As discussed last week, I’ve been tracking chutzpah-related traffic online.  And I’ve found a lot of co-occurrence between “chutzpah” and “growing a pair”, or, as inoveryourhead.net puts it, “Growing some @#$%ing balls”.

I’ve been wrestling with the idea – maybe I just have too much time to think – of what the difference is between chutzpah, at least the way I’ve been using it, and growing a pair.

I think I have an idea.

“Chutzpah” has to do with getting something you want regardless of what it takes.  Obviously, one thing it “takes” or might “take” is getting someone else out of the way.  But that’s not the point; the point is getting what you want.

“Growing a pair” puts the idea of besting the other person front and center.  Showing balls is specifically edging someone else out of the way, whether to get something you want or for some other purpose.

Close, but not exactly the same.

Between Saturday and Monday I got peeved by my lack of traction on being aware of what I was afraid of.

So I resolved to write down every day the things I could remember that had made me afraid.

So I’ve been doing that this week.  3-4 things a day.

Talking on the phone has got to be one of the hugest (most huge?) things on the list.  So I’ll need a Supplementary Intervention about the phone to try to get moving off my stuck point of emailing people I should be phoning because my chutzpah levels are too low to phone.

We’ll see.

As part of the Project, I’ve been monitoring the online world (well, really only Twitter, although I suppose should add LinkedIn and Facebook) for “chutzpah”.

I can’t help but notice that a disproportionate number of references to chutzpah concern politicians and athletes.

Makes sense, I suppose.  Politicians are constantly flirting with shamelessness, which brings them into chutzpah territory and beyond as a normal occurrence.  And athletes need to establish their turf, like herdsmen or feuding mountain clansmen.  Big Body Language is part of chutzpah kindergarten for athletes.

But there isn’t much Twitter traffic about chutzpah among celebrities, who also seem to border on politicians and athletes.

OK, well March blew by along with its interventions.  I’ve had some juicy encounters with chutzpah – encounters that have been full of feeling and therefore taught me a lot – but not much consistency in trying to apply the month’s interventions.  This may well end up as a longer project than I had figured!

I’m still coming up way short in Do What You’re Afraid Of, or even in Become Aware of What You’re Afraid Of (although the latter has shown some progress).  For April, let’s stick with Do What You’re Afraid Of.

Three more:

• No Matter Where You Enter the Stage, Be Interesting When You Get On It (from Kristi Hedges’ book on Presence)
• Learn to Love the Phone (like many geeks, I shy away from the phone, mainly for chutzpah-deficit reasons as near as I can tell)
• Speak Truth to Power (an old anarchist slogan repurposed for my Chutzpah Project)

Let’s see how this goes.

Just finished reading Kristi Hedges’ excellent Power of Presence.  Kristi is someone I’ve thought better and better of as I’ve gotten to know her better, and the book is really good: not repetitive, down-to-earth writing, straightforward information on the how of being a better leader that’s quite useful.

One chutzpah-ready idea (among many!) from the book, which resonates with earlier experience I had as a consultant: no matter where you enter the stage, be interesting when you get on it.

People aren’t paying attention to anything nowadays that doesn’t demand their attention, and nothing squanders attention – even when the audience has no choice but to pay it – like mealy-mouthed, equivocating, or plain old dull talk.  It’s worth giving a fair amount of effort to how to be interesting: in meetings, when you speak, when you want to be heard and win people to your point of view.

It’ll be an Intervention for April, I think.

We had an entrepreneur in this week who, one of my partners said admiringly, “owned the room.”

He was not a jerk, or shameless, or a “bad boy,” as many of the entrepreneurs we see are.  If you grant me that chutzpah is the golden mean between self-effacement and shamelessness, they slosh over into shamelessness.

This guy didn’t do any of that stuff. He just thought he was pretty good and made us think it, too.

How?  Humor, for one thing.  He poked fun at some of his early assumptions building his company, and did so in a way that brought us in on the joke.  He made fun of VCs a bit, too, but, unlike jerky entrepreneurs, it didn’t sting.  Again, we were in on the joke.

