Got stage fright? Forget the stage. Take it straight to the streets.

Thanks, Ken, for pointing us to this.

Susan Boyle, Unexpected Champion Of Dreams

For all of us who feel frowsy and frumpy…

For all of us who think people are rooting against us because we’re not cool, or fashionable, or beautiful…

For all of us with dreams that will not die…

Susan Boyle dreamed a dream.

She appeared on the stage of Britain’s Got Talent as the epitome of the middle aged, quirky housewife neighbor lampooned so often on the BBC. By the end of the opening line of her song, she had Simon Cowell swept away.

Yes, that Simon Cowell. Mr. Testy from American Idol.

He is transported by the angelic voice of this stunning hero; and all the audience is transported, too, as their cynical chuckling is squelched by their awe.

Listening to her sent a shiver up my spine and gave me goose bumps.

Enjoy your elation.

The witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth were referring to their potion when they said Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Their heavy, solid metal cauldron could withstand the heat. But throw it into a glassblowers’ furnace, where glass is kept molten at 2100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the cauldron really would bubble.

Watching glassblowers work in their industrial studio invokes more than a passing thought of magic. They create pieces that are translucent and colorful, majestic yet fragile. They balance the classical elements, combining earth, air, and fire, while keeping water at bay. It’s modern-day alchemy.

The Alchemists’ Beginnings

Clifton Crofford, Kevin McGehee, and Mark Alexander wrangle the elements at CMA Glassblowing Studio. They’ve had their own studio for about four years in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They trained together for many years at the glassblowing hot shop at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).

None of them entered college planning to study glassblowing. Two of them were studying graphic art and the other was studying architecture. Each of their degree plans called for an art elective. Glassblowing was interesting. Working with fire sounded very cool. Turns out they were right.

Playing With The Elements

In a hot shop, molten glass is kept in a furnace that is always heated to around 2100 degrees. Since most things melt at that temperature, the basin for holding the glass is made of a special ceramic. Glassblowers reach into the furnace with long poles that have holes through the middle for blowing. They swirl the amount of molten glass they need onto the pole and start working it.

Working it includes spinning it, blowing air into the center for expanding the shape, and expanding it while the glass is in a mold to give it a certain shape like fluting. As the glass being worked starts to cool, the glass artist puts it back into the middle of a smaller furnace called a glory hole for a few seconds to heat it back up and then continues working it. Glory holes are kept close to 1600 degrees Fahrenheit. In front of each glory hole, support frames are mounted on metal tables with wheels on tracks that are attached to the floor. The pole with the glass is laid across the support frame so the glassblower can move the pole deeper into the furnace and pull it out by rolling the table on the track.

Cool Tools

Glassblowers use metal tools on the molten glass to help give it shape while they spin it. They use heavy shears for cutting the ends of strands of the fluid glass and other tools for twisting and shaping the strands. They have small sheets of glass that look paper-thin which they can heat and add to a project when they need handles, rings, rims, or color. These steps are done as quickly as possible because it’s important to keep the glass from cooling. If it cools too quickly it cracks, but if it heats too much it loses the shape it has taken.

And they get to a use a blowtorch. It’s a large diameter, high intensity gas torch that blasts like a flamethrower. It’s used for heating up a piece being worked when it’s not feasible to return it to the glory hole.

Dramatic To The End

Obviously a hot shop stays very hot, even with great ventilation. Near the furnaces, where the glassblowers work, it gets well over 100 degrees and often over 120. The heat causes the glass artists to sweat, introducing another dangerous element to the mix. A single drop of water on a tiny portion of a piece being formed will cause a small crack. A crack makes the whole piece unstable so a single drop can ruin it.

Pieces that make it successfully through the twisting, blowing, shaping, forming, and clipping are put in a special cool-down box. It starts around 910 degrees and goes through a ten-hour cycle to drop to room temperature. Only after the end of the cool-down cycle will the glassblower be able to tell if a piece is stable and whole. Even the colors may change slightly during cool-down. This means after the blasting flames and the sweating and the tiring physical work, there is still mystery and uncertainty. The artist doesn’t get to find out until the next day exactly how each piece turned out.

Hooked

The glass hot shop at UTA worked its alchemy on Cliff, Kevin, and Mark during their introductory classes. Their elemental interests and talents were refined and clarified and their distractions started to burn away. Each returned to the hot shop for more classes and eventually shifted his focus in school to glasswork. Through years of training at the university they got to know each other well. When it was time for them to set up their own operation, they went into business together.

UTA had just upgraded its hot shop when Cliff, Kevin, and Mark were ready to set up their own studio. Since they helped with the renovation at UTA they knew how to put together a hot shop. They were able to build their own equipment, including a cool-down box made out of a converted cooler from a convenience store. They started with an empty shell, built it out to install the furnaces, and made everything they could by themselves. That saved them a lot of money.

The Artists’ Model For Business

Early on they focused on creating some pieces that were functional but artistic and others that were sculptural and artistic with no specific function. Their business model was to sell their work through high-end galleries. They were seeing steady progress for a while, until the economy stalled. High-end sales were down about twenty-five percent this past Christmas.

This disrupted their long-term plans in a big way. The guys work at the hot shop in the morning and have other jobs in the afternoon and evening to help pay their bills. The shop doesn’t generate enough profit to provide a full-time salary for each of them but they had been moving closer to that point. The collapse of high-end artistic sales got them to reconsider their business model.

The Entrepreneurs’ Model For Art

They started focusing more on custom work. For example, they have created pieces used by exclusive retailer Neiman-Marcus in their jewelry departments. They partner with large-scale designers who want sculptural glass for buildings. This allows them to create enormous and elaborate structural pieces without incurring the cost of installing or insuring the pieces. They meet with the designer, get the basic guidelines, agree on a price, and then get to create.

They are partnering with another designer by creating long organic pieces that will hang from a gigantic chandelier. They are making some smaller artistic pieces for a colleague to use in her booth at an exhibit. The blown pieces will add balance to her cut glass work. They are also creating sconces and fixture covers for a lighting company. They were chosen to do that because they are able to replicate shapes that are brought to them, including other glass pieces.

Elements of Success

This model has been effective in two significant ways. First, focusing on custom work has brought in more immediate revenue. Second, they’re able to spend their time doing what they love doing and are best at: blowing glass. The reputation they are building is based on their exquisite work with glass. They won’t have to venture into high-end art sales or architectural installation or starting a lighting fixture company to be successful.

Finding a way to keep their focus on the glasswork has energized Cliff, Kevin, and Mark. They’re able to see how they will grow their success through this model until the studio provides a comfortable living for all of them. They’ve discovered the power of partnering with people who are good at sales, marketing, and project management, which would be distractions if they had to do them. They are free to work from their gifts, talents, and passions, which are the elements of real success.

The sixth chapter of How To Talk So Kids Will Listen is the final chapter introducing a category of skills and is the final unit in the training series. It’s titled “Freeing Children From Playing Roles.” I like to think of it as freeing children from limiting their lives into little boxes or deep, narrow ruts.

The problems with expanding children’s occasional patterns of behavior into a role may be pretty obvious, but they’re important enough to merit an overview. First, children are growing and developing and changing rapidly, but labeling them usually doesn’t acknowledge that fact. So the eight-year-old girl who has started learning about cleaning up her supplies and work area at school might still be regarded by her family as the five-year-old who leaves toys all over the house. When her mother says “She treats every room in the house like it’s her closet” or “This one was born to be rich; she expects a maid to pick up after her,” her daughter’s growing maturity is ignored and discounted.

Second, labels and roles become self-fulfilling. A child who hears that she’s lazy, or that he’s hard-headed, will start to assume that’s how he or she will act. Thoughts like “That’s how they think I am so it must be true” or “That’s what they think of me so I might as well act that way” make the label true by default. Children rise and sink to the level of our expectations. They may not hit the highest standard we set, but they are elevated when we truly believe they can accomplish great things and their achievement goes up. They can fall to the level of our negative expectations much more easily, not only meeting but often exceeding them.

The third glaring problem with labels and roles is the implied criticism that belittles the child and diminishes self-worth. There’s not much about “hard-headed” or “lazy” or “sloppy” or “forgetful” that feels good to a child.

Faber and Mazlish have many suggestions in the chapter for interrupting the pattern of expanding occasional behavior into roles with negative labels. One is useful to parents ready to make a change. We can consciously and intentionally look for opportunities to point out when our child’s behavior disproves the label. For example, with a child who has been put in the “lazy” role, we look for opportunities to comment on initiative and effort. We say, “Heather, I noticed you made your bed and put up your toys after breakfast. That’s what I call diligence.” If you think your child doesn’t understand the word diligence, just say it with excitement and enthusiasm and see how quickly she figures it out or asks what it means.

Another recommendation they give is to help break the cycle when your child has internalized a negative role and consistently sees himself or herself that way. Parents become a living scrapbook and historian, able to call on memories that refute the negative label. John says, “I’m too clumsy to be good at any sport.” His dad reminds him how careful he was helping with a woodworking project and how he rides his bike for hours at a time. Dad’s not arguing or disagreeing, which John can easily discount. He’s providing real evidence that John knows is true, and he’s doing it with love and respect which stand as champions against the negative words John thinks about himself.

Have I Mentioned I Love This Book?

Following the training units on the six areas of improving your relationship with your children through new skills, Faber and Mazlish include a chapter that pulls the skills together for more complex situations. They respond to questions mailed in from parents over several years. They take on some pretty tough situations and give examples of applying these skills with challenging kids.

This book and the system it describes are the best starting point for parents wanting to improve their interactions with their children. The system respects children’s developmental needs, strengthens parents’ communication skills, and nurtures relationships between parents and their children. It lays the foundation for life-long character in children. Other parenting books and systems are good, but none is as heart-focused, comprehensive, practical, and effective as this.

The difference is the spirit of Dr. Haim Ginott, the child psychologist who trained and inspired Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. They shared his passion for mentoring children. He passed along his commitment to honoring and valuing children. They soaked in his teaching, applied it, lived it, and found clear and direct words to explain it to others. The result is an engaging, easy-to-read book that is both simple and profound.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable: be honest and frank anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

We all have a face we wear in public. Some philosophers and psychologists refer to this as an act or a façade because it’s meant to show people what you want them to see and hide some of your less likeable qualities.

The façade changes depending on the situation for most of us. We might be very friendly and try to look interested in the details of a fellow churchgoer’s recent experience. We might be focused on fun, joking and teasing with our teammates and opponents in the bowling league. We try to look knowledgeable and professional when we talk to clients.

But as leaders we feel a unique pressure to look competent and together and are often on guard against anyone seeing our weaknesses. This can dictate that we have the “leader façade” in every situation if we think there’s a slight chance one of our team members will be present – or even if a friend or family member of a team member might be present. Boy does it get tiring!?

The common misconception is that maintaining an appearance of being together and in charge will give us status and power. We have information available to us to see that isn’t true but we’re reluctant to use it. When we see a leader who always looks calm and competent we tend to think we’re seeing an act. When we have a leader in a social group, like a volunteer organization or a church, who is always pleasant and always competent, we feel distant.

We are all more inclined to follow someone when we connect with that person’s heart. We can’t easily connect with a heart when it’s hidden behind a well-heeled façade. We connect with someone when we identify with that person. We are inspired to follow someone when we see flaws and foibles plus strength and intention and character to rise above them. We are especially inspired to follow someone who has a powerful vision that flows from his or her heart and resonates with us. There is no resonating happening in a façade.

