ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Typically, this time of year, I write a piece about the holiday season. This year, I’ve penned a story that took place years ago—during the late spring—nowhere close to the holidays. Nevertheless, even though the tale doesn’t involve presents, or mistletoe, or anything remotely festive, I think it captures the spirit of the season.

The other day, while my three-year-old grandson, Tommy, and I took a walk through the neighborhood, the little guy picked up a rock and tossed it into an irrigation ditch. And then, in the non-sequiturial manner that defines three-year-olds, he looked up at me and whispered, “I love you.” Much to my delight, Tommy tells me this quite often, but on this particular day there was something about the circumstances that jarred loose the memory of an incident I hadn’t thought about for over half a century.

This particular memory started with what should have been a harmless trip to the grocery store. It was the spring of 1953, I was seven years old, and Mom decided she needed to fetch some milk in order to finish a batch of chocolate pudding. Five minutes later, as Mom, my brother Billy, and I rolled up to the grocery store, Mom spotted her best friend Lydia.

“I’m going to be chatting for a while,” Mom barked. “Why don’t you boys play outside with the kids in the neighborhood?”

I was hungrier for snacks than I was for companionship, so I set off in search of discarded pop bottles in nearby gutters. If I got lucky, I’d find a few bottles and trade them in for penny candy. At age eleven, my brother Billy was hungrier for adventure than for sweets, so he set off for points unknown.

After talking with Lydia for nearly half an hour, and with a quart-bottle of milk firmly tucked under her arm, Mom stuck her head outside the store and shouted, “Boys, it’s pudding time!”

With the promise of chocolate hanging in the air, I raced back to the store—but Billy was nowhere to be seen.

“Go find your brother,” Mother exhorted. “He’s probably down by the creek.”

The creek Mom referred to flowed through the countryside a couple of blocks north of the store until it abruptly disappeared into a four-foot-high cement culvert that carried the water underground for two miles. The tunnel was filthy, dark, dangerous, and chock full of rats. In short, it was boy heaven.

Unfortunately, just getting to the creek posed a serious challenge. The route went past the McHenry house and the McHenry house was filled with stone-cold criminals. The adult McHenrys (when not in prison) were constantly tossing back home-brew while feverishly hammering on the pile of rusted auto parts that was their front yard. The McHenry boys, ever anxious to please their parents, cursed, spat, and sic’d their dogs on anyone who had the temerity to breach their territory. I was about to be their next victim.

But I got lucky that day. As I walked toward the creek, the McHenrys were nowhere to be found. Seizing the moment, I dashed passed their den and down to the tunnel entrance. Whew! I had made it!

And then I faced a new challenge. If my brother was, indeed, playing in the culvert, I’d have to shout out a password before he’d let me in. It was kid code. My friends and I were always using secret words such as “Open sesame” to gain entry into our forts or to earn freedom from captivity should the “enemy” lock us up. This system worked quite well except when we changed or forgot the password, which was most of the time.

“Open sesame!” I hollered as I rounded the bend near the mouth of the tunnel. I heard nothing from Billy. “Open sesame!” I tried again, followed by silence and then a resounding “Geronimo!” which also had no effect. Next I tried, “Montezuma!” Then “Beelzebub!” Still no response. Just when I was about to whip out the granddaddy of all passwords—”Code red!”—I was yanked off my feet and held in the air—thrashing like a gaffed salmon. Craning my head to see who had ahold of my collar, I stared into the face of Chuck McHenry, the oldest and foulest of the McHenry boys.

“Lookin’ for your brother, are ya?” Chuck asked with breath that could stop a bullet. “Cuz if you are, me and my brothers have him trapped.”

Sure enough, a few feet away stood two of Chuck’s teenage brothers. They were throwing rocks into the mouth of the tunnel, as if competing in some sort of sadistic carnival game. Eleven-year-old Billy would peek out of the culvert opening to see if the coast was clear and then the McHenrys would hurl jagged rocks at his head.

“Leave my brother alone!” I hollered as I tried my best to kick the McHenry ringleader. Chuck merely laughed. I was seven; he was in his late teens. Fighting was useless.

After I tried to break away for what seemed like an hour, Chuck offered up a plan: “If you want us to let your brother go, you’ll have to do somethin’ for it.”

“What?” I asked.

“What do you guys think?” Chuck questioned his brothers. “Should we make him run naked through stinger nettles?”

“Maybe we should hang him by his heels from a tree!” one of his brothers chimed in.

“I got it!” Chuck announced as he nodded his head knowingly. I couldn’t imagine what he had in mind, but whatever demented stunt he had concocted, I’d gladly do it. Billy was my best friend, my protector, my big brother.

Then, with a grin that suggested he had just devised the most nefarious punishment ever, Chuck announced: “Tell your brother—in a loud voice—that you love him!”

I was confused. This was all he wanted? To tell my brother that I loved him?

“Go ahead,” he chided. “Say it! I dare you!”

“I love you!” I shouted to my brother.

The McHenry boys then hooted and howled. From their point of view, I had just humiliated myself beyond repair. Right there in front of the whole neighborhood, I, a boy, had been tender and sensitive. Worse still, I had dared to say, “I love you”—to my brother no less! Ugh! As far as the McHenrys were concerned, I had completely disgraced myself.

Finally, after nearly laughing himself sick, Chuck tossed me to the ground and threatened to “pound” my brother and me if either of us said a word to our parents. Then, tiring of the whole affair, Chuck turned on his heels and darted back to his lair—his brothers close behind.

After checking to see if the thugs had really gone, Billy cautiously climbed out of the tunnel, took my hand, and walked me back to the grocery store.

“Don’t tell Mom what just happened,” Billy warned. “If you do, the McHenrys will beat us for sure.”

“Plus, if we tattle, Mom will ask us what we learned,” I added. Then we both laughed at the thought. Mom was always asking us what we had learned from our latest debacle and to be honest, I didn’t have a clue what I had just learned. I could say that I had learned not to play in the culvert, or go near the McHenrys—but I already knew that.

No matter what we were supposed to have learned that morning, the incident remained locked deep inside my brain until a few days ago when my grandson, Tommy, tossed a rock into a stream and told me he loved me. And then, like an orb tumbling out of a gumball machine, the McHenry memory tumbled out of the dark recesses of my mind and onto these pages.

I’m glad it’s been nearly sixty years since the original event took place because now I’m mature enough to know what I learned that day. And I’ll be darned if I hadn’t learned it from the most unlikely of characters—Chuck McHenry. The lesson couldn’t be clearer. When threatened by your worst enemy, when going toe-to-toe with the adversary, remember the secret password. Not just any password, but the password.

I love you.

It opens all doors.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Listen to Kerrying On via Mp3
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This story begins in the spring of 1954, not long after my eighth birthday. At this time in my life, two important events happened over the same weekend—Mother’s Day and the appearance of a traveling carnival. Both required money. Lots of money. Fortunately, after months of squirreling away most of my weekly 50-cent allowance, I was able to set aside six whole dollars—two dollars to buy my mom a pair of Mother’s Day earrings she had pointed out at a local jewelry store, two dollars for an unlimited ride pass at the carnival, and two dollars for food and bus fare.

