The Career Clinic Blog

I have a theory about why some of us get frustrated when others get upset.

We don’t know what to do.

I stumbled on something that works wonders in those situations.

Ask.

“What can I do?” is a magic question, really. It tells someone you’re not only ready to help, but eager to know what would constitute help.

Some people think when the suffering is intense you shouldn’t ask how to help--you should just do it. Show up with a pan of lasagna, for example. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do when I’m feeling down is to eat lasagna--or to add “return baking pan” to my to-do list.

The other night I felt crushed by the weight of several to-do lists. When I admitted that to Darrell and Katie they both said it: “What can I do?” Much of the weight disappeared immediately. My sweethearts were mobilized, and I wasn’t in it alone. Turns out the answer to their question was, “Nothing at the moment. But I’ll get back to you if that changes.”

No judgments. Only support.

Magic.

Comment (0)

If someone tells you how he’s feeling, say “I understand” at your own risk.

How can you possibly understand what someone else is going through? Even if you’ve had the same problem, you haven’t brought his life experience to it--so you’re still in the dark.

If that person is suffering, saying “I’m sorry” is almost never a bad move. Unless you’ve contributed to that suffering! In that case “I’m sorry”--if offered too soon--might feel like, “Can we get this over with? I messed up, I’m sorry, why can’t you move on?”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not on a mission to collect apologies. A lot of problems can’t be solved. What I want most is the feeling that I’m not alone in my grief.

And when I’m getting grief from someone? I try to tell myself criticism is a gift. It isn’t good news or bad news.

It’s just information.

Use it or don’t use it--but thank your lucky stars you’re surrounded by people who tell you the truth.

Comment (0)

You want people to know you care about them, right? So why do you tell them to calm down when they’re upset?

Rich Gallagher joined us on the show recently to talk about customer service. His new book is The Customer Service Survival Kit, and if you can demonstrate to a potential employer your ability to soothe irate customers, he dares you to be unemployed for long.

And once again, advice for work--advice for life.

Rich and I both wonder if anything good has ever come from the suggestion to calm down. I haven’t met the person who likes being told how to feel. His reaction might feel appropriate to him. Even if you could prove it isn’t, why would you?

Better, Rich says, to try to identify with his feelings. “Of course you’re upset!” you could respond. “Who wouldn’t be?” Forget for a moment you wouldn’t be. Then you can continue the conversation honestly with something along the lines of, “Let’s figure out a way to fix this…”

Argue with someone’s feelings, and you’ll have a different problem. I promise.

Oh, and by the way, Rich says you can practice empathy with people you don’t feel much empathy for. Just try it. They might respond in a way that inspires your empathy after all.

Next up, when “I understand” and “I’m sorry” backfires--and why criticism isn’t what you think.

Comment (0)

How do you want it to have mattered, that you were here?

Figure it out, and the rest is just...logistics.

Comment (0)

What do you do when you have a bad day and you’ve sworn off drugs (not that I ever got started), alcohol (though I don’t miss what little I indulged), and even donuts (I could’ve inhaled Darrell’s pastry just now, that’s how badly I wanted it)?

You feel like hell, that’s what.

Which is better, I think, than feeling like hell about one thing--and feeling like hell as a result of whatever distracted you from it for a few minutes.

It reminds me of those TV commercials for allergy medications or whatever. It takes longer to rattle off the side effects than it does to explain the benefits.

I’ll take the original problem, please.

Comment (0)

There was something about the hostess at our favorite Mexican restaurant that kept me from taking my eyes off her. And no, it wasn’t wondering whether she was the right person to ask about the TV. We wanted to enjoy a Final Four game with our chips and salsa--to enjoy the culmination of what some people say is the most exciting sporting event all year--but the big screen was on…hockey?

Never mind that. Let me draw your attention back to the woman I just mentioned.

Her posture was impeccable. She wasn’t walking through the restaurant. She was floating. She looked regal.

She reminded me of Diane Kruger, the actress, who glided into the Prada store in Manhattan a few years ago just as we were leaving. Katie held the door open for her, but she didn’t seem to see Kate--or anyone else in her path, for that matter. Which didn’t strike me as rude so much as otherworldly.

What would it be like, I wondered, to carry yourself in a way that inspires such respect? And if both a famous actress and a waitress in Fargo can pull it off, why couldn’t I?

What would it hurt to try?

Comment (0)

When I was home recuperating from a bad car accident the summer before my junior year in college, my dad took a picture of me.

I looked hideous. Until then I’d been a pretty college coed. Now, when I had the nerve to venture even as far as the grocery store--not often--little kids started crying and hiding behind their mothers.

I am not kidding.

What strikes me about the photograph isn’t so much the scar as the posture of the person bearing it. I was slumped over, with an expression on my face that seemed to apologize for my very existence.

I’d seen that look in other photographs of me, many times, before and after the accident. That’s why, when Darrell noticed my suddenly regal posture the summer I got an agent, we marked the moment. Was I not going to straighten my shoulders until I’d earned my own respect?

Dr. Nick Morgan thought that was plausible when I talked with him about it on the show recently. It’s possible to change the way you feel about yourself by changing your posture, he says, but it’s difficult. Much better to address why you feel the way you do. The posture, and everything else about your body language, will follow.

Body language is one of Nick’s passions--and lucky for all of us, in my opinion, that’s the subject of his next book.

