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CRUCIAL™ SKILLS REMINDER
January 12, 2005
Volume 3, Issue 2
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IN THIS ISSUE

1. Quote of the Week
2. Survey: Crucial Conversations with Your Doctor
3. Make Your New Year’s Resolution Really Count
4. Kerrying On: I Remember Strawberries
5. Send Your Questions
6. Where Can I Learn More?

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1. Quote of the Week
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“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself. “
- Abraham Maslow

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2. Survey: Crucial Conversations with Your Doctor
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Patient Experience Survey

With all the press about medical errors increasing in the past few years, we want to find out what patients do when they worry the health care they’re receiving isn’t up to par. Have you ever been less than satisfied with the treatment you were receiving? How have you responded in return? We’d like to hear from you.

Take our latest survey on patient experience found at the following link: http://www.keysurvey.com/survey/50984/161b/

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3. Make Your New Year’s Resolution Really Count
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The idea behind New Year’s resolutions is making positive change. VitalSmarts training programs will help you do just that by giving you a set of influence tools that vitalize organizations, strengthen teams, improve communities, and deepen relationships. Enroll today in a VitalSmarts training program near you by visiting www.VitalSmarts.com/events. Resolve to make this year the one you truly make measurable, positive change that will enrich every aspect of your life.

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4. Kerrying On: I Remember Strawberries
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I miss strawberries. Despite the fact that my acquaintance with them started quite by accident, I still miss them. Here’s how it all started. One day when my best friend Bobby Kaiser and I were playing in the woods behind my house, we stumbled onto a small patch of wild strawberries. They didn’t appear all that promising. We had already gobbled down huckleberries and salmon berries and blackberries that day and figured that this modest offering wouldn’t amount to much. We were wrong. The berries were sweet and firm and juicy and delicious beyond description. As we gorged ourselves on the meat of this wild wonder, all other berries hung their heads in shame.

Change in direction, but not topic—Last night I tuned into a TV “make over” program quite by mistake. I thought it was the show where they bawl like babies while making over a deserving family’s home—all the while pitching a full line of Sears appliances. Instead, they made over a human being—a woman to be more precise. I tuned into the part of the program where the plastic surgeon bragged about the results. As he eagerly promoted his work, the show cut to “before” pictures—one of a fairly normal looking woman. The surgeon chided her for having had the nerve to have looked so plain. Then he bragged about the miraculous transformation he and a team of health-care professionals, trainers, silicone experts, and cosmetologists had performed. Apparently they held the belief that looking like Barbie should be the goal of all caring people. They couldn’t have been more pleased with their creation.

The woman they had transformed was an elementary school teacher. When they showed the obligatory segment where her students saw “the new her” for the first time, I was surprised by their reaction. I figured the kids would be startled and maybe even miss their old teacher just a little, but they liked the new one. One small boy said she was “hot.” The word made me flinch. Indoctrinated by dozens of Madison Avenue messages a day, the kids had already learned that only certain faces and bodies were beautiful—and their teacher now had the right ones. How lovely.

I thought my first-grade teacher was beautiful as well. I can remember the day I was most struck by her beauty. Tammy Ray Black had just completed an assignment for the very first time. She was the kid nobody liked. Learning came hard to her and, as is often the case with children who struggle, she was constantly misbehaving and whining and causing her classmates grief. Finishing anything was a breakthrough for her and our teacher, Miss McDonald, didn’t miss this chance to reward her efforts

At first I couldn’t believe that Miss McDonald was praising Tammy Ray for something as common as completing a coloring assignment. And then I got it. She was trying to help my classmate, a child who sorely needed help. It was a lovely thing to do. At that moment I thought that Miss McDonald was as beautiful a person I had ever seen. Curiously enough, she didn’t look a bit like Barbie. Of course, Barbie hadn’t been invented yet, so how was I to know what was beautiful and what wasn’t?

Back to the wild strawberries—“So you liked the strawberries,” my grandfather remarked as I told him about the ones we had eaten. “They aren’t just tasty,” he went on to explain, they’re also honest.” I didn’t catch his drift, so he quickly clarified his point. “You see, most fruits and berries employ trickery. They hide their seeds. You bite into a luscious cherry and learn that it has a rock-hard pit inside. Peaches are genuine liars—certain varieties possess a pit that is almost impossible to remove. And avocadoes, well you’ve seen them. They’re the biggest liars of all. The strawberry, in contrast, wears its seeds on the outside. I like that. It’s straight-forward and honest.”

As the make-over show continued its love affair with plastic, it finally broke for a series of commercials. The first one proclaimed that love is a beautiful thing and if you really love someone you’ll buy her a large, glittery and expensive diamond. Truth be known, if you don’t go into debt up to your eyebrows purchasing a diamond, how could you ever profess your love? Okay, the ad didn’t actually say this last part, but it was clearly implied.

Tiring of the TV ads I thumbed through a weekly news magazine where I learned that the only way to really get to know somebody is by the watch they wear. The writers of this particular promotional piece made this unabashed claim in a glossy, full-page spread. It seemed so sincere. Ah yes, it was all becoming clear to me. Expensive watches and diamonds are the true measure of deep feelings and lasting character. How could I have been so blind?

