Holidays are times of great loving and loneliness and we often don’t know who is experiencing which. For many it is a bit of both.

For us all this can be a prime time for kindness, sometimes by sharing what we have.

And kindness is often unspoken. “An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. At another time, Emerson wrote, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”

“You may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went, sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as you go through life, you’ll find—you’re never sorry that you were kind,” said Herbert Prochnow. There’s a French proverb on the wall of my study, “Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble.”

Authentic praise is an extension of kindness. Whatever we praise we encourage to flourish. Whatever we criticize or “simply” snub goes deeper and lasts longer.

Each moment we choose our emotional response. We choose where to put our attention, emotion, and intention. Emotions are energy. So, look to someone’s positive intent, especially when it appears she may have none.

Even though after his death his wife probably disagreed with how he displayed some of his “kindness” on the road, Charles Kuralt wrote, “The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.”

“Keep what is worth keeping. And with the breath of kindness blow the rest away,” suggests English novelist, Dinah Mulock Craik. Here’s to making more opportunities to play, laugh, celebrate, and act together in cultivating kindness as life’s genuine “keeper.”

Life contains few absolutes, and one of those few is that kindness usually cultivates connection, something we yearn for in a time-pressed, ear-to-the- cell-phone, relationship-diminished culture. After all, the heart can be our strongest muscle if we exercise it regularly. Yet being kind is not a guarantee of safety from hurt — nothing offers that fail-safe comfort.

“Kindness and intelligence don’t always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships,” wrote Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in an article for McCall’s magazine way back in 1975.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares,” wrote Henri Nouwen in Out of Solitude.

Years ago from my college classmate, Alasi Perdanan, I heard a Persian proverb, “With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair.”

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate,” wrote Albert Schweitzer. “He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love,” wrote the Greek religious leader, Saint Basil.

“Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom,” wrote Theodore Isaac Rubin in “One to One.”

“Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart” said English chemist Humphrey Davy.

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop that makes it run over.

So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over,” once wrote the Scottish lawyer and biographer, James Boswell.

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness,” wrote columnist Ellen Goodman.

From an artist’s perspective, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, “The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.”

Willa Cather believed that “When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason has left them.”

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution, “Kahlil Gibran reminds us.

Ultimately, “kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not,” noted Dr. Samuel Johnson. Albeit unevenly, this holiday, I am attempting to practice giving what may be the most nourishing and priceless present and by now you can probably guess what that is.

Your thoughts on this?

Odd things can happen when hanging out with those who don’t act right, like you. I got unexpected insights when, with two friends, I walked through the Steins Collection of paintings by Matissse, Picasso and other avant-garde painters in bohemian Paris.

In most every gallery room one friend would sit on the bench in the middle of the gallery, then casually look down. I didn’t understand at first. He was deep in thought, I surmised at first. Yet actually he was closely observing the shoes people were wearing, and there was a wild variety in this art-loving crowd.

Following his eyes I saw footwear as diverse as laced up-to-mid-thigh, purple velvet boots to topless sandals. They must have been glued to the soles of the woman’s feet.

Otherwise I might not have noticed that one doesn’t see many shoes in these paintings. Faces appear more often.  Yet, when looking at a Picasso, my friend was immediately reminded of  shoes he’d seen just before we’d entered the museum.

Meanwhile my other friend would describe the emotions he saw in faces in the paintings, and on people around us, commenting on their possible personalities. As you probably anticipated by now, what my friends saw  — and did not see  –  depended on the lens through which they viewed the world. One friend is a shoe designer, visiting from Milan. The other is a trial lawyer who is accustomed to sizing up clients, judges, witnesses and potential jurors. Sharing that experience through their eyes was a considerably richer, more multi-faceted experience. In fact, when we continued our lively conversation over coffee in the adjacent café, two pediatricians at a nearby table, in town for conference, joined in the conversation.

Discover Lessons for Not Living a Narrow Life

Forget passive entertainment and learning. Would you like to live a more adventuresome life where you:

• Stumble across new ideas that dovetail with the life you want to lead yet didn’t realize it until you experienced “scenes” you want to repeat?

• Attract serendipitous opportunities?

• Have meaningful conversations with acquaintances that sometimes become friends?

• Create your own fun with others?