When the appointed day finally arrived, I leaped off the bus and set straight off to buy Mom’s earrings. I was on a mission: first secure the earrings, and then go have fun. Unfortunately, as I approached the jewelry store I also drew closer to the carnival and its joyous and tempting sounds. To me, the rumble of the rides and the squeals from the children were the modern-day version of Ulysses’ sirens. Since I had neither a ship’s mast nor men to tie me to it, I eventually gave in to the irresistible clamor. I decided to put off buying the Mother’s Day earrings and go straight for the home of the Loopty-Loop. This was my first mistake.

I made my second mistake when I arrived at the carnival itself. Instead of going directly to the ticket booth and buying an unlimited ride pass, I wandered into the midway where a hoard of carnies tried to convince me to win Kewpie dolls, pinwheels, and the like. At first, I resisted the invitation to play the games. They weren’t in my budget and besides, who wanted any of that cheap junk?

And then I came across a booth that awarded winners a small cage containing a parakeet. I had never seen such magnificent birds. They weren’t just green and blue; they were fluorescent green and blue. And according to the nice carnie with the missing front teeth who worked the booth, you could teach the exotic creatures to talk. Plus the fellow had a “MOM” tattoo on his right bicep. It was fate. It was kismet. It was a sign.

“I would like one of the parakeets far more than the earrings,” the “MOM” tattoo whispered to me.

Hesitantly, I loosened my grip on my six dollars as I sized up the challenge in front of me. All I had to do to win the most extraordinary prize ever offered by a man with a pack of Lucky Strikes trapped under his right T-shirt sleeve was throw a dime and land it on a plate—a huge plate no less. And there were dozens of plates. So I took a deep breath and cashed in one of my dollars for ten dimes. I could practically see the smile on Mom’s face.

The first dime hit right on a plate—oh boy, oh boy, oh boy—but then it bounced off. But then it almost landed on another plate. This was going to be a breeze. Of course, it wasn’t one bit easy. After bouncing six dimes and winning nothing, I started having second thoughts. But then the fellow with the whispering tattoo told me not to worry. “You’re bound to win soon!” he promised. “Honest.”

And so went the two dollars I had set aside for food and return bus fare. But all wasn’t lost, I reasoned. If I won a bird soon, I would no longer need the two dollars I’d set aside for the earrings and I’d be back on budget. The next twenty dimes bounced pretty much like the first twenty. They would hit one plate, glance off another—and almost win me a bird. Almost.

As I clutched my last two dollars, I was tempted to walk straight to the jewelry store before it was too late, but then as I turned to exit from over my shoulder I heard one of the parakeets chirp, “Pretty bird!” In retrospect I believe the exclamation did indeed sound like “Pretty bird!” but only if spoken through missing teeth. In any case, I cashed in for twenty more chances to win the best present any kid had ever given his mom for Mother’s Day!

The three-mile walk home was a dismal one. I hadn’t eaten anything, I didn’t get to ride anything, I had no money, no earrings, no bird, and worst of all, boy, was I going to get a lecture!

As I trudged down the dirt road that led home, my next-door neighbor, George Lockhart, drove up in his milk truck. George arose every day at the crack of dawn and delivered milk to the front doors of various families around town. He was now on his way home. Normally I would have been thrilled to hitch a ride with George—you know, ride up front with a guy wearing a cool milkman uniform; maybe he’d even give me a fudgesicle. But not this day. I had just suffered the great parakeet debacle of 1954.

As I told Mr. Lockhart about my failed attempt to win my mother a bird, I explained how I had lost my entire six dollars to a game that looked ever so easy but was probably impossible to win. George nodded knowingly but didn’t say a word. Eventually, when we arrived at his house, Mr. Lockhart turned to me and said, “I’ve done you a good turn by giving you a ride home, would you do something for me? I’ve just had a new load of wood delivered and I need some of it chopped into kindling.” Then he handed me an ax.

Things were looking up. I wouldn’t have to go home and face the music—at least not right away—plus, I’d get to swing an ax. Now, before you go all safety-conscious on me, let me remind you that this was in 1954. Back then, eight-year-old boys went to the carnival unescorted, walked long distances alone, and yes, they even swung the occasional ax. Well, I did anyway.

After a couple of hours of fevered chopping, Mr. Lockhart reappeared, gave my stack of kindling a nod of approval, and said it was getting dark so I should go home. As I turned down the path that led to what would certainly be a stinging lecture, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked around and there stood Mr. Lockhart. In his right hand he was holding six one-dollar bills. “This is for the work you did,” George explained. Then he handed me the money, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Six dollars! It was a miracle! It was exactly what I had lost! I could hardly wait to get home and tell Mom what had happened.

When I returned to town the next morning, I made a beeline to the jewelry store and bought the earrings Mom wanted. (She wore them on special occasions for over fifty years.) When I made my way over to the carnival, I didn’t let myself walk within a half-block of the parakeets. I knew I’d be too weak to resist the temptation. Instead, I bought a wad of cotton candy, purchased an unlimited ride pass, and spun myself into oblivion.

I learned several lessons that day, but I think the most interesting one is about influence. When someone you know does something really stupid and your natural inclination is to lay on a lecture and lay it on thick—think about George. He knew better than to smugly point out my obvious poor choices. Before launching into the traditional diatribe laced with “what were you thinking?” and “hard-earned money,” he correctly assessed the situation. He realized my intentions had been pure and that I had most certainly learned my lesson, so instead of lecturing me or preventing me from trying again, he gave me a second chance. What a wonderful idea. He gave me a do-over.

Sometimes it’s just what the milkman ordered.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Listen to Kerrying On via Mp3
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Last week while talking with (and trying to impress) my two seventeen-year-old nieces, I mentioned that I had run into Robert Redford at his restaurant just up the hill from our home. The two stared at me with a gaze teenagers typically reserve for a lecture on the history of floor wax. After politely listening to me gush about Bob, one of the twins asked, “Who’s Robert Redhead?”

What?! They hadn’t seen The Sting?! They hadn’t watched Mr. Redford as the delightful Sundance Kid? Had the world gone mad? As I probed further, I learned Mr. Redford wasn’t the only older celebrity unknown to my nieces. In fact, the two were virtually unfamiliar with any stars, celebrities, or politicians of my generation. At first, I figured they didn’t watch TV or movies, but I quickly learned they could tell me the shade of Taylor Swift’s blush, write an entire book on Justin Bieber, and quote whole segments from Miley Cyrus’ latest movie.

How is it these two knew so much about their own times but virtually nothing of the movies, TV, or life experiences of anyone old enough to shave? When I was their age, even younger, I knew a great deal about my parents’ world—including their politicians, luminaries, and movie stars—because I watched dozens of films from the thirties and forties. In fact, I watched them with my parents.

As I congratulated myself on my own sense of history, it struck me that I had no reason to gloat. When I was growing up, my childhood world was perfectly organized to create an environment in which I not only associated with adults and adult things, but spent time learning and discussing life as it unfolded in front of us in our living rooms. We only had four TV channels and they were so lacking in programming that the stations gladly showed material from decades earlier—just to fill the airtime. And since we, like most families of the 50s, only had one TV set and most programs were family friendly, every evening we sat down together and watched a combination of old movies and primetime TV shows.

Why does any of this even matter? Realizing that my nieces were almost completely unaware of anything aged longer than, say, a can of Cheez Whiz got me to thinking. I began to mourn the loss of a simpler time when everyone—adults and children alike—could quote the same movies (“Badges! We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”) and discuss the same current events. A time when entertainment wasn’t so enormously segmented so as to appeal to only fourteen-year-old boys who own a video game system or twenty-one-year-old single women looking for love . . . or a wedding dress.

What is cultural entertainment actually doing for our culture? If it’s not bringing us together, there’s a good chance it’s driving us apart. I fear we’ll eventually become so segmented that members in a specific niche of the population will have little, if anything, to discuss with people outside their very specific demographic. By becoming increasingly diverse in our tastes and interests, I fear we are limiting our ability to relate to diverse populations—including our own nieces and nephews.

I was discussing this issue with my partner Ron, when he knocked me off my “old fogey” soapbox with a message of hope. He and his twelve-year-old son Ben were talking with a neighbor when his neighbor asked Ben, “So young man, what do you think was George Washington’s greatest contribution to the country?” (Apparently this neighbor wasn’t into small talk). After thinking for a second, Ben responded, “Resigning his commission as general before accepting the presidency.” Ben then went on to explain that disconnecting himself from the military had helped Washington shape the nation into a republic rather than into a military state.

As you might guess, Ron was proud of his son’s insightful remarks. He was also rather astonished. How had his twelve-year-old son developed such an informed opinion about such a weighty topic? It turns out Ben routinely watched and loved the History Channel where he had seen several episodes on Washington’s life.

So, there is hope. In the “good old days” we created a common culture by watching (and reading) old-fashioned stories, enthusiastically discussing current issues and events from the past, and jointly building values that were shaped and conveniently portrayed in their widely shared entertainment venues.

Today we can do the same, not in spite of but with the help of the latest resources. But, in my opinion, only if we use the tools wisely. We may have to switch off a few video games and skip past a dozen or so TV exposés covering celebrity shenanigans, but if we’re willing to search, there’s a great deal of terrific scientific, artistic, and historical material out there that we can and should experience with our friends, relatives, and loved ones.

Of course, it’ll take effort. It’s time we stopped retiring to separate rooms and engaging in separate electronic activities. Instead, pick a program (or a book) of substance, sit down, experience it with your children, friends, and family members, and then discuss the themes and concepts. Watch it at home where you can talk freely as the show unrolls. Pause and discuss issues and ideas. Revel in new scientific and historical discoveries. Roll back the clock and learn from the masters. Tell your own stories while giving people of all ages a chance to talk—each teaching the other.

In short, don’t be mauled by modernity. Master it. Use electronic tools that could easily fractionate and alienate to unite and illuminate. Make the language of your home the language of ideas steeped in history, vivified by art, and supported by science. Create a common culture. Better yet, couple the wisdom of ages with the efficiency of modern methods to create an uncommon common culture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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In early 1951, a few months before I entered the first grade at Larrabee Elementary School, the U.S. embarked on one of the most peculiar and troubling lines of research ever conducted. Sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, in a place known as the Nevada Proving Grounds, scientists began detonating nuclear devices. You know, just to see what would happen.

I first became aware of these blasts when Mrs. Plunk, the rather gruff principal (who ruled Larrabee not unlike General Patton ruled the Third Army) started projecting movie clips from the Nevada test site onto the cafetorium wall. When each nuclear display ended, Mrs. Plunk blew a whistle and we kids scattered about the room like—well, like kids in a nuclear-attack drill.

After careening about wildly and trying our best not to scream too loudly, we eventually found an empty spot on the edge of the floor, laid face down, and placed our hands tightly behind our necks. We needed to practice this ritual, Mrs. Plunk earnestly explained, in the off chance the Soviet Union—which was also testing nuclear bombs—tested them on Larrabee Elementary School.

One day, the newsreel contained even more haunting images than usual. This time, American soldiers, dressed in green fatigues, toting rifles, and holding their helmets tight to their heads, walked resolutely into a cloud of nuclear dust as the latest blast rolled across the desert. Would the guys be knocked down? Would the blast break their bones? Or, in the words of six-year-old Bobby Keefer who was lying face down next to me, “Would the soldiers wet their pants?”

If you were to view this same footage today you’d surely ask, “What were those scientists doing to those poor soldiers?” It’s not as if the dangers of radiation were a secret. Certainly not in 1951. And yet, the testing continued.

You can’t watch this “science-gone-mad” video without asking, “What similarly insane things are we doing today?” What modern invention have we wholly embraced, appears to have made our lives better, but is actually slowly killing us? In short, what “nuclear walk” are we taking today?

For some it’s plastic bottles. Don’t people realize that plastic slowly leaches Bisphenol A, which will eventually turn us all into helpless blobs of oozing flesh? Or how about holding cell phones close to our brain while they emit invisible death rays? That can’t be good, right?

Here is the latest trend that has me concerned (this week). If you took a vacation nowadays with a group of a dozen adults of differing ages and backgrounds, you would quickly note that they fall into two groups. First, you have those who set aside their worries, take their minds off their jobs, and throw themselves into the true spirit of vacationing. That’s Group One.

The people in Group Two offer up the occasional “Ooh!” or “Ah!” but they aren’t exactly living in the moment because they haven’t exactly unplugged from their jobs. They’re digitally linked to their offices—constantly fidgeting with their electronic devices, dashing off messages, and whispering underneath the tour guide’s lecture. Group Two folks are also highly stressed from trying to keep one foot in the moment and the other back at work.

My, how things have changed! Thirty years ago as I prepared to depart on my first overseas vacation, my boss kindly exhorted, “Please don’t phone us. Don’t even think about us. Disconnect, relax, and recharge your batteries. We’ll take care of whatever comes up.”

Contrast this thoughtful advice with the experience of two of my friends, Lisa and Jordan, who work as managers in a firm not far from my office. Lisa and Jordan’s bosses (like many of today’s leaders) don’t offer a comforting speech as their employees head out for a week of family fun. Quite the contrary. Lisa and Jordan’s bosses insist that they respond to phone calls, e-mails, and texts—24/7—especially during vacations.

Of course, much of this torture is self-imposed. There are advantages to being constantly connected to work. For one, you gain flexibility. You can take a mid-afternoon break to attend a niece’s soccer game and then make up for lost time by connecting to your office and working from home later that evening. In addition, if you stay continually tethered, you can also promptly respond to your phone calls, e-mails, and texts. You can be amazingly prompt and everyone wants that.

