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August 30, 2004: "Taking the Plunge"
Fort Worth Star Telegram

There comes a moment in every flight across the ring when the trapeze artist must let go of one trapeze and reach for another, trusting that it will arrive at precisely the right instant.

Motivational speaker and executive coach Gail Blanke uses the trapeze artist's brief interval of sailing from one swing toward another as a metaphor for the increasing uncertainty men and women confront today in their business, professional and personal lives. As Blanke sees it, we all are likely to find ourselves "between trapezes" from time to time, i.e., between jobs, careers, relationships and lives.

"We live in a time of unprecedented uncertainty and insecurity. Employees who once trusted their bosses feel betrayed. Entrepreneurs who once trusted their skills and imagination now experience crushing self-doubt. Families who trusted the stock market find their retirement and college funds decimated. And after Sept. 11, 2001, everyone who trusted that the strength and power of the United States government could keep them safe has suffered a devastating blow. Job security, financial security, personal security, and national security all appear to have flown out the window," Blanke writes.

Because of today's pervasive uncertainty, says Blanke, many people have chosen to desperately keep trying to hold onto their known trapezes even if they feel trapped and unfulfilled in those situations.

But Blanke suggests this alternative to such resignation:

"What if you were to see this state of groundlessness as a good thing? What if, for the first time, you allowed yourself to not know the future, to assume the role of adventurer in your own life? Isn't the whole point of a great adventure that you don't know the outcome, and that anything can happen? Isn't that why adventures as so intrinsically thrilling?" Blanke asks readers.

Most people, says Blanke, let the opportunities presented by change and uncertainty escape them because they panic and rush to find the next job or the next spouse or something similar to replace whatever was lost.

"The result is that we move too quickly into our next life and discover that it's pretty much the same as the one we left behind. Not only do we miss the joy of being blissfully in between, we frequently miss the Big One: that wonderfully fulfilling job that uses all of our talents, that drop-dead gorgeous lover we've waited a lifetime for, that mind-blowing adventure that life was trying to hand us while we were busy trying to pin down the next tidy step. We miss the fact that the real thrill in life is not in the land -- it's in the flying," Blanke writes.

Having delivered her admonition to use the periods between trapezes to discover or reinvent oneself and set new goals, Blanke offers guidance and instruction in letting go of the old and reaching for the new. She does this primarily through reflections on her own life and examples of famous people and people she has coached.

Blanke was between trapezes when she chose to go to work for Avon. She had a good, rewarding job at the time with a San Francisco-based advertising agency. She was not looking to change employers when an executive recruiter sent her on an interview with Avon. The more she found out about the company, the more interested in working for it she became. She saw greater possibilities for using her talents with Avon than with the agency.

After seven interviews with the company, she became frustrated because no decision had been made. When at the next interview an Avon executive asked her why she wanted to work for the company, she told him:

"I don't know that I do want to work for Avon. I don't even know what the job is. Because nobody seems able or willing to tell me what the job is. If you can tell me what it is, great. Otherwise, I think we're all wasting our time."

The job was marketing planner. And Blanke became the first woman to hold that position with the company. She later trapezed into other positions with Avon and played a key role in a reorientation of the company that enabled it to stave off a buyout attempt by Mary Kay.

Blanke says she loved every minute of the crisis Avon faced in the 1980s.

"Whenever I say that sometimes it takes a crisis to find out who you are as a person, a country, or a company, I think about Avon undergoing its wrenching transformation in the late eighties, which I had the privilege not only to live through, but help guide. You can buy the company, we said to ourselves, but you can't buy our people, or our attitude. Despite the fact that in objective terms things were very difficult, personally I was thrilled by the rich smell of change in the air," Blanke writes.

After creating the Lifedesigns division in Avon, Blanke trapezed out of the company, taking Lifedesigns with her. After several years of conducting motivational workshops based on the program, she branched out into motivational speaking and executive coaching.

Blanke advises the people she coaches, as well as the readers of Between Trapezes, not to confuse falling with failing.

"The greatest fliers are always the greatest fallers," she writes.

Blanke must be a terrific motivational speaker. Between Trapezes reads like several well-nuanced and upbeat inspirational addresses. It is spiced with stirring testimonials to the efficacy of optimism, self-confidence and courage in the face of uncertainty.

She is offering good, time-proven advice. Nevertheless she is being a bit Pollyannaish; in these times of uncertainty, the danger of falling is very real. And getting back up is not a given because increasingly people today find themselves flying between trapezes without a safety net beneath them.