HR Horizons HR Blog

Webmaster September 5th, 2007

By Dan Goldberg, MBA

It’s September 10th and there I am again, driving North on the New Jersey Turnpike towards Kenilworth (this time). This is the first day of eight over the next three weeks at a company in this town off exit 11 and up the Garden State Parkway, interspersed with a couple days in Maryland, two in Connecticut and one in Manhattan. Three weeks of constantly being on the go, being busy conducting seminars and consulting.

Team Building is the topic for this day, with four more to follow. How to build effective and efficient teams, communicate better, know your and your team members strengths and weaknesses, delegate, motivate and of course have some fun along the way.

What a great group of folks they are, a dozen in the morning class and the same for the afternoon session. I leave at around 5:30 to head home to Philly. On the road I’m mentally figuring out how much time I have to eat, make my calls, spend some time with my son maybe talking, just relaxing and or watching sports before going off to sleep. Tomorrow is a special day. September 11th and I’m to meet my clients Paul and Lynn in Trenton at 7:30 A.M. to catch the train to Manhattan. We have a day of meetings scheduled and a surprise Birthday Party in the evening.

The party’s for me, Paul had arranged it and even called people on his speakerphone while I was in his office to say Are you coming to Dan’s surprise party on the 11th And we’d all laugh. September 11th is my Birthday. I can’t calculate how many times I’ve told people, Do you know how much money I had to spend to get my birthday on all those Police Cars! 911.it wasn’t easy?

Paul calls late and leaves me a message. There’s a change of plans, we’re gonna take the eight twenty-five (or the train around that time). I call him. I don’t think he’s feeling too well, maybe he wants to get a few extra minutes of sleep in the A.M. Check in with me in the morning he says. Five forty is my call into Paul. Dan I think we can take the 10:35, I just wanna lay in bed for a bit, but we’re definitely going, see you at the station.

So I eat my breakfast, take my shower and get all my stuff in order.

Now it’s a few minutes after nine and the phone rings, it’s my friend. He asks if I’m still going to Manhattan. I give him an affirmative and he says, Oh no you’re not, turn on the TV.

I press the on button and there it is. I’m numb, frozen, in disbelief. Can this really be happening? I attempt to think, but disorganization gets thrown into the mix. Sometimes I’m fully cognizant of what I’m doing and other times I have to think and rethink to make sure that I’m comprehending even the normal things away from the commentary and pictures on CNN.

The calls go out, to my son, Paul, other family members and friends to see if everyone’s ok. And to tell them that I didn’t go.

I speak with Anne Marie who works in Manhattan. She was supposed to attend the dinner party. She tells me that a mutual friend, who she works with, had just dropped off a package to his roommate on the 102nd floor of Tower One, taken the elevator down and reached the lobby when the plane hit. He’s fine but he doesn’t know where his roommate is.

The party, the meetings, the business seems oddly meaningless and meaningful at the same time. How nice it would be to have the party, sit in a meeting and do the business of business. And how absurd it all seems at this time of tragedy.

The day passes painfully, my birthday will mean something so different to me and everyone else from here on out.

I try to call the Red Cross to give blood but all the lines are busy. Finally I get through and they tell me that there’s a blood drive being held in Flourtown (my Flourtown) tomorrow starting at 2:00. No appointments will be taken.

The 12th is more of the same, everything to do with business is cancelled and who would want to do anything anyway. I wonder about my friends in NYC and in North Jersey and hope everyone is ok.

I walk down the block and there, a few houses away is a makeshift shrine on the steps of a neighbor. Five or six candles and two photos, one of the photos is on a piece paper that looked so much like the photos I’ve begun to see on TV, held by distraught relatives and friends. Missing 102nd floor, Tower One (the same tower and floor of my friend’s roommate), followed by his name and the picture of a man smiling. How sad. What do you do? Or Think? Or say? My mind still shifts between thinking straight and the haze that so many people continue to say appears from time to time in their thoughts.

I get to the blood drive at 1:50 P.M. there are about forty people waiting. And the line continues to get longer. The day proceeds, I wait, and the realization hits me that I have to go back up to North Jersey the next morning. At 7:25 P.M. I’ve been thanked, my blood has been given and I head home. The Team Building Seminar Series is to continue in the morning.

Team Building has come to America in a manner that theory, academic exercises or lecture can only reinforce in a seminar. We’ve illustrated it by our actions. The firefighters, police officers, emergency workers, and civilians have reacted in a way that shows the best in people.

Everyone is helping and supporting, giving money and or blood, sending supplies, performing tasks that must be done in order to make things move somewhat smoothly in what otherwise would be a totally chaotic situation. And we do it. From psychological help to just talking with each other. We somehow realize that we need one another.

