How To Be A Leader People Want To Follow

by Rita Burgett-Martell

“The days of Command and Control are over. Today’s leaders must Trust and Inspire their employees to be trusted as leaders.”

I was a shy sixteen years old, afraid of my own shadow, the summer I worked as a Nurse’s Aide at our local hospital. The Director of Nursing was a strong loud woman that I found very intimidating. Whenever I saw her coming I would turn and go the other direction, or look for someplace to hide.

One day she stopped beside me, put her arm around my shoulder, and said: “I want you to look at my shoes.”

I immediately thought there must be something wrong with my shoes. They were the wrong kind. They weren’t as white as hers. They weren’t laced up correctly. I was literally “shaking in my shoes,” expecting to be criticized or reprimanded. Instead, her words taught me a valuable lesson in leadership that has served me well in my career.

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How To Feel Secure In Insecure Times

by Rita Burgett-Martell

How well are you managing change and disruption caused by COVID-19? Listen to my interview on “The Evolutionary Power of Change and Disruption” with Gwilda Wiyaka, host of Mission Evolution Radio, and learn what you can do to feel secure in insecure times.

It’s 4 a.m. and you are wide awake, worrying about all the bad things that could happen, feeling anxious, and unable to sleep. The fear you are feeling is self-imposed instead of a reaction to what is actually happening because at the present moment you are safe. There is nothing to be afraid of other than the imaginary reality that you have allowed the power of fear to create in your mind.

Sleeping at 4 a.m. is not easy when you are living in the misery of uncertainty, as many of us are with all that is happening in our external world plus our internal imagination-induced fears, We do not like the feeling of being out of control of our life and we do not like being in a position not knowing what’s going to happen next. We need to fill in the blanks. When you are awake at 4 a.m., you probably are not imagining a happy future and will likely fill in the blanks with what you fear will happen instead of what you desire to happen. You easily become trapped in a fear-driven thought cycle instead of a faith-driven cycle focused on pleasurable possibilities.

In 2020 we are faced with very real threats to our health and financial security that many of us have never experienced and never thought we would. This has been a rapid unexpected and unwanted change that we must deal with. Fear prevents us from thinking clearly about what we can do to minimize the threat to our wellbeing. It renders us helpless and blinds our vision to what we can do to stay healthy and keep the money flowing to keep a roof over our head and food on the table.

Although we do not like being in an undefined place between the past and the future, that is where we live.  It is called the present moment.  And, as you know, it is all you ever really control. If you once thought you had created a secure, controllable, and predictable life for yourself, you may be realizing that this was an illusion. There is much that is beyond our control and nothing stays the same forever.

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Everything I Know About Change I Learned From My Cats

When one door closes another one opens. Often we look so long at the one that’s closed we fail to see the one that’s opened.

Helen Keller

A few years ago, I started a new project that required me to live on the East Coast. My two cats, Jasmine and Ginger, and I flew cross-country to our temporary home. They were eager to escape from their cat carriers after our long flight. Following the advice of my vet, to introduce them to their new home one room at a time, I confined them initially to the bathroom and bedroom.

I closed the door to the living room and let each cat out of her carrier. Ginger immediately ran under the bed and didn’t venture out until the next day. Jasmine headed for the closed door, eager to discover what was on the other side. She wouldn’t take no for an answer so I opened the door to let her roam. She hesitantly placed one paw on the shiny wood floor to make sure it was safe and then took off and spent the next few hours exploring her new home, while Ginger continued to hide under the bed. They both experienced the same change but responded in different ways.

The thought struck me that cats have the same reaction to change as people. Some, like Jasmine, see change as an adventure and choose to explore the new world on the other side of the door. Others, like Ginger, prefer to hide under the bed and avoid experiencing anything different until forced to.

It’s not the change that makes the difference. It’s what we think about the change. It’s the internal battle between the fear of the unknown vs. the expectation that change will open the door to something better.

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Changing The Way You Think About Uncertainty

Changing the Way You Think About Uncertainty

The Key to Mastering Uncertainty

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~ John Allen Paulos

It’s 4 a.m. and you’re wide awake, thinking about all the bad things that might happen in your career, relationships, and life in general.

These thoughts are creating anxiety that is preventing you from sleeping. But, any fear you are feeling is self-imposed and created by thinking about a scary future rather than focusing on the reality of what’s happening in the present. Because, at the present moment, you are safe. There is nothing to fear other than what is being created by your imagination.  

We’re very good at using the power of our imagination at 4 a.m. Maybe that’s when we should schedule our team calls. Everyone awake at 4 a.m. can get together and redirect the power of imaging bad things to imaging phenomenal things!  Just call 1-800 No Worry.  

In all seriousness, when you are living in the misery of uncertainty about what’s next in your life, sleeping at 4 a.m. is not easy to do.  We don’t like the feeling of not being in control of our life.  We don’t like not knowing.  We need to fill in the blanks about what’s likely to happen next.  

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If Only “They” Would Change

“Be thankful for the difficult people in your life and learn from them.
They have shown you exactly who you do not want to be.”

I always begin my change management workshops by asking each participant what they hope to learn. “I’m here to learn how to change my boss because he really needs to change,” one woman responded.  She literally thought the workshop was about how to change management instead of how to manage change. 

When life isn’t going our way, it’s easy to get caught up in the blame game and fall into the trap of thinking that if only someone else would change, our problem would be solved.  

If only…

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‘I Want Things to be Better. I Just Don’t Want Anything to Change.’

