What seems like a lifetime ago, in the summer of 2001, I got one of those crazy ideas. For those of you who know me, you know that this is not terribly unusual.

I was in Seattle, running my corporate events company, Impression Events, and I found this breathtaking spot at the foot of Mt. Si for a 700 person picnic. The problem was, there were no picnic tables.

Now a sane person would say: (a) rent the tables, or (b) find a different spot – but as we’ve already established I’m known to doing things a little differently. I like to think of it as “creative” thinking.

Anyway, the gorgeous site was owned by the City of Snoqualmie. They occasionally had concerts there – as the site was situated on a gentle sloping hill – but most of the time (since it was table-free) it was just one of those hidden gems that taxpayers had the privilege maintaining, but not using.

But it was so beautiful! It was perfect! I had to have my Graceland-themed picnic there! Yes, imagine…Elvis and Priscilla making their grand entrance via golf cart down to the stage…

I tend to not only think outside-a-normal-box, but I’m also stubborn (since I’m outing foibles), and I just had to figure out a way to make it happen. That’s when it struck me! What if… rather than renting normal tables that would stick into the grass and look out of place in the middle of paradise, we were to use the same amount of money and instead build gorgeous picnic tables to donate to the City of Snoqualmie??? Hmmmm…..

So of course, that’s what we did. I sweet-talked my brilliant-former-engineer-husband into designing picnic-table-blue-prints, helping me order all the materials, and oh, also heading up the construction assembly-line (we were newly-weds at the time). I pulled together a team of extraordinary volunteers, we brought in Krispy Kremes and lunch, had the materials delivered, and we had an absolute blast spending a day in paradise building 100 gorgeous picnic tables that the City of Snoqualmie now owns.

I’m sure you won’t find this kind of thing in your normal business play-book.

So why the trip down memory-lane this holiday season? Well I just finished reading Blake Mycoskie’s, Start Something That Matters, and I’m completely inspired. He’s reminded me of the impact we all can make when we think creatively. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Blake, he’s the guy who founded TOMS. TOMS shoes breaks all the normal rules of business. They are a for-profit company that has making-a-difference woven into the fabric of their organization. For every pair of shoes they sell, they provide a pair of shoes to a child in need. They have given more than 1,000,000 shoes away – and are making quite a nice business out of doing so in the process. And people who work for TOMS aren’t simply “employees”, they’re part of the TOMS ”movement” – so how’s that for engagement?!

For Easter, when our son was three, we gave him a viewfinder. Ever since his grandma bought him a broken robot at a garage sale when he was two, our kiddo was totally obsessed with robots, so naturally, when the Easter Bunny left a viewfinder in Jeremy’s Easter basket, he immediately started calling it his “Robot Eyes”.

For a solid week he wouldn’t go anywhere without his Robot Eyes. He’d be sitting in the backseat of the Prius, on the way to preschool, with a kid’s cliff bar in one hand (hey, we were running late) and the other holding up his Robot Eyes, through which he claimed to see a whole new world.

I think in a sense that’s what we all do. We all have our invisible Robot Eyes plastered to our faces. We’ve held them up for so long that we don’t even know that they’re there. And it turns out that we only have one disc, the one that came with the thing. We flash through the pictures on that disc only seeing the same old pictures flash in front of us again and again. We forget that we can take them off. We forget that we can go to Target and buy a new disc, or ten new discs, or borrow someone else’s disc. We only see what we see. That’s what the world has become to us. We don’t know how to look at the people we meet, and the things that happen to us, as they really are. We only look through our Robot Eyes.

Professionally, I’ve found this to be a tremendous barrier. I’ve decided, erroneously, who would benefit from working with me and who wouldn’t. I’ve not had important conversations that need to be had, because I didn’t think it was possible to be understood. I’ve not brought ideas to the table, because I didn’t think they’d be valued. And, after working with hundreds of leaders, I find I’m not alone.

For leaders, this is a particularly tough challenge. With the intention of communicating authority, confidence, and credibility, we stop asking ourselves the questions. “What is it I don’t know? Is there another way of doing this I haven’t thought of? Is there another perspective that might be useful?”

What is it I don’t know?

There’s quite a lot of talk these days about the importance of knowing your “leadership philosophy”. What are your core values? Your guiding principles? Your beliefs? Your purpose? Incredibly important stuff. And yet a “philosophy” alone, in my humble opinion, falls short.

We’ve all had them. Those insane days where nothing seems to go as planned. Your alarm doesn’t go off when it’s supposed to. You miss your flight. Your connecting flight is over-booked. You get lost. An hour has been added to your already too-long trek to your destination. You’re low blood-sugar, have a headache, and can’t quite remember why you chose to do whatever it is you’re doing. You’ve had days like that too, right? Or is it just me?

This spring I had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time with Shawn Achor’s new book, The Happiness Advantage, which does a terrific job of building the business case for creating a positive organizational culture. Shawn has traveled worldwide asking business leaders to think about the following scenario (and now I pose it to you….):

“Imagine for a moment that you walk into a bank. There are 50 other people in the bank. A robber walks in and fires his weapon once. You are shot in the right arm.”

Then Shawn says, “…if you were honestly describing this event to your friends and coworkers the next day, do you describe it as lucky or unlucky?” and challenges them to explain why they described it the way they did.

So how about you? Would you consider yourself lucky or unlucky? Why?

I have to tell you, when my alarm clock went off late and I missed my flight, I wasn’t feeling so lucky – at first…

If you’ve been in the professional world, corporate or otherwise, for any length of time, you’ve heard about the importance of communicating benefits. You may have taken a class in it – or maybe even taught the class, for that matter. Communicating Benefits is one of those basic block and tackling skills that rarely get taught in high school, or even college for that matter (like balancing a checkbook – what’s with that?), but something every professional needs to master.

The problem is that most of us understand the benefits-thing on a cerebral level. We understand that we should communicate them. We understand what to do. But like every skill, there’s a vast difference between logically understanding something and really “getting” on a deep internal level, why it matters and how to authentically, mindfully, and effectively do it.

Can you believe that it’s the end of January already? I was telling a dear friend of mine in an email not long ago that I feel as if I’m on a run-away train lately. So much going on! So many balls in the air! I’ve been so focused on knockin’ things off the list that I’ve stopped consciously choosing what I’m doing.

It occurred to me recently, during a moment of total desk-chaos, that I perhaps I need to stop and evaluate what I’m actually knockin’ off the list. The right things, or am I simply busy being busy? I know it makes logical sense to step back, but just thinking about stopping is overwhelming. If I stop – really stop – will all the balls I’ve been working so hard to keep up in the air come tumbling down around my ankles?

And what about the way I’m knockin’ them off the list? Perhaps I’ve got the right balls whirling about my atmosphere, but am I going about this whole process as effectively as I could?

Running a small business is a bear, there’s no doubt. But leaders within large organizations face the same challenges. We’re all faced with doing more with less time, fewer resources, and higher stakes. It’s stressful business, this business of doing business. We get so focused on delivering short-term results that it’s easy to lose site of the big picture. It’s hard to identify if what we’re doing and how we’re doing it is working, when we’re standing in the eye of the tornado. Sometimes we have to step back and just…stop.

One favorite acting-term, from my theatre-days, that I still like to apply in my life is called “fresh minting”. The term “fresh minting” means experiencing something you’ve done or said before as if it’s the very first time.

Last weekend, as Perry Como’s rich baritone voice filled our rental car with The Little Drummer Boy (we just happened to be driving through Perry Como’s home town of Canonsburg, PA, complete with his snow covered statue!), I found myself slipping back in time a few years, when my kiddo Jeremy was about to turn two. That was the first year he was really old enough to start participating in the season’s festivities, so everything was new and exciting – the year he taught us how to “fresh mint” the holidays.

As many of you know, music is a big part of my life, so in our house, as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey has met his demise, the carols hit the airwaves. The Little Drummer Boy has always been a favorite (the Celtic Women version is particularly awesome), and the year we started teaching Jeremy the song, we would sing the lyrics and he would jump in with a rousing “Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum!”

