I occasionally write about ways that aspects of my job intersects with my life. People often expect me to be some kind of organizational guru because I’m a stage manager, but truth… I don’t think I am. It’s a little chicken and egg for me. Am I a good stage manager because I have good organizational skills or did I learn good organizational skills because I became a stage manager. I think a lot of it is the latter. I have to work really hard to not seem like a professional mess, and occasionally those skills in the workplace are useful in the rest of life.
Anyhow, this one isn’t actually a stage management skill, but more a mind blowing tip turned life advice I got once while on the job.
I mentioned a few weeks ago about attending a retirement party of a dear dear colleague who was retiring after thirty plus years at my company. She has taught me so much in the twenty years I’ve known her. One of my favorite turns of phrases comes from her, “Managing expectations.” I’d never heard anyone else say that until she came into rehearsal one days and said to the director, “I need to manage you expectations on what will be ready the first time you rehearse onstage.” What a gentle, level headed, non-panic inducing way of saying, “We’re behind in our work and there are things that won’t be ready.”
But this tidbit came from seven or eight years ago, we were working on a production of The Marriage of Figaro. There was a scene where the maid Susanna had to take her apron off. She starts the scene with her apron on, so at the top of every rehearsal, I would help her into her rehearsal skirt then tie the apron on her since the bow was in the back. Some days, during the scene, the apron would come right off, and some days it would be a tangled mess and the singer would get frustrated as she tried to sing and fumble with apron strings.
One day, my colleague M was watching rehearsal, and saw the singer struggle with untying the apron strings. At a pause in rehearsal she came up to me and the singer and suggested to the singer, “Why don’t you tie the apron on yourself. “
The singer did so.
Then M said, “Reach around and untie it.”
And then magically, the singer was able to reach around an with one tug smoothly untie the apron.
Afterwards, M said to me, “If you let them tie their own apron strings, they’ll know which tail to grab to untie it. When you tie it for them, the strings sit differently from what they expect and they’ll get tangled.”
It was such a clear and simple thing, but I had never thought about it before. Trust the lady who has spent forty years tying apron strings to point this out to me. By letting someone get into something themselves, they will be able to see (or feel) more clearly how to get out of it. (I mean there are exceptions, of course. Corsets, for one.) It’s similar to another piece of advice from a mentor early in my stage management days, “Never hand a singer their prop. teach them where the prop table is, otherwise you’ll spend all your time handing people props.”
It was hard advice for me to internalize – as a stage manager, I feel like I should help people. I want to make life as easy for them as possible, remove obstacles, give them as little to do so they can just concentrate on the work they do onstage. But I’m realizing it’s more work and potentially frustration- for me, for the crew, for the singer themselves – when they get everything handed to them without learning the ropes (apron strings?) themselves. They need to be able to find the prop table back stage and the correct apron string when it comes time to take the apron off.
I think about M’s words often in my non-work life, too – particularly with my kids. I turn around in my head the difference between doing something for my kids and letting them discover something for themselves. Of letting them climb to the top of the play structure, discovering where each foothold is, rather than giving them a boost and bypassing those footholds. Because those are the same foothold that they need to know to climb back down. If they don’t find them going up, will they be able to find them coming back down? Or so many other things – if they put away the dishes, they’ll know where to find them later; same thing with backpacks and bike helmets and homework and friendships – though, we are still working on all these ones, truth be told. But you know, you can’t rescue everyone. And sometimes inserting yourself just mucks things up even more.
So as as a tribute to the wonderful M on her retirement, I am passing along her wise wise words to the world – “Let people tie their own apron strings.”
Have you ever received advice from a work colleague that’s stuck with you?
Our jobs are so similar! I have to teach students how to do things for themselves (how to read their degree audit, how to find the name of their advisor, how to register for their own classes) and if I don’t do it the first time, they’ll keep coming to me to do it for them for the rest of their career.
A work colleague I worked with once told me not to trust any organization that I worked for that referred to employees as “family.” The assumption is that if you’re family, you’ll stick with them through thick and thin and bad treatment. And that has been true in my work life. As soon as higher-ups start talking about family, it means layoffs and pay cuts are coming. Organizations that truly care talk about work/life balance, offer meaningful leave you can actually take, and have workshops on recognizing burnout and what to do to ameliorate it.
I do think we do similar things, just in different venues.
I have definitely been guilty of thinking of a company as “family” and then being burned by that (over a maternity leave type issue, in fact.) This is such a great point.
This was amazing. Advice that I received from a colleague a million years ago “you can’t make everyone happy.” In teaching, you really want to make the best of the best, best lessons, best activities, best skills. But sometimes you just do your personal best or your personal average and still life continues. Parents want their kids to learn, students (most) have a desire to learn, and I have a desire to teach. Sometimes I don’t meet other people’s expectations, but other people’s feelings is not my problem.
“but other people’s feelings is not my problem.” Ooooh that is such a good bit of advice! A hard one for me, though. I think it’s easy for me to want everyone to feel good/ comfortable/ happy – and yes, to a point there are things to be cognizant of, but you can’t tie your feelings of how well you are doing with everyone else’s happiness.
I love that idea that everyone wants to learn. I need to lean in the that right now since homework is such a struggle these days.
I think that’s SUCH a good metaphor for everything parenting related! One of the best things I ever did was lean back and let them take the lead – and also experience consequences, good or bad. I mean, how else are they going to learn about life?
Recently a woman in my writing group was talking about expectations about her manuscript and said “I’m disappointed. But you know what, I am tired of being disappointed. I don’t want to spend my life being disappointed.” and then discussed changing expectations. I have thought about that 1000000 times since then.
“I don’t want to spend my life being disappointed!” Ooooh that’s such a great mantra and can be manifested in so many different ways.
Well my old boss/colleague used to tell me “there’s no crying in bonds” a la “there’s no crying in baseball.” I embarrassingly used to be far more emotional and sometimes I could not contain the tears, although I learned to hold them in and cry in the bathroom rather than at my desk. Ha. But that was 10+ years ago and luckily I’m in a job now that doesn’t bring me to tears. But that’s the most memorable “advice” or comment I received (and it was delivered in a very kind/caring way – he was trying to make me laugh since I was so distraught about something that was happening at work).
But “let them tie their own apron strings” is a good reminder for me as a mom, too. I sometimes will do things for the kids because it’s faster if I do them, but then they don’t figure out how to do it for themselves. The boys have swimming lessons 15 minutes apart so I was having Paul sit with me while Taco finished his lessons and then they’d get dresses together at the end of Taco’s lesson but they would not stop messing with each other in the changing room which drove me crazy. So yesterday, I helped Paul rinse off and then brought him to a changing room and told him to get dressed and meet me back at the pool. He protested a bit but then complied. And then when it was Taco’s turn to get dressed, I could just focus on him and sent Paul to the lobby where they have an area with toys. That means he was out of my sight a number of times but it’s a safe environment and I figure I need to let him have more independence when it’s safe to do so.
Oh yes, kids getting dressed on their own is a game changer! Going to the pool became so much easier this summer when I could have each kid change themselves while I took my own shower.
I’m glad you are no longer crying in the bathroom at work now. Ugh! I’m sorry you ever felt that way!
Amazing advice. Simple and true. Like all the best advices.
Love this post a lot.
Thank you!