We don’t think about this much, but in a real sense the funeral experience is full of phases. Without phases the funeral experience can get stuck. When a funeral director gets stuck this most often results in there being painfully slow movement forward, it becomes an exercise in verbosity, an exercise in exhaustion for both the funeral director and the family clients
When I write about a funeral director getting stuck I certainly don’t mean to say that there ought to be a rush on time. I don’t mean to communicate that being stuck means doing or saying nothing. Being stuck in the funeral arrangement conference, interview or general funeral experience is usually not because the funeral director is not talking, it is precisely the opposite. The funeral director may be wasting the family’s time by talking way too much.
Early in my career I was blessed to be mentored by some mighty fine funeral directors. Looking back it is clear that most of these great personalities weren’t great business people, they didn’t know a profit and loss statement from a pipe organ: they were great funeral people.
I was consulting with an established family firm. They were very proud of their heritage, having been in operation since 1888. I was introduced to a gentleman who dressed immaculately, had brilliantly polished shoes and a great welcoming smile. He had been at the firm for decades. The staff liked him as did I! He was meticulous on funerals and an outstanding embalmer. He even told me that he still mathematically figured out the HCHO demand for each and every decedent he was privileged to embalm!
However, for all his outstanding characteristics this professional got stuck while making funeral arrangements and as a consequence would innocently offend families. Family satisfaction surveys showed a trend. “Great guy, but WOW can he talk!” “I was ready to shoot myself!” “I thought we would be in and out in short order, hell Dad pre-arranged everything!” “I know he was trying to help us, but please tell him to talk less and help us more by finishing instead of going on and on and on!” Here was the most brutal, “I was ready to blow my brains out!” And the most creative, “Listening to him talk was like attending an endless insurance seminar.”
This gentle, kind-hearted man was out of balance. His inability to guide the client’s funeral experience was stymied because he just kept talking.
In the process of learning our inner balance for helping people the pendulum can swing in an exaggerated movement. The opposite of the funeral director who gets stuck in talking too much is the funeral director that makes the funeral experience so rapid and swift that it is difficult for a client family to determine just where one phase of the overall funeral experience ends and the next one begins.
Balance can be found when we discover how to live in the middle of the tensions created by the opposites in our lives. Being an effective funeral professional is not an easy task. Balance is our watchword. Not too much, not too little. That, my friends, is a mighty difficult assignment and an almost impossible task, but we can try.
I humbly suggest that locating our illusive balance in life is more magnified today, in our present funeral world, than it has been in the long and impressive history of our great profession. Why? Things today seem to be so unbalanced, so unstable, so confusing when a loved one dies.
Most funeral professionals are well versed in the techniques of the funeral interview and implementing and overseeing funeral rituals in their own respective communities. However, is it not a good idea to just once in a while, every now and then, take time to review and think about what we are doing?
As obvious as this thought might be on the surface, I suggest that bringing more balance to the funeral ceremony is in the important initial phase or funeral interview. While you and I know why the family is sitting there, they might not. I suggest balancing out the initial phase of the funeral experience by stating the purpose of this meeting. This seems so obvious, but I have discovered some family clients are so confused, so grieved, and so distracted, they don’t know precisely why they are with us, nor do they know what they want, or what to expect, or what to do. This confusion can only exacerbate itself because in this state of chaos many clients end up changing their minds, then changing them again – which represents no balance at all.
Funeral professionals don’t have to talk a great deal, but they do have to listen and lead a great deal. Balance is easily composed with what I call listening leadership. Let us return to our talkative funeral professional. He was talking so much he couldn’t lead. He literally ran out of time, and hence was unable to listen intently to the client’s inner most wishes and directions.
Of course, today’s culture leads families to resent the notion of being led. This contemporary attitude is a far distance from what bereaved families used to be like, when they followed the funeral professional’s guidance and leadership with great devotion. The impact of listening while leading is of the utmost importance in our quest for balance.
While today’s independent thinkers resist and resent the very notion of being led, just let something negative happen in their funeral experience. The good folks who don’t want our help or want to take care of most of this on their own, will quickly blame us! Today’s clients don’t want direction, but they do want direction. They don’t want advice, but they do want advice. They don’t like suggestions, but they want suggestions. Does this situation strike any of the readers as being out of balance?
We need to step up to the plate and balance this confusion. Offering gentle guidance and a myriad of creative suggestions that they may not have ever considered will nurture and germinate a new funeral service idea. Exploring and identifying the inner balance of the modern funeral professional encompasses keeping up with what is going on in funeral service, not just in the USA, but globally.
I would like to offer some common sense ideas concerning how to raise the bar concerning our quest for inner balance.
Sometimes we might have made something that in reality is very simple very complex. The ability of being helpful to another human being is often as simple as getting a box of Kleenex, sitting down and listening to a story of loss and grief.
Some may know that my hobby is the study of the lives of US Presidents. People almost always ask “Who was your favorite President?” I immediately name President Lincoln, but I surprise folks by sharing my second favorite, Calvin Coolidge. Nicknamed Silent Cal, he never talked much but listened intently. President Coolidge was known to frequently say, “You will never be asked to repeat something you haven’t said.”
If we implement honest listening and sincere absorption of what we hear, honest communication will happen. Honest communication is a key aspect of finding our core substance of inner balance. Being honest with ourselves allows us to be honest with our clients.
Humility redirects the focus from us to others. It redirects our unbalanced notions about life and others to more mature balanced notions about life and others. This is a priceless and tremendous asset in creating a meaningful funeral interview and funeral ceremony.
Humility is not easy and it takes time to develop. A good first step in this development of inner balance leading to humility is perhaps to realize first and foremost, what we say is generally much less important than we think it is. Gentle humility coming from a discovered deep inner conviction in our search for inner balance, and then in turn being authentically humble with others is a highly valued skill in literally every aspect of funeral service excellence.
Looking back at my own beginnings in funeral service, I know I made embarrassing and foolish mistakes. I know of no easy remedy for this except inner patience and awareness of our self by constantly looking inward to locate our inner balance, lock onto that balance, nurture and feed that balance, and then never let go of it. Over the veil of time this will create the high watermark in how we are evaluated as to the quality of our success as a human being.
In our great profession we truly do have the brutally honest assessor, a commandant of truth, the final assessor, the judge, jury and executioner all wrapped up into one. This is the one who most often will, without hesitation or mental reservation put us in our place whether it hurts our feelings, or our pride. This person is the client family. I have discovered, usually to my own deep chagrin and deep embarrassment this unblemished truth, the client family, one way or another will usually set us straight.
This can sting, hurt, be brutal, but in the end, for the self-improvement of our great profession this resource is an absolute blessing. This is something our talkative funeral professional never figured out. Client families told the owners what they thought, and through just not listening, too much pride, or not enough courage, an unfortunate and unbalanced situation was only corrected with this funeral director’s retirement.
There is no guarantee that when you search for inner balance that it will be successful, but not to search can be worse. So what to do? Here are some thoughts in closing.
Every artist must discover his or her own style and the tools with which he or she works best; and so it is in our quest for substance and meaning of inner balance for the funeral professional.
Styles usually, and fortunately, mature with experience, discernment, and reflection. Individual styles, I have concluded have made some of the greatest funeral professionals I have ever encountered.
Your quest is to develop your own inner balance which will change your style for the better. I am not interested in you adopting my style or vice versa, but in this writing I am very much interested in stimulating you to develop and reflect upon your own style; you own inner balance; your own humility; your own maturity.
There is no magic dust or magic potion to guarantee this will ever happen, but there is interestingly one single magic bullet to insure that at least something will happen – and that single magic bullet in our beloved profession is YOU – YOU the funeral professional. The nobility of the funeral service profession does not revolve around the dead, it doesn’t in the end even revolve around the bereaved. The nobility of our great and beloved profession revolves upon what character resides in the mind and soul of every funeral professional on the face of the earth. I believe this with every ounce of blood in my veins and air in my lungs. It is a truth! —TVB