Abby and Eason,
First, I am sorry that I haven’t written in a while. As you know I have been launching our recent company, and it has been incredibly time consuming. I have thought about your letters often and am sorry that I haven’t written.
I want to pick up where I left off. After my summer job, I moved away to college. Because school was expensive, I had two jobs. On campus, my job was a work study with a blind professor. Off campus I kept teaching gymnastics. But for now, I will focus on the on campus work study job.
This job was different from anything I had ever done. I hadn’t worked in an office before so I didn’t know much about what to do. The professor I was assigned was blind. Back in those days, there wasn’t much technology for helping him. So, my main job was to read the textbooks that he would teach from onto tape. He then used those to plan his lessons.
I hated reading. It was something I had never been very good at. And, reading history seemed extra boring to me. But, I did it because I knew it was important to him, and it was my job.
After only a few weeks of reading, he pulled me aside to talk to me. He asked me if I knew how to read. I was like – yeah. He said that he thought I didn’t. He had heard a lot of people read, and he knew when people had just memorized words and didn’t really know how to read. He told me that any hard word I guessed or made up a word completely. He said I never was able to read proper nouns that I wasn’t familiar with.
He approached me with gentleness. He explained that I needed to learn to read to be successful in college. He asked me if I had any idea how to do that.
Honestly, at first, I was embarrassed and almost angry he had called me out. I knew I wasn’t good at reading. I actually hated it. But, I did know how to read – I thought.
After I calmed down, I decided to explore what it would mean to learn to read. The professor has given me different jobs to do while I learned.
I found Hooked on Phonics. Back then it was a brand new concept with one video series. I bought it, but it was really embarrassing to put videos of little kid phonics songs into the TV, so I would look for places to practice that were less embarrassing. One of those places was my grandmother’s house. She watch me and told me she didn’t know how to sound words and read either. She had just memorized them too. So, she decided to do it with me throughout that weekend.
Over time I became better at reading. I don’t really think I felt this great pride in learning to read, but I knew I had to do it to be good at my job.
And, that is what I think I learned in that job. Sometimes the work space requires difficult conversations. Three questions really matter in those conversations: (1) Can the person who is approaching you approach you with kindness? (2) Can you respond with an open mind to what they are saying and consider their thoughts even if you don’t completely agree? (3) Will you do what needs to be done to resolve the issue?
Of course difficult conversations go both ways. Today, as a leader, I have had to have many difficult conversations with employees. I carry responsibility to approach them with kindness and work toward resolution, whatever that looks like.
So, the lesson is be open. Sometimes people see in you things you don’t see in yourself. Sometimes they are right; other times they are not. But, we always need to remain open and coachable so that we can continue to grow.
I love you both very much and am proud of you.
Mom