My Father's Story: a new and I believe best version

My Life's Favorite Moment: A short-short story

My Dad, My Hero

My mom is beginning to fail. I'm going to visit her in NY tomorrow. Among the many thoughts that float through me are of my dad, Boris Nemko.

I've often written about his having used work to get past his Holocaust memories and to afford to move my mom, sister, and me from a Bronx tenement. But I just flashed on some other things about him that, on reflection, really were quite heroic. Perhaps they'll inspire you as they continue to inspire me.

My dad didn't open his clothing store in one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods (105 Moore St. Brooklyn) because he had a political desire to serve the poor. It was all he could afford. He didn't charge $1 for shirts and $1.98 for Ray-Ban sunglasses because he wanted to be kind to the poor. That was all the market there could bear.

But even after he could afford to move his store to a less dangerous neighborhood, he stayed...for 40 years. He stayed even though people would constantly steal from his store. Twice, he was awakened in the middle of the night by the police--they called to tell him that robbers had emptied his store. A third time, the police called to say that someone broke a window and tossed a lighted kerosene-soaked towel into his store. Half the merchandise was burned, much the other half ruined because of the smoke.

Apart from those anomalies, every day, my dad had to endure the smell of stale blood from the live chicken market next door merging with the smell of deep-fried pork intestines from the deli on the other side plus the smell of the garbage that people would throw into the street. So often, he had to endure unfair customers. For example, when I was helping my dad at the store one Saturday, I recall one customer who, for 20 minutes, tried on suit after suit, asking my father question after question, which made all the other customers wait. And after that, he said he couldn't afford the $25 for the suit and asked if my father would sell it to him for $10. My father said the best he could do was $20 and the customer pranced out laughing.

My father kept his store open from 8:30 a.m. until 7 p.m.Monday through Saturday. And before he could afford a car, he would take a bus, train, plus a six-block walk (rain, snow, or shine) to and from his store. And on many Sundays, he would go to the Lower East Side to buy merchandise for the store, carting boxes of shirts, pants, etc back to his store. 

Nevertheless, my dad stayed for 40 years, serving that community, providing basic products, things they really needed, at an affordable price, and providing services unheard of today. For example, my dad would do alterations for customers for free. He had a sewing machine in the back and did the work when business was slow.

I believe that the small shopkeepers who, like my dad, endured everything from ongoing robbery to ongoing stench and kept on serving--with integrity--are far more worthy of praise than are the politicians, athletes, and pop culture stars we genuflect before.

A Sampler from the One-Woman Show I Co-Wrote and Piano-Accompanied

Here's a six-minute sampler from the one-woman show I co-wrote and piano-accompanied, Big, Black, and Shy. 

It starts with the performer, Jeffrie Givens, recreating an incident as a preschooler that reveals her extreme shyness. It includes a cameo appearance by my doggie Einstein.

At 1;04, there's the first snippet of her remarkable singing/performing ability.

That's followed by the improbable (and funny) true story of how I helped her go from being so shy to someone who performs in front of thousands of people.

At 3:45, she ends her show with a song the lyrics of which embed a lesson we all could probably benefit from.

As you'll see, she got a standing ovation, as she has every time she's performed the show.


 

The Art of Coaching

This is a draft of my next column for The Intelligencer, a Mensa publication. Feedback welcome.

Whether it's someone at work, our players, or a family member, we all coach.

This anecdote elucidates some non-obvious coaching techniques I've found effective:

I walked into the waiting room to greet my next client. There sat a 250-pound woman named Jeffrie Givens. (Note: She has given permission to use her name and photo.) When I said hi, she averted her eyes and murmured "Hi." She had dropped out of Cal, was making $8 an hour in retail sales, and had come to me for career help.

I pored over her answers to my new-client questionnaire. She loves singing--not exactly a low-risk career goal. But looking for an entry-point, I had her sing for me. Reluctantly, she did: B+ voice, F performer---I've seen less-stiff cadavers.

I then showed her YouTube videos of world-class performers singing that song. After, I said, "Go into the this room. It has a full-length mirror. Like when you were a girl, play pretend: Pretend you're one of those superstars performing that song. When you're ready to perform it again for me, call me in."

Fifteen minutes later, she called me in and her voice had improved to an A- and her performance to a C.