The true power of a leader comes from authenticity. It comes from being a full and complete person who knows himself or herself and is learning to be comfortable with all those facets. It comes from being comfortable with one’s own limitations and quirks, and from having the empathy to extend grace and acceptance and forgiveness to others for their limitations and quirks. It comes from sharing a real path of struggle and failure and success which others can emulate. It does not come from presenting an untrue picture of success and competence that denies human nature.

I can remember staff meetings with our child care and preschool teachers where we spoke from the heart about our vision for the center and what we wanted it to be for the children and their parents. When we were honest about our limitations, whether they were financial or based on a lack of information in a certain area or our inability to “do it all,” the magic happened. Our staff members who shared our vision wanted to be part of it. They looked at how they could get training or made suggestions for doing things on a tight budget and offered to give more of their time and effort.

When we admitted our limitations, we opened the door for them to become powerful.

And it will always be so. Other people will not have the opportunity to extend us grace or compassion or help or guidance until we admit our flaws and weaknesses. And most people are much more inclined to step up and improve a situation through their effort and involvement than they are to follow an unblemished façade of perfection.

Making authenticity a priority has obvious benefits for your psychological health and your spiritual balance. It gives you focus to make sure you don’t over-schedule yourself with too many activities. It helps you establish your priorities and stick with them. But it also brings an unexpected benefit.

Living an authentic life means taking charge of your goals and the standards you set for success. It means letting go of concerns about status, which can be a huge drain on resources and a huge pressure on you.

Status goals may push you to seek promotions to get more responsibility and higher pay. Authentic goals may free you to see that you enjoy working directly with or for clients but you don’t enjoy managing people.

Status goals may have you striving to afford the European luxury car. Authentic goals may free you to be content with a late model used American or Japanese car.

Status goals may tell you the older boat you have should be replaced with a new, more powerful jet boat. Authentic goals may help you realize you go boating so rarely it works better for you to sell your boat and rent one occasionally with a group of friends.

Status goals may convince you that you need a graduate degree to be prepared to start a part-time small business as a contractor or consultant. Authentic goals may show you the path to develop your expertise in a more suitable field through your passion and natural curiosity.

Status goals may pressure you to trade up to the larger house in the newer neighborhood. Authentic goals may help you see that paying off your mortgage more quickly and then investing the equivalent of a mortgage payment will bring you more financial freedom and peace.

Status goals may have you going with friends every week to the newest movie theater paying top dollar for tickets to the latest movies. Authentic goals may have you planning which movies you actually want to see and choosing to see them for a discount at matinee times or at older theaters.

The money, time, effort, and other resources you expend pursuing your authentic goals will feel like a good value, not like a huge sacrifice. The money, time, effort, and other resources you expend pursuing status goals will often feel wasted.

You can’t get enough of what you don’t really need. It’s in the U2 song Stuck In A Moment. It’s also in a lot of the literature on addiction treatment, so much so that I can’t recall where I first heard it, although my best guess is from John Bradshaw.

When you pursue things that don’t really suit your authentic self, you experience scarcity and feel deprived. When you pursue things that align with your authentic self, you feel abundant.

That’s a liberating idea.

Elephant Burgers is usually about different ways to approach large or ongoing projects and break them into achievable steps. It’s about accomplishment. But what happens when something is important to do, but it isn’t a project to complete?

My son has a study unit at school called “The Basic Needs of Man.” We’re all familiar with the concept. For survival you need food, clothing, and shelter.

Shelter can be a huge project, like building a house. Our neighbor had her small frame house demolished a year and a half ago to build a larger brick home. After many delays, she last said she hoped to move in at the end of March. They still aren’t finished. But when they are she will have a beautiful new home. The project will be over and shelter will only require occasional tasks, like maintenance and cleaning.

Clothing can be a project, too, like sewing a shirt or pair of pants. Even shopping for clothes can be a project if you have to choose a wardrobe for a new situation, such as snow skiing or professional speaking. But between episodes of shopping or sewing, clothing just requires small tasks, like washing and ironing or trips to the dry cleaner.