But what if you (dare I say it) unplugged from the grid once in a while? Would disconnecting for, say, an hour or so actually make your life better? In a word, yes. Consider the effects of constant interruptions. Every time you stop your current task, deal with an interruption, and then return, you place the original task from short- to long-term memory, put the new job into short-term memory, and then reverse the entire process to get back on task. Completing this conceptual lifting dozens of times a day creates stress, which (and the research on this is yet to be completed) just might lead to distress and all of its attendant health problems.

As if this weren’t bad enough, frequent interruptions can also lead to job dissatisfaction. Instead of working continuously for periods of an hour or more on a task that’s challenging and solvable (elements that career expert Mihály Csikszentmihályi insists contribute to job satisfaction), we purposely interrupt our flow, add stress, and make our jobs far less enjoyable.

There’s more. On those occasions where blurring the borders between work and home leads to additional time on the job (which it usually does) this too exacts a hefty toll. In a study recently conducted in England, those who labored 11 or more hours per day had a 67 percent higher risk of coronary heart disease than their less-tethered 9-to-5 office mates.

Even if you don’t work extended hours, the mere act of remaining connected can be surprisingly damaging. Waiting to be interrupted—expecting to be interrupted—can trigger a stress response similar to that of actually being disturbed. And then, of course, there’s the whole problem of being interrupted, flitting off to the new task, and its impact on ADD. No matter your electronic devices, if you’re constantly switching tasks, it’s not long until you become less able to hold focus.

Obviously, with the release of each new innovation, there’s much to think about. As we invent and embrace new devices, we may not know the toll they’re taking on our mental, emotional, and physical health until it’s too late. Whether we’re setting ourselves up for job dissatisfaction, family tension, failing health, or ADD, one can only speculate. So, what’s a person to do?

As a starter, make the current practice of remaining constantly tethered and frequently interrupted part of your family and corporate dialogue. There’s no need to suffer quietly—you’re not alone. In fact, over two thirds of subjects recently surveyed in a poll conducted by the bureau of labor statistics suggested that they’ve experienced problems with their employer because of conflicts between their job and their duties as a parent. Much of this unresolved conflict is a natural consequence of today’s constant tethering.

So, speak up. Talk openly about the two-edged sword of innovation. What new invention or trend is working for you? What’s slowly killing you? Or better yet, how is an invention or trend that’s working for you, also killing you? Decide how and when you want to be connected and where and when you want to be interrupted. Make it a choice, not the natural extension of embracing what appears to be a helpful new tool.

And remember, it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You’re not required to take a vow of digital celibacy. You don’t have to chuck your devices; you just have to control them so they don’t control you. For instance, you can set your devices to notify you only at certain times; as opposed to the instant a message arrives. You can also negotiate with colleagues and bosses to watch your back while you vacation, disconnect, and recharge your batteries. Friends can and should be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Friends don’t let friends walk into a nuclear cloud.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer.

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Listen to Kerrying On via Mp3
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When I was a young boy and our extended family gathered to celebrate holidays, it was common for the adults to congregate in the dining room and play pinochle while we kids romped around the yard or (when it was raining) watched The Hopalong Cassidy Show on our 19” DuMont TV consol.

But not always. Sometimes my uncle Vic would break away from the adults and teach me a trick or two. It was Vic who showed me how to press two fingers to my lower lip to create a wolf whistle. It was Uncle Vic who taught me how to tie a cat’s cradle, how to spin a button on a string, how to make a coin disappear, and dozens of other childhood tricks and games.

I often wondered why my uncle so readily slipped away from the rest of the adults—just to spend time with a kid. One day, long after he had passed away, I asked my mother why Uncle Vic was as likely to spend time with me as he was to mingle with his peers. Vic’s actions were particularly curious given that his wife, my aunt Mickey, was such a vibrant, vocal personality. I couldn’t imagine how she ever ended up with such a quiet man.

“Don’t you know what happened to your uncle?” my mother asked. “When my sister first met Vic, he had been the life of the party, oozed confidence, and looked the part of a movie star. Why, when he and Mickey walked into a restaurant, the crowd would hush and stare at them. It was as if celebrities had entered the room.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“World War II.” She explained. “It happened to all of us—only more so to Vic. You see,” Mom reluctantly continued, “your uncle joined the Army and was immediately sent to the Philippines where he was put in charge of a platoon. It was the job of Sergeant Victor Veloni and his platoon to clear the remote islands.”

“Clear them of what?” I asked.

“Of enemy soldiers who stayed behind to cause havoc with the American troops and Philippine civilians. Surely you’ve heard about them. You know, the soldiers who perched in palm trees—some for years—waiting for a chance to shoot anyone who came into view. Your uncle Vic and his team would land on an island and then do whatever was required to remove the tree-dwelling snipers.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

I could tell that Mom didn’t want to talk about the details.

“Vic and his team would police the island until someone would shoot at them, and then they’d deal with the sniper.”

“They walked around until someone shot at them!” I exclaimed.

“Mostly,” Mom replied. “It was the best way to draw the enemy into the open.”

I could hardly imagine trudging around a steamy, tropical island in full military gear, while waiting for a bullet to pierce my helmet. It’s beyond comprehension.

“Wasn’t that dangerous?” I asked.

“Dangerous?” Mom continued, “Vic ended up losing every single man in his platoon and half of the replacements. One by one, he lost his dear friends and comrades as they fell prey to sniper fire. Our prayers were answered when Vic came home alive, but he never forgave himself for doing so.”

“And that’s what changed him?”

“When the war ended and your uncle returned to Seattle, I hardly knew him. He was the same handsome man who had gone off to war, but the vibrant, fun-loving Vic that used to live behind that chiseled face was no longer there. The horror of watching his friends die, the tension of waiting for the next bullet, the self-imposed guilt for not taking one of his own—it killed the Vic we knew and left behind the quiet, withdrawn man you grew up with. Not everyone who survived the war actually survived the war. Vic went off to battle, but somebody else came home.”

I had no idea about any of this. I was just glad my uncle Vic had spent time with me. I just wanted to know why he had always been so kind, gentle, and attentive.

Earlier this month, as teenagers from the local Boy Scout troop posted a flag in our front yard to help celebrate the 4th of July, my thoughts turned to the scores of people—like Vic—who have sacrificed in so many different ways, so that you and I can enjoy our many freedoms. As the scouts unfurled the flag, my mind turned to an earlier day with a different group of scouts I had taken to a military cemetery. As these young men and I gathered on a grassy hillside just outside San Francisco, we stood by the graves of decorated soldiers and read aloud the detailed stories of the selfless acts that had earned each fallen soldier both his medal and his grave.

Today my thoughts turn to not only these young men and others who have fallen in the field, but also to those who have returned home—many injured, all affected, and some, like my uncle Vic, transformed into a completely different person. When TV news commentators talk of the number of wounded and killed in current battles, or when statistics pop up on the screen to summarize what’s happening over seas—I don’t see the numbers. I don’t think of the statistics. Instead, I see an image of my uncle Vic. It’s not the image you might imagine. It’s not of a crowd gathered to pay homage to his sacrifice. It isn’t of a general draping a medal around his neck. Nor is it of a band trumpeting his glory. It’s far more humble—and more important—than any of that. It’s the image of a little boy holding a cat’s cradle string, and sitting on the lap of a true American hero.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. His fourth book, Change Anything, was recently released.

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Every now and then, someone accomplishes something so remarkable that you just have to talk about it. The accomplishment I have in mind has quietly taken place over the past two and a half decades in some of the most remote, desolate villages on earth. These places are so isolated they’re virtually never covered in any news stories and so desolate they have no rivers, streams, or other forms of running water to help keep them alive. Instead, shallow valleys near the villages fill with water during the rainy seasons and then slowly dry up and fester as the annual drought burns its way through the calendar.

As the months pass, the water holes become contaminated with all manner of microbes. In the midst of this deadly cocktail live tens of thousands of sand fleas. Inside the sand fleas you’ll find even tinier larvae. The sand fleas are so small they’re hard to see unless you scoop them up in a glass of water and hold them up to the light. Even then, if you have no microbiologists or theory of modern medicine, you wouldn’t know what to think of the squirming, translucent creatures within.

The villagers, given no other choices, gather the contaminated water, pour it into earthen pots, carry it to their huts and use it for washing, cooking, and drinking. Once ingested, the sand fleas dissolve, freeing the larvae to enter the human body and transmute into tiny worms that, over the next ninety days, grow into three-foot long vermicelli-like monsters. Then a cruel genetic trumpet sounds. The worms respond to the call by excreting acid to burn a path through their host’s body as they tunnel their way out of their human prison. The pain of this nine-month long exodus is excruciating.

Finally, to give purpose to the hellacious journey, once the worm pokes its head out of its human host, it causes an intense burning and itching that can only be soothed by immersing the infected body part in the local water source—at which point the creature releases thousands of tiny eggs back into the fetid mother water—completing the life-cycle of the Guinea Worm.

For thousands of years, villagers have suffered the pain and debilitating injuries caused by the Guinea Worm’s unspeakable and lengthy journey. Not knowing how to explain the presence of the pest, locals blamed the infected villagers for hosting the worm. According to legend, sinners bring the fiery monster upon themselves.

“Surely she’s an adulteress and that’s why her children are now being cursed.”

“He must have stolen from the village and now he’s paying the price.”

To add suffering to insult, the infected (and now maligned) villagers are unable to work for months on end, so great is their pain as the worm follows its nine-month path. Many starve. Children are unable to go to school, so they remain illiterate. And all of this pain and misery has been going on in parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa for thousands of years.

Eventually, the plight of the Guinea Worm came to the attention of scientists who figured out both its life cycle and the cure. It’s simple. Encourage villagers to filter the water and the larvae are eliminated. In cases where people are infected, keep them from washing in the water source. Either way you short-circuit the life cycle and the dreaded worm (which only grows in human beings) disappears in an evolutionary blink. Medicines are not effective. Surgery is out of the question. But get people to filter their water and not wash their sores in the water source, and the creature will become extinct.

As this horrible plight became more public, hundreds of medical professionals and change agents tried their best to eradicate the worm, but with little success. Simply telling people to filter the water proved insufficient. Locals didn’t trust the outsiders. And, of course, not soothing your burning sores in the water, once infected, called for a monumental act of self-discipline.

Twenty-five years ago, when experts at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia turned their attention to the Guinea Worm plight, more than 3.5 million people from 20 countries were still infected. Here was the big question: what change strategy could they come up with that others had been unable to discover? What would it take to get 3.5 million people—along with their friends, family, and neighbors—to filter their water and keep infected villagers from washing their sores in the local water source?

Two years ago, we wrote about this indefatigable group of Carter Center change agents in our book Influencer. We told of how they had been creatively applying a variety of clever change methods. For instance, they learned to gain support from respected, local leaders. Otherwise, nobody trusted them. They used clever posters, created contests and awards (complete with slogan-bearing t-shirts), posted warning signs near the water source, and taught people how to effectively confront neighbors who didn’t follow the rules—to name but a few of their techniques.

By combining change methods, one upon another, the group slowly made progress. Person by person, village by village, country by country, the tiny band of Carter Center experts gradually eliminated the cursed beast. Then, just a few weeks ago, one of our contacts at the center invited us to a special event. The center would be holding a news conference followed by an awards ceremony and a gala. We eagerly booked our flights.

Two weeks later, as news cameras ran and reporters sat poised to take notes, former president Jimmy Carter entered the crowded room. He was beaming with joy.

“We’re proud to announce,” he enthused, “the complete eradication of the Guinea Worm in two new countries—Niger and Nigeria.” From there the former president went on to explain how these two countries have now joined 14 other nations that have completely eliminated Guinea Worm disease. Today, less than 1,800 cases remain.

All of this extraordinary progress has been made under the leadership of a mere handful of people who possess two important qualities. First, they have learned what it takes to both motivate and enable people all over the world to act differently. That makes them members of a rather elite group of true influencers. Second, they chose to apply their skills to millions of individuals who, for centuries, have endured incalculable suffering. All of this, of course, has been accomplished under horrific conditions, for modest salaries, and often far away from home.

Just imagine the good these intrepid change agents have done. If the sufferers who had been infected were to attend a gathering hosted by the Carter Center—say in the fashion of a wedding reception where people stand in line, greet one another, and talk briefly—you might overhear comments such as:

“Thank you, I’m able to work my farm for the first time in over a year.”

“Bless you, my children have now returned to school.”

This line of gratitude would run 24 hours a day—for more than 400 days! And this doesn’t include the millions of people who would have been infected but now won’t be.

When my partners and I first wrote about influencers, we were delighted to discover that when you become a truly effective change agent, you can succeed with the most intractable of problems. We learned challenges that have gone on for generations have been carefully reduced, even eliminated, in select pockets throughout the world.

However, it never occurred to us what might happen if someone applied these skills to something as important as disease eradication. In the case of the Guinea Worm, less than a dozen people (with the help of hundreds of agencies and tens of thousands of volunteers) have led a behavior-change revolution unlike any ever accomplished on earth. They’ve nearly eradicated a horrible disease. Within the next few years, they’ll have completely eliminated it.

I take my hat off to these dedicated, talented, selfless people. At a time when the news is filled with disasters, debacles, and disillusionment, it’s a delight to pause and reflect on the work of a handful of selfless heroes who make us all proud. I get goose bumps thinking about what they might do next.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Patterson is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. His fourth book, Change Anything, will be available April 2011.

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Sometimes when I wake up it’s 1957 and I’m eleven years old. The genesis of this repeated misgiving is rooted in a time from my early childhood when my dad held a job at the local plywood plant and collected payments on magazine subscriptions at night. Between his two jobs, Dad earned enough money to put us just below the poverty line. We lived down a long, lonely, dirt road in a house so small Kareem Abdul Jabbar could have stretched out his arms and spanned the entire structure. But Mom had dreams. She would help us work our way to greater prosperity.

After trying a variety of failed home businesses, Mom read an ad in the local paper placed by an elderly couple who wanted to sell their college boarding house. The massive structure they were selling sat across the street from the local college and housed a gaggle of college girls. Mom immediately borrowed our neighbor’s car, drove to the domicile, met with the aging couple, and talked them into loaning her money so she and Dad could then make a down payment on the home.

“It’s easy,” Mom enthused. “All I have to do is cook breakfast and dinner for seventeen people seven days a week. How hard could that be?” The day after inking the deal, Mom was up at 6:00 a.m. making breakfast—which included throwing bacon on the grill at 6:20 a.m. Eventually, the smell of this frying bacon would awaken me just in time to complete my task of setting the table for the crowd. To this day, when someone arises early at our home and cooks bacon, I wake up to the familiar smell and think it’s 1957.

Thanks to Mom’s dream, our little family had climbed out of a shack in the woods and into a large and comfortable boarding house, but there was never any money left over for things such as vacations and college funds and I was now a teenager with an eye set on a higher education. So Mom put me to work painting the entire boarding house—four hours a day, every day, for three summers. “I’ll pay you when you graduate high school and I send you off to college,” Mom explained one day when I had the audacity to ask for money for the work I was doing.

But how would Mom earn the college money she had promised me? At first, she made wedding cakes. But that was a lot of work for a small profit. She needed to dream bigger. And then, it hit her. She lived across the street from a college, why not attend? So, in 1964 when I graduated from high school, Mom graduated from college and took a full-time job as a teacher—generating, as promised, whatever college funds I lacked.

And Mom’s dreams didn’t end there. After I married and graduated from college, Mom dreamed her way across the country to live near my growing family. After she and dad retired, she dreamed the two of them to Guadalajara, Mexico where they set up affordable living in a small American retirement community.

But not all of Mom’s dreams panned out. “What’s the hole in the backyard?” I asked Mom one day after returning from college to a new home Mom and Dad had moved to while I was away.

“I’m digging a swimming pool,” she explained with a straight face. She and Dad didn’t have the money to build a pool, but if Mom dug a hole, then maybe they’d find a way. Always the dreamer.

A few days later, I overheard a woman at church asking who my mother was. Another woman from the congregation explained, “She’s the lady with the hole in her backyard.” Apparently the word had spread of her harebrained scheme. What middle-aged woman digs her own swimming pool with a hand shovel? And it turns out the detractors were right. Mom never did finish the pool—just the hole.

Throughout her life, Mom had many detractors. “You’ll never be able to buy a boarding house. You have no money.” “You’ll never be able to settle in Mexico. How will you get there?” “You’ll never, you’ll never, you’ll never . . .”

And sometimes they were right. Years of cooking for seventeen people yielded no profits. Dozens of wedding cakes resulted in little money. And then there was always that hole in the backyard. People who only saw that hole and knew nothing of Mom’s other more successful endeavors thought she was zany—even irresponsible. Friends and family who heard of Mom and Dad’s misadventures as they pulled a trailer down the Baja to find affordable housing in Mexico shook their heads in disbelief. “She comes up with these crazy schemes, and then he has to live them,” Dad’s side of the family would lament. Everyone was always taking shots at the dreamer.

But Mom wasn’t your typical, high-profile dreamer. She wasn’t a Cinderella. Cinderella, as did most fairy princesses of her time, dreamed of the day she would be rescued from her plight and taken away to live in a sumptuous castle where she would live happily ever after. Just because she was nice and pretty, she would be rescued.

Unlike Cinderella, Mom never asked for or expected handouts. All she wanted was a chance to work her way to a new station in life. Her dreams always ended with her and Dad (and often me) working our way to the next rung up the ladder.

I share this with you today because with the recent economic downturn and the accompanying malaise, I see far too many people who have the courage to dream, fail. After enduring ridicule from the people around them, they give up. Many simply settle. They take a job they absolutely despise because they need the work and then stay on for years. Or they close their eyes and imagine better times, but in order to reach them they do little more than buy a lottery ticket. They hold out for the mathematically impossible.

Or, perhaps worst of all, they stop dreaming. Instead, they come up with unimaginative plans that lead to marginal improvements. They assume that setting mini-goals will take them to their Valhalla, when, in truth, they need bigger hopes, bigger plans, and a bigger harness. Equally important, when they run into problems (and they will), they need to see setbacks not as evidence that dreaming is futile and silly, but as helpful feedback on what needs to change. In short, they need to dream, try, fail, make adjustments, and then dream again.

And so today (on my mother’s birthday) I honor her and all others who fight for their dreams, despite the naysayers and setbacks. I honor those who not only have the courage to dream, but also the energy to fight for it. I honor those who, despite the occasional loss, dare to create one more dream because, unlike most of us, they open their eyes wide enough to see the fruits of their past efforts—not just the hole in their backyard.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kerry Patterson is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.
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During this holiday season, we would like to share one of our favorite holiday Kerrying On articles and invite you to watch for opportunities to help those in need.

Over twenty years ago, I received the most amazing Christmas gift. Today I share it with you.

It was December of 1984 and my wife and children and I were eagerly shopping for a teenage boy we had never met. This particular shopping spree was part of a sub-for-Santa adventure we and four other families were undertaking. This was the third year in a row the gang of us had agreed to help a needy family (this year it was a mother, father, and five children) and we approached the task with our usual mix of joy and anxiety. Could we truly help someone? Would we be a blessing in their lives or would we disappoint them?

Two days later, we nervously gathered presents, food, and clothing, piled into our cars, and drove through a constant drizzle to a small house that sported the address given to us by the local relief agency. “It looks small,” said my oldest daughter as five cars chock-full of parents and children pulled up to the house.

Gingerly we carried the boxes to the front porch. (Later my oldest daughter revealed that you could see four noses pressed against the window as the family’s younger children looked on in excitement.) Not knowing exactly what to do, we eventually all gathered in the freezing rain and started to sing Christmas carols. At the end of the second carol, the father of the clan took pity on us, stepped out into the rain, and begged all of us to please come in. “In where?” I thought as I looked around at the crowd and figured if we all went inside, we’d explode the house.

Minutes later as we stood cheek to jowl, the father began to talk. He explained that he had undergone back surgery earlier that year and hadn’t been able to return to work quite yet. It hadn’t been an easy choice, but he had decided that if they were to have any presents for the kids, he’d have to call on one of the local agencies, which he did. He thanked us copiously for answering the call.

“Now, in turn for your presents, I offer you one of my own—in the form of a story,” he continued.

“Eight years ago when we had only two children and I was just getting started in my career, we were facing a rather meager Christmas. We bought my oldest son, who was eight at the time, and his sister who was four, two presents. One was a pair of socks, the other a toy. My son had asked for a basketball, and from the size and shape of his two packages under the tree, there would be no surprise for him that year.” The son, who was now a gawky teenager standing shyly in the hallway, nodded in agreement.

