Do you have an extra gear? Can you summon up more strength when needed? Can you work at a faster pace when facing a deadline? Do you really step up your game in times of crisis or under pressure? I think most of us can, and do!
Everyone discovers an extra gear under
pressure. The rare skill is accessing that extra gear without being under
pressure.
The excerpt
below may come from a work of fiction, but the principle is absolutely true.
Consider how this applies in sales, when introducing new ideas to your team, or
even during a debate or negotiation.
“The secret
to convincing anyone of anything comes down to a single moment of clarity. It
might be a sentence, certain words artfully strung together, or maybe a gesture
or demonstration of some sort