Susan Schneider’s Blog

Freeing the Lemming

The Lemming Theory may be a bit of an urban legend, but its message on conformity is quite interesting. Supposedly, a cute little furry rodent called a lemming is so dependent on sticking with the crowd that they will follow their little lemming friends right over a cliff and plunge to their death. Perhaps this is why as teenagers, when we wanted to do something completely ridiculous, our parents would ask, “If all your friends were going to jump off a bridge, would you follow them?" I guess in hindsight, we should be thankful for these lemming questions. It probably saved us from dying our hair pink, piercing our eyebrows or worse yet, running off with the circus.

I have to admit, there are times when it would be a heck of a lot easier to be “lemming-like.” For the most part, it does provide a sense of security, belonging and acceptance. You get to be part of a group of people just like you and you don’t have to worry about being judged by others. It does create a nice path of least resistance...right up to the point where the path leads you to your ultimate and not-so-pretty fate. This is where my lemming envy comes to a screeching halt.

Last week, I attended a national conference. Rather than doing our usual wine and dine of clients, we decided to take our entertainment budget and purchase products to make hygiene kits for homeless youth. We went one step further and invited all our friends and competitors to work with us in assembly line fashion to help us reach our goal of creating more than 2,000 kits. In less than two hours, our goal was achieved. Through this event, we freed the lemming.

Now, I am not saying that entertaining clients is deadly. Yet, there is some risk involved when you step outside the traditional lines. Some people might not like veering from the pack. To be nonconforming, you have to be willing to take some risks. In this case, the risks were minimal, but the rewards were phenomenal. All it took was deciding to be a little “lemming-free.”

Don't Expect It, Just Because You Asked For It

For the readers who liked last week’s post and have been concentrating on clearly stating your thoughts or needs, this week may turn that upside down (although, I hope not).

For much of my career I was in sales, and as any salesperson knows, there is a lot of effort that goes into closing a deal. A successful salesperson knows you always have to ask for the business. This is where my theory of "not expecting unless you ask" gets a little tricky. What if when you ask they still say no? Does this give us the right to be offended? Angered? Judgmental? Most of us want to answer these questions with a resounding no, but I would be lying if I said there weren’t many rejections in my life that ended with exactly these emotions.

Perhaps we could justify the salesperson’s reaction because of the impact on their career and their income. The truth is that however big or small the situation, there are going to be many cases in which we ask people for something and we don’t get what we expect in return. Have you ever asked a friend to dinner and they replied, "no, thank you" without any reason? Have you ever opened up a gift and found yourself completely disappointed because it wasn’t even close to what you asked for? Of course you have, and so has everyone else.

As difficult as it is to get our arms around this concept and as much as we want to defend our right to be disappointed, we should never expect anyone to do what we want them to do. Even if we think we are right, the truth is, we might not be.

If You Don't Ask For It, Don't Expect It

I recently attended a presentation where the speaker started out by asking everyone to turn off their phones, which is fairly common nowadays. Then she went on to place a few more rules on the audience, including a request that we refrain from having any side bar conversations while she was speaking. At first blush it seemed a bit over the top, as though she assumed we wouldn’t know how to behave in this environment. But then she said something that really resonated with me:

“Unless I tell you exactly what I need from all of you, I have no right to expect anything different.”

Hmmm…if only I had learned this simple statement earlier in my life, imagine all of the moments of frustration and disappointment that I could have avoided. I guess this explains why the silent treatment never worked in my first years of marriage! As I ponder this, I can think of many situations - at work, at home, and with friends - where I assumed people would know exactly what I wanted and act accordingly, as though everyone in my life has some paranormal sixth sense and can read my mind.

The truth is most people aren’t sitting around concocting ways to make our lives difficult. They just don’t know what we want because we haven’t told them. We think by being honest we will come across as demanding, insensitive, or even rude; yet isn't this better than the alternative?

I do know one exception to this rule and that would be my kids. I can promise you I speak with great clarity and yet they choose not to listen. I guess in their case, my voice is like a dog whistle, only to be heard by a select few.

The 80's Called...

…And they said they want my oversized, overly padded, Easter egg colored clothes back. They have also requested my Rolodex filled with fax numbers that don’t work, flow charts for processes that have been long broken, and my three-ring binders filled with old meeting notes. And don't forget my Word Perfect cheat sheets and unexecuted marketing plans. All the things I have collected and hauled around for years in my “just in case” file are beginning to look like a time capsule the size of a storage locker. There are parts of my life that are seriously outdated. Before I find myself on the Hoarder Disorder reality show, I need to take action.

I guess I could procrastinate a bit longer to figure out why I am so attached to useless stuff, but I think we all have a tendency to hold on to our past for far too long. I suppose I could blame it on my grandparents’ post-war mentality of never letting anything go to waste (not likely). Or I could be honest with myself and realize that I hate cleaning out old stuff. For me, it's a pain, time consuming, and the process often gets a lot messier before it gets better.

So far, this is just for the tangible items in life. What about the intangibles? These include things like out-dated thinking or our unwarranted attachment to protecting the “we have always done it this way” behaviors. This is when the cleansing process gets tough.

Don’t mistake my purging as not giving credence to history. I think there are places in our lives where keeping things that work well is justified. Yet sometimes, we have to admit that holding on to particular items comes from not wanting to tackle another messy endeavor. The key is to be honest with ourselves; to call it out for what it is, and then make the decision to either change or not change. The decision is really that simple.

I guess it’s time for me to take a bit of inventory myself and rid the 80’s and maybe even the 90’s from my closets and drawers…except of course my collection of one-hit wonder hair band CDs… those I will take to my grave.