I then said, "We're going on a field trip," and I drove her to Woodminster Amphitheater. Looking down upon its 2,000 seats and bigger-than-Broadway stage, I said, "You are going to perform here some day." She said, "You're crazy."

Long story short, she has now performed at Woodminster in five of America's great musicals, gained the confidence to finish her degree and land a middle-income-earning job at Children's Hospital. And now she performs a wonderful and inspiring one-woman show, Big, Black, and Shy, that I devised and we co-write which tells her improbable story in anecdote and song. (By the way, her voice is now an A, better than Susan Boyle, a Black Celine Dion.) I accompany on the piano. Her next performance is sold out with a long waiting list. If, however, you might like to attend her subsequent performance on June 17 in the East Bay, email me for info: mnemko@comcast.net. 

That story embeds at least three principles of coaching:

• Consider going beyond talking. People who seek coaching often have talked about their problem ad nauseam. Sure, coaches need good communication skills: listen well, ask questions to facilitate the client coming up with her own solutions, and tactfully and not-too-often offering their own. But often, an experience(s) is required to blast a person from inertia.

• Build on a person's interest, even if it seems irrelevant or impractical. There's often a way to tie it back to practicality.

• Provide a model for the desired behavior: show, don't tell. It needn't be a YouTube video. For example, to demonstrate how an effective CEO behaves, I role play an executive running a meeting. Another example: I've taken a client who wanted to learn the art of flirting to a pick-up bar to watch what successful bar hounds do.

Here are three more of my favorite non-standard coaching techniques:

The Optometry Game. The Optometry Game allows you to use your ideational fluency without making your coachee feel less-than.

I tell the client, "Eye doctors always ask you, 'Is it better with lens 1 or 2?' Well, now I'm going to give you two options and you tell me which you like better?" (It could be career choices, options for meeting a romantic partner, getting more education, whatever). You're generating all the ideas. Your coachee simply needs to pick among two alternatives. Anyone can do that.


A variation on The Optometry Game is The Trial Game. I pretend I'm a lawyer making the arguments for one option. Then I make the arguments for the other option. Finally, I ask the coachee to be the judge: to pick the winner and explain why.


Disequilibrate? I consciously decide how much disequilibration to create in the coachee.

Normally, I want my clients to feel confident, that they're efficacious, or at least that they're on the right track. So usually, I try to avoid disagreeing with client contentions.


But sometimes, a client is overconfident, complacent. So if I decide that the likely benefit outweighs the risk, I'll tactfully disagree. Even more occasionally, I'll decide that being tactful won't create enough disequilibrium. In that case, I use a technique I call, The Jerk. I say, "I'm going to pretend I'm a well-intentioned but tactless jerk." I then say something honest but quite blunt to create the desired disequilibration. Here's a particularly forceful example:

"You spend your life blaming your failure on everyone but yourself. Or maybe you really don't want to succeed---It's a lot cushier to let your parents keep funding your lazy-ass existence. Well, if you want to go on being a parasite, fine--We'll all just keep thinking of you as a loser. But if instead, you decide to be a contributor, everyone will think so much more of you and, more important, you'll feel a helluva lot better about yourself. The choice is yours."

I then ask the client, "How would you respond to that jerk?" Usually, the client says something like, "There's some truth in what the jerk said." So, without alienating the coachee, I've said something s/he may have long needed to hear.


The Vegas Game. My job is only half done when my client and I have developed an action plan s/he's excited about. The other half is helping to ensure s/he implements it. To assess the likelihood of that, at the end of the session, I usually ask, "If we were in Vegas, should I bet that you would or wouldn't implement the plan?"


If the client says "Wouldn't," I ask, "What would improve the odds?" If the client doesn't know, I usually say, "Let's go to that moment of truth when you know you should start implementing the plan. What's going through your head?"


Often, that question reveals that I need to provide more guidance on how to implement the plan or on how to overcome a fear. We keep playing The Vegas Game until the client says something like, "Now you should definitely bet on me."

Big, Black, and Shy: The Improbable but True, and Inspirational Story of Jeffrie Givens

I must admit I'm pretty damn proud of the woman who did the one-woman show I produced, directed, co-wrote and piano-accompanied. I'm really quite confident you'll enjoy watching it.