Like all of you, I’ve heard The Little Drummer Boy hundreds if not thousands of times over the years. I’ve heard it, sung it, but to be honest, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the words until the year we taught it to Jeremy (one of the best things about teaching something is that you have to re-learn it yourself!).

So that year, as I launched into the second verse, I actually paid attention…

Little baby, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

I am a poor boy too – pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

I have no gifts to bring – pa-rum-pa-pum-pum

That’s fit to give our king, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, rum-pa-pum-pum, rum-pa-pum-pum.

Shall I play for you – pa-rum-pa-pum-pum – on my drum?

And, with my son belting out, “Pa-rum-pa-pa-pum!” in the background, I thought to myself … maybe the little drummer boy had the right idea.

There are people in my life that make me want to be a better person. They’re not perfect. They too have grumpy days, bad hair days, self-doubting days. They too are incredibly human, with all that entails. But they are the leaders of leaders. They step up when nobody else does, without being asked. They focus on what can be done, when the masses are focused on can’t. They are the people who light the way with their generous spirit. Our organizations need more leaders like this. Our communities need more leaders like this. Our world needs more leaders like this.

My friend Alise is that kind of leader. She never ceases to amaze me. Alise sits on multiple non-profit boards, volunteers for every charitable event imaginable, speaks at conferences across the country, juggles her expanding business and family activities without breaking a sweat, runs, lifts weights, composts, remembers birthdays, has a PhD, cooks like a dream, is diplomatic, asks great questions and actually listens, is humble, kind, thoughtful, genuine, powerful. Oh, did I mention that she had 40 people over for Thanksgiving? Cooked 5 (or was it 6…) turkeys, a ham (because “Not everyone eats turkey, Honey”), vegetarian manicotti, probably 15 side dishes, desserts, wine, a “special holiday beverage”. You name it, she thought of it. It was breathtaking.

But it’s what Alise does from a leadership perspective that makes such a difference in her results.

Wow. It’s amazing the impact that one person can have. It’s easy to forget how powerful we all are. Single-handedly, we can take an entire team down in flames, or inspire thousands worldwide to believe in themselves and make a positive difference in their world. This month I have witnessed both ends of the spectrum.

When I first met the “down-in-flames” leader, she didn’t make eye contact with me, her self-consciousness peeking out from behind her I’m-suppose-to-be-tough-exterior. With her team, she’s critical and condescending. When people bring her their ideas she shuts them down right away, without consideration. She doesn’t listen. She doesn’t ask questions. Recognition and appreciation are unheard of. Every person on her team believes to their very soul that she doesn’t care, that she was somehow born without a heart, and that her primary goal in life is to make them miserable. I know this to be untrue, but then again it’s much easier to be understanding and compassionate toward someone when you live in a different state! Senior leaders, for years, have made attempts to coach down-in-flames, to no avail. Team members threaten to leave regularly, but don’t. They stay, she stays, and nothing changes. It’s an openly hostile environment. Productivity? You’ve got to be kidding. Engagement? Ha! Imagine the cost! The impact one person can make is amazing.

Meanwhile, several thousand miles away, there’s a very different kind of impact being made.

The past three and a half years have been a huge revelation for me. In March of 2006 we moved from Seattle to Dallas, and with our move came growing pains. Seattle and Dallas are very different cities with very different cultures. I had lived in Seattle for 15 years. Made dear friends. Did some great work. Loved the mountains. The water. The air. It was home.

When I arrived in Dallas, to say that I experienced “culture-shock” would be an understatement. My heart and soul were in revolt. I was not in my happy place. I pouted a lot. I didn’t participate. I shut myself up in my life and waited for Dallas to pass. But it didn’t.

For the first year and a half all I could focus on was what I didn’t like. I spent an enormous amount of energy proving myself right. See! See how different Dallas is! See how I don’t fit in!

Isn’t it funny, how we see what we look for?