time later, they were completing the transaction and all we’d need to do was go to the Verizon store and pick up our new phones! Yay!

That was until the credit card company turned down the transaction.  Not a big surprise.  A charge of $1780 dollars for two iPhone 12’s?  I’d turn it down, too.  We thought she’d get an automated text to approve the transaction, but no.  I went to call the credit card company on my cell phone since Trish was on the land line but DREW HAD TURNED OUR OLD PHONES OFF!  Which also meant there were two activated 12’s in boxes in Costco’s returns pile.  I kicked a cardboard box across the floor that the cats were playing with and sat back down.  Fortunately, Alberto was able to deactivate those Costco returns and reactivate our old phones.  I called the credit card company and was put on hold because of “unusually high call volumes”.  “What might be ‘usually’ high call volumes?” I wondered.  So we waited.  And waited.  Trish was still on the phone with Alberto.  They were telling each other stories from their childhood.  And waited.  And waited.  Trish was now telling him the story of how we met.  And waited.  Around 45 minutes or maybe three days later, as Trish was finalizing vacation plans with Alberto and his family, a customer service rep picked up.  Yes, she said, your card is locked.  I’ll unlock it.

Alberto put the transaction through again.  It was declined again.  He tried a few more times.  We envisioned the FBI coming to our doorstep, asking about the drug ring we must have been setting up by buying 15 iPhones.  I called the credit card company again.  Trish and Alberto were now discussing the finer points of Existentialism.  The card was unlocked AGAIN and we were scolded to wait 5-10 minutes before trying the transaction again.  FINALLY the purchase was completed and Trish and Alberto said a tearful goodbye.  I think we are now godparents to his children.

As the winter sun began to set over the Philly suburbs, we hightailed it to the Verizon store.  I wisely stopped at a Wawa and got Trish coffee, her pacifying juice.  We saw a sign outside the Verizon store telling patrons to wait there to be let inside.  It’s 31 degrees out, with a stiff wind.  A woman was standing there already, stomping her feet to keep warm.  We waited in the car.  Trish decided now was the perfect time to make a dental appointment.  The first woman got let in.  Another person wandered up while Trish was on hold.  Then another.  Time marched forward.  After losing our place three times in the freezing line we were finally let inside to wait in the cordoned off COVID Bullpen.

Ultimately, a nice young man retrieved our new phones and wished us well.  Yeah, that’s it.  No data transfer help or even a hint of support.  We pulled out our $20 Costco protector sets and asked him to please just put the safety film on for us.  He said, “No, I can’t do that since you didn’t buy those here.”  It’s now after 5:00.  We’ve been at this for seven hours.  All we wanted was this one little bit of kindness.  We both erupted.  He looked at us passively and tried to mansplain again why he couldn’t help us.  I offered to pay him.  Anything!  Just please do this!  I’m not sure what changed his mind.  Maybe it was the pleading look in my eyes.  Maybe Trish was making a gesture just out of my sight.  All I know is he relented, reluctantly, as long as we took everything out of the package and promised to not hold him liable should anything break.

Home with our news phones, we at least found the set up easy.  Thank you, Apple, for making something easy.  We have the newest phones.  We shouldn’t need to go through this again for at least five years.  I hope.  My marriage depends on it.

Observations From a New Cook

(Author’s note:  I have been very serious in my essays these last many months.  Since this has been a Very Tough Year, I thought I would end on a more humorous note!  I am so grateful for all of you.  Thank you for choosing to spend your time reading my essays and giving me such wonderful feedback.  Have a safe and happy holiday season!)

As many of you know, I recently discovered the Joy of Cooking.  No, not the cook book.  The ACTUAL joy of cooking.  I had always been intimidated by the kitchen.  When I was in high school, instead of taking Home Economics, I took a third year of chemistry.  I was similarly reluctant to learn from my Mom as a kid.  As an adult, I marveled at what wonderful cooks my sisters and best friend were—and became even more loath to try to learn.  Over the years, I learned to make only a few simple things:  a beef stew, chicken rice soup (all Jewish women make this; it’s in the Handbook), a salad, a hamburger.

A few years ago, my sisters-in-law bought us a gift of a box of meal kits from Blue Apron.  I became hooked.  The recipes were easy to follow but more importantly gave me many little tips on how to prepare ingredients and put them together into a meal.  My confidence grew as I began to make things that were more than “just edible”!  The mystery around cooking started to melt away.

Then, Trish and I joined Weight Watchers.  A cornerstone of that program is cooking your own meals from whole foods.  And they provide access to recipes galore!  I am not a creative cook, mind you.  I’m not one of those people who can look in the fridge, pull out a tomato, a wayward grape, an old pork chop and a pint of sour cream nearing its expiration date and build a three star Michelin meal around them.  But I can follow a recipe well and I’ve learned enough tricks to make things taste good, although Trish says I never add enough salt.  Or pepper.

