Happy New Year from Julian Consulting!

I just want to pen a brief note of thanks to all of you who have made 2010 a great year for Julian Consulting!

I’ve treasured the opportunities to serve you in a variety of contexts and look forward to partnering together in 2011.  That partnership may take a number of forms:

• Your reading and commenting on this blog
• My serving you and your team in helping to promote your professional and personal success
• Effective Family Communication seminars and family events
• Our continuing friendship and deepening appreciation for one another

Some of you I will never meet, but I appreciate you.  We may be interconnected only through pixels and information pipelines, but that doesn’t make the encouragement that comes from the exchange of ideas and information any less real.

May you be blessed as you are a blessing to others!  In 2011, my continuing hope for each of us is that we are becoming the people we were created to be, people who are learning to communicate effectively.

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Traditions–Preserving Old Ones, Starting New Ones

I remember seeing Fiddler on the Roof when I was a child.  I can still recall a number of the songs and can hear “Tradition!” ringing in my mind.

Here are a few of our family Christmas traditions:

• We sit in church as a family on Christmas Eve (normal Sunday services find us spread throughout the sanctuary)
• My Dad suggests that we each open just one gift on Christmas Eve – he always suggests, we never do – it’s tradition
• We open all of our gifts one individual at a time from youngest to oldest on Christmas morning

There are community traditions, family traditions, individual traditions.  An example of the last is that I always tell Judy to “order whatever you like” when we go on a dinner date.  Never mind that I know she will order what she wants, it’s just a tradition from our days of counting pennies to let her know that I want her to enjoy the evening and not worry about the cost.

This Christmas we went to our church’s Travelers’ Eve service on December 23.  Although we weren’t traveling, we spent Christmas Eve at a homeless shelter helping serve dinner to about 350 people.  We came home from that experience reminded of just how blessed we are.  Sometimes it’s good to buck tradition, maybe starting a new one.

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Speaking “toddler”–a language I’ve struggled to master

Years ago I sat in a McDonald’s and watched a mother and son have a meaningful conversation.  Unremarkable except that the child was probably 3 or 4 years old.  I remember thinking at the time: “How can an adult converse so effectively with a young child?”  I had three young children and felt I was often speaking over their heads (probably literally as well as figuratively).  Here I watched a mother speak in simple, concrete terms that her child understood and to which he was able, even invited, to respond.

So for all of you out there who communicate effectively with toddlers and pre-schoolers, I want to say just how impressed with your ability I remain.

Much of this blog deals with communication between spouses and among family members, but given my own strengths and interests, the topics tend to deal with children who are upper elementary school and older.  I’ll try to slip in some tips periodically for those of you with younger children in the hopes of keeping you on board.  If you want to share some insights that you think would be good for others, please drop me a line at stephen@julianconsulting.org – I’m always willing to learn.

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Exaggerating versus lying–it’s all about intent

In response to my recent post, “Parents’ Guide to Understanding Your Kids: Tip #2 – People Tell Stories for Different Reasons,” Denise asked: “How do you handle your 14-year old hanging out at the fast food restaurant at 10:30 PM when he said he was at his friends’ house because he was there for 5 minutes when he went to pick them up before hanging out in the street?  When challenged, your child responds: ‘And besides, Dad, you stretch the truth with your stories and you don't recognize that there is something wrong with that.’”

Great question.

Intuitively telling a story and being dishonest are separated by intent.  Let’s start with what it means to lie to someone.  If I intend to deceive you then I am speaking dishonestly whether what I say is true or false.  If you ask, “Is it sunny outside?” and I respond, “No,” believing that it is sunny and intending to deceive you, then I have spoken dishonestly even if it is actually raining.

Now intentions are difficult to discern – I have trouble knowing my own true intentions at times.  But children can understand that exaggerating for the point of emphasis and intending to deceive are not the same.  I would question my 14-year old as to what he intended for me to believe as a result of what he said.  Did he simply neglect to mention that most of the evening was spent at the fast food restaurant or was he intending to deceive me by speaking in a way that while technically true was intentionally misleading?

Trust that helps – writing this makes me think of some clarifying conversations I need to have with my own children.

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The “reset” button – reestablishing authority with your child

I’ve told my wife that one of our children needs to have it out with me about every six months.  Now I know this runs counter to what many would say, but I’ve found that this child loses perspective on the adult-child difference and that distinction needs to be reaffirmed about twice a year.  The way it is reestablished is usually through a heated disagreement.  Typically that child then goes back to accepting the boundaries established for him/her and everything is fine until another six months or so goes by.  One of our other children can barely handle “the look” – a full-throated argument would push him/her over the edge.  I’m not talking about heated arguments just to vent. I’m talking about recognizing an opportunity to hit the “reset” button – to reestablish authority with your child.

We’ve got to learn how to parent each child as an individual.  Often it is the oldest child that we grow used to parenting and if we don’t stay actively engaged, we take what works with that child and use it with the others.  While it is possible to luck out and find one strategy that works for all of your children, more likely you will be parenting one child effectively and parenting your other children less so because you are asking them to respond to strategies that are not adapted to who they are.  You are parenting individuals – look for principles and strategies that work for other families and children, but modify and employ them based upon the particular makeup of each child.  There is no parenting technique that is universally effective – no one reset button each parent can push.

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Parents’ Guide to Understanding Your Kids: Tip #2 – People Tell Stories for Different Reasons

When Judy and I first married we had a lot to learn about aligning expectations with behavior – in other words, we didn’t know what we were in for.

Using Myers-Briggs Type Indicator terminology, I have an intuiting preference.  Judy has a sensing preference.  Those with an intuiting preference typically tell stories to make a point, to entertain, to demonstrate creativity, but certainly not to convey a host of unnecessary details.  Those with a sensing preference tell stories to convey details, to demonstrate that they know what is or was, to be precise, but certainly not to create “facts” from thin air.  (Now for my sensing preference readers who know something about MBTI, the real world is a bit more complicated but, as an intuiter, I’m trying to make a point here.)

So when Judy and I would go to a party I would tell a story to entertain and Judy would stand next to me correcting the details so that no one was misled by my playing fast and loose with the facts.  “So there we were nine months ago sitting at our dining room table. . . .”  “Actually it was seven months ago; I know because we had fresh daisies on the table and I had bought those to brighten up the room.  I don’t do that often and it was June when I found that new florist on Cumberland Pike.  I’m pretty sure they weren’t even open in April, which would be nine months ago.”  At this point the rhythm of my story was shot and people were either bored by another couple disagreeing in a way that couples often do, or they were fascinated by our particular disagreement and no longer interested in the wildly entertaining insight that I had been preparing to unveil.

A lot of parties ended poorly for the newly married Julians.  It was only when we realized that our issue flowed from two sources that compounded our frustration that we began to make progress.  First, we had different communication preferences (intuiting versus sensing), and second, we had observed two different models in our homes growing up.  My mother never disagreed with my father in public.  So my personality preferences and my historical expectations combined to produce a deep sense of betrayal, all over a story that wasn’t (if I was being honest) that significant.

Those who actually read the title of this post may be wondering if I have lost my way.  No, I’m turning now to parenting.  Sensing parents need to understand that intuiting children are not “liars” but creative storytellers who see the sharing of information as being more about entertaining than conveying disinterested (and uninteresting) facts.  Intuiting parents need to realize that their sensing children really do need to share all of the facts because those facts are the puzzle pieces that make up their stories.  Without the facts the story would collapse or, worse, cease to exist.

Give the gift of listening and free the storytellers in your home to share their view of world history in their own way.  In private you (the sensing parent) can challenge and correct the details – “It was a blue Chevy and not really a teal Ford” or gently make the point (as the intuiting spouse) that no one really cares that it was May 15, 1973, when they awoke in their gray pajamas to Tony Orlando and Dawn singing “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” as the intro to their response about remembering POW/MIA flags.

Chances are you’ll have an opportunity to listen to stories over Thanksgiving – be gracious and be thankful that others see the world differently (even if their stories are boring or incorrect ).

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Quit waiting for “The Perfect Holiday Gathering”

In Peanuts Charles Shultz introduced the Great Pumpkin as a mythical figure for which Linus would wait each year.  For many people The Perfect Holiday Gathering has become their Great Pumpkin – always longed for, never arriving.

When I used to teach public speaking I would warn students of “the great speech fallacy” – the belief that any one address was going to make a profound difference in the lives of others.  Now you may be thinking of just such a speech – one that influenced your life in a significant way.  Great.  Now think of how many public orations you have heard.  If you are a regular churchgoer the number may be in the thousands.  The percentage of life-altering communication events is quite small.  It’s the cumulative message that counts.

I grew up in a minister’s home and I heard several hundred sermons by the time I left for college.  I don’t remember many specifically and one that I often think of was a baccalaureate address my father gave and not precisely a sermon (“Decisions Determine Destiny” – one time that alliteration really worked).  But is any of this to suggest that my father did not greatly influence me and the course of my life?  No.  It just means that particular sermons faded while the cumulative effect of his life remains.

Sometimes busy parents assert that they spend quality time with their kids, but if someone has honestly figured that one out she should write a book entitled “Scheduling Quality Time with Your Children: How to Preplan a Life-changing Conversation that Takes Five Minutes or Less.”  It can’t be done.  At least not for me.  Quality time with my children grows out of quantity.  I don’t know what moment will make a lasting impression so I have to string together a lifetime of moments pointing in the same direction with the hope that the arrow of my life hits its mark.

So this Thanksgiving, quit waiting for the Great Pumpkin.  There will be no Perfect Holiday Gathering, no conversation that solves everything or resets your relational clock back to the beginning.  What there can be are opportunities to continue a lifetime conversation.  Maybe this year’s portion of that conversation will be memorable, very possibly not.

The only caveat I would offer is to those who feel they need to begin a new conversation or to reframe an existing one.  That may mean admitting mistakes, asking forgiveness, or listening without trying to fix the other person.  In that case, this Thanksgiving is a great time to begin.  One caution: Rather than announce your attempt at a new conversation or desire to redirect an existing one, just express what you need to without putting all that pressure on this one moment.  Don’t spend this holiday continuing your vigil for The Perfect Holiday Gathering.  Release yourself and others from that pressure.  Give thanks for what is growing in your pumpkin patch.

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