Nick congratulated me on consulting my gut, literally consulting my gut, about a supposed upgrade to not only the ceilings but also the walls of our house. I’d stood quietly in the center of the first room where the ceiling had been treated with a beautiful texture--and I asked myself how I’d feel if it was on the walls, too. A current of fear ran through me. Nightmare averted. Our drywallers reassured me leaving the walls alone was the right move, and were relieved I’d arrived at the answer by myself.

Nick didn’t tell me to take more breaths, to pause more, when talking with him. He showed me, by doing it himself. Having him on the program is a great reminder we always have only now, and if we try to cram too much into any particular moment we’ll just waste everyone’s breath.

I want to stop here because I’d rather have you listen to the podcast than keep reading. It’s fascinating. Nick, that is--not me. The only part of my contribution that’s fascinating is how often I used the word fascinating.

That’s why I listen to every word of every show after we record these interviews. It reminds me to keep the nervous laughter in check--yeah, I still get nervous, which Nick would say is great because it shows I care--and to make sure I don’t fall back on the same reaction to my guest’s observations.

There’s a word for that. Annoying!

Comment (0)

Interviewing Bobby Knight fifteen years ago was a game changer for me. Not because of what happened during the interview, but because the interview happened at all.

I was hosting a radio talk show called Hodgepodge in the small town where I still live. Knight was head coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, and had a reputation for dismembering journalists if he talked with them at all.

I knew it wouldn’t hurt to write him a letter, but I was sure that would be it.

It wasn’t. It was, as they say, one shining moment.

I can spew advice all day long on this blog--but unless I’m testing it, why would you pay attention? This was a test of bestselling business author Harvey Mackay’s advice: “Don’t say no for the other guy.” Which quickly became a pep talk for myself when wondering whether to step onto the latest stage: “You can do this. You got Bobby Knight on Hodgepodge!”

Here’s where I owe you a link to the interview, but I’m not that evolved. I listened to it yesterday before I submitted another reverie on the subject to the Huffington Post. It was painful. There was too much nervous laughter, for one thing--and too few pauses. I was so uncomfortable I raced through my list of questions so as not to endure even two seconds of silence. Had I given Knight those, he might have elaborated more.

I’ll never know.

The thing I feel the best about, the biggest reason I’m filing this in the win column, is my reaction to the job I did. “I sucked,” I remember thinking. “And I can’t wait to do it again!”

I interviewed John Tesh last fall, and that conversation was practically flawless. One reason? I’ve been willing to suck. I’ve been at this talk show hosting thing a long time, and I’ve listened back to every word of almost every interview--analyzing each exchange the way college basketball coaches study each game video. I’ve learned a lot. And as someone once pointed out: “You can’t be learning and looking cool at the same time.”

I wasn’t all that cool with Bobby Knight, but that didn’t stop me from stopping people on the street to tell them about it. Come to think of it, I had delivery people come to my door--people I didn’t realize knew who I was, but it’s a small town so of course they did--and ask me how I got that interview.

You can hear the excitement in my voice on the promo that ran on KDLM the morning we aired the conversation.

I hear excitement--and potential.

Comment (0)

“What is it?” Darrell asked Katie a few hours ago.

“It’s a cat,” she told him. A tiny toy cat.

“Where was it a moment ago?” he asked.

“In the bag,” she said.

“Where is it now?” he asked.

“Out of the bag,” she said. Then she threw her head back and laughed so hard I thought I’d never get to explain what, exactly, was out of the bag.

You see, this summer will be full of surprises for Katie. I didn’t realize she could see something on my computer about one of those surprises--and in the course of comparing notes on what she had or hadn’t seen, I got confused.

So when it was time to fill her in, after we’d given her the bag with the toy cat in it, I was sure she’d already figured it out.

But she hadn’t.

Surprise!

Oh, well. It’s much better this way, we all agreed--the anticipation and all. Besides, what she accidentally found out represents about eleven percent of the total surprise--so there are lots of ways to mess with her head during the next few months.

Journalists aren’t supposed to raise questions they don’t answer, but I can’t fill you in on the specifics--even those I filled Katie in on today--and I can’t even tell you why. I can tell you she thinks I should’ve been a lawyer for what I’ve pulled off with Dad.

A lot of people say I would’ve made a good lawyer. I never considered it. I didn’t want to referee fights for a living--not that I’ve summed up the profession in a way that’s remotely fair.

I do get along really well with lawyers, though. I talked with one only this morning. He was the attorney for the other guy, actually--in a dispute we settled a few years ago.

“I remember you!” he said when I first got him on the phone. I guessed correctly it was because I’d written him a letter after we’d taken care of business. I’d called him “a pretty cool guy.” That might’ve been a corny thing to say. It was unusual, to say the least. But I cleared it with my own attorney, who promised me it was a classy gesture.

Whatever it was, I meant it--and I never expected to talk with the gentleman again. But he was as warm this morning as it’s possible to be. I half expected him to reach through the phone line to give me a hug, that’s how sweet he was.

I don’t know if he can help me with the little problem I’d called about. But he reminded me that telling someone you appreciate him is almost never a bad idea.

I also don’t know who ordained me the arbiter of “pretty cool”--but to each his own. This man is smart and funny and good at what he does. What’s not to like?

Better get back to some other work. I have more tracks to cover.

Comment (0)

When you’re old and gray--or at least, old--will you regret not telling more people they disappointed you?

You don’t have to like how other people live. So don’t live that way. If your life is a shining example of the way to be, they’ll catch on.

Telling them you’re disappointed they haven’t?

You might be inspiring a little disappointment right back.

Comment (0)