Big Food has worked hard and spent heavily on advertising to convince us that we are too busy to cook and that people who do cook a lot are either retired or otherwise not contributing significantly to society.  Cooking, they told us, was for “fun”.  Putting food on the table for a family every night, if you were a “normal” person, required the assistance of their processed and packaged foods.  Nonsense, I say!  Cooking from whole foods can be as straightforward and rewarding as you choose it to be.  And it really does not need to take hours.

There are a few useful things to know, however.  Herewith, I share a few key observations from a new cook.  Bon Appetit!

  • 50% of cooking is chopping onions.
  • Another 25% of cooking is chopping other things.
  • True courage is taking a very sharp, very large knife in hand and cutting open a spaghetti squash.
  • Speaking of sharp knives, spend some real bucks and get yourself a top notch set of chef knives.  I had bought a set from Pampered Chef many moons ago, supporting a friend who had a Pampered Chef party.  Best dang purchase I ever made—even if I didn’t appreciate it until 15+ years later. 
  • Same comment regarding a good skillet.  I spent an outrageous amount of money on one from Our Place (it was even a 50% off Deals and Steals from GMA) but it’s worth every penny.
  • Never let ANYONE touch your good knives.  Or your good skillet.  Trish put one of my good knives in the dishwasher once.  I freaked out.  Fortunately, I rescued it in time.  She has not touched one of my good knives since. (Sorry, honey.)
  • Clean up as you go—even if someone else has the responsibility to clean since you’ve cooked.  One, you may need some of those items again.  Two, it just feels nice to have a clean sink.  Three, it will keep you from moving too quickly to the next step in a recipe when something needs time to develop.  And, four, it will keep people from touching your good knives.
  • When you are making a soup or a stew:  Once you’ve sauteed onions, add the spices and “toast” them onto the onions for a minute before adding liquid and other items.  It’s stunning how that brings together, and brings out, the flavors.
  • Similarly, I have learned to worship at the alter of the Holy Trinity: onions, carrots, celery.  I buy bags of them, now, with no specific recipe in mind and actually use them up before they go bad!
  • You can learn how to do anything cooking-wise from YouTube.  Want to peel a kiwi? YouTube.  Want to cut into a butternut squash?  YouTube.  Want to root an avocado pit?  YouTube.  I could go on.
  • If you start cooking more from whole foods, expect to go to the grocery store at least 2-3 times per week.  Don’t worry—the produce section is an excellent place to social distance.  Never a big crowd.  The frequency is partly due to the limited shelf life of fresh produce and partly due to meal planning only 2-3 days at a time.  Otherwise it gets overwhelming.  And you’d need another refrigerator.
  • Prep all your materials before you start cooking.  Yes, it can be a pain and you just want to get going, but there is nothing worse that needing to add something that you haven’t chopped yet or gotten out of the cabinet or brought up from your stash downstairs.
  • It is natural to talk to yourself while cooking.  In fact, it is also natural to pretend you are hosting a cooking show, sharing your tips and tricks with your loyal audience.  This is even more fun when you do your prep properly and have all your ingredients lined up in little dishes.
  • An immersion blender is the reciprocating saw of kitchen tools—most fun ever!
  • Get a good meat thermometer.  There is nothing scarier than looking sideways at a chicken breast and wondering if it’s cooked enough.
  • A mandolin slicer is as dangerous as it sounds.  I have spent the last two weeks rebandaging a wound on Trish’s thumb that really should have had stitches.
  • Having a dog would be helpful.  As careful as you might be when chopping and transferring—and I decidedly am not—things will drop on the floor.  A dog will quickly vacuum that up.  Cats?  Not so much.  While they are my constant companions in the kitchen, their main goal is to quietly lie down behind me and try to trip me.  Oh, and see if there might be some fresh chicken breast meat or water from a tuna can appearing.  Anything else that ends up on the floor just gets sniffed at with disdain.
  • Roasting vegetables has changed my life.  Why did I ever nuke or boil?  A red onion, some cherry tomatoes, a range of cruciferous veggies and/or potatoes and/or squashes; some olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cooking truly has become my love language.  I so enjoy cooking for those I love, especially now that I’ve gained some confidence in the kitchen.  It’s also a reminder that we humans are lifelong learners.  There is a big difference between saying you can’t cook and you don’t cook.  If you want to learn how to do something, you can.  It’s just a matter of priorities and commitment, which we have discussed at length.  Start small but challenge yourself.  And don’t give up.  You, too, might be able to make potato leek soup that is the bomb!