Also, he made persuasive arguments with logical steps in them to show us why he believed he was doing well (his potential is good but his numbers aren’t there yet).  And, unlike jerky entrepreneurs, he didn’t try to mislead us.  He told us all his trial installations were just that: trials.  The logical arguments made sense, and made us think he was sensible even though the proof isn’t there yet with his company.

A lot of people seem to think chutzpah means “win/lose”: you grab at something before I can grab at it and take it away from me.

By being funny and sensible, this entrepreneur made his nerviness “win/win”.

Hope we get the chance to work with him.

I shouldn’t say it’s always hard for me to fawn.  I find it easy to fawn:

1. When I like the fawnee.  I guess that’s sort of obvious, but it probably needs to be toted out and examined.  Since I like the person anyhow, I don’t have to worry (as much) about whether they’re going to like me.  I don’t have to worry about what to say, because we already have things we like to talk about.  All I have to do is feature things they want to talk about rather than feature things I want to talk about, and we’re off to the races.
2. When I’m not fawning on my own behalf, but on behalf of a third party, like a Cause or a Product.  I don’t know why this makes fawning easier for me, but it does.  And not just me; a friend told me the other day he doesn’t mind fawning when it’s on behalf of a greater cause.  Maybe this gets to the heart of why fawning takes chutzpah: when you’re fawning on your own behalf, you’re saying, “look at me, look at what I want, look at what I’m after.”  That’s a chutzpah sink; it’s much easier when you’re saying, “It’s not about me, but about <Important Cause>.”

Fair enough.  Fawning is harder than usual for me:

1. When the fawnee is indifferent to me.  Now I not only have to say, “listen to me,” I have to act like a clown or make a fool of myself to get his/her attention.  I’m not sure why I equate drawing attention to myself with acting like a clown or a fool, but I do.  And to make a clown of myself and then have the fawnee ignore me: it’s humiliation++.
2. When I have to compete with other fawners.  Right here is why I hate networking events: many-to-one fawners-to-fawnees.  Good definition of Hell: I can be rescued from eternal torment in a lake of fire, but the Way Out is to fawn on Satan or one of his top lieutenants at a networking event where all the other damned souls from my lake are fawning to get out as well.

Since before I brought The Project live in February I’ve been pondering the issue of Really Sensitive Posts.

It’s easy enough to talk about chutzpah-building in the abstract. And at least some of the more practical Notes From the Field are easy enough. But what about situations that involve my boss, my wife, etc., where too much frankness can blow back. What to do?

Well, if chutzpah is the golden mean between self-effacement and shamelessness, there’s got to be a golden mean between gutlessly insipid posts and suicidal ones. A golden mean I’ve got to aim for.

I’m thinking of posting the really sensitive ones to a private blog, to be opened up when the sensitivity has elapsed. That way I can keep to a posting schedule and not crimp my style while reserving the right to open things up in the future when the material in a post is less volatile.

Comments?

Just got back from a few days in Scottsdale at a VC and Private Equity IT group conclave.  Delightful to find out that such a group exists, and a fun time with a good crew.

Didn’t seem so at the beginning.  Coming in to a new group of people all of whom seem to know one another and feeling like I have to impress them is a situation that daunts the crap out of me.  And that’s how I was Tuesday evening when I went to bed after meeting a few people and depleting my slender reserves of chutzpah.

Fortunately, I remembered the Interventions and mindfulness about fear in particular.  By remaining mindful of what I was afraid of – actually, having people I wanted to impress react to me with indifference – I was able, paradoxically, to keep it in perspective.

(The opposite, not being mindful, tends to make the fear more global, more ominous, and, because it’s unknown, more scary.)

I also remembered the Intervention about associating with those with chutzpah.  I hung out with some guys who were speaking up at the sessions, who seemed to be a standard deviation or two out on the comfortable/confident  axis, and they proved to be great guys and very friendly to me.

This in turn started a virtuous circle going.  I won’t say I felt like Homecoming King at the end of the conference, but I had met a bunch of great people whom I’ll stay in touch with and whom I wouldn’t have met sans conscious work on the chutzpah dimension.