Favorite Quotes About Work

I read all 1001 of the quotes in the book, 1001 Best Things Ever Said About Work. Here are my 62 favorites arranged by category:

ACT

There is nothing brilliant nor outstanding in my record, except perhaps this one thing: I do the things that I believe ought to be done .... And when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.— Theodore Roosevelt 

The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete. — Lao Tzu 

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer. — Nolan Bushnell 

When you're going through hell, keep going. — Albert Einstein 

APPRECIATING WORK

It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness. — Thomas Jefferson 

It is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. — Ecclesiastes 3:13. 

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. — Oscar Wilde  

The nearer man comes to his goal to make his life easy and abundant, the more he undermines the foundations of a meaningful existence. — Franz Alexander  

No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one. — Elbert Hubbard  

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man. — Benjamin Franklin 

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still. — Oscar Wilde 

When some fellers decide to retire nobody knows the difference. — Kin Hubbard

ANTI-DILETTANTISM/GENERALIST

That man who knows too many trades . . . .his family starves. — Chinese proverb 

ARROGANCE

Arrogance is too often the companion of excellence. — Unknown wise person  

ATTITUDE

Little things affect little minds. — Benjamin Disraeli 

It takes a strong fish to swim against the current. Even a dead one can float with it. — John Crowe 

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. — Rainer Maria Rilke 

Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof. — John Kenneth Galbraith 

A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it. An amateur is a man who can't do his job when he does feel like it. — James Agate 

CLOTHING

Being a well-dressed person is a career, and he who goes in for it has no time for anything else. — Heywood Broun 

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. — Oscar Wilde 

COMMITTEES/TEAMWORK

A committee of three gets things done if two don't show up. — Unknown wise person  

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and quietly strangled. — Sir Barnett Cocks 

If you want a track team to win the high jump you must find one person who can jump seven feet, not seven people who can jump one foot. — Unknown wise person  

What the crowd requires is mediocrity of the highest order. — Auguste Préault

 COMMUNICATION

No one ever listened himself out of a job. — Calvin Coolidge

It's not what you say but the way you say it.- — French proverb

Words that do not match deeds are not important. — Ernesto Che Guevara  

When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred. — Thomas Jefferson  

DELEGATION

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me. — W. Somerset Maugham 

Success means only doing what you do well, letting someone else do the rest. — Goldstein S. 

DIPLOMACY

Diplomacy is letting someone else have your way. — Lester Pearson

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. — Caskie Stinnett 

EQUALITY

Inferiors revolt in order that they be equal, and equals that they be superior. — Aristotle

Equality is what does not exist among mortals. — e. e. cummings  

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent. — Aldous Huxley 

ETHICS

The darkest hour in any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it. — Horace Greeley  

FAILURE/MISTAKES

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. — George Patton  

More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them. — Harold J. Smith 

GETTING FIRED

Getting fired is nature's way to telling you that you had the wrong job in the first place. — Hal Lancaster 

GOALS

I always wanted to be a somebody but I should have been more specific. — Lily Tomlin  

Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal and I will give you a stock clerk. — J. C. Penney 

HURRY

They stumble that run fast. — William Shakespeare  

HIRING WELL

If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. — David Ogilvy 

JOB SECURITY

Perform your job better than anyone else can. That's the best job security I know. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.  

LUCK

The worst cynicism: a belief in luck. — Joyce Carol Oates 

MANAGEMENT

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. — Peter Drucker 

NEATNESS

If your company has a clean-desk policy, the company is nuts and you're nuts to stay there. — Tom Peters  

PERFECTIONISM

A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked Perfection. — Donald Kennedy  

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement. — George F. Will  

Do the right things instead of trying to do everything right. — Peter Drucker  

PERSISTENCE

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge  

PLANS

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work. — Peter F. Drucker  

PLAYING TO YOUR STRENGTHS

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. — John Wooden 

Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation. — Aristotle 

REWARDS

Don't work for recognition, but do work worthy of recognition. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.  

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work. — Elbert Hubbard 

RETIREMENT

Retirement is the ugliest word in the language. — Ernest Hemingway  

To retire is the beginning of death. — Pablo Casals  

TALENT

I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic. It's what you do with it that counts. — Martin Ritt  

THRIFT

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. — William of Occam  

TIME MANAGEMENT

Those who make the worst use of their time most complain of its shortness. — La Bruyère  

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe