Making a Difference – Part 2

In a previous post I explored “making a difference” from a business, almost clinical point of view… take a problem (i.e. an unfulfilled need), plan how to fix it, implement the plan, measure how well you did, and then start planning all over again. The key point I was trying to make was that without measurement, all you may be accomplishing is self-congratulations.

But last weekend I learned from a few young adults who have never benefited from corporate training, that there is a much more basic requirement to “making a difference” than willingness to measure your impact… I just wish that a young friend did not have to die to bring this point to our minds.

Perhaps you read the story or saw the television coverage when it hit the national news: a beautiful young American girl killed while enjoying nature on vacation in India. The news in its current ratings and profit-driven incarnation, painted this story in as few dimensions as needed to grab an emotional string and pull it hard. Sadly this story provided extra attention-grabbing power because it had an additional horrific twist: her only sister died 4 years ago in a different, but equally horrible outdoors accident. The media gave you the feeling that their parents, the kindest and most loving people I have ever known (and believe me, the superlatives are justified here), must have lost it all.

But in experiencing the funeral of Lauren Failla last weekend, where over 700 of her family and friends gathered to celebrate her life, the shallowness of the media’s coverage of her story became apparent. Please allow me to share with you how Lauren and her amazing friends and family continue to show us how to make a difference, and to do so in the only way I have ever found that truly sticks (i.e. is sustainable).

How to Make a Difference

1. Find a place where it is safe to care. You cannot understand Lauren or her family without being introduced to their church community, that of St. Peter’s Episcopal in Morristown New Jersey. Churches and religions in the US have been going through difficult times (i.e. declining membership) for decades as modern truths revealed in a science-based world make it easy to doubt the existence of a mystical, omnipotent, controlling, defined-by-one-religion, singular being that is called God. Some churches counter those doubts through subtle fear (“If I don’t stay a member and do what I am told, I may go to hell”), through gambling-like appeals (“If I pray the right way, I may win the lottery”), through carefully marketed snobbery (“We have the only path to God, and all others who say they do are like knock-off Prada handbags, maybe pretty on the outside but thinly lined on the inside”), and through appeals to stop thinking and just feel (“When I sing my praise music, I feel God blessing me and if I feel good, that’s all that really matters”).

The community of St. Peter’s is different. It asks you to think. It allows you to feel. And most of all, it doesn’t just ask you to care, it provides many opportunities to do so. In my own travels through many churches, St. Peter’s is the one that comes closest to a community of explorers who strive to love without condition, listen without criticism, and hold each other with joy on the journey. It is the community that Lauren grew up in, a community led by people like her parents.

Why is it unique to find a place that makes it safe to care? Because the predominant message passed to us in work and social circles is that if you care too much, you will be taken advantage of by the selfish, the needy, the less deserving, and if you let that happen to you, you only have yourself to blame. This leads to limited caring, caring with caution. It leads to being like a baseball player or dancer who always holds something back and therefore performs at best with mediocrity.

[For those in the corporate sustainability world who are reading this, I ask you, how safe do you make it for your employees to care? Or do you consider caring a diversion from your main goals, a threat to discipline that must be avoided? I suggest that unless you make it safe for people to care about more than their salary, your sustainability programs will be as short-lived as the temporal motivations that you can provide. I also suggest that because caring comes from inside, it is the most renewable motivation there is.]

2. Find where your passions and abilities intersect with a need in the world, and then live there. St. Peter’s has a girls’ choir started by Anne Yardley that gives girls a love of music, the skills and discipline to understand it in all its forms, and the opportunity to grow in confidence by performing it with the support of friends. Lauren and her sister Emily joined the choir in its founding years. My daughter and her friends followed. In this group just like in the better Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, older members learn not only music but also how to mentor and develop younger members into a troupe. The girls’ choir gave Lauren and Emily a passion for song and for leading other youth to grow. Emily translated her passion into a career as an elementary school teacher. Lauren learned to interpret the song of life in dance and in painting, and to use that to inspire and heal other young people.

In addition to several amazing choirs, St. Peter’s also provides awareness of basic needs in various world communities. One of its past ministers, Prince Singh, came from India. During his St. Peter’s tenure he educated the congregation about the needs of the Dahlit community, the underclass of Indian society that provides little opportunity, not even educational opportunity for those born into it. He led a group of parishioners to visit a Dahlit community in Andra Pradesh, India and forge a link between these vastly different worlds. One of the youth that participated in that journey was Michael Haslett, and it was in India that he found his passion and abilities. After graduating from college, Michael started a foundation to continue serving the Andra Pradesh community. He also teaches regularly at the St. Peter’s English Middle School in India, a school built and maintained through the connections that Prince forged. Lauren was in India in large part to meet with her friend Michael. When Lauren was killed, Michael was in transit to visit her. Michael continued on to help the friend and family he truly loved in any way he could. Michael arranged for and accompanied Lauren’s remains back to her family.