Food is rarely a project, except for special events. It requires some planning and preparation to make at home, adding a stop to your list to bring home take-out, or scheduling time and allotting money for eating out.

We pay even less attention to water usually, but it’s a much more immediate need than food. When we get thirsty in a public place we look for a water fountain. If we’re running errands, usually in our cars, we can stop at a store to buy something in a paper cup or a plastic bottle. At home we just open the fridge or get out a glass and fill it up.

We have a need that is more compelling even than water. It’s air. We have to breathe all the time. We can’t go very long without it. But unless we’re scuba diving or launching into space we don’t think about having air with us. We don’t even think about breathing most of the time. We just do it.

Think about the things that are important to you that parallel physical survival. These would be things that you need for spiritual health and emotional health. They’re things we easily bump out of the schedule because we don’t feel the immediate thirst, or hunger, or cold.

Our physical bodies are good at stating needs. Our emotional and spiritual selves are much less direct. We suddenly realize we are very bored and disconnected, or very lonely, or drained of energy, and are surprised by it until we think about how we have treated ourselves.

Your emotional and spiritual selves need regular attention and care, like your body needs water and air. You need quiet time, time for connecting, time for challenges that cause you to stretch and grow, time to grieve and let go, time to rejoice, and time to explore inner stillness. Unless you’re focusing on a spiritual journey, none of these things are likely to be on your schedule.

But you need them like you need water and air. They’re just not as demanding as the physical needs. We have to remember to schedule time each day for drinking in and for breathing in what we need emotionally and spiritually. It’s key to good self-care.

This month we pause in the series of profiles to present an article adapted from an upcoming e-book for people considering creative career choices and entrepreneurship.

Throughout most of human history, the work people did was determined by survival. Hunters and gatherers hunted and gathered. As people learned to cultivate crops and raise animals some gave up the nomadic lifestyle and settled down to establish villages and eventually cities. Although there were a few artisans and craftsmen, most of the work was focused on providing food for survival.

Before the founding of the United States the colonies were developed mostly by people who wanted land of their own to have a farm. This meant that early in the history of the nation, most people were self-employed or small business owners. Even the merchant traders and the specialty craftsmen like woodworkers and smiths worked for themselves. Few people had a job where someone else employed them. The farmhand worked with a goal in mind of having his own farm some day. The apprentice looked forward to becoming a master and having his own clients. What changed?

The Beginning Of The Job

Jobs as we know them were developed during the industrial revolution. Mass production in factories started to replace individual craftsmen. Factory owners paid a survival wage and were able to find plenty of people living in poverty willing to trade their freedom and put up with oftentimes terrible conditions for the promise of steady income. Factories created a demand for workers centralized in cities. People left rural areas and even moved from poorer countries to industrializing countries for the chance to have a job.

As more factories opened, the idea of large corporations running businesses in multiple sites evolved. Local small business owners were replaced by store managers and regional managers. Small-town doctors were replaced by satellite clinics of a hospital or larger medical group. Blacksmiths were replaced by local hardware stores, and those were replaced by Home Depot.

Comfortable In the Job-Box Rut

Improvements in technology and decades of fighting for workers’ rights have improved the situation for workers drastically. Today the conditions in the workplace are not so much terrible as annoying, and the level of compensation and additional “benefits” makes the notion of sacrificing freedom for a job almost benign. Just a few decades into this new paradigm, many people can’t imagine earning a living in any way other than having a job working for someone else.

Today, less than one hundred and fifty years since a time of high self-employment in the U.S., most people work for someone else and are terrified of starting their own business or trying self-employment. The ideas of self-determination and possibility that defined the entrepreneurial spirit of the past have waned. Only a few people value and pursue them, and they are considered unrealistic dreamers while they chase their dreams and the lucky privileged few when they achieve their dreams.