Leap to a still different time and place—The summer before I started junior high school, I entered the workforce for the first time. Each morning I would wait on the corner just north of my home where a berry bus would pick me up at seven a.m. sharp. It would then haul me and my twelve-year-old buddies into the country where we picked—you guessed it—strawberries. The honest fruit.

As it turns out, strawberries are also the user-unfriendly fruit. They offer no relief from the blazing sun as they lay low to the dirt, demanding that you either stoop or crawl if you want to harvest them. Now, these commercial strawberries weren’t anything like the wild ones Bobby and I had discovered. They had been transformed through the miracle of horticulture into larger and prettier berries. But at a cost. One bite and I learned that they weren’t nearly as sweet or flavorful as their wild ancestors. But that was okay with me because I was getting paid by the flat—twelve full boxes earned fifty cents. Bigger berries filled the boxes faster.

“Just look at her!” the plastic surgeon exclaimed as the make-over program continued. Everyone appeared so happy. Her family and friends cheered. Her team of experts cheered. They had completely eradicated the plain person and replaced her with a genuine beauty—a firmer and “rounder-in-the-right-places” beauty. Behold Barbie. The crowd roared. I doubt that when DNA was first discovered the celebration was as boisterous and heart-felt as this one.

Back to the farm—In my fifth summer of picking strawberries I was selected along with two other kids to harvest a new, experimental field. The small patch sported the latest variety of strawberry. The new breed was huge and deep red and beautiful. Horticulture experts had outdone themselves. And here was the really good news. Because they were so large, I could fill a box in half the time.

For a dream-like two hours in 1962 I filled each flat in fifteen minutes, not the half hour the other smaller berries took. I loved those new berries. Of course, as I bit into one I discovered the rest of the story. It was neither firm nor juicy. It was pithy. And not only wasn’t it sweet, it was actually bitter. Worst of all, gone was the taste of strawberry. Imagine that—a strawberry that didn’t taste like a strawberry. Of course, those berries that I picked that summer day over forty years ago are the same huge, deep red, tasteless berries you can buy at the grocery store today.

Putting it all together—It’s the beginning of a new year and if you’re like many of us, you’ve vowed to exercise more. I know I have. So far I’m doing pretty well. But let me be clear about one thing. I’m exercising and, yes, trying to lose weight, for my health. I want more energy. I don’t want to drop dead from a heart attack. With me, thinning down is not so much a looks thing as a health thing. That’s because I pretty much like who I am and I’m glad that my wife and children seem perfectly satisfied as well. Like a strawberry, I mostly wear my seeds on the outside. I know I look like a cross between Tom Cruise and Danny DeVito—only without the Tom Cruise part. And you know what? I don’t give a hoot.

I don’t believe it when ads and TV programs tell me I need to transform myself into someone else’s view of how I need to appear. I never want my wife or children to feel that they too are somehow unfinished until someone makes them over into the word’s view of the perfect prototype. I love them just the way they are. I love them for who they are. And like the wild strawberry, I love them for what’s inside. I know this sounds corny. It is corny. I don’t care. Maybe I’m not thinking clearly because, when I look out the window of my office and see big-lipped, silicon enhanced, be-diamonded, sculpted, and curiously look-alike “beauties” jog by, I have an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. I miss strawberries.

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About Author Kerry Patterson

Kerry Patterson began his research into the challenges of developing and maintaining healthy organizations during his doctoral work at Stanford University, and for over two decades has worked as a consultant on extensive culture-change projects. His award-winning, video-based training programs have been used successfully by hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. Read more about Kerry at
http://www.vitalsmarts.com/CrucialSkills/Product/TheAuthors.aspx
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5. Send Your Questions
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Our author Q&A feature will return next week. Submit your question to the authors of "Crucial Conversations" at www.vitalsmarts.com/CrucialSkills/FreeStuff/AskAnAuthor/
Or e-mail it to questions@vitalsmarts.com.

We do our best to answer those questions that reflect the interests of our readers. For more about the authors of "Crucial Conversations," visit www.crucialskills.com.

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6. Where Can I Learn More?
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Special Author Events
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Don't miss your opportunity to learn more about “Crucial Confrontations” by attending a special author event where one of the authors will teach you to handle crucial confrontations well and get the results you want.

For details about each author event and to register online, visit www.vitalsmarts.com/Events/?s=All&c=Introductory%20Workshop

Events now scheduled in the following cities

- January 19, Eugene, OR
- March 11, Walnut, CA

Open Enrollment Training
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The Crucial Conversations Training offers intensive skills training in our principles and methods. For in-house training conducted by your staff or one of our professional facilitators, contact your VitalSmarts representative. Open enrollment courses are also available as follows:

- January 18-19, Raleigh Research Triangle Park, NC*
- January 26-27, Baltimore, MD
- February 1-2, Salt Lake City, UT*
- February 8-9, Chicago, IL*
- February 8-9, SF Bay Area, CA*
- February 15-16, Greenwood Village, CO*
- February 22-23, Arlington, VA*
- March 1-2, Seattle, WA*
- March 8-9, SF Bay Area, CA*
- March 8-9, Southfield, MI*
- March 15-16, Dallas Ft. Worth, TX *
- March 15-16, Columbus, OH*

Additional course dates are available at www.vitalsmarts.com/Events/?s=All&c=Training
*Trainer certification is also offered directly following most Training. For more information or to sign up, contact your VitalSmarts representative or visit
www.vitalsmarts.com/Events/?s=All&c=t

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