Real life stories | Energize Performance

There is an organization that helps their clients truly transform their lives. The Care Center in Nashua, NH.

Their clients move from…

fear to confidence

despair to hope

and

homelessness to security.

I’ve had the deep honor of interviewing a number of their past clients. Almost every one has talked about living a life of fear,

in a home where the mother’s and children’s physical safety was always questioned…

or one step away from living on streets…

The Transitional Housing Program (their flagship service) is a tightly run process that truly gives the women and their families every opportunity and every tool that they need to transform their life.

They told me that the major ingredient the clients must bring to it is their own grit. They must also believe in the future life they want for themselves and their children. They have to adapt to the supportive guidelines, heal their emotional wounds in therapy, learn new parenting skills, and improve the way they deal with finances. When they did all of this, they succeeded.

I noticed that what usually first drove the women to the Care Center was fear and pain. What then helped the successful ones to transform their life was a vision of greater health, security and well-being for themselves and their children.

There are powerful lessons for all of us in changing our own lives.

Let the fear motivate you away from the danger; and then use the love for self and others to motivate to greater things.
Be willing to adapt to radically new ways of doing things.
Be grateful to those that offer you help – and take advantage of all the resources you can on your journey.

In the next few weeks I’m going to post video of some of the interviews, so that you too can be inspired by these heroic women.

This is a true story of Improv Leadership creating more dynamic presentations.

This is a guest post from a good friend and colleague of mine, Eric. He is a senior healthcare architect who has mastered the art of co-design with his clients using improv leader and solution-focus techniques. Here’s his story:

My work as a healthcare planner requires a capacity to talk about complex medical issues and translate those issues into a spatial solution for my firm’s clients; there is, of course, never enough time, space or money!

In the past, those meetings have been “conference room combat” for me, now they are “improv jazz”!

The difference?

I have come to recognize that the best solution is not “my solution” but is truly owned by the folks who will use the end result (the implemented plan). By freeing myself up from the presumption that, as the “planning expert” I must generate the “best plan”, I create the opportunity for me to participate freely in the dialogue. That dialogue, in turn, is free to head into unexpected turf and unconventional, but effective solutions.
Once I frame alternatives as potentials for them to review, criticize, examine, take apart and reassemble, clients actually respect my professional skills more, rather than less. It removes the “yes/no” charge from discussions about solutions, and directs the discussion into the wonderful grey area of “what if?” where true can emerge. We focus intuitively on the positive and the potential, and view obstacles as opportunities to be mastered!
By engaging in dialogue, my clients understand that I view their expertise and experience as critical to the process. When clinicians are invited to participate, they focus on real issues, rather than “grandstanding” or politicizing the process.

In “conference room combat”, someone may appear to win, but ultimately, everyone loses. The end product suffers. By creating an environment that allows fluidity of thought everyone has a voice at the table, and the result is an improvisational work session that can truly lead to better, more dynamic and optimal solutions.

Eric R. Lautzenheiser , AIA, ACHA

Director of Health Facilities Planning

Francis Cauffman

If you have a story to share and want to be a guest blogger here, let me know.

Energize Performance

Browsing Category Real life stories

Deep full-life transformation

Like this:

Conference room combat to improv jazz – true story

Like this: