February 14th should have been a happy day for Ted. He had a beautiful young wife and a 2-day old daughter. His political career was on track. He was one of the youngest men to date to hold a position on the New York State Assembly representing the Republican Party, and he'd already been reelected once. Adding to his list of achievements, his first book, written while attending Harvard, had been published two years earlier. By all accounts Ted was destined for more happiness and success. However, this would not be a happy day for Ted. His mother had become ill recently, and passed away in the early hours of the morning. Later that evening his wife, Alice, died suddenly and unexpectedly of kidney failure. He was hit with despair, writing in his diary that day "the light has gone out of my life."

In a letter he wrote the next month he made a decisive statement regarding his family tragedy, "It was a grim and an evil fate, but I never have believed it did any good to flinch or yield for any blow, nor does it lighten the blow to cease from working." Ted would go on to remarry and have more children, write over 40 books, become the police commissioner of NYC, take office as the Vice President of the United States, and then as the 26th President. He would even go on to be the first American recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Ted" is Theodore Roosevelt.

In my research for this topic I came across a number of interesting stories about individuals who endured tragedy and loss, but who ultimately never stopped working towards their goals.

So what allows someone to lose loved ones, suffer from injury or illness, fall into financial distress, endure controversy and ridicule, etc., without stopping their lives and their work, without, in many cases, even losing momentum?

The answer, I feel, is exemplified in Theodore Roosevelt's assessment that in the face of tragic events it does no good to yield. Yielding in this case would be giving up one's course and one's work, and giving in to despair and despondency. Nothing can change past events, and stopping one's life to reflect upon the past will not lessen the weight of what's occurred.

Yielding is how people get stuck. I've met people who, decades after a tragic event, are still so present to that event that they're unable to move on with their lives. I see this a lot in people who have gone through a bad divorce. They're still living in the pain and circumstances surrounding the divorce, and, because of this, they are unable to move forward and form new satisfying relationships.

One company I did coaching for employed sales people working primarily on commission. One woman there, who I'll call Barbara, was hit with a double-whammy soon after joining the company. She learned she had cancer and would need invasive surgery and chemotherapy. While she was battling cancer her husband left her. Barbara decided that neither tragedy would rob her of her goals. She had a young daughter to provide for and she wanted to excel at her job. Barbara had a record year, far exceeding her goals at work, beating cancer, and making it through a divorce. Had she yielded, she undoubtedly would not have accomplished all of her goals.

I sum this up as choice. We're all faced with circumstances, some good, some bad, some unimaginable, and we're given the choice of how we'd like to respond. We can choose to yield, to give up, and to fade away, or, we can choose to stay the course, to reach our goals, and even to create new, more exciting goals.

Part of this choice is how we choose to relate to tragedy. This is not so much about what we choose to do, for instance, I could be in the midst of a divorce, and still choose to go to work each day and to do my job, but every spare moment is spent ruminating on how "that wench is getting the house and I have to pay alimony and she better not try to get custody of the dog. Fido was my dog before I met her. I don't care if he likes her better." Instead, it's about who you choose to be in relation to the events at hand. In the face of tragedy many people choose to be the victim. They feel that someone or something has wronged them ("that wench," "my stupid boss," "the universe".) They feel sorry for themselves and they want others to feel sorry for them. People who overcome tragedy and who thrive are the ones who choose an empowering role in the situation. For instance, in the face of financial loss, I've seen people who decided that instead of being thrust into poverty, they were simply in a position of rebuilding wealth. Did you know that you can be a "student" of illness or divorce? You can choose to learn from just about anything. When you start to think "this is something I'm gaining knowledge from" you stop thinking "this is something that's being done to me that's beyond my control."

At this point people may still be thinking "It's great to be able to choose, but what if I want to honor what I lost?" Don't confuse honoring something with living in a state of being at a loss. People who succeed in overcoming tragedy realize: It's ok to honor the past, just do it in the present. Roosevelt honored his wife with a letter, published privately, detailing his feelings for her and the joy that her life brought. Well-known television host John Walsh continues to honor his son, who was kidnapped and murdered at the age of 6, by working, along with his wife, to get legislation passed to help missing and exploited children, and by hosting the television show America's Most Wanted. Many people have set up scholarships in the names of loved ones, funded medical research to cure diseases, and written books about their experiences with tragedy and loss in the hopes of helping others. These are choices of people who are unwilling to yield.

If I went into a company and asked managers what hobbies their employees participate in I would anticipate blank stares or vague guesses. Often they’re clueless. I’m not saying that managers are clueless about employee’s personal lives. Husband or wife’s name, number of kids, favorite sports team, sure. But hobbies… they just seem unimportant… unnecessary.

From the employee’s perspective talking about hobbies in the work place can be a dangerous thing. I witnessed a case where an employee, after her company brought in a financial adviser to speak to the staff, became very interested in the stock market. She began sharing her new passion with her coworkers. Her boss, fearful that people would begin watching stock prices throughout the workday, pulled her aside and asked her to curb her enthusiasm.

Let’s start with before an employee even becomes employed. What’s one thing professional advisers suggest that job seekers omit from a resume? Hobbies! Why? Employees are told that potential employers want to quickly assess their skills, not read a “novel” about their life. Or worse, putting a hobby on a resume is like admitting to being under qualified. It says “I don’t have enough real skills and experience to fill a whole page.”

It’s not hard to see where this stigma comes from. Many people (and companies) treat a job like a box. The box can contain only certain things. For a receptionist the box contains how to use the phone system. For a pilot it contains how to fly and land a plane.  If you apply for one of these jobs your skills need to fit into the right box. The fact that you scuba dive or collect rare stamps is inconsequential and potentially distracting.

I used the “box” metaphor intentionally. Failing to acknowledge creative pursuits outside the workplace is a failure to realize an individual’s full potential.  When you put people into boxes you will eventually find that what’s in the box isn’t enough. This happens most noticeably when big changes occur, like the current economic situation. Boxes don’t adapt or create. When you try to use the same tools on new problems you’ll quickly find those tools don’t work.

One of the best ways I’ve found to encourage innovation and creativity in the workplace is to encourage hobbies. In fact, hobbies are an excellent way to gain relaxation, happiness, improved mental function, and creativity in one’s overall life.

• Escape from burnout – Even if everything is going well at work, feeling that you are solely defined by your job can increase anxiety and lead to discontent and burnout. Hobbies allow for variation of identity. When work isn’t the only defining factor in your life you’re more likely to find it satisfying, and to be more relaxed when things don’t go as planned.
• Improved mental function – When you are engaged in an activity that you love you’re more likely to become completely submerged in the experience requiring high levels of concentration. This mental state has been linked to reaching peak performance. 
• Happiness – Making time to participate in activities that are enjoyable increases positive thinking and feelings of contentment.
• Innovation – Most hobbies require the continued acquisition of knowledge. Continued learning is a great way to come up with new ideas. 
• Creativity – Hobbies can be both challenging and stimulating. New situations and challenges, when coupled with an activity that peaks one’s interest will lead to new creations.

Great, so how are the benefits of hobbies realized within a workplace? A few examples...

Jessica works as a guidance counselor at a school for gifted children. She enjoys her job, but has a passion for travel. During college she traveled extensively and began collecting snow globes from each new place she visited. Jessica’s boss took an interest in her hobby, and now when she travels she also brings back snow globes. The fact that her boss participates in her hobby gives Jessica a great amount of satisfaction in her relationship with her boss, and vice versa.

Bruce owned a small computer programming company. He took an interest in scuba diving, and soon became an avid diver. Due to his relationship with the local dive shop his company was contracted to build and maintain the shop’s website. As part of the deal he worked out his employees were all given free dive lessons. Many of them took advantage and still enjoy diving nearly a decade later.

John loved video games and animated foreign films. He turned his hobby into a company that became one of the largest distributors of animated foreign videos in the United States.

Here’s one from a blog I read online. Simon, a VP at a technology company took up furniture making. As he designed furniture he realized the brand of tools used was unimportant. A hammer, regardless of brand, is made to hit a nail. He realized that the same wasn't true with IT products. These products often worked so differently that the brand was imperative, and a product that could get the job done was often hard to find. His experience making furniture led to a fundamental change in the way he viewed product development. Instead of brand differentiation his goal became to make a product that gets the job done, and put the extra effort into making it cost-effective and user-friendly.

Hobbies can enhance the love of a job, build connections with coworkers, bring in new business and ideas, or even lead to the creation of a new business. Here’s my suggestion to drastically improve the state of your business – get interested in your employee’s hobbies. Get a hobby yourself! Discover how creative people can be when they’re not in a box.

I recently gave a free seminar on producing (business) during turbulent times. I started off the evening with a question: Where is your stability located? In turbulent times people look for something stable/secure to rely on. So where is yours? A few articulated that stability is in our heads. Jokingly I asked if we got a brain surgeon in here and open up a person's head, would we find stability? Another suggestion was that stability comes from accumulated knowledge, or, knowledge of the past. However, if something worked in the past does that always guarantee it will work in the future?

In order to get to the real source of stability I asked another question: Who made money in the 1930's during the Great Depression? Not surprisingly, the answer is: the people who stayed creative and who became sensitive to the (then) current needs of society. For example, a young merchant named Amadeo Giannini living in San Francisco in the early 1900's noticed that banks were unwilling to lend money to individuals of certain occupations and backgrounds, which included him. Instead of becoming discouraged, he opened the Bank of Italy in 1904. In 1906 the bank faced a major challenge in the form of a massive earthquake. Realizing that people would need quick loans for rebuilding and basic necessities, Giannini moved his lending operations into the streets so that he could provide services while larger banks were still crippled from the devastation. The Bank of Italy was renamed the Bank of America in the 1920's. (And the rest is history.)