Here are some lessons I’m slow in learning yet that have made life more fascinating

1.  Overcome Attention Blindness

We tend to see life through the lens of our work and life experiences.  That means we miss a lot. “As long as we focus on the object we know, we will miss the new one we need to see,” says Cathy Davidson, author of Now You See it.

2.  See How Differences Can Spur Fresh Insights and Innovation

One fun way to overcome that blindness is to share new experiences with individuals quite different than you in work, life experience, temperament and values.  The color commentary you share as you see that art exhibit together, or prototype a new product or collectively plan an event or place can broaden the landscape you see in the moment and for the rest of your lives.

3.  Speak to the Glue of Greater  Adventure or Accomplishment

Even better, if you share a sweet a spot of mutual interest in the activity you and your colleagues may nudge each other into staying connected and even co-creating something new.  That sweet spot can be strong glue for your group. As The Difference author, Scott E. Page, and Group Genius author Keith Sawyer both discovered, a small, diverse group can collectively innovate better than a team of of individuals with more similarities than differences.   If  my two friends and I had realized that we  were all fascinated by design and human behavior we could have discussed that upfront, before entering the museum and perhaps had an even more meaningful time – explicitly speaking  to those share sweet spots of mutual interest.  We do now when we seek out new experiences to share.

4.  Retrieve an Atrophied Part of Your Character

When engaged in conversation with individuals who do not know you, as we did in the museum café, you can express ideas that close friends might dispute or even not hear because they do not expect them from you.  YAs Melinda Blau explained in Consequential Strangers, this gives you the opportunity  to deepen a facet of your character or explore a latent interest when in lively conversation with people who have no preconceived expectations of you.

5. Seek Out Those From Whom You May Learn the Most

The kind of individual from whom you can learn the most is also an ideal kind of dinner guest or committee member or teammate. That person is T-shaped, as Collaboration author Morten Hansen somewhat antiseptically describes this priceless trait for our increasingly complex yet connected world. Such individuals have both a deep mastery of a topic (the vertical line of a “T”) and an open, curious mind — they enjoy learning from others (the horizontal line of the “T”). I am presuming they also tend to have a flexible rather than a fixed mindset.

A gentle warning here. Even when we see ourselves  — and our colleagues in front of us — as open and curious people we don’t act right around each other.

6. Hone Your Capacity to Thrive Around People Who Don’t Act Right – Like You

Since our assets spring from different outlooks, it behooves us to keep reminding each other:

• We do not see the same situation the same way

• “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” ~ Niels Bohr

•  We get to be learners and teachers for each other, and that means changing roles more often than we do in most situations, an uncomfortable behavioral shift for many of us.

• Some individuals are givers more than takers, others are the reverse. Yet to enjoy the next chapter of your life story with more disparate characters in it – the most likely path to greater adventure, you must become — and be in the company of — people who want more or less equal give and take over time.  Absent that factor power is not perceived to be equally shared that that inevitably creates conflict as the classic Tit for Tat game studies proved.

• More than leaders, diverse people, gathered around a common interest, must become deep listeners, committed – not to being right or in control but to sticking to a common conversational thread.

That’s a different discipline.

It takes practice and patience. I am not good at it yet am eager to keep learning.

What ways have you learned to see the world in fresh ways, through your experiences with others? I’d love to know.

Got a business? Nervous about your future?  Anyone who says they don’t feel fearful sometimes in the face of this uncertain economy is in deep denial.

One symptom, research shows, is that it is literally harder to hear when we’re stressed. That’s a signal to savvy, caring business owners to listen sooner, deeper and longer.

Only then can we discover which problem keeps our customers awake nights. Solving that one hottest concern is the thoughtful and successful way to sell.

In so doing you can begin collaborating with that prospect or customer in front of you.

Just Listen – then collaborate with them into buying

Who does most of the talking when you are with a prospective buyer? As in fishing, until you find the hook that grabs their attention so they want to know more it is highly likely that they will get away.

As infants most of us were rewarded with wide smiles and warm voices when we talked. Later we enjoyed more reinforcement for talking as we learned to read.

Beginning in kindergarten, we’ve been rewarded to sit still and be quiet. Yet, even when we do, but we aren’t trained to listen. Yet we are expected to know how. As we grow older we may hunger to be heard and understood yet not learn to listen. We talk until they go on a mental vacation then physically leave.

