Feelin' Small (Part 2)

by Don Harkey

I my entry yesterday, I detailed an experience I had almost 19 years ago. After writing the blog, a thought occurred to me. I "Googled" Dr. Fritz Mountford. It was easy to find him. He had actually started teaching at Hastings College in 2000 (9 years after the Honor Choir) and his email address was easy to find. I sent him an email along with a link to the blog story. By the afternoon, I received a response from Dr. Fritz, whom I hadn't talked to in over 18 years.

I won't share the whole email, but I wanted to share a part of it.

"Again, thanks for sharing your time, talent, and energy in the first place (yes, the concert is still in the same gymnasium!), and for carrying and spreading the experience in countless unknown ways since then, and endless thanks for reminding me why I still bound into rehearsals and leap up on the podium as if my life depended on it! Best wishes for continued success. - Fritz"

The technology of the internet has given us an easy way to reach across the years and show thanks to people who have meant so much to us. My Dad, a life long teacher who passed away 2 years ago, loved these types of affirmations. It helps give a clarity of purpose on why we get up in the morning and why we work so hard to reach others, often in seemingly small ways.

I don't care if you work for a profit or a non-profit, a big organization or a small one, or even if you don't work at all. You have opportunities every day to make a positive impact the people around you. Go ahead!

Feeling' Small

by Don Harkey

Sometimes we find ourselves in unique situations that offer powerful, yet unexpected, memories.

I was 16 years old and I had been sitting in rehearsal for several hours in a practice room at Hastings College in Nebraska. We only had a couple of days to learn the music and come together as a choir. Most of us had never even met. Even the director, Dr. Fritz Mountford, was unknown to us. We were a group of strangers pulled together to quickly learn several pieces of music in only a couple of days for a performance in front of hundreds of people.

This is how honor choirs frequently operate. Hastings College had held auditions throughout the state of Nebraska looking for high school singers. They had selected around 60 singers from the state to come together to immerse in music for a few days. I really didn't expect a lot. I was looking forward to seeing how the choir would sound, but I really didn't think that we would be able to pull something together that was truly significant.

I was very wrong.

Dr. Fritz was not your average conductor (evidenced that I don't usually remember names well, but I remembered his name after 19 years). Dr. Fritz was one of the most passionate conductors I had ever seen. He spent his first hours with the choir teaching us how to sing together under his direction. He would stop suddenly in the middle of a song and we were expected to stop. He would speed up and slow down and we were expected to follow. We eventually caught on, although we didn't really understand why this was important.

The music we were doing had not made an impression on me, at least before we started rehearsal. We had a version of "Ave Maria", a contemporary piece called "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners", an Italian piece that was playful, a church hymn straight out of the hymnal called "Beneath the Cross of Jesus", a choir version of Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Waters", a men's piece based on a Robert Frost poem, and an extremely challenging event rodeo-like piece called "Cindy".

As we rehearsed, the choir began to fall in love with music. Dr. Fritz took us through the music and explained the meaning of each song giving us powerful imagery to use while we were singing. For Ave Maria we pictured Mary holding a baby Jesus in her arms while angels watched from on high. For "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners", we pictured the evil in the world that would be unable to hide at the Day of Judgment and, at the end of the piece, we imagined the horror they will feel realizing that it is too late to repent. For the Italian piece, I can still see Dr. Fritz dancing in the front of the choir. For "Bridge over Troubled Water", we were asked to imagine the smallest, most precious thing we could think of as we sang the words, "When your weary... feelin' small." For Cindy, we were told to just have fun and sing the song like we were telling the story (which included singing parts of the song in a western accent).

When we got to the performance, we were all excited. We had some amazing moments in rehearsal and we wanted to really capture those feelings again. It was all very unspoken. We were just together. We wanted to bring that audience into the new world we had entered only a couple of days before.

Our first song was "Ave Maria". It is nearly impossible to write about the first moments of that performance. The gymnasium was quiet as the choir paused before beginning. The opening chords coming from the choir were unbelievable. When a choir sings a beautiful chord and the harmonics come into play, the sound is so full and amazing that most choirs tend to sing louder. The opening of the song, a slow "Ave", used that harmony, but did it in such as soft way that the audience was immediately hooked and left wanting more.

We moved on through the performance with the audience's complete attention. We opened "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" with a unison and powerful phrase, "At the round Earth's imagined corners, throw your trumpets angels and arise, arise from death you numberless infinities of souls... and to your ransomed bodies go." We paused for effect (under Dr. Fritz's close direction), then the men continued forcefully to describe all of the different ways that we mortals shed our coils. "All whom the floods did, and fire shall overthrow! All who war, death, age, tyranny..." Then when we were finished, the women sang the part of a soul who stepped forward before God asking for forgiveness. The plea was soft and passionate in contrast to the harsh opening. The answer came dramatically from the choir who sang with increasing power to the climax and end of the song with the basic message that it was simply too late, "WITH THY BLOOD!!!". We ended the "D" on blood as loud as we could and at the same time so that it echoed in the gym. The audience was dead silent for several seconds. The director had dropped his arms, but still silence. They were stunned. They only began to applaud when the director turned with a sly look to the audience as if to say, "take that!".

We went on with our performance singing "Bridge over Troubled Water", which brought some of the audience to tears. We sang "Beneath the Cross of Jesus", which was dedicated at the performance to a deceased professor at the college. The hymn was no longer a hymn, but a musical testimony of the grace of our Savior "my sinful self, my only shame, my glory on the cross.".

Finally we ended with Cindy, which was an event. We struggled to keep up with the piece and made numerous mistakes, but we didn't care. We were having so much fun that the mistakes didn't matter. "The first time I saw Cindy, she was standing at the door, her shoes and stockings in hand, her feet all o'er the floor!". Parts of the music built up to 32 part harmony complete with clapping and stamping and we ended the performance with a loud "Yee-Hah".

The audience was on their feet instantly. It was the single most powerful reaction from a crowd I have ever experienced. We stood listening as if in a haze. Within a couple of days, we were back in school singing with our own high school choirs with more focus on finding the right notes than putting imagery and passion into the songs. I got a chance to talk with a few others from the choir and we all had the same feeling. We almost felt that for a few moments on stage and in rehearsal, we had touched the Face of God.

There are so many lessons from this experience. Take each moment and strive to make it mean something. When you have the opportunity to reach out to others, as Dr. Fritz did, don't just use the moment, but wear it out. There are things that are bigger than any of us and they are all around. These are the twists and turns that God places before us to help us gain wisdom so that we choose to know that He is the way.

The next time you are "feelin' small", look to the miracles all around you and make a moment that you will remember for your entire life!

Choosing Happiness

by Don Harkey

Andy Andrew's had been dealt a bad hand. His parents had died when he was just a teenager. The blow was just too much and Andy spiraled down until he found himself homeless and hopeless. Why did this happen to him? Why did some people have so much luck while others had so much hardship?

Andy had a lot of time on his hands so he went to the library. He searched for answers to his questions by reading autobiographies of famous people. He tried desperately to read past the words on the page to understand why these people had been "chosen" to be successful. What was so special about these people?

Over time, he found his answer. Life hadn't chosen these people... they had chosen life.

Andy learned that successful people didn't necessarily have an easy path to success. In fact, it was often the opposite. It was how these people had overcome the twists and turns of life that really caught his attention. He found that these people had made seven conscious decisions in their lives over and over. These decisions include:

1) The Responsible Decision - Choose to accept responsibility for my past and for my success.

2) The Guided Decision - Choose to seek wisdom in the challenges that God presents to us.

3) The Active Decision - Choose to a person of action.

4) The Certain Decision - Choose to have a "decided heart" and not let criticism, condemnation, or negativity bring me down.

5) The Joyful Decision - Choose to be happy.

6) The Compassionate Decision - Choose to have a forgiving spirit as no one is "out to get" me.

7) The Persistent Decision - Choose to faithfully persist without exception or doubt.

These decisions are outlined in Andy's books "The Traveler's Gift" and also in "Mastering the Seven Decisions". Today, Andy is extremely successful. He has a family, has published several books, and works as consultant. He has spoken at the request of 4 U.S. Presidents and has been called a modern day Will Rogers.

The point is simple. God put us all on this earth and He controls everything. Yet He has given us the power of choice over what to do with our lives. We can choose to be victims of life's many challenges, or we can choose to gain wisdom and strength from those challenges and live everyday with a purpose.

Its your move!

Making it Better

by Don Harkey

I had an interesting morning. I attended a local event sponsored by the Springfield Business Journal (SBJ) called "12 People You Need to Know". The monthly event introduces one local person of interest and allows the attendees to ask question. This month, it was Ron Spigelman, director of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra.

Ron is a very passionate fellow. He approaches every aspect of his job with a contagious enthusiasm. He talked not only about directing a symphony, but also listening to the community. He even talked about how he personally calls patrons who don't renew their membership to find out what he can do better.

The moderator, Eric Olson, editor of the SBJ, asked Ron a simple question. What do you think about just before you walk on stage? The answer was surprising.

Ron replied that he thinks about the upcoming performance as an opportunity to make the world a better place. The Springfield Symphony including all of its associated groups performed 85 times last year. Can you imagine considering every one of those 85 performances as an opportunity to make the world a better place?

Ron explained. The people in the audience came with varying expectations. Some are frequent attendees while others may be hearing a symphony for the first time. All of these people have their own lives outside of the symphony. Ron sees each performance as an opportunity to give those people something. Maybe they were down and needed an escape to relax. Maybe they will leave feeling inspired. Maybe a young person in the audience will launch lifetime love of playing an instrument.

What a powerful philosophy! Imagine going to work each day thinking, "How can I make the world a little better today?" Would it change the way you interact with people? Would it change the way you do your job? Is it even possible?

Now expand that philosophy to everything you do. Imagine the power!

OK. It may seem like a stretch that you are truly "changing the world", but I believe that we all change the world every day in ways we don't imagine. When I was in college, I wrote an encouraging letter to a friend of mine who was still in high school. I didn't think much about the letter and I don't remember what the letter said. Years later, another friend was visiting the first friend and found my letter hanging on her wall. He asked her about it and she said that it really inspired her to really do well in high school, go onto college and really work hard. She felt that it gave her confidence.

The letter was a very small gesture, not unlike the hundreds of gestures we make in a week. If you keep the perspective that each of these interactions is a chance to make the world a little better, you will likely succeed!

Modest Millionaire

by Don Harkey

Dr. Thomas Stanley studies Millionaires. His books, "The Millionaire Next Door" and "The Millionaire Mind" show common characteristics of people who are financially successful.

An important finding by Dr. Stanley is that millionaires are actually harder to find than you would think. One would think that you could just go knock on the door of the $750,000 house with the BMW parked in the driveway and ask to interview the owner. However, Dr. Stanley found that many of these people aren't really millionaires. They are actually horribly in debt and are scraping by month to month like many people.

I bring up this point first because the people in your life that you might think of as being rich probably aren't. It's not easy to tell. If you drove by Warren Buffet's house in Omaha, you wouldn't notice it. It is a nice house, but it is not the house you would expect from one of the richest men in the world.

So what traits do millionaire's share? The #1 trait shared by millionaires was developed by asking both the millionaires themselves and by asking people who know them and do business with them. That trait is character.

This seems backwards in our society. We are used to thinking of our richest members of society as being backstabbing elitists who will run over their grandmother if it means getting their way. While I'm sure there are millionaires like that, it appears to be the exception more than the rule. So what does the average millionaire look like?

The average millionaire is married with children (by a vast majority). They made their own money instead of inheriting it. They are not workaholics who rise at 3AM everyday and neglect their families. They live a relatively modest existence having found that true joy comes from things like a kid's soccer game or playing cards with friends. Most of all, the strongest characteristic of a millionaire, according to the study, is honesty.

Honesty is something most of us would claim as an attribute, but few (if any) of us practice fanatically. True honesty means being honest all of the time. Most of us know that lying to get something you want is bad, but life has a way of making us see gray.

I once heard a Vice President talk about putting off the truth until it could be properly dealt with. I once heard a manager tell me, "I'm not going to lie unless they tell me to". It seems that it becomes easier to lie when we promise to make amends later or when we blame the situation for "forcing" us to lie. These are the traps that many financially successful people avoid.

This may mean that you must tell a client something difficult. I have sat with business owners who were frustrated with their people and who were asking me what to do. I had to tell them that it all started with them. They were doing something wrong. I have had clients look at me like I had just punched them in the gut. Most business books would tell you that this is not a desired outcome, but it is the honest approach.

A very important point here is that honesty appears to work over the long haul. If most financially successful people have high integrity, then honesty could be considered a key trait in becoming successful. Your reputation is critical. Your coworkers who see you making compromises in integrity will remember that. Your coworkers seeing you make sacrifices to keep your character will also remember.

If you work for an organization that expects dishonesty, my recommendation is to leave. The organization likely has a bad reputation and it might just rub off on you. Surround yourself with people of high character and hold your character as one of your most prized possessions. It is not only the right thing to do ethically; it is also the right thing to do for success!

Autonomy

by Don Harkey

The 3 needs that create motivation are competence, autonomy, and relatedness. In the last article ("I Think I Can, I Think I Can"), I talked about competence. Now I want to talk a little about autonomy. Its trickier than you think!

Autonomy is simply a person's ability to choose whether or not to do something. The ability to choose a course of action is a basic component of motivation. Someone who gets to choose how and whether to act will be more likely to act as long as they feel competent in the action and as long as they feel related to what they are doing. This seems very intuitive, but it presents supervisors with a challenge.

A supervisor must get their people to do a job. The easiest way to do this is to simply order the employees to do the job. However, as we just discussed, this can be demotivational. This is the challenge. How do you get someone to do something without telling them directly to do it?

The answer is complicated. Providing a vision on what to do does not necessarily mean giving details as to how to it. For example, I could tell my employees that a new client will be visiting the office at 3PM that afternoon and that I thought we should put our best foot forward. The employees will likely take steps to make sure the office is welcoming. They will take both expected and unexpected steps toward the mission. The trick is to answer the questions, "why are we doing this?" and then empower the people to find a way to get it done.

This is a real challenge, especially if you are working with someone who has been working in an unhealthy management environment for a long time. These people are used to getting orders and don't function well at first when they are empowered. However, it is well worth the investment of time it takes to show these people how rewarding their jobs can be.

Consider carefully the role autonomy plays in leadership and make sure to focus on the vision and goals rather than on the specific steps. Your people will take you places you never dreamed and they will love doing it!