Then there are the flags. More than I’ve ever seen. I wonder how many are displayed out of respect, how many out of real patriotism and how many out of jingoism. I hope the former two far out weight the third. I glance up to read the sayings placed under old glory on the overpasses. My favorite one reads America, Diverse and Free. I think about how important it is for everyone to constantly remember that. America really is a Team, made up of all kinds of people. That’s one of the things that makes us so strong and makes so many people outside and inside our country so envious.

The seminar the next day brings those points to fore. What better example of Team Building? Instantaneously we’ve become a Team. Things go well under the circumstances that day and the next. The American Team Building has even spread to the Garden State Parkway on the 13th where motorists have pulled over, gotten out of their cars and stand next to their vehicles holding candles. It continues for miles. I leave North Jersey after more Team Building Sessions on the 14th.

The next week the haze remains to some degree. More Kenilworth Monday and Tuesday. I must say I really like the people I’m working with. They seem to realize their team building needs quite clearly and are already using some of the techniques to bring about change.

Thursday and Friday I’m in Maryland. Thursday night I go to sleep around 10:30. The workshop I’m doing starts early. Somehow I hit the pillow and I’m out, sound asleep until a blast wakes me up at who knows what time. I jump out of bed open the curtain look outside to hear sirens and see flashes of light. My hand reaches for the remote, I turn on the TV to see what has happened and there’s no signal. How my reference points have changed. Two weeks before I would have known it was thunder and lightening, now I’m not sure if it’s another attack. I figure if it is they’ll come and get me, if not I might as well make an attempt at more sleep.

At the Seminar I ask how many folks heard the thunder and how many of them thought that it was another attack. More than half the hands go up. Most of the rest slept through the noise.

The next week takes me back up to North Jersey again and Connecticut. The drive to Connecticut is strange. I leave Philly a little after 5:00 PM. I get on the Jersey Turnpike and take exit 13 Elizabeth.

In order to circumvent Manhattan I go through Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx on route 278. It gives me an incredible view of the Manhattan skyline. It’s so beautiful and majestic. I have time. The Battery Tunnel is closed. Traffic backs up and I look at the City while listening to NPR on my radio. Then I see it. The smoke is still there. The haze remains, not just in my thoughts but in the skyline. Those buildings that I ALWAYS looked for, the ones that signified that I was close to my destination were gone. All I could see were those other buildings, ones that have become familiar to me only through TV, the ones with the greenish domes that formerly were dwarfed by their neighbors, Tower One and Tower Two.

On my way home to Philly I thought about business and how those two towers had, to some degree, symbolized the motors of commerce and how their demise had slowed it down. I counted a scant eleven airplanes from central Connecticut to New York City. Eleven. How unreal. Then I realized that those eleven planes were more than I had seen in the sky in quite some time. We’ll make it I thought. A little more cautiously on one hand and a lot more determined on the other but we’ll make it.

Connecticut, Maryland and North Jersey are, for now, behind me.

Three weeks of life (and counting) filled with extreme emotions and the everyday chores we may treasure somewhat differently.

It may be me but I get the feeling that people are driving differently since the eleventh, I would even say more courteous. We seem to be a bit more grounded. Is it that we’ve been hugging our kids more often, understanding each others strengths and weaknesses with more tolerance, perhaps even putting our priorities in order.

What does this mean for business?

I hope it means a richer, slower more invigorating business climate. One that appreciates everyone and everything that makes our businesses work. It may mean that we have to look around at the folks we work with and tell them how much we enjoy seeing them each day, yeah, even those who used to annoy us. And perhaps it would help to smile at the people who pass us by each day, say thanks to all of those who clean our streets, pick up our trash, deliver our mail, put out our fires, protect our safety, check us out at the supermarket and sit in the offices and cubicles around us.

Maybe it really is time to put our business lives in perspective. Have more fun. Treat people with added respect. Continue the capitalist pursuit with a little smile.

Maybe it’s time to think about this amazing Team we’ve built and be thankful.

About The Author

Dan Goldberg, MBA, is President of Dan Goldberg Consulting L.L.C. a training, coaching and business development firm located in the Philadelphia, PA area. He is the founder and former owner of “For Eyes” the highly successful international optical company and an internationally recognized keynote speaker. Dan is the author of the book “Stand Back A Second, Just don’t fall off the edge,” and of “The Six Steps To Solid Sales Success” and “The Seven Elements Of Successful Management” programs. He is Executive-In-Residence at Kutztown University and has been the subject of stories in Newsweek, Business Week, Playboy, Successful Business, Investor’s Business Daily, major newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, Baltimore, Miami, San Francisco, Oakland, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and many other national and local publications. In addition, Dan has appeared on Good Morning America and other national and local television and radio programs. You can contact him at dg@dangoldberg.com, visit his website at http://www.dangoldberg.com/ or reach him at (215) 233-5352

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