Years ago, Anne Yardley and Prince Singh moved on from these leadership positions at St. Peter’s. But the ventures they started continue to flourish. By living at the intersection of passion, skill and need, Anne and Prince infected others. Thus the work they believed so strongly in continues, and those who continue it are also continuing to infect others. This is what “sustainability” is supposed to look like.

[Is your corporate sustainability program dependent on your involvement? Are you afraid of others who have passions and abilities that are different than yours? I suggest if you want to create a program that lives beyond your involvement, you stop trying to look for that "high-performer" to "develop" as your successor, but instead try to make all you touch high performers in their own right. Leaders like Michael will then make themselves known without your special attention, by continuing to perform even under difficult circumstances.]

3. Befriend others who care, then inspire and support their unique passions and abilities. Having friends and having a posse are two different things. If you need to be the center of being, then the people who you may call friends really act as your posse. They are there to support all you do, and they are not allowed to challenge you. Indeed when you “help” these friends, it is more often than not to make them more like you. There is no growth in such relationships, only stasis.

But friendship based on caring is different. It requires you to be more like the muse that Lauren came to be. In her brief adult life she worked with the youth at St. Peter’s to help them become better people so much so that they called her regularly for counseling and advice. In death, Lauren continues to inspire her friends and all she touched to follow their own passions especially when used in service to others. The most recent fruit of her inspiration is a beautiful song written by friend and musician Blaire Reinhard in Lauren’s memory, its title quoting Lauren, “The Only One Missing is You.”

[In corporate-speak, this step towards sustainability involves team building. A team requires many skill sets in order to handle diverse challenges. It also requires everybody to practice their assigned roles expertly and in coordination with others. The job of the leader of the team is to create an environment that allows the team members to succeed; it is not to demonstrate superiority. The more diverse and free the team members are to embrace their diversity, the more likely the program they are charged to steward can sustain any challenge.]

4. NEVER take yourself so seriously that you can’t change. Some call this having a sense of humor. But it is hard to laugh when somebody so vibrant and young dies. Instead the event knocks you down, makes you question everything… even your deepest beliefs. As the current rector of St. Peter’s, Janet Broderick said in her homily during Lauren’s funeral, “God and me are not on speaking terms right now.”

Expressing your doubts will invariably open up new paths for your team to explore. I heard friends of Lauren say that they liked Janet’s open-mindedness so much that they could see themselves attending Lauren’s church. And I believe that the hurt that Janet is clearly feeling will eventually open her up to see her ministry in a new and more vibrant light.

[For sustainability professionals, this aspect of "making a difference" means that you should never blindly accept what others tell you to believe, but rather follow a process that allows your program to embrace new opportunities when they appear, as well as to modify and grow as it faces new challenges.]

5. Incorporate all experiences into who you are, then identify yourself by your faith and successes, never your losses. Every parent who heard Lauren and Emily’s stories asked how can their parents go on? I do not know how long it would take or if I could ever even recover from such a tragedy. But of one thing I am sure: if there is a way to recover, it is by re-focusing on your ability to connect, even when it is hard.

Love, the strongest of connections, is a two-way street… you give and you take. When the center of your love is taken away and you can no longer give to that person or receive from her, then there will always be a huge painful hole in your life. But the day you can acknowledge the pain without letting it consume you, you will start to regrow the ability to give and receive love, and that is when you will know you can survive. The loss will always be a part of who you are, but the loss does not have to become the new center of who you are. It just requires faith that making new connections will always be worth the risk of future pain.

I pray that Lauren’s parents will be okay. They showed us their strength, their gratitude and their love at Lauren’s funeral by graciously greeting all 700 who came to give their support and remembrances, in many ways helping us feel better when it should have been the other way around. And by expressing the song “God Be in My Head” in sign language during the internment, I believe that Lauren’s mother showed the spirits of her daughters as well as the rest of us that even when you are so consumed that you cannot speak, you can still show that you are working to keep your love and faith from dying. I pray that they will let all who care about them, love them. And I pray that all who love them will be able to respect their grief, but will never use this disaster to redefine their center, because both Lauren and Emily need us to recognize that their parents are so much more than that.

[Sustainability has been a hard sell these past few years in the corporate world. If you have been working to promote it, you have likely been knocked down more than once. But if you continue to believe that strengthening the connections we have with each other is the only way that our lives and our companies can be improved, then even when you are knocked down, it will make it easier to stand up and start all over again.]

6. Complete the circle… make it safe for others to care.St. Peter’s has set up a memorial fund, the “Lauren Failla Endowment for Church Youth” that will keep one aspect of Lauren’s legacy alive. And Richard Demaio, Lauren’s boyfriend for many years, is organizing a Foundation for Art Therapy to make sure that Lauren, who never got a chance to fulfill her career dream of art therapist, will still make better the lives of others who are hurting, through art.

[When you enable others to follow their own passions for making a difference, you guarantee your impact well beyond your own life, and you multiply the benefits that all receive.]