by tashmcgill | Dec 28, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Family, Mind, Strategy
You’re done for another year. You can put away the tree, the tinsel, the decorative napkins and put the furniture back into place. Throw the tents and sleeping bags into the back of the car with a cooler of left-over Christmas ham. You’ll stop at an orchard on your way to whichever beach or river is calling you. You’re in the safe zone – Christmas and Boxing Day done for another year.
Of course, that’s a Southern Hemisphere Christmas. But you get my point – regardless of snow or sun, there’s often a palpable sense of relief in the air once Christmas is done. So here are some strategies to help you have a considerable less stressful, angry, bitter and a more imperfect Christmas next year.
This year, our Christmas was quiet but entirely pleasant. People contributed food and drink, exchanged gifts, quality time was spent with people we love. But in the build up to the day, many of my conversations with friends revolved around the juggling acts of meeting all sorts of expectations and hopes from complex and emotionally weighty family situations.
What we don’t acknowledge regularly enough, are the ever-increasing numbers of people who experience Christmas as an annual anxiety trigger, full of non-consumer related stress and emotional trauma.
Christmas – That Myth Of Perfect.
The trouble with Christmas is not the commercial underpinnings or the trappings of food and wine that see us creeping back to the scales in shame. The trouble with Christmas, is how it perpetuates the myth of perfect. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Dec 21, 2014 | Health, Leadership, Mind, Strategy, Youth Work
In a world driven by being the best, it takes a hell of a lot of resilience to be second. To be second best, but not give up. To be second in command, advising on big decisions but not aim for the top rung. To be the backing vocalist, never sing the lead and still sing, anyway.
The Importance Of Being Second
Business leaders talk often about the power of cohesive and supportive relationship between a Number One and a Number Two. Just the other day, I had this conversation with a Managing Director who talked about the value of his Number Two. Cohesive, supportive and encouraging relationships that are also commercially successful require shared mutual outlook, mutual benefit and a clear understanding of mutual strength and weakness. Both have unique responsibilities required for wise decision-making and management. Very few great leaders exist without one or many Number Twos. We make critical errors if we forget that Number Ones need Number Twos, or that Number Twos are as important as Number Ones.
I’ve had a chance to be a Number Two several times. They have been enriching, rewarding experiences and once, it was harrowing and soul-destroying. It’s not just how you think of yourself, or how a Number One thinks of you – but it’s also how the World perceives the value of the Kingmaker, versus the King. Yet, kingmakers are sought after by the wisest of those in positions of power. These leaders who surround themselves with other talented people empower and enjoy the success of the cohesive whole.
But how do you become a great Second?
I remember being 20 years old and driving home from a band practice with a girlfriend. It had been a particularly rough session where I wasn’t on top of my game. I asked her, being a musician and vocalist I really respected, if she thought I was actually talented at all. She said bravely, ‘Well, I think you’re good at what you do but you’ll never record an album or anything.’
Fifteen years later and I remember it clearly – the crisp smell of a cold Spring night creeping into the car and trying not to let the pain show. If I’d had a dream to record any songs of my own, it was stripped in that moment and took years to return. It’s the same feeling I had when I missed out on creative writing awards at school. Always good, but never the best – therefore unrecognized and out of mind.
The thing is, I didn’t want to be better than anybody else, I just wanted to be myself. But we see people and ourselves through the lens of talent competitions that determine talent and ability in ever decreasing circles, competing against one another instead of ourselves.
It takes a lot of resilience to live as second, without being to feel ‘not good enough’. To live as Second is not Second-Best. Second is a role, second is a position that has it’s own unique requirements. It’s not a judgement. The self-awareness required to understand yourself and your ability to be confident in your own talent is typically not nurtured early in our development, rather left to emerge as a result of character-building experiences. Those experiences might teach you your place in the natural order of things, but they don’t always result in a stronger sense of your own voice.
It takes a lot of courage to accept that success is not a pre-determined set of factors. In the same way we must do the work of establishing our unique voice, we must also define success in ways that are meaningful to us.
The challenge of our schooling structures is a substantial focus on identifying what students are best at by means of defining possible vocational choices. Rather than honing and developing ways for young people to establish expressions of their own talent and voice, we throw them into ranking examinations, grading and fierce competition often before we’ve helped them do the work of identity formation.