What we’re really saying is “I want to experience the benefits of change without experiencing the disruption of change.”

And, who wouldn’t? 

When confronted with the reality that achieving what we desire requires more changes than we are ready or willing to make, we often choose the status quo.

I’ve had many projects launched on a giant wave of unrealistic expectations about how much better life will be once the change is implemented, only to come crashing down when the reality of the impact of changes required to realize the expected benefits becomes known.

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Abandoned In Australia Coming Home

A cruise around the world sounded like such an amazing adventure to undertake, a perfect celebration of turning 70, and a safe and relaxing way to go places I have never been while being pampered along the way. The possibility that Holland America could force me off the ship in a foreign country, with 4 days’ notice and no assistance on how to get home, didn’t occur to me. A cruise ship would never treat its passengers this way, after all, they have a responsibility to take them safely back home. Apparently not.

Abandoned In Australia Coming Home

A cruise around the world sounded like such an amazing adventure to undertake, a perfect celebration of turning 70, and a safe and relaxing way to go places I have never been while being pampered along the way.  The possibility that Holland America could force me off the ship in a foreign country, with 4 days’ notice and no assistance on how to get home, didn’t occur to me. A cruise ship would never treat its passengers this way, after all,  they have a responsibility to take them safely back home.  Apparently not.

After abandoning passengers at the dock in Fremantle Australia on Sunday, March 21st, the Amsterdam sailed back to Ft Lauderdale with our luggage, which will hopefully be shipped to us one day, but without the 1300 passengers who paid for an around the world cruise. I was completely on my own in a country 11,111 miles from home in the middle of a pandemic, with an upper respiratory infection diagnosed by the ship’s doctor the day before the Medical Clinic was closed to passengers,  a deep cough that sounded like a foghorn and attracted a lot of unwanted attention, and no testing to prove that I didn’t have the Corona Virus.

The ship had not provided passengers with any information about how to answer questions from immigration,  the hotel or airport about our time in Australia. Surprisingly, Immigration asked no questions, conducted no health check, nor took our temperature. I was relieved because my voice was hoarse, and I knew I would start coughing if I had to speak for very long to answer questions.

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Nightmare At Sea Reveals Who We Are

We’re living during a time of radical unpredictability that causes greater degrees of uncertainty than we’ve ever had to cope with in the past. Who we are at our core as individuals, governments, and businesses are being revealed by how we respond.

Being told you must get off the ship and get out of the country as soon as possible without providing assistance to do so would create a stressful situation for anyone, but it’s ten times worse for those who are the most vulnerable.

A “nightmare at sea,” was how The Sun Sentinel newspaper described my Amsterdam world cruise in an article on March 18th. I’ve included the link to the article, which is an accurate description of what has been happening on our ship for almost 2 weeks now. I never thought I would pay so much money to be treated so poorly.

https://www.havasunews.com/nation/nightmare-at-sea-cruise-line-forces-elderly-tourists-to-get/article_4ccc13da-6949-11ea-8ccc-43a19656926f.html

As I watched the behavior of my fellow passengers as the situation worsened, the unwillingness of Holland America to provide any assistance to the passengers they were abandoning in Australia with 4 days’ notice,  and lack of empathy shown by Captain Jonathan Mercer, I was reminded of the quote by Robert McKee that “True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.”

We’re living during a time of radical unpredictability that causes greater degrees of uncertainty than we’ve ever had to cope with in the past.  Who we are at our core as individuals, governments, and businesses are being revealed by how we respond.

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Living With The Question Mark — Part 2

Our captain announced today that the cruise is ending when we arrive in Freemantle, Australia on March 22nd. Passengers will be asked to disembark and make arrangements to fly home at their own expense. Even though the ship will be leaving March 23rd to return to Florida, there apparently aren’t enough ports allowing cruise ships to dock to provide adequate food for 1300 passengers. So, Holland America Cruise Lines is abandoning us in Australia.

Last week I wrote about learning to live with the question mark of not having an answer to the questions of where I’m going next in my life and where are we going on this cruise. This week I have an answer to the question about the future direction of the cruise, which has only resulted in more unanswered questions.

Our captain announced today that the cruise is ending when we arrive in Freemantle, Australia on March 22nd. Passengers will be asked to disembark and make arrangements to fly home at their own expense.  Even though the ship will be leaving March 23rd to return to Florida, there apparently aren’t enough ports allowing cruise ships to dock to provide adequate food for 1300 passengers. So, Holland America Cruise Lines is abandoning us in Australia.

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Living With The Question Mark

I brought a journal with me thinking I would write down my thoughts and insights about my future as I’m making this 128-day voyage around the world.  I drew a question mark – a big one  – ? on the first page to indicate that the next decade of my life is somewhat undefined.

In his new book  “When,” Daniel Pink defines“9-enders,” as people in the last year of a life decade who experience a desire to evaluate their life, how they feel about what they have and haven’t accomplished, and how they want to experience life in the next decade. I, like many of my clients, fall into to the category of “9-enders.”

I’ve always had a vision of what my life would be like “next, ”but never really had a plan for how that would happen. I just had faith that my vision would become my reality and the details of “how” would take care of themselves, and they did. The question mark was never about what I wanted but instead about how I would achieve it.

I’m 64 days into the cruise and that question mark is all I’ve written in my journal. However, I’m beginning to think the question mark was an accurate indicator of my future because, not only do I not know where I’m going next with my life, I don’t know where this cruise ship is going next. The Corona Virus is wreaking havoc with our itinerary.

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