My Ideal Day: A Day in the Life Sunday

Have you ever spent time thinking about what your ideal day would look like? Well, I had not until Becky Robinson asked me that very question. As part of a campaign with Jason Womack, author of Your Best Just Got Better, Becky is asking people to describe their ideal day.

I'm in. Are you?

My ideal day is a day without a plan. It begins with me waking up on my own. It's quiet inside the house and even quieter inside my head. Moleskine is hand, I write, capturing free-flowing unedited thoughts while observing how easily they connect if I stay out of their way.

I exercise. It could be a bike, run or hike but it is outside and my thoughts are on nothing other than the movement, the sounds and my strength.

By the time I finish, the family is awake and humming along. Breakfast is a must and an ideal weekend breakfast is brunch-like with oatmeal or French toast complete with nuts and fruit and coffee with Baileys. Oh, bread pudding! The fall in the air today has me remembering a Vermont maple farm brunch I read about but I could be just as happy at a local coffee shop with indie music and a great artisan bakery.

We eat, talk, read, watch TV, walk the dog - whatever. The activity, or lack of activity, is not important. What's important is that we are together, in the moment, with a quiet understanding and total acceptance of each other as individuals and as a family unit. 

My ideal day is not only about what I am doing, it is also about whom I am doing it with. My ideal day is about the state of my relationships and  being present for them by quieting my inner noise. Now . . . a day at the spa, a new look and a great dinner wouldn't ruin an ideal day either.

Photo credit: iStockphoto

{Labor} Relations and this HR Pro

As an HR professional and leader, I have touched just about all there is to touch in day-to-day organizational HR and after being in this game for over 18 years, I have come to the conclusion that I {suck} at labor relations.

Actually, I am pretty good but you have got to know that the very nature of the labor-management relationship can stress the people pleaser in me.

Collaboration, mediation, hold your line, give an inch, negotiation, agendas, partnership, and positions . . .  labor relations can be a running reel of contradictions.

When faced with contradictions in your HR life, what do you do?

Although I may come face-to-face with the desire to go tit-for-tat, it's just not in me to operate that way. I feel strongly about "no surprises" and even when the upper hand is mine, it is not often that I will lead with it. I never walk into a meeting unprepared yet as the ultimate optimist, I believe we can work through anything together - even if that means working to the point of agreeing to disagree.

That's not where my problems arise.

My problems arise when I break the #1 rule of business, human resources <and life actually> and I take things personally. 

You'd think after so many years of being in this game, I'd know better. Try as I might not to, it happens anyway and when it does, I can see it coming like a Mack truck. Thanks to a wonderful support system and creative coping techniques, I get it together rather quickly.

Labor relations. Pshw. My gig is up. You know as well as I do that this really has nothing at all to do with labor - pick a relationship, any relationship at all and the dynamics for me are the same. Relationship is the color of the glasses I see my world through.

Over the years, on request, I've tried to change the color of my lenses, but in the big scheme of things it's simply not happening. Nothing is going to change. I am not going to change.

Don't like it?

Sue me.

Photo credit iStockphoto