“It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

In this increasingly connected yet complex economy competition can hit faster and from more places. That’s all the more reason to listen closely to diverse people. You’ll be better able to serve your customers and to identify valuable allies with whom you can generate stand-out value in your mutual market – perhaps becoming the top-of-mind choice.

By listening closely, then speaking to the sweet spot of mutual benefit you can also forge profitable partnerships with complementary companies that serve the same kind of customers as you.

Collaborating with other businesses in this way is often the most credible and cost-effective way to stand out from your competition – a priceless possibility in this bad economy.

Here are 16 pointers to sharpen your listening-to-connect skills – vital traits in this increasingly transient, economically uncertain, information flooded and time starved world:

1. Control outside interruptions and distractions.

2. Where possible meet in a place that is not noisy, where seats are comfortable and where you can sit at a right angle, “sidling”, rather than across from them.

3. Avoid patterned shirts, blouces or other distractive clothing especially on the upper half of your body.

4. Get your whole body involved in listening and show that you are paying attention. Look the person squarely in the eye most of the time, using facial expressions and other non-verbal clues to show that you hear and understand what she is saying.

5. Open your eyes, mind and ears to be truly receptive to the messages the other person presents – both by what they say and what they avoid saying.  Begin listening from the very first word and give the person your undivided attention.

6. Lean slightly towards them, look them directly in the eye, nod sometimes and do not fidget. Avoid frequent rapid movements of your arms or legs. You are demonstrating your attention – making the other person the center of attention.

7. Focus on what the person is saying right now. Avoid trying to figure out what she is going to say; you may miss what she actually means.

8. Don’t interrupt. It sends the message that your views are more important than theirs.

9. Confirm your understanding of what they said, using their words. Don’t paraphrase.

10. Ask follow-up questions to clarify and to glean the specific benefits they seek or the problems they want to solve.

11. Take notes. It demonstrates interest and respect and enables you to recall exactly what was said. When you take notes you triple the amount you remember – even if you do not look at them later.

12. Be direct in answering questions. First answer, then elaborate – not the reverse, which is more common. Don’t give qualifiers and background before answering. That’s underbrush they must wade through. You will seem evasive or thoughtless or both.

13. Remain genial and receptive. Do not react negatively – even and especially to highly charged words and tones. Hear the person out, then respond. Don’t change the topic. Most people will cool down and begin to talk calmly once they vent their anger and frustrations and feel heard.

14. When the other person gets more intense – negatively or positively, she is discussing what most matters to her.  That’s your hook.  Offer the specific benefit – the solution to that point to move her closer to buying.

“Every moment counts, and that moment is lost if you’re not in that moment 100 percent.” ~ Tachi Yamada, M.D.

15. Remember, your objective is to listen your prospective customer into buying or potential ally into collaborating. You do not need to remind yourself of what you think, you must find out what your prospect thinks. There is no sales principle that suggests you must “get your two cents worth in.”

16. Look for connections between apparently isolated remarks. What’s the underlying theme, the hottest thing that most concerns them?

“To truly listen is to risk being changed forever.” ~ Sakej Henderson

The bonus? The more strongly that person connects with you the more likely they will emulate your behavior, tell others and extend your presence to their friends and the friends of their friends.

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” ~ Karl Menninger

Joe Lee was sitting at a table, rapidly counting rain jackets in a small room somewhere above the sumptuous lobby of the Jamaican hotel where I was to speak at a corporate conference the next morning. I did not know who he was then, although he looked familiar. I was just told that the man in that room could tell me if there was a spare space for me to go on the rainforest tour arranged for conference attendees.

He looked up and smiled as I came in saying, “What can do for you?”  I asked him and he replied, “You came in at the perfect time. I was just making sure we had enough jackets and one of our people just dropped by to tell me he was switching to another tour.”

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” ~ John Buchan

Only later that night at the opening mixer when I saw Joe walk in, listening to two people animatedly talking to him did I realize he was the same man I’d shaken hands in the receiving line outside the hotel when I arrived. He was the CEO of Darden Restaurants, the company hosting the conference for its top performing managers at Olive Garden and Red Lobster.

Here’s what happened. 

