Tag: teamwork

We each have our own reasons for participating in a sport or supporting our children in their endeavors. Many athletes are revered because we all know the commitment that is required to excel.

When my 17-year-old son decided he didn’t want to play travel hockey this year, we were surprised and disappointed—felt kind of let down actually. Why did I feel this way? Was I too attached to the outcome because of the money "invested" for the past eight years? He’s the one playing hockey, not me or my husband.

There is a joke about a husband who is a computer programmer. His wife asks him to go to the store and buy a loaf of bread. She says: "Please go the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread, and, if they have eggs, get six."

The husband returns with six loaves of bread. The wife asks why he bought six loaves of bread. He says, "Because they had eggs."

The lesson in this joke is that both expressing and reading, or "de-coding," information needs to include the nonverbal as well as the verbal content of the message.

Is your company in a bad mood? The signs aren’t always overt. People aren’t biting each other’s heads off or glaring sullenly across the conference table. (That’s home, not work!) Instead, it feels like everyone is just… coasting. Rather than digging for solutions, they make a cursory effort and then lay the problem at your feet. They’re not cage-rattlers and idea-sharers; they’re "yes men" and passive compliers. If you could be the proverbial fly on the wall (instead of the boss in the hall), you suspect you’d hear far more bitching and blaming than the faked enthusiasm you usually hear.

Having your spouse by your side, or at least nearby, should help to manage the noise and reduce stress during the holidays, right? Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out this way.

The person closest to us can be the one that irritates us the most (and vice versa). Stress in the relationship only exacerbates the holiday stressors we experience.

So, what’s the solution? Do we just close our eyes and wait for January 1 to come, when it’s all over and we can go back to "normal?"