Monday, November 1, 2010

Death Lessons

Over the last 14 months our family has endured the death of three family members; a parent and two siblings. Despite the temptation to assume such experiences should best be left out of work related discussions there are some very important lessons we learned that are quite appropriate for any work situation.

A death is in essence a crisis. It is a sudden event that despite our best attempts to prepare for it comes upon us when we are not expecting or ready for it. In the case of my father’s death, we knew that it would come, but we had no idea it would come so fast, that more deaths would follow and that there would be so many practical details to attend to. What we accomplished as a family was amazing in retrospect and can be attributed to a couple of key skills.

Communication:

From the outset, we knew there would be a lot of emotion involved in the numerous decisions we would have to make and we did not have the luxury of time to discuss and come to consensus on everything. Each of us had to take pieces of this complex process research and make a decision on what was best. We were successful because we agreed from the outset that we would not second guess each other, and that in the event someone did the decision maker had a metaphorical FU! Button they could push if it happened. Crass? Maybe, but it helped introduce some levity into a very stressful situation. (More about this later)

Teamwork:

We recognized immediately that there was no way any one person could do everything, so we would have to work together to get this done. In families this can be very complicated as the old grudges and recriminations can make cooperation difficult. We were not immune to this risk, but the team work was successful because of the next two critical skills.

Clearly Understood Goals:

We were only able to accomplish everything because in this case we knew we had a lot of practical details to accomplish very little time to do it in and we all decided that our family relationship was not worth sacrificing for the process. Yes, there were seemingly insurmountable tasks that had to be completed but no one forgot why we were doing it and never hesitated to ask for help.

Attitude:

This is quite frankly the most essential to success on any project. As strange as it might seem, a sense of humor was one of the most important skills necessary for us to be successful. In a situation like this it is so easy to let the stress and gravity of the situation narrow a person’s vision. We had to develop tools as a family to keep the individuals from going into unproductive places; we did that with humor but also by individually making the conscious decision to remember that this was not some sort of contest to see who could be the biggest hero or the most thoughtful or caring. We also gave each other the benefit of the doubt when it came to motivations and actions. I will not say that every aspect of this experience went smoothly, but when we did encounter an issue, attitude was the only thing that made it possible to solve it.

Anyone who has gone through an experience like this will tell you that it changes everyone involved. In the end each individual determines how it will change them by deciding how they are going to participates in the process. That individual decision has an enormous affect on the outcome.

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