“One evening two days before Christmas I came home with an announcement.” The father continued. “A new family had moved in not far from our house, and since they didn’t have two pennies to rub together, they wouldn’t be having a Christmas. They had a boy and girl the same ages as our family and I was thinking that maybe we could share Christmas with them.

“‘We could each give them one of our two presents,’ my wife suggested as our two children looked on in suspicion.”

“Finally, after staring at his two presents under the tree for what seemed like ten minutes, my son walked over, picked up the package containing the basketball, and said, ‘I’ll share this one.’ Each of us then grabbed one of our two presents, put it in a box, and carried our gift down to our new neighbors who seemed very grateful.”

As he told the story I noticed that my own children were fixed on him, their eyes brimming with tears as they thought of how these people had sacrificed so dearly.

“Later that day,” the father continued to explain, “I received a phone call from my local church leader. It turned out that there were a few families in our little church group that didn’t have any money for Christmas that year. A group of generous people had put together several boxes of presents and food for the needy families. Since I was driving a rather large and beat-up station wagon that had a lot of hauling space, he asked if I would be so kind as to drive to the church on Christmas Eve, load up the wagon, and make the various deliveries. ‘Besides,’ my church leader explained, ‘your two young ones will get a kick out of playing Santa.’

“I immediately agreed to lend a hand. But I knew in so doing I was in trouble. I hung up the phone and explained to my family what I had committed to do, and then shared with them the challenge. We had spent all of our money on Christmas, and the station wagon was almost out of gas. We’d have to find a way to raise some cash to fill the gas tank to make the deliveries.”

“‘We could collect soda pop bottles,’ my daughter quickly suggested. That’s what she had seen her older brother do in order to raise a few pennies. This, of course, was at a time that if you retrieved a discarded pop bottle by the side of the road and took it to a local grocery store they’d give you two cents for it.

“So it was agreed. We bundled up against the wind and snow and all day long the day of Christmas Eve we hunted for bottles. Finally, just before we were due to make the deliveries, we cashed in the bottles, put a couple of gallons of gas into the old wagon, and drove over to the church.”

“As our church leader loaded box after box filled with beautifully wrapped presents into our dilapidated vehicle, my son and daughter looked on in wonder. They sniffed the air with a look of longing as he loaded in a carton containing freshly baked pies and a ham along with all the trimmings. They squished over to the edge of their seat as the boxes stacked one upon the other until our wagon was filled to bursting.”

“Our church leader handed me an envelope containing a list of the various names and addresses of the people we were to visit, and then thanked us profusely for helping with the deliveries. As he drove off I opened the envelope to see the extent of the task in front of us. The small piece of paper I found inside the envelope contained but one name and address. It was ours.”

As the humble man finished his story, those of us who had come to help his family were either openly crying or doing a poor job of holding back tears. I was completely humbled as I envisioned this sweet man and woman and their two children bracing against the wind and searching for bottles—doing their very best to help the needy.

What made the story all the more wonderful was that the gentleman telling it did his best to make the church leader and the other generous members of his congregation out to be the heroes—look how nice they had been to his family, he had explained, just as we were now being nice to them this year.

It had never occurred to the man we had come to help that as thoughtful as his church friends had been to him and his family, our motley sub-for-Santa gang looked on him and his children with a genuine sense of amazement. They were the ones who shared their Christmas. They were the ones who, as others drank cocoa by the fireplace or stirred fudge in the kitchen, trudged through frozen fields in a quest for two-cent treasures. They were the true heroes and didn’t even know it.

My family and I count this sweet experience as our favorite holiday gift. It’s a present that will live with us forever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kerry Patterson is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.
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Thirty years ago, after landing my first consulting job, I could hardly wait to get started. For years, I had studied how to change the world and now it was my turn to roll up my sleeves and actually do something. The goal of this particular project was to take an adversarial, punitive, and authoritarian corporate culture and turn it into a productive, team-oriented place. At least, that’s what the plant manager requested.

“And I want it soon!” the agitated manager told me over the phone. “Or heads are going to roll.”

As I drove to the airport on my way to the anxious manager’s factory, I couldn’t help but notice a bumper sticker sported by several of my neighbors. The popular sticker stated rather immodestly—”Irvine: Another Day in Paradise.” Several hours later, as I exited the Wayne County Airport on my way to visit the client, I noticed Detroit’s version of the home-town promotional slogan on a sweatshirt: “Detroit: Where the Weak Are Killed . . . and Eaten.”

Later that day, as I interviewed hourly employees, I got my first glimpse into the rather un-paradise-like nature of the company I was supposed to help fashion into a paragon of cooperation. When I asked the question “If you ran this place, what changes would you make?” the employees immediately started ridiculing their leaders. At one point, they told of a supervisor throwing a heavy ashtray through a plate-glass window and then chopping up a breaker box with a fire ax—you know, to get his team’s attention. Later, during that same interview, a rather animated employee explained that the ashtray-hurling supervisor’s direct reports eventually grew tired of his shenanigans and one Friday afternoon chased him out to his car. When he climbed on top of it for safety, they lit the car on fire!

Then things turned from scary to complicated. As I interviewed a group of supervisors from whence this ashtray thrower came, they (much to my surprise) seemed reasonable and rational—nothing like the slavering maniacs their direct reports had just described. In fact, they appeared rather pleasant. The supervisors did share one thing in common with their direct reports. They had a bone to pick with their own bosses, the superintendents who, in their words, were authoritarian monsters. Of course, when I met the superintendents, they seemed quite professional, and—you guessed it—they pretty much loathed their bosses, the managers.

As it turns out, everyone at this rather frightening factory blamed everyone else for their problems and everyone—based upon the unprofessional actions of their bosses—felt justified in their own counterproductive behaviors. Why? Because everyone deserved whatever you gave them. And this wasn’t a problem unique to this particular factory, city, or region. As my career has unfolded, I’ve run into similarly violent and reactive places all around the country.

Not everyone lights cars on fire, of course, but the idea of dealing back what you’ve been dealt is still widely shared. It seems one of the values reflected in today’s video games, TV shows, and movies has left its mark. All encourage revenge. For instance, the longest running TV show of my generation, started with the “bad guy” riding into town, getting off his horse, spitting on a nun, and pistol-whipping a schoolmarm. Then, for a full 55 minutes, the good guys sought revenge on that pistol-toting bad guy, who, as we all knew, deserved whatever he got. And to this day, this same troublesome theme continues on the screen.

I recently mentioned our seemingly insatiable thirst for revenge to my next-door neighbor and he chuckled softly and stated, “I have the same problem with my own children. They’ll be in the middle of a squabble, I’ll ask one of them what’s going on, and my oldest son will invariably come back with, ‘It all started when he hit me back!’”

“It all started when he hit me back!” What a clever encapsulation of a contemporary malaise. As long as others mistreat us, we can mistreat them right back. Because, well, they deserve it.

