Tag Archive for: Caring

If you see someone across the room that you’ve never met, could you build trust with them in ten minutes?

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In ten minutes you couldn’t build enough trust to hire them, marry them, or invest your money with them, but you CAN move the trust needle.

Here’s how:

  1. Reach out. Waiting and hope are not good trust building strategies. Introduce yourself. Put yourself out there.
  2. Extend trust. People either distrust you until proven otherwise or trust until you proven otherwise. You’ll have a much better chance of building trust when you come from the latter approach.
  3. Be curious. Instead of trying to impress and be interesting, put your focus on being interested. Ask questions. Seeking to understand through listening to find common ground is one of the best ways to make deposits in the trust account.
  4. Demonstrate Caring. You can’t fake this one. If you don’t care, people will sense it, and if people know you care they are more likely to reciprocate trust. Demonstrate caring by remembering names and showing concern about what’s going on in their life. But when you care you don’t have to worry about demonstrating it. It will naturally come through.

Trauma leaves traces on our minds and bodies.

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It leaves an imprint on everything we touch, the way we think, the way we feel, the way we interact with those around us, and the way we live.

Join me this Friday, April 25th for a webinar focused on Trauma, Loss & Recovery.

  1. Leave with a greater understanding of trauma, its impact on our lives, and what a healing journey can look like.
  2. Learn how trauma is not what happens to you; it is what happens inside you because of what happens to you.
  3. Leave with guideposts for navigating the trauma and the journey of recovery, along with insights for supporting others through their trauma journey.

Click here to secure your complimentary seat.

SHATTERED OPEN – How Tragedies Can Help Us Grow

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In the summer of 2024 approximately thirty percent of the beautiful townsite of Jasper, Alberta was destroyed in a fire that swept through that community. Of the 1,113 structures in the town, 358 of them burned. The wildfire covered an estimated 33,000 hectares, the largest wildfire recorded in the park in a century. A mass evacuation of 25,000 residents and visitors occurred in July last year with the evacuation order lasting until August 17. Tragically, one firefighter lost his life during the containment efforts. The insurance claims for damages are reaching nearly a billion dollars, making this tragedy one of Canada’s most expensive natural disasters.

There isn’t a person connected to this pristine community who was not impacted by the disaster. And the journey to recovery, rebuilding, and healing will last a lifetime.

While those who don’t live in Jasper can’t possibly know what it was like to go through the fires, perhaps some who did can help us understand the choices and challenges we all face in times of tragedy and trauma: Will we be shattered and defeated, or shattered open and transformed?

We all know people who have risen from a life interrupted, from the ashes of trauma – illness, loss of a loved one or business or home, divorce, layoff, bankruptcy, abuse – to emerge stronger, wiser, and more connected to their passion and purpose. How can you embrace unimaginable difficulty in a way that allows the pain to break you open so a better person can emerge from it?

Here are three reminders to get through a tragedy:

  1. There is no prescribed way to get through a devastating loss. The only way to get to the other side is through it. And you get through it by honoring whatever you’re experiencing.
  2. We’ve all heard that “when one door closes another one opens.” What they don’t tell you is that it’s hell in the corridor. It’s the corridor that’s toughest to navigate.
  3. There’s no such thing as “closure.” Closure is a fabricated concept used to give us an artificial sense of comfort in the pain. Instead of seeking closure, we heal by acknowledging and integrating gratitude and grief into our lives simultaneously. Healing is a life-long journey.

What portion of your day is spent intentionally connecting with your team?

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Why it matters and how to make it part of your routine in a meaningful way.

I’m usually very reluctant to reach out spontaneously to my teams – my work team and the one I chair in my non-profit world. I score high on the introvert scale, so it isn’t easy to initiate conversations. I also don’t like to interrupt people and intrude on their time.

But when I don’t reach out enough I know it can be interpreted as a lack of caring – which is the furthest thing from the truth.

Both teams under my care are remote teams, so to reach out regularly means phone calls or virtual conversations. What’s important is that I take the time to understand what the expectations are and to sincerely make the effort to reach out more often. My teams need to know I care about their work and more importantly, they need to know that I care about them as people.

How that gets expressed is dependent on individual needs, personalities, and preferred styles of communication.

A Token Of Appreciation

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After my webinar on Psychological Safety this past week, I had a great conversation with Marg, my VP of Client Care. We reminisced about when she was the Senior Manager of Learning and Development at Lilydale and I consulted on some projects there. Lilydale was established over 75 years ago as an Alberta Farmers’ cooperative and today is a proud member of the Sofina Foods family. It always promised to provide Canadians with great tasting and high-quality Canadian poultry products as it built an incredible culture with some incredible leaders.

One of the great tools they used for building and reinforcing their culture was a Token of Appreciation. You were encouraged to give this token to anyone you sincerely appreciated. It was a coin, along with a little poem, to remind them not to take each other for granted and to continue strengthening the muscle of expressing gratitude.

I’ve learned that this kind of tool has to be built on sincere, honest, and caring relationships – which were evident at Lilydale. No tool can compensate for failure to connect.

What do you do when someone on your team stops caring – and what if that person is you?

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Caring is a part of who we are. If you’ve stopped caring, it is a coping strategy in response to stress. Not caring means you have built a wall to protect yourself. Maybe you’ve been hurt and are shielding yourself from further pain. Or perhaps you are exhausted from too many demands and expectations of others. Maybe you’re burned out from being pulled in too many directions and are simply backing away.

If this is a person on your team, treat it as an opportunity to explore this with them. If it is you, explore these issues with yourself. Remember that there is a legitimate reason that you stopped caring. There’s no sense judging yourself for it, but by all means, get to the bottom of it so you can open your heart and move forward with compassion. Life is more enjoyable and fulfilling when you bring yourself back to a caring place. And be sure you get there in a caring way.