Week 20.52 The Magic Formula

Some years ago I was working with a leader who was struggling with a relationship that appeared to be intractable. He couldn’t figure out how to get past the hurt that he caused and that he felt. I shared the story with Marshall, and he reminded me of his magic formula for resolving and moving relationships forward. In the years since I have used the Magic Formula many times and it has never failed. 

2020 is that kind of year. It was brutal, it asked a lot of us, and forced us to ask a lot of others. Mistakes were made, intentional, and unintentional. Nerves were frayed, feelings were hurt. We were more understanding, and at the same time, may have had a shorter fuse. I would like to suggest that we can use the Magic Formula as a way of moving passed 2020 and into 2021. 

This is a three-step process:

Step One: Ask Forgiveness. Before you can move past you have to accept responsibility for what was. Own your actions, ask forgiveness for those who have offended and offer forgiveness to those who have offended you. This is particularly true of the externalities of 2020 itself: the pandemic, the election, not living up to our best intentions for diversity and inclusion (symphony), and any other of the massive offenses to our humanity that we endured this year. For good measure, I will be asking forgiveness for all of the times when I had it good, now that 2020 has helped me realize more poignantly the good fortune I had. 

Step Two: Ask for Help I confess, this has always been tough for me. I learned how to ask forgiveness (ok, that wasn’t easy either) and I used to think that after I ask forgiveness, the next step was to make it right. What I have learned is that the repair that follows asking for forgiveness is asking for help. It opens up the vulnerability of saying that I need the other to make it right. It takes emotional courage to ask for help, and that is what supports the ability to move forward. I will be asking for help from the pandemic to help me appreciate the people I take for granted. I will be asking for help from the election to help me understand how to heal divides and understand people who have a different perspective. I will be asking my friends in symphony to help us rise together in mutual respect and recognition. And I will ask my memories of 2020 to help me appreciate my good fortune every day.

Step Three: Share Your Optimism After asking forgiveness and asking for help, it is a good time to give something back, something positive, something nourishing, something delicious. There is no better time as we move into the new year to share our optimism. And how fortunate are we that there is so much to be optimistic about! We have a vaccine that provides us with a way forward into the light of the new normal. We have a new president who has a long history of being able to work with peers and partners in government, who is bringing in a cabinet and administration of inclusion. We have so many people who have become aware of the need for more diversity, more inclusion and the conversation is more in the open now than ever before. We have far to go and we have reason to be optimistic. 

My last message for 2020 - week 52 - is to try the magic formula and see if it works for you. Try it at work, at home, with people you care about, and even with the year 2020 to get your New Year's resolution off to a splendid start. 

I am so excited that now I will be able to write 2021 week 1, with a clean slate, a new vision, full of optimism and hope, and appreciation for each of you. May you have a wonderful year. I am looking forward to sharing with each other speaking with each other, and sometime soon, getting together with each other.

Week 5 of 52 weeks of giving: Pay It Forward Foundation

The 100 Coaches project continues to be an amazing experiment. The goal is for the community to start a broader movement, so that leaders, thinkers, and coaches from around the world will help each other and help the global community by sharing all that they know at no charge – with the only expectation being that the recipients of this generosity pay-it-forward and share what they know with future participants.

Contributions support our operations and are now welcome!

Thank you. Life is good. 

Garry Ridge: Confidential to CEOs: Grateful for the Gift of Belonging

Day after day, I have seen examples of my tribe members pulling together, loving each other, supporting each other, bringing out the best in each other, covering for each other when we just couldn’t bring our best to the tribe. We fed and protected each other, just as a tribe does, according to Simon Sinek’s definition of tribe.

That is what we do. That is what will see us through. That is what makes me so proud to be a member of my particular tribe. I concluded my message to my tribe with the invitation to send me stories of when they were most grateful to be a WD-40 Company tribe member in 2020. It’s only been a couple of weeks, and I’ve already received upwards of 75 responses from people all over the world expressing their gratitude for belonging to the WD-40 Company tribe. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/confidential-ceos-grateful-gift-belonging-garry-ridge

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Jasmine Thomson Dec 29

And, as always, thank you, Marshall, for making all of this possible

With love and gratitude

Scott