Rather than an estimated 30 minute taxi ride from the airport, through town and up the hill to the hotel, three of us had a muggy, noisy and fascinating two hour trip through one of the biggest local festivals of the year.  As I and the other attendees straggled in all day from the airport, in a remarkable show of respect the top management and all board members stood out in the heat, waiting for us.  They lined up to personally greet us. The last person I met in line was humble Joe Lee who had started working at Darden as a 19 year old.

“You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.” ~ Sam Rayburn

Sadly it is not a common scene for me to see at the conferences at which I speak: the CEO personally going out of his way to see that his people are taken care of.

That’s probably why I observed something else that should be more common at such conferences.  During breaks attendees were surrounding Joe, eager to talk.  He actively listened rather than talking at them.  And the board members and officers were not standing off by themselves. Rather they sat at different tables and walked around to talk with various individuals throughout the day.

“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” ~ Ken Kesey

That’s why I beamed when I opened the New York Times this Sunday and saw one of those Darden officers staring back at me, Clarence Otis Jr., then CFO, mentored by Joe and now the company’s CEO.

In this newspaper interview Clarence described how Joe’s inclusive leadership style has influenced his.

“You can judge a leader by the size of the problem he tackles. Others cope with the waves, it’s his job to watch the tide.” ~Antony Jay

Reflecting a Me2We leadership mindset, here’s some nuggets from Clarence’s interview:

• First Care or Your Team

“On Sept. 11, 2001, after it became clear what had happened, we had an all-employee meeting, and Joe started to talk. One of the first things he said was, ‘we are trying to understand where all our people are who are traveling.’

The second thing he said was: ‘We’ve got a lot of Muslim teammates, managers in our restaurants, employees in our restaurants, who are going to be under a lot of stress during this period. And so, we need to make sure we’re attentive to that.’

And that was pretty powerful. Of all the things you could focus on that morning, he thought about the people who were on the road and then our Muslim colleagues.”

• You’ll Do Well if the Teams You Create Do

When asked how his leadership style has changed over time, he responded, “It’s less and less about getting the work done and more and more about building the team — getting the right people in place who have the talent and capability to get the work done and letting them do it.

• Associate With People Who Perform Well in Unclear Situations

Being comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty is a trait I look for… they’ve got their wits about them, so they’re looking as much for the opportunity that’s inherent in that as they are for the risk.

“Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values.” ~ Mike Vance

In a weak economy organizations must optimize performance of everyone. Clarence’s approach reflects the most efficient way to accomplish that – evoking the ensemble style he learned from acting where everyone knows they are a valued part of a team. 

They get in sync with each other.

They look to each other’s needs just as Joe did by counting rain jackets for his people. 

Only the loony disregard this crashing economy. Yet the prudent recognize it’s vital now to practice resilience, even virtue. It helps to be near friends who feel the same. (Who lifts your spirits?) So it also helps to know that we’re born with a set point for happiness.

The good news is that set point “determines just 50% of happiness.  A mere 10% can be attributed to differences in people’s life circumstances – that is, whether they are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, married or divorced, etc. This leaves a surprising 40% of our capacity for happiness within our power to change.” That’s

the theory of The How of Happiness author, Sonja Lyubomirsky and her two colleagues, Ken Sheldon and David Schkade. 

Since we experience negative emotions faster, more intensely and longer, to enjoy life more we must cultivate a 3 to 1 ratio of positive to negative emotions, believes Positivity author Barbara L. Fredrickson.

Her suggestions to achieve this ratio sound familiar:

• Meditate

• Reduce exposure to negative news

• Cultivate kindness

• Connect with nature

She offers a  “broaden-and-build” approach.  In short, choose how you view a situation. If it makes you feel down, look at the bigger picture.  This reminds me of the “make a bigger pie” negotiation technique. When you feel you need more clout among the players in the discussion, involve more people.

As Frederickson notes,” pleasant emotions like hope, inspiration, joy, and well-earned pride literally open us. As the blinders of negativity fall away, we take in more of what surrounds us. We see both the forest and the trees. We appreciate the oneness that binds us instead of the barriers that divide us. Even race becomes irrelevant.”

The benefits of optimism, according to Frederickson:  

Positive thinking opens our minds.

Positive thinkers:

• See more of the world around them

• Are more likely to find innovative solutions to problems.

