I gave a keynote presentation last week. And I had one helluva introduction. The kind of intro I never would have thought to prepare for… the kind of introduction where someone asks the audience to donate to help send a long-time colleague on a vacation with her daughter to Disney World this coming weekend because she now measures her anticipated time left on earth by the week and deserves the love and support of her company.
That’s quite an act to follow! I thought about using it as a foray into my topic, Quality Events which are moments of intense personal satisfaction (even under intense pressure), but decided that I couldn’t: the woman in question knew many in the room personally, and her story was part of the organization’s story. I was an outsider, and co-opting this moment would have taken something away from it. (I couldn’t reach the level of genuine sincerity held by others in the room because I lacked the depth of relationship, so I felt that professing my understanding would have cheapened the whole thing, and that, in turn, could have caused people to withhold donations. I didn’t want that.) So what would I do? I had better think fast, because now they were calling my name! 550 were waiting!
I was describing the situation to my dad the other day over breakfast. He looked up from his eggs to ask, “Sphincter Value 10, huh?”
I smiled, because I like a little color in my life, and the term seemed to fit the comi-tragic tone of the story. “Sphincter Value? I think I see where this is going, but why don’t I let you explain it to me just to be sure.”
“When someone drops a bomb on you, there’s a certain Sphincter Value to the bombshell. But sometimes, something just nails you from out of left field, and you can’t respond. Like when I’m doing a trial—” my dad’s an attorney—“And a witness starts falls apart on cross, let’s say. What am I going to do? I can’t let my surprise show on my face… then the other attorney will know he’s on to something. I can’t signal to my client that I’m worried in the slightest… that’s not good for anybody. And I can’t show uncertainty in front of the judge, because judges are like refs in sports games: they tend to give more calls to the players who are better and more confident on the court. So I’m sitting there, watching my whole case fall apart, and the only muscle I’m free to move is my sphincter. Which is good, actually, because when the moment is Sphincter Value 10, you’re going to really want control over that particular muscle!”
I nodded at the sagacity of my old man. “I’d say this had a Sphincter Value of about… 7. I wasn’t totally at a loss.”
Then my mind started racing to moments with high Sphincter Values: the public break up; someone walking in late to a conversation and nonchalantly—and intelligently—dismantling the very point of view you had just spent twenty minutes advocating; the public test to your mettle/ability/adaptability.
High Sphincter Value moments are what sitcoms are built around, commercials are carved from, and good stories are based on.
What Sphincter Value moments can you recall? Were you able to rise above? Or did you crater?
I can remember a few whoppers. Times that, in the moment, I really didn’t know how they would turn out. Heck, I had one last week! The higher the Sphincter Value, the more controlled your response must be. For high Sphincter Values (the 7 – 10 range… on a scale of 1 – 10), you can’t freak out—despite every cell in your body screaming for you to do just that—so you freeze your face in that Mona Lisa smile, you steady your breathing and silently count to ten, and you mentally search for the nearest exit, keeping in mind that it could be behind you, just in case. Then, in response to that flash of sheer panic, you clench your suddenly, involuntarily, loose sphincter.
Of course, what comes next is up to you.
Welcome to one of life’s funkier elements. If you’ve never registered a high Sphincter Value moment, lucky you, you’ve never been tested.
But for the rest of us… well… let’s just say that sometimes, “No sh*t” is more than a snarky way of calling out an observation by Captain Obvious. Sometimes, it’s an important—and surprisingly tricky—short-term goal.
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