The more competitive your work environment, the harder it will be to do the work required to establish strong, healthy identity. People love stars, as long as they are delivering big wins. To be good at anything requires a consistent effort in a series of habits that are grounded in your unique talents. You might call this finding your voice.
Why is it so hard?
Because our culture does not understand what talent really is. It confuses talent with being the best of many versus being the best of one. On who can beat out the competition. Embracing your talent and your unique identity is embracing the strength to be second to some or even many but to be entirely yourself.
To know your voice and speak out loud, clearly. Philosophers have expressed this as ‘Know Thyself’. But we need to find spaces to do this work without a cultural demand for competition and a hierarchy of winners overtaking.
So become resiliant. Become sure of your voice, become sure of yourself and what you are capable of achieving from any position.
Second Is Not For Always.
There are some who thrive as Second, forming unique partnerships that deliver success in an ongoing way. But Second is not for always – as with so many things, position is a strategic choice. A healthy Number One/Number Two relationship might thrive and provide deep satisfaction commercially and in life but there may be times where you choose to take on a different kind of role. The resilience to be Number Two, alongside a constructive awareness of the different requirements gives you ample fuel to adapt and achieve in a variety of different roles.
Practical Advice:
- Get to grips with your unique abilities and strengths. Be sure of what you are really competent in.
- Practice working in teams and learn how you do that best.
- Find a great partner or Number One. Someone you have great chemistry with, trust and who increases your capability and influence. Someone who has different strengths than you.
- Define your strategy and goals – both achieving professional success by working together and supplementing the abilities of the other. Identify a goal you want to achieve.
- Work hard on a variety of projects and challenges, even side projects to flex your ability to support, encourage and enhance the capability of your twosome team.
- Check your ego on a regular basis – critical self-assessment, let your teammate observe and give constructive feedback and vice versa. Analyse and look for ways to improve your team communciation and outputs.
- Read and gather insights on personal development, leadership and strategy. Discuss with your teammate regularly. I’d suggest subscribing here for regular short bursts on the subject.
As someone who works with people in a leadership role, I am convinced that our job should be refinement of talent, not establishing talent. Those who encourage and lead others should give significant portions of their time and effort to helping people find their voice and unique expression. Our investment in people’s voice should be a commitment to fostering identity formation and growth. In giving people the resilience, confidence and self-awareness to be Second.
by tashmcgill | Dec 20, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Spirituality
The kitchen is thick and sticky and my skin feels damp like the back of a post-it note, catching every piece of dust and flour in the air. I’m drinking sweet bourbon on the rocks, feeling the condensation gather on my fingertips when I lift the glass for a sip.
This is what Christmas in New Zealand feels like, December’s slow crawl into oppressive 93% humidity. The rain doesn’t fall, it just sinks from a sky that’s become a thick grey blanket over the city.
It’s terrible weather for baking anything, let alone shortbread. Shortbread and gingerbread belong in a Winter Solstice for precisely the reason it is easier to work with buttery short crust when it’s freezing outside.
But it’s Christmas time everywhere, including here and the Western world is largely caught up in a wave of tradition – baking, feasting, carol singing, tree decorating, maybe even a church service or two. Traditions that have been formed over centuries and decades in order to create festivals of remembrance and stories of celebration. And I’m baking, because that’s what we do at Christmas even though I am not meant to eat sugar or gluten.
There’s a science to baking – use a trusted recipe and trustworthy tools. Measure, mix precisely and follow the damn instructions. Just do it the way people have been doing it for centuries and little can go wrong. Unless you’re trying to make Scottish shortbread in a New Zealand summer. Then you have to figure out how to keep the essence of the tradition alive with a method that works in your new environment.
Except I’ve fallen short. My mother has a recipe book full of childhood memories and her shortbread is the best. But the book has a frayed spine, faded ball point pen and sellotape that has lost its stick. It’s almost become too precious to touch and certainly too precious to borrow. So when I should be using my grandmother’s and mother’s fail-safe recipes, I’m using the Internet. Instead of copying by hand the recipe safely tucked into the handwritten kitchen treasure, I’m scouring Pinterest and Google. It’s a sham. There is nothing traditional about this baking exercise. I’m using my laptop instead of a recipe book and rather than being a trusted source, I’m just giving it a go. I’ll try a new one next year if it doesn’t work out.
But I’ll be leaving out the best parts of the story. What worked and what didn’t. How I managed to keep the butter in the crust cool, how I learned to test the oven for hot spots. There is so much that we miss if we forget to write our new traditions beside the old. Even the Christmas tradition we celebrate now, was built on top of another ancient tradition and we can’t forget that is not just about the product of our efforts but also the practice and journey towards it that matters.
Baking shortbread is about understanding the relationship of butter, flour and temperature. It’s as simple as that. Too warm, the dough won’t hold, too cold it won’t be malleable. Baking requires patience on an ordinary day; whether letting dough rise for cinnamon scrolls and bread or waiting for custard and ganache to set. In 24 degree heat, waiting becomes part of the tradition because the relationship requires it.
Similarly, traditions (or rituals) are the way we understand the relationship between the past, where we have come from, the present, who we are now and the future, including who we long to be. Think about the ritual of communion, of breaking bread at the beginning of a feast, of wedding toasts, of honeymoons, of bar mitzvah or coming-of-age rituals. They are ways of marking what has been, what is and what we hope for.
When you cast aside tradition too hastily, you risk losing a connection to what propels you forward. Advent requires a certain amount of ritual regardless of your spiritual belief because it connects to things of old and things of the future. Find me a man or woman who doesn’t recognize some symbology of newness or hope in the Advent/New Year season and I’ll show you a liar or a fool.
I am both trapped by tradition and freed by it. Trapped by always looking back into history but freed by learning from it. We urgently need a connection to the future that makes sense of our past, particularly when it comes to religion because our current traditions aren’t enough. But it appears we’ve stopped creating new traditions – instead we are trying to find more meaning than ever in the old ones. The trouble is, the old traditions need help expanding to meet the requirements of the new landscape.
When someone new joins the family, people have to rearrange their favourite chairs to make room at the table. Something old must make way for something new that adds new meaning.
In the same way I need to write down the recipes that are now mine – the ones I’ve tried and proven regardless of where they came from. A recipe book that ball point pen won’t fade from, pages that can take the heat of my Antipodean kitchen. I need ways of capturing the recipes that are shared with me, borrowed by me and the ones I create myself to share with others. And it needs to be permanent. A chronological recipe book that begins with my grandmother and moves through each generation including my own; collecting our traditions, what we’ve learned along the way and passing something into the future.
Religion is the same. There are dozens of families who will get up this Sunday morning and head to church services because that’s what they do at Christmas. A moment in time inspired by the past and possibly very disconnected from the future. We’ll likely be turning up all week at midnight masses, carol services and Christmas productions. What are the rituals of religion worth keeping and which ones should be recorded as part of our history but replaced or evolved to something new?
Why so urgent? Because for the next week I’ll be encountering people who need the shortbread and gingerbread I’m baking tonight. I’ll expand the metaphor – all this week, the Advent season brings all sorts of people into connection with spiritual communities because of tradition, but I don’t think that tradition is going to cut it.
There are plenty of traditions and rituals that have been meaningful and worthwhile through our history. There are also some that are probably long past due for retirement. Others that should be resurrected. We should be mindful that our spirituality is changing before us all the time, therefore our expression and our storytelling also must change to reflect that new environment. It is not a crime to reinvent tradition, in fact we do it every year.
Our traditions need to be both old and new – old enough to connect us to the essence of our story and new enough to point the way to a future that is approachable and makes sense in our new land.
by tashmcgill | Dec 20, 2014 | Food & Drink, Girl About Town
Ebisu is quality Japanese at about the same price point as Masu in Federal St, with less fusion influence.
All the classics are there – essential Rainbow roll, karaage and sashimi. Best – the fried flounder served on the deep fried spine from which the delicate fillets were cut. No picture, no time. They disappeared too quick. Also to be appreciated, sake served in wine glasses. It reduces the temptation to throw it back hastily and encourages you to linger, savouring the unique spirit of Japan. Remember they share a kitchen with Fukuko, the fab shochu cocktail bar next door. Clever hospitality.
by tashmcgill | Dec 18, 2014 | Food & Drink, Girl About Town
Simon Gault’s Euro has been an institution on Auckland’s waterfront, particularly if you have a hankering for rotisserie chicken. Recently there’s been a shift at Euro to embrace a new way of eating – less sugars, more whole foods, less processed carbs. I was excited to try it. The standout was the sashimi starter with citrus and cucumber. Followed by salmon and zucchini spaghetti for mains, the food was light and delicious.