People imbued with positivity are:

• Healthier

• More generous

• More productive

 They:

• Bounce back from adversity more quickly

• Make better managers

• Live longer

So, let’s grab more moments to go on a walk/talk, pick up the phone to praise and to share our reasons to be grateful.

As the thinking person’s magazine Atlantic decided to ask readers to Think Again. In seeking The Wisdom of the Crowds, they invite anyone to answer questions raised by their superlative writers.  (Now that’s a smart way to start conversations about the magazine, online and in-person.)

So far here are some of the questions:

• Is Porn Adultery?

• Was God an Accident?

• Why Are Campaign Commercials So Bad?

 • What’s the Cost of Being a Nerd?

Bet you can guess which question most people click on first.

What questions would you ask? More specifically, what questions might deepen your understanding and ability to connect with your closest friend, your customers, a parent  - or a person who is difficult for you to be around?

I am going to think of questions for those relationships too and write about them later. Meanwhile here are a few of my Atlantic magazine-style questions (tell me yours):

• What’s a Sign of True Friendship?

• What’s the Best Way to Reward Your Biggest Customers?

• What Will Become the New Comfort Food?

• How Do You Define Heroism?

BTW, The Book of Questions remains a favorite of mine and a great way to deepen conversations with friends.

A bus driver guides the elderly woman off the bus to an unfamiliar restaurant where  she’s meeting friends, then hears her tell him why that day and his help touched her. A teenager confesses her cutting became addictive and how her love of her mother and best friend helps her get by.  

Over 23,000 people have sat down in a booth with a simple recorder and a volunteer – ready to tell a life-changing story, to declare their love, acknowledge their regret and more.

At the Story Corp they opened up because someone was ready to listen.  As founder, Dave Isay says, “Listening is an Act of Love.”  “The stories explode 

off the page” admits Isay in his interview today on public radio – my station is KQED. 

This is the first ever National Day of Listening – another Story Corps-generated idea. Today we are asked to spend an hour asking a loved one about their life. Don’t be one of those who says later on, “I only wish I had asked my mother and father to tell their stories – and share my story about them.” 

Unexpected memories flood back as one sits in a booth for 40 minutes, with someone there just to listen to you. “What was the happiest moment of your life?” “What are you most proud of?”  “How do you want to be remembered?”

I didn’t wait for Story Corp to come to Sausalito. Over the past four years I’ve sat several times, small Olympus recorder in hand, at my dining room table with the view of Angel Island in Richardson Bay and asked my parents to tell me about growing up, falling in love, raising us four children – and what they most believe in and why.  We continue these conversations sitting in their living room in Portland, looking out at the giant sequoias – the “old growth like us” my Dad observes dryly.  

One story I’ve heard since childhood still chokes me up. While soldiers in World War II Dad and his brother Harold, stationed thousand miles apart in the U.S., went AWOL. They were to be sent overseas shortly. From letters  my grandmother wrote to them, they located each other and somehow agreed to meet in a cafe in a small town, located mid-distance between them.  Dad came first and waited several hours, drinking several cups of coffee and eating a grilled cheese.  But when Harold walked in and sat down they mostly talked about small things. The cherries their mom was canning, the songs their sister was playing on the piano for their Lutheran church’s Christmas service, combat training.

Knowing they might not see each other again, they synchronized their watches and made a plan in their usual, logical way.  At precisely 2:00 pm, they would rise from the table, walk out the door, one turning left and the other right. 

You can have a temporary listening booth in your library, company cafeteria, synagogue, museum, school  - or other place where people can walk in, sit down and tell a story that has stuck in their mind over the years.  Bring a family member or friend.  Volunteer to hear and record stories for a couple of hours. 

A Story Corp booth has just been installed across the water in San Francisco at the beautiful new Contemporary Jewish Museum – a place dedicated to offering art and culture to the whole community. How apt a place to listen and to be heard as we mourn for the rabbi, his wife and over 100 others who were killed this week in Mumbai.

 Listening with friends, tears come to our eyes as we hear individuals tell stories that remain fresh in their mind years after they happened. 

 Continue to give thanks by listening because, as Issay reminds us, “Every life matters.” In this faltering economy why not create a priceless, heirloom gift for your loved ones?