So, simply, your stability is located in your ability to access your creativity. Money, jobs, and loved ones, can be lost. Even knowledge has a pesky way of slipping away, but no one can take your creativity from you.

Next question: What happens when there is fear? People freeze. They wait for circumstances to "get better." They stop creating. This can happen when there's no reality to the fear. An individual may be doing fine, and they turn on CNN, and apparently we're in an economic crisis, and, by the way, there's also terrorism, and violence, and car crashes, and fires, and we should all be afraid. Very afraid. The future begins to look bleak. When the future looks bad we don't want to move forward. We stop and wait for CNN to say that everything is OK again.

There are 3 basic ways people relate to life. They create. They react. They ruminate. Choose to create. Life is too long and too short not to. If you hate what you're doing now, imagine doing it for the next 30 years. Now imagine doing it for the next 3 months and finding out those were your last 3 months to live.

How does creation begin? It begins by saying you're going to do something. Your word is the most powerful vehicle for creation. Say you will do something and make it so. You will always have to dance with circumstances, but you do not have to honor them. Honor your word instead.

When you're creating, realize that your creation is not one in the same with your creativity. If the foundation of something you created is crumbling, it isn't you who's crumbling. This is the misconception that sends people out of windows in tough economic times. You are not your creation. You are the creator. (Big difference!) You can create something new. One last question - if you're reading this, ask yourself - what are the real opportunities during this time? Here are some ideas people shared:

1. Businesses that can provide the most efficient, cost-effective products are getting more positive attention. Think of hybrid vehicle vs. Hummer sales now compared to a year ago.
2. There's a huge candidate pool due to layoffs. Exceptional candidates who wouldn't have been available to you in the past are now available.
3. In tough times go back to basic needs. Everyone needs food, water and shelter (and affordable entertainment.)
4. In some industries like sales and recruiting, simply staying in business when times are tough will give you increased market share because many other will choose to go out of business.
5. When faced with the possibility of losing a job, you get the opportunity to think "If I weren't doing this, what else would I do that I would love?"

Now create your own list of opportunities.

I've started reading the "Working Lunch" Articles on MSN. These satirical articles, with titles like "Take a Day Off - On the Clock" and "Bored? Start a Rumor," are written from the various points of view of employees at a fictional company called Delaney. This month I've been focusing on the subject of management - especially middle management and the importance of empowering individuals in middle management positions. I was amused to find a Working Lunch article entitled "Signs of Bad Management" in which the author refers to managers as "Cocky little Napoleons" who she wishes she could "transport to a planet populated only by them and [her] ex-boyfriends." The article concludes by detailing three strategies for defeating bad managers. These strategies are meant to combat managers with "obsessive meeting disorder," managers who claim to be "just like" their employees, and managers with open door policies.

Ultimately, in this article, as in real life, meetings and open door policies aren't the issue. The disdain expressed stems from the fact that an ineffective manager, regardless of strategy or policy is still an ineffective manager. This fact makes these managers targets for scorn and counter compliance tactics.

Let's consider that the managers spoken about above are "middle" managers. This means that not only do they have to navigate the choppy waters of managing employees under them; they also have to tiptoe across the mine field of being managed by upper management. Hopefully this imagery provides an idea of how difficult it can be to succeed in a middle management position. In a worse-case scenario middle managers are the fall guys for those above them and the whipping boys for those below them.

You may wonder, "Why is it so important for middle management to succeed?" Looking at the management structure of companies today, after a sharp decline in the 1990's, middle management positions are becoming more and more prevalent. Individuals placed in middle management positions are intended to be the glue that binds the front line worker and upper management. Admittedly, "glue" is an ineloquent analogy. Let's look instead at arguably one of the most beautiful and well designed systems in nature, the human body. If upper management is the brain, generating new ideas and strategies for successful survival, the front line workers would be the heart, the lungs, the hands, and every other part that carries out the plans formulated in the brain. Middle managers in this scenario are the nervous system, they allow for the flow of communication throughout. When the nervous system in a body is unhealthy then the whole body suffers.

So how can companies create a healthy and successful middle management, and how can this result in an overall healthy and successful organization? The answer is by empowering middle management. What does this look like? Imagine this scenario: You're an executive of your company. You have all the time you need to formulate strategies for your company's success. You know exactly what's going on with your work force. You know that problems, which are avoided in most cases, are being handled effectively when they do occur. You know that every member of your staff has a clear idea of the direction and intentions of the company as it moves forward. Utopia? No, just a company with an empowered middle management.