3 Commitments

3 things I am going to commit to, to use in my everyday live moving forward:

1. The little things could bring a lot of happiness to the people around you. I have begun encouraging others that it’s the little things that matters and I have put an inspirational thought of the day in my email signature and change it several times a week.
2. The Golden Rule- I have always and will continue to use this rule. I was taught from an early age if I would not like it done to me, don’t do it to someone else. As I age and mature I see how important this rule is. Doing some research on the ethics section this rule just really stuck with me because I have always thought this was the best, straight-forward, method our society needs to use and be reminded to use.
3. The “Bright Spot” by Ted Egly: always start off a meeting, a talk or a session with what is going GOOD. Don’t always start with what’s going bad, what upsets everyone, etc. this makes for the tone of the communication to start with a negative vibe. I have used this technique a few times and have also suggested it to my boss and we have really come to like it.

 And just one more I have to include…

Feedback should not be viewed as negative but as self-building communication and development. 🙂

“You are what you think about all day long.” -Dr. Robert Schuller

The Golden Rule

I like The Golden Rule; it’s a straight forward approach to ethics and principles that dates back a long time, which our society seems to be forgetting how to use.

 Basically The Golden Rule consists of:

1. You should treat others how you would like to be treated

 A key element of this rule is that the person attempting to live by this rule should be treating others around them with consideration. This rule has a very long history and was followed by a great number of prominent religious figures and philosophers. You can also think of it as a modern day way to modern rights and ethics.

 The Golden Rule is a great example that leaders should follow. Before they lead or treat someone a certain way the leader needs to consider if they would like to be treated that way.  Leaders and managers often get a bad wrap because they are known to feel like they are on a pedestal compared to the “worker-bees” and if they just took a minute to reflect and try to put themselves in the workers shoes and apply the Golden Rule they could lead much happier teams.

What is Transition Management?

The technical definition of transition management:

Systematic planning, implementing, and monitoring change in an organization.

What I feel transition management is in a nutshell is managing the change.

Change is:

• Successfully identifying the need to change
• Having a plan
• Committing to the change
• Information Gathering
• Successfully identifying the need to change

 Identifying the need to change and many other factors is just the first step. Once the plan is rolled-out you must manage the transition, which might be a lengthy ongoing process.

 Managing Transition:

• Identifying with the end users
• Collecting good/bad information
• Communicating with your company
• Fixing any issues found
• Rolling out remaining phases
• Supporting your companies vision
• Being empathetic to not only your people but to the company as a whole



“Remember: Strategy Points Your Organization in a Direction — Managing the Transition Gets You and Your Organization There”  – Unknown

The WHAT and HOW of Change Management

I thought this change management idea was very interesting.

There are 2 parts to this view of change management:

1. WHAT is done
2. HOW it is done

WHAT is done:

It is important to make a plan, support that plan and implement the necessary changes. This is more of the business/science side of change management. Sticking to a plan is important but the people side is, I feel, the most important.

 HOW it is done:

You must have individual empathy and organizational empathy. Change is very hard for people, especially older people. As a leader, you must lead by example and support your company’s decision but also understand that everyone is different and handles change differently. As a whole you must have organizational empathy and understand and adapt the changes to the cultural environment as a whole.

 “It’s not so much that we are afraid of change, or so much in love with the old ways, but it’s the place in between we fear… it’s like being in between trapezes… there’s nothing to hold onto.” – Marilyn Ferguson

Dan Pinks Science of Motivation

What is motivation?

motivation
— n
1.	the act or an instance of motivating
2.	desire to do; interest or drive
3.	incentive or inducement
4.	psychol  the process that arouses, sustains and regulates human and animal behaviour

 What motivates me?

• Success
• Love
• Family
• Acceptance

 In this segment I thought the study on people, motivation and rewards was very interesting to see the people that offered the higher rewards performed worse than people who were offered smaller rewards performed better. Our society needs to begin focusing on intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the desire to do things because we like them, they matter, they’re interesting, because they are part of something important.

 3 Characteristic “Building Blocks” of Intrinsic Motivation:

1. Autonomy- urges to direct own life
2. Mastery-Desire to get better at something that matters
3. Purpose- Yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

LEGOs and Leadership

Are you wondering how a best selling childrens toy, LEGOs, would ever relate to leadership? Well to my surprise, LEGOs relate to leadership in many ways. I am reading a book called Toy Box Leadership by Ron Hunter Jr. and Michael E. Waddell.

Can you believe that you can arrange 6 eight-studded LEGO bricks 915,103,765 ways!

