Rescued By Ruby

omewhere in my past, I was taught that crying over personal losses was something that signaled weakness on my part and was something that I should not do.  But sometimes you really do have to cry, so I also learned that crying at movies was somehow ok.  I even cried at Harriet the Spy when I took my (now 48-year-old!) daughter to see it.  So—and those of you who hate unhappy endings skip the rest of this sentence—when my beloved dog Minnie died last week, I didn’t cry, but I did (and do) have a hole in my heart.  Over the weekend, my husband found a movie on Netflix that let me weep uncontrollably for our loss.

“Rescued by Ruby” is not a great film, but it does have a great premise and some really important lessons.  It is about a man who is dyslexic, ADHD, and has both a great heart and an amazing wife (I’ll explain in a bit). He desperately wants to join the K-9 unit of his police force.  But he hasn’t managed to get in.  On this, his 9th and final try, the leader tells him if he can find a dog, he can try.

Enter Ruby.  An exuberant rescue animal who—like our protagonist—is a bit hyper and seemingly unable to heed instructions.

Our hero rescues Ruby and (as so often happens in life), is rescued by her.

His wife—you know, the amazing one—really doesn’t want Ruby, but once she is there, the wife is all in.  And she is the one, when Ruby fails in class, tells her husband not to give up but to teach Ruby the way Ruby needs to learn.

The lessons?  First that one size does not fit all.  Not everyone (and I am including any being) learns the same way.  Find the way that meets the needs of the one learning and the results will be astounding.  And positive reinforcement—rewarding the good— works so much better than punishing the bad.

Think about your organization—and the various communities within your organization:  your staff,  your board and other volunteers, your clients, your supporters—and recognize that they are all made up of individuals.  While you can’t always structure things to meet every individual need, you can avoid being so rigid that different needs do not get served.

Try different approaches, messages, platforms.  And talk about the positive. In this year of politics (always that year, but this year even more so), let’s try to ignore those gloom and doom messages and talk about what we can accomplish, together.  The good changes we can make.

I, for one, have stopped supporting politicians and nonprofits whose messages are all about destruction—or who focus on what is wrong without providing solutions for what could go right.  I then measure the solutions and support those I believe have a snowball’s chance.   

I think about the dog I still live with—Tramp.  A rescue who had been badly abused as a puppy and who came to live with us with so many fears and so many reactive behaviors.  I think every neighbor in my wonderful neighborhood carries if not a real scar the memory of reaching out to welcome Tramp to the ‘hood and getting bitten. But now, 5 years on (he is now 8), he is sweet and loving—and much more calm.  But still reactive and still needing special care.

Rewarding him, praising him, just plain loving him for who he is and what he does well, brings great results.

I remember staff  and boards who I failed to nourish and who failed to flourish.  And those who learned and grew from positive feedback and gentle corrections.

It’s hard.  When they—whoever they may be—don’t do what we want/need them to do, it is so much easier to lash out or roll our eyes or simply whine about what they are not doing.  But truthfully, focusing what they are doing right will pay off big time—for you, for them, and for the sector we all serve.