The expectation that a person can create his or her own destiny has been replaced with the expectation that each person should look for a good job and try to keep it. Growing up we were told, “Get a good job with a good company and keep working your way up.” This message told us a good company would provide great benefits, regular pay raises and promotions, job security, and a comfortable pension or other retirement program. Even though reality has taught us for over twenty years that the pattern isn’t reliable and is no longer realistic, lots of people still cling to the message and find their comfort and security in working for someone else. It’s a recurring theme in human civilization: we give up freedom for security, especially false security.

The End Of An Era

A couple of important trends are helping change things. First, people are living and working longer. Instead of dedicating twenty-five to thirty years to one company, retiring, and then passing on, people are sticking around! A worker can spend twenty or twenty-five years in a field and become bored with it. With plenty of productive years left, a lot of people see that as a mid-career point. They wonder if they can make big changes and do something more enjoyable or rewarding, or if they’re stuck working in the same field until they can afford to retire.

A related trend that amplifies the problems of a longer work life is the collapse of job security. Companies cut employees quickly to try to keep a profit margin. Acquisitions and mergers save companies money by reducing duplicated tasks and centralizing operations, which means “redundant” positions are cut. Entire industries are changing rapidly or disappearing as technology streamlines some positions and creates others. We are living longer, working longer, and having to find a series of jobs in a series of industries in order to support ourselves.

Another big event changing work habits and options is the technology revolution. With worldwide communication, computers, and the internet, people can provide a service for a company from their homes or a location near their homes but far from the company. Providing valuable work to a company doesn’t always mean being an employee. This frees people up to provide a similar service to multiple companies as a contractor or consultant.

More important, it counters the centralizing trend of industrialization and corporate growth. One individual can develop a product and have it produced and shipped out by partnering with one or two other small businesses. With internet-based marketing, they don’t need the huge distribution outlets or corporate retail locations to begin selling their items. Control is being returned to individuals little by little. A dramatic change in work is happening.

The Return Of Freedom

People can develop a small specialty business in a narrow niche and reach enough people to stay in business by reaching out to the world through a virtual store on the internet. They can produce useful information products, including printed books or workbooks, e-books, and audio recordings, and sell them along with partners on the internet. People who advise, guide, and train others, such as corporate consultants, executive coaches, and life coaches, can live in a smaller town or travel frequently but still “be at work” through teleconferencing and video conferencing.

More than any other time in history, an individual person is in a strong position to find a type of work, or even a few different types of work, that feel like a comfortable and natural fit to their gifts and way of seeing the world. They can choose things that speak to their passions and bring them excitement, happiness, and even joy. Developing an entrepreneurial spirit is one of the highest expressions of personal growth and development. Contrariwise, it is often an unexpected result for those who commit themselves to personal growth and development but aren’t thinking about work or careers in the beginning.

Leaving The Rut

Since so many people start out on a career path with the message of choosing something safe, something secure, and something where a corporation provides the paycheck and the benefits, it’s no wonder lots of them are getting restless after a few years. Most made a general career choice in high school or early in college, before they even knew their own gifts, talents, and passions well. Even then a lot of them were sidetracked by circumstances and wound up in a career that’s not even connected to the choices they made. It’s no wonder so many feel like they “settled” and missed out on choosing a career they would really enjoy.

When people start to open the boxes where they locked away their dreams, they often hear dire warnings of failure and bankruptcy and homelessness for those who try to start their own business or simply be self-employed. Even though those warnings come from people who never followed their dreams and don’t have personal experience with self-employment, it’s scary enough to persuade a lot of people to cram their dreams back in the box and lock it tight. Over time, most of us can hardly remember those dreams or hear the connection between our dreams and our souls.

People who are frustrated in their current work and ready for a new challenge or a big change or a fresh beginning are usually estranged from their dreams. They usually know what they don’t want, but a lot of them don’t really know what they do want. Those who have a better connection to their dreams usually don’t have a clear plan or support from their friends and family, and they can’t see how to make it happen. But most of us just have a distant, long-ago memory of getting excited by the idea of having fun doing work we would love.

Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness

That’s not a bad place to start. In fact, people who have a notion they could do work they enjoy and find meaningful are probably way ahead of people researching business opportunities or work-from-home options just to earn more money or get away from a frustrating job. The latter are often reacting in the moment and may trade one frustrating circumstance for another, or worse, wind up losing a lot of money following a questionable path due to desperation or greed. In the face of that frustration they give up and resign themselves to the rut. Some give up their plans for change for much smaller reasons, often because their immediate circumstances change just enough for them to accept the golden handcuffs of servitude.

Those who start with a desire to enjoy their work and make it part of a more meaningful and more authentic life have a sustaining motivation to take the steps towards long-term change. They value their lives and have a long-term vision of how they will be. They exercise their liberty to take charge of their circumstances and get control of their destinies. They seek the ultimate expression of a human life on earth, discovering and developing and sharing their gifts talents, and passions – that is, pursuing happiness.

“You are wonderful!”

“That’s the most amazing project I’ve ever seen!”

“You’re the best assistant division manager in the whole company!”

Are you buying that?

Neither are your kids. They hear exaggerated praise and dismiss it. They hear vague praise and think it sounds hollow.

In chapter 5 of How To Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk, titled “Praise,” Faber and Mazlish recommend using specific descriptions of children’s behavior and their accomplishments. Specific descriptions are by definition not exaggerated, so they are not easily dismissed. They are not empty or hollow because they are rich in content.

As an example, when four-year-old Bryson shows mom his picture, she doesn’t say, “Wow, honey! It’s beautiful! You’re such a good little artist.” Instead, she describes what she sees. “I see green here, that looks like grass. And that’s a house with a chimney. The sun is bright yellow and you put a smile on it. I see people playing. When I look at this picture I feel happy.” Bryson knows his mother is paying attention because she is describing in detail. His work and effort are being affirmed. When she adds her emotional response to his work, he knows he has connected with her. His effort is recognized clearly and is truly appreciated.

Faber and Mazlish teach an additional powerful technique for giving effective praise that summarizes the description in one or two words. That short summary is an affirmation of a quality that is developing in the child. It is proof that he or she is on a good path towards social and personal responsibility in adulthood. It can help a child undo a negative self-perception and see himself or herself as capable and effective in an area where others have given criticism. It also becomes a touchstone the child can recall when doubts or insecurities arise.

It works like this. Jenny is in the habit of not doing things until reminded. Her second-grade teacher sees it as a pattern and looks for instances where she can give accounts of Jenny not taking care of her responsibilities. At home, mom and dad have fallen into criticizing her, too, asking her, “Why can’t you remember things?” or “What’s it going to take for you to do this without being reminded?” Jenny is developing a self-image of being forgetful and ineffective, and probably helpless.

Jenny’s dad, deciding to apply this approach, looks for an opportunity. It’s Jenny’s chore to help set the table, and one night she starts when mom announces dinner will be in five minutes. She not only puts out plates, silverware, and glasses, she asks her mom what kind of serving utensils to put out. Her dad says, “Jenny, I saw that you started your chore without a reminder tonight. You put out the plates, the silverware, and the glasses. You even put out the serving utensils.” That part is the description. The summary that follows has the power to go deeply into her heart and change how she sees herself. Dad says, “I saw initiative and consideration.”

This technique is very similar to a skill used in professional coaching called acknowledgment. A coach offers a client an acknowledgment by speaking to a quality of strength the client has which he or she can tap to accomplish challenging goals. The coach says, “I know this might be a difficult week with family getting together and old conflicts coming up, but I know you have the wisdom and compassion to stay out of old patterns.” That resonates in the part of the client that is strong and capable and gives confidence to take on the challenge. As parents, we build up those places of strength and confidence in our children when we affirm the qualities we see develop in them.

For a related article on praise and self-esteem, click here to visit Parenting By Strengths.