In this book LEGOs represent relationships. Hunter and Waddell claim LEGO bricks provide the essence of this leadership lesson on relationships because building begins with connections. In business if you dont connect with you customers, vendors, co-workers, etc. you will be out of business. This leadership lesson does not only apply to business but can also apply to building relationships in your personal life.

Some characteristics of LEGO brick. Ironically the same characteristics needed in business:

• Reliability
• Compatibility
• Re-usability
• Organization

This book is very interesting how your favorite childhood toys could have begun teaching you leadership lessons at a very young age. It and also explores Slinky Dog, Mr. Potato head, Little Green Army Men, Lite-Brite and more.

“In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people…”
-Ken Blanchard

 

 

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

ISBN# 1-59071-003-7

This is a very straight forward writing exploring resistance in your life. It explores everything from resistance and writing, resistance and love, and resistance and self-doubt. Steven Pressfield writes short excerpts with examples on each area of resistance, making it very clear how resistance can get in the way of our successes, even when we dont realize its there.

Take-away’s from the book:

• Resistance is universal
• Pressfield says, “everyone who has a body experiences resistance”.
• Resistance is fueled by fear
• “Master that fear and we conquer resistance”
• Resistance and the choice of mate
• “If we are not consious of our own resistance, we’ll pick a mate who has or is successfully overcoming resistance.”
• Becoming a professional at mastering resistance

I really enjoyed Steven Pressfields view of resistance. Although I believed a lot of his reasoning in what resistance affects in your life, some of his reasoning was a bit far fetched. I felt this book was overall interesting the way it brought resistance to lite. I think the book explored resistance at a higher level and opened my eyes to how resistance affects life but I didnt quite think the book helped directly with winning creative battles and didnt feel like it inspired my abilities.

“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed!”
— Peter Senge

Shocking Stats about Communication

Excerpt from Hynes: Managerial Communication

Nonverbal communication is a crucial element in business and is in every managerial interaction. The meaning of the message being delivered is lost without it. Nonverbal communication accompanies oral and written communication and is critical to deliver signals to others. “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say” ,Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nonverbal communication signs vary from culture to culture. Contrary to popular belief, nonverbal communication is everything but the words/vocals.

According to the reading, communication stats say:

• 55% of communication comes from the appearance, facial expressions and posture
• 38% comes from vocal aspects
• 7% comes from the actual words

I was intrigued with these stats, they were quite suprising to me that out of overall communication, only 7% comes from actual words. Typically when people think of communication they think of the words being spoken and the message being delivered but 83% comes from nonverbal means.

 

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.”

— Lee Iacocca

What the Best CEOs Know- Grove on Intel

Krames: What the Best CEOs Know

Andy Grove, the cofounder and former CEO of Intel was interviewed and discussed gut wrenching moments when Intel was facing crisis and had to battle to overcome obstacles and reassure the people. In business obstacles are inevitable and it’s better to be prepared for them than to be shocked and unprepared when a situation arises.  Grove believes the following are very important areas to be aware of in business:

• Strategic inflection points- this is the point when an inside or outside factor could largely impact the companies well-being.
  • Realizing key competitor might change
  • Realizing primary complementor might change
  • Managements ability to “get it” might change
• Preparing for the inflection point- Grove thinks it’s very important to not only be aware of the above inflection possibilities but prepare for them and develop a strategy how your business is going to handle such a situation.
  • Listen to the “alarmists”, the people who are always convinced the “sky is falling”
  • Encourage rigorous discussion and debate
  • Examine and be skeptical about the cold hard facts- the data
• Experiment early and often with the inflection points you have identified

 Although many companies don’t spend a lot of time trying to forecast these inflection points, I think it is important to be prepared, rather than surprised and in panic. I also think it is especially important to be prepared for points of inflection when in the technology business, like Intel.

Leaders and the Leadership Process

Pierce-Newstrom: Leaders and the Leadership Process: Readings, Self-assessments and Applications, Fifth Edition

In this reading set there is a lot of information on cultural differences we may face in business. Leaders may face difficult cultural differences such as: individualism and collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, time orientation.

The stories went on to discuss specific cultural differences across the globe and by region, including European, Oriental, US, Canadian and many more leadership models and strategies used. As quoted from the reading, “culture refers to those learned behaviors characterizing the total way of life of members within any given society”.

I found the self-assessment on individualism-collectivism interesting. My score was a 4 which fell into the collectivistic orientation as it pertains to the set of colleagues upon whom you focused your authority. I do wish the score categories of this self-assessment were a bit clearer.