Dorrier Underwood

Today, after connecting on many points with a fabulous candidate for our team, I asked him:  “Harry, what would take me a long time to find out about you, the good and the bad?” Without hesitation, he told me about his music career and his deep abiding love for his parents, his love of cooking and holding dinnertime sacred with his family, and the Friday night Seders where everyone comes, even the teenagers. When I said, “And the bad,” he said without hesitation: “I don’t write things down. In the moment, I am not thinking of the future moment when I will need the information, and that has gotten me in trouble. I’m also more afraid than I look like.  I am filled with fear.”  He said it with a little catch in his throat, being afraid as he said it.  It was totally authentic, and I got it. I shared that I too was afraid. And I shared that, as consultants, we know it’s universal; it’s not personal, and it is everywhere. And we pretend it is nowhere. “So write...

Love at work Not the kind like on Mad Men, which isn’t love, but sex and drinking on the ad men’s couches.  Back in the 1960s. Now 2013. Love like we are in this together. We are in this moment together and we can’t say it, can’t give it a name. Love like I WILL brief you generously and be transparent and tell you everything (vs. hide bad news from you, hide my contrary ideas from you, hide my input that I am afraid will get me in trouble). Love like I WILL hold you to account and correct you and raise my voice but never will lose respect and regard for you.  I respect you. I value your opinion, especially if it is different from mine. Love, like I WILL apologize. Love like, I love coming to work here. It is difficult and challenging and not a cake walk for sure, but it is where I belong, where I am listened to, where I can make a huge difference and have a great job. Love like I see you. Welcome, come here and lift your pencil, Or fix that machine Or sell ...

I have learned so much playing the World of Warcraft with my grandson, Davis, age 11. Davis wants to play with us, play with our work team, 3 of whom are in Australia, so we have to coordinate times when we are all awake at the same time, so we go back and forth on email until bingo we have a time we have all agreed to. It isn’t a time that we all wanted to play right now, right now like Davis wanted to at 8:30, now now now on a school night. Davis said as I tucked him in and he was pouting a little, could I help him get to Tenaris, the realm where we are playing the World of Warcraft and could I help him get to be at level 25 where we are so he would be ready to play with us and I said yes, yes, yes of course and we set up a time next Sunday when I will have landed at my desk after a week of work and play travel in Atlanta. We are asking his Dad, Stan to come to play too. He got quiet for a moment then promised that he would be able to play with the team, “I promise,” meaning that he ...

Dorrier Underwood: Traveling Adventure, by Jane Smith

This is a first world problem, he said. No question – not hard to get that as we sat in the airport on Tuesday night, confronting delay after delay to the last flight out of Cincinnati to Charlotte, now already too late for me to make my Raleigh connection. It’s a miracle of our times that we can start our day in two different cities, get in the long silver tube with seats, meet up and be in another city, then go up into the air and land to lead an afternoon program an hour from the airport, then return the same day.  The Spanish speaking ladies didn’t see it that way, nor did the vacationers who wanted to get to Myrtle Beach that night. They complained, loudly and often – “I can’t believe this, this is ridiculous. They are going to pay for my hotel.” Not happening, this was an act of God that stacked the delays up like dominoes all through the country…a tornado between the runways at the Denver airport, thunderstorms and wind through the Midwest, East and South. One plane late, th...

“Listen, do you want to know a secret? Listen, do you promise not to tell? I am in love with you.” Listen, pay attention. There is someone there. Someone brilliant and you will see them if you listen and listen a little longer. At first and still, I have thought our new program on listening and love was about giving a gift, the gift of really listening without interrupting with your good idea or to make a joke or say what that reminds you of, etc.  Now, I think it is also about giving yourself that gift of discovery, that gift of seeing for the first time. What does this have to do with business strategy? With business success?  Except everything? At the end of the day no matter what the numbers, no matter how big the success was, it was the people. People that love to work together, think things through together, and pull together and celebrate a job well done or work out recovering from a failure together.  I got up this morning and ...

I expect the interruption. I need the interruption. I talk until it comes.  If it doesn’t, I will talk past my point, way past, until the listener is distracted and nervous about interrupting me. And still I talk, thinking it’s THEIR responsibility to speak up and drop that whole polite façade and be direct with me. I don’t take straight talk as offensive, and you would know why if you spent a few hours with my mother.  If you spent time with Mom and me, you would see how unerringly direct she is with me. Put that down! (Not, “please don’t mess with that.”) Douglas, come here and help me with this. (Not, “do you have a minute?”) I know better than to think that that style really works, but I still don't really get it when people complain that I interrupted. I usually think, duh, how else does anyone get to talk? I think of conversations like a game, running through a field, avoiding rocks and stumps, figuring things out along the way, racing to get...