Dorrier Underwood

It was Saturday, my typical run-errands day. My list included groceries, a bolt, and a tube of caulk that Phil needed to move the towel holder, which is turning into quite a project. And, oh yeah, a new hair brush from Sally’s Beauty Supply, not on the list but important because I needed it for our upcoming vacation.   I complete everything in short order (so efficient!), and as I unload the grocery bags from the trunk, I remember the brush.    Does that ever happen to you? The one thing you know you will remember turns into the one thing you forget? When I go to the grocery store without a list, I may or may not get what I went in for, and I may buy other things that trigger a “get that” response. If I don’t see the thing I went in for, well…who knows? One of the distinctions of Dorrier Underwood’s work is existence . That means that things--read ALL THINGS--need to have a physical location to exist. If something is only in our minds, it doesn’t have any re...

On Tuesday Doug and I led the half day follow-up for one of the Transforming Leadership Intensives we have led this year to an operations team in the health sector. Many of the participants are hourly workers whose positions have them experience themselves as somewhat “less than.” This group was lively, engaged and very much in the conversation to impact their own leadership and to contribute to the company. For example, one man in the group has definite opinions that he willingly expresses about their supervisor and he saw, in the two day, that there were different possible interpretations he could have, even in the face of a lot of agreement for their point of view. On Tuesday he shared that he has been different with the supervisor, and he has seen a difference in how the supervisor is being with him. At one point during the afternoon he caught himself slipping back into his   old way –   he has an expressive face with includes a well-developed eye-roll – and...

Most people think that a leader is the one with a particular title or someone who has at least been anointed by a person with a title.  That may not be true. This is the biggest dilemma I have always faced in my work life, how to TAKE leadership from the one who HAS leadership because of their position or circumstance, and I hear it from others in the companies with which we work. This week one of my clients brought up the leadership question. He wanted to talk about what he has been seeing about his team, and then himself. We have been talking about what his team needs to really be a team. And they aren’t a team so much as a group of individuals who get together with concerns of their own, that they need to have and the organization needs them to have.   And the ones who lead do so only when the issue is in their area. They easily take leadership when they have the most knowledge, not because leadership is needed and wanted. My client told me about his own leadership ...

Phil and I… mostly the “I” along with an acquiescing and a little uncomfortable Phil… are planning a trip to Tuscany in September.  This is a big deal for us… Last year’s Paris writing workshop in the French countryside, and then Barcelona was the first time I have been outside of North America.  And it was a damn big deal for me, one I loved and will never forget. Along with having a fabulous adventure with Nancy and Doug, I figured out that I could survive even without knowing the language… and I definitely know less Italian than I do French and Spanish.  We will figure it out together, a fun idea for me. Phil doesn’t have the survival experience and hasn’t been outside of NA.  When I asked him if he would like to go to Italy, Tuscany, he said “No, I don’t want to got to Tuscany,” with an observable edge to the answer, so much so that I originally tabled the idea.  A few days later he came back and said “If you want to go to Tuscany, we will go, and ...

We have a mouse in the house. At least I think this dark thing that moves like lightning to some unknown retreat is a mouse… about that size, at least in the flash I see it. The first clue I had was visual, and I thought I was seeing things that weren’t there. I saw something scurrying out of the corner of my eye one night, and I tried to see where it went… to no avail. Then I saw the tiny little droppings, near the sink and the dishwasher… I mean tiny, tiny pellets that could have been just seeds from something, or maybe even chocolate sprinkles left over from a cookie session with Eve. I got them up, and then they reappeared the next day… no seeds in our house or cooking sessions to blame it all on. Okay, likely a mouse, or a rodent of some sort. And there have been two sightings since then, all by me… Phil hasn’t seen anything but the droppings, though he does believe me.  I’ve been reading up on how to catch a mouse. We could rent a cat, perhaps… not my idea o...

A good compromise is supposed to leave no one happy. The lack of one does the same thing. I don’t know where I read this but it certainly makes sense. Happy isn’t the goal of a compromise. Action is, moving forward is, taking new ground is…  The NHL (National Hockey League/ owners) and the NHLPA (National Hockey League Players Association/ union) don’t seem to want compromise, even though they say they do… They want happy… Both sides want happy, and that apparently mean someone wins, someone loses.  Right now it looks as if there will be no hockey, even a shortened season, because both sides want what they want. The fans suffer, the owners are losing money this year, and the players aren’t getting paid…nonetheless, no compromise. Our Congress doesn’t want compromise on the fiscal cliff issue; both sides want happy. And there really is no way for this whole issue to be resolved without a compromise. We can’t do exactly what both sides want, so there has to be give and ta...

We walked into Marguerite’s, the quaint, if-I-hadn’t been in central Florida-almost Southern-like café near the bay in Dunedin, ready for the kind of meal you can only get in such a place – the “famous” homemade chicken salad on lettuce or in a sandwich, fresh coconut cake on a cake stand on the counter, beside a jar of homemade cookies. Evie wanted to sit under the butterflies that floated over the tables in the back, but those tables were all filled by “snow birds,” the older people who flock to Florida in the winter, or go there to retire. So we took the table by the window, across from two older women deep in a loud, hard-of-hearing conversation. Our waiter, a wiry, obviously stressed young man with a bit of a rush swirling about him, smiled, walking towards us, and asked the usual question, “What would you ladies like to drink?” Katie, who comes here often, mainly because it is across from the Dunedin library that she and Evie love, said “What is your special tea today, is it ...