I’ve thought about this issue for quite some time, and as many of you know, it permeates our writing. For example, the principle of working on ourselves first from Crucial Conversations suggests we need to think less about exacting revenge on others and more about our own style under stress. Equally true, maybe we shouldn’t mirror the very behavior we loathe. Transforming others into villains and viewing ourselves as heroes also fuels the fires of getting even. In short, in both our training and books we teach that responding to violence with violence is a bad thing, and I believe we’ve made some progress. In fact, in that first factory where a supervisor wielded an ax, leaders learned to effectively handle high-stakes, emotional conversations, and over the next two years violence decreased significantly.

Today, I hope to take this message to a new audience: children. Actually, I’m hoping you’ll pass the message along for me. I know, asking a favor deviates quite a bit from your standard business newsletter, and writing something for children—why that’s virtually unheard of. But it’s my hope that if we can set kids on the right path while they’re still young, they’ll be better prepared for the unrelenting stream of invitations to violence that will most assuredly assault them as they turn on their TVs, play their video games, go to movies, and eventually show up at work.

So, with the children in mind, and in the spirit of the holiday season, I’ve written a rather Seussian children’s tale that I hope you’ll share with the young ones in your world. It’s not about mistletoe, snowmen, and the like, but apropos to the season of love and tranquility, it shares a message of peace—the kind of peace one creates through a healthy and loving response to how others treat us, even when they’re being naughty, not nice. The short (three minute) story is intended to be accompanied by pictures, but I haven’t arranged for the artwork yet. So for this holiday, I plan on reading it aloud to my grandchildren, sans illustrations. You might consider doing the same.

Download Story Here

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kerry Patterson is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations.
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The following article was first published on November 24, 2004.

As we embark on two months of holiday gatherings, many of us are wondering what it’ll take to survive the unavoidable conflicts that lie ahead. Friends and loved ones will gather around a cornucopia of recently harvested food and, despite their best efforts to avoid all things hostile, controversial topics will weasel their way into the conversation.

Here’s your common holiday fare. Dad denounces his firstborn for canceling out his vote in the latest election. Granny asks her grandniece why she’s dressed like a hussy—Halloween has already passed. Mom plays the martyr as she tries to guilt-trip anyone who walks through the kitchen into working. She’s been serving up heaping spoonfuls of guilt along with the feast for years.

Eventually, two or more loved ones end up in a contentious debate. What starts out as a pleasant gathering with relatives wassailing each other left and right, transforms into a scene from A Jerry Springer Holiday. And as a result (to put a twist on Jim Croce’s famous tune), we think about the gatherings that lie ahead and we all come down with: “The steadily depressin’, low down mind messin’, celebratin’ holiday blues.”

In fact, 85 percent of the readers we recently polled stated that their family holiday gatherings include at least one heated argument where a valued relationship suffers. Rather than strengthening family bonds with each holiday gathering, one more link in the chain of family unity is further corroded. I speak from experience.

As a boy, I looked forward to each Thanksgiving and Christmas season more than any other time of year. It was a time when I got to sit next to my brother, dad, grandfather, and uncle and watch football. I don’t remember much about the games, but I can still smell the faint aroma of granddad’s nickel cigar and feel the afterglow of the camaraderie that enveloped each event. At dinner, the men would compete for who could load up their plate the highest while the women mockingly chided them for courting a coronary. Of course, nothing earth shaking happened at these gatherings. I guess if the world looked in on these events they would think they were sappy. I thought they were wonderful. We loved and respected each other and it showed.

So why was it that when my beloved family members met in full force for the last time (before kids married and moved away and grandparents passed on), I had to be such a moron? I was now an adult fresh out of grad school where I learned all about the importance of theoretical rigor and solid methodology. So when my cousin mentioned that she was “into” subliminal learning, I couldn’t help myself. Not only did she believe that if she played audio tapes while she slept her brain would magically take it all in (something that had been discredited years earlier), but she also believed that if she listened to her favorite guru yammer on about who knows what, she would be healed.

No sooner had she announced to the crowd that she was speeding down the subliminal highway to sound mental health than I laid into her arguments like a pit bull on a pork chop. Unfortunately, her claims couldn’t be disproved. Her arguments always ended with, “but it works for me.” She was a master at ducking scientific inquiry. For instance, years later she moved a chair in her living room to “alter the room’s karma,” and sure enough she was “back on the road to psychic balance”—or so she claimed.

Not being able to discredit my cousin’s arguments, I pointed out that the one-room-school over a garage where she currently studied family therapy wasn’t a school at all—it was a loosely-coupled gathering of flakes and charlatans. I offered up this heart-felt remark to no effect. In fact, my cousin merely smiled knowingly. I hated that smile. It hit me like a punch to the forehead.

So I punched back. Quickly I moved from lobbing cheap shots to launching a full-fledged personal attack. As I raised my voice, the spirit in the room changed from merriment to discord. My tone clanked against the pleasant background music and gentle chatter. All by myself I defiled the very spirit of the holidays. All by myself I upset the delicate balance of the successful family shindig. And hot dang, I was proud.

My cousin rose to the fight, matching insult with insult. Soon we were one more casualty in the book of failed holiday gatherings—all because of one thing. I just had to be right. I just had to set the record straight. I just had to attack the faulty details. And then for years to come, instead of apologizing for taking a sacred family tradition and sullying it with ill will, I acted as if what I had done was somehow noble.

That’s right. I was just doing my part to defend sound logic and thinking. Others could listen politely while my cousin raised idiocy to an art form, but I wouldn’t take it. I’d challenge her outlandish claims and if I hurt her feelings in the process or dealt the family gathering a death blow, that’s the price I’d pay for defending scientific rigor. All great things come at a price.

This was my story and I stuck to it for two decades.

So, here’s why 85 percent of the people we recently polled experience discord right along with their annual mug of eggnog. Every family gathering that has been brought to its knees by a heated and unsuccessful confrontation contains two or more participants who not only refuse to apologize for their role in the debacle, but who justify their mean-spirited and selfish attacks by explaining that they were merely defending a core value—and how wrong can that be?

Dad wants nothing more than to help sonny-boy come to his senses. That’s why he tries to set him straight. Granny wants her grandniece to quit sending the wrong message with her scandalous attire—so she won’t attract the wrong guys. Mom just wants some credit for all that she does for everyone—is that asking too much?

Let me break from the pack by making a pact. This year I’m not going to sacrifice family unity no matter what anyone says—or no matter how important the value I think I’m defending. Should a cousin announce that her health has greatly improved since she’s started eating a bushel of pine cones for breakfast while spinning hubcaps on her thumbs, I won’t laugh out loud. I’ll ask why and then actually listen. And if I still have a different view, I’ll express it in a pleasant and caring way.

Here’s my plan. I’m going to start every discussion by asking what I really want. Does everyone really have to believe what I believe? Do I really have to win each and every point?

One thing’s for sure—I don’t want to turn every gathering into an event where you can’t talk about anything substantive; I just want to talk about interesting and important issues in a way that doesn’t violate the spirit of the holidays. I want my own children to enjoy the sweet taste of healthy family discourse, good will, and genuine camaraderie. And to keep on track, I’ll continually ask myself: “What is it that I really want?” That’s the plan.

Who’s with me?