A morning reflection over coffee (or tea)
A couple years ago I was working in Taiwan and was leading a discussion about the principles and concepts of continuous improvement within a company.
I learned many things that day. The entire audience of 60 plus people spoke no English, and I do not speak Mandarin. Between us, we had one interpreter and the President of the business who was also bi-lingual. My use of idioms was our first stumbling point. The audience, interpreter and President were all lost when I confessed that the sloppiness of others can easily “drive me up a wall”. Or when I exclaimed, “I was just pulling your leg,” when I was trying to lighten a moment.
But as I was relearning how to share information while avoiding some of our two language’s pitfalls, the President pulled me aside and told me, “Charlie, I am going to share a story, but I am going to speak in Mandarin. It is about handling stress under pressure. I think you will still understand.”
I already knew that he celebrated a great deal of respect and support from his colleagues, but watching the President tell this story was a wonderful example of people hanging on every word. I had a front row seat in a Master-Class of storytelling.
As the story goes, pressure, stress and uncertainty are like a large boiling cauldron of water. Bubbling and spurting out rapidly, almost as if the motion were audible shouts of anger.
If you approach a situation such as this like a carrot, this business leader started, you will be stiff, fixed in your beliefs and unwilling to compromise, you very well may eventually succumb to the unrelenting pressure. You may come out of this situation weakened, void of color and nutritional value and depleted of what you had come into the conversation most ready to offer as value.
If, on the other hand, you were like a fresh egg, teeming with new life and freshness, ready to adapt to whatever is laid out in front of you, the unreasonable nature of the stress and vitriol could easily close you down. Putting you into a fixed position and like a hardboiled egg, making you fixed and unable to reshape and/or expand your point of view.
“But,” the President smiled as he raised his cup, “when you gain inspiration from a leaf of tea, you allow the turbulent water to engulf you while still sharing what you have to offer and while positively contributing and adding to the situation, forever changing it for the better.”
He hit the nail on the head. At least I think he did, but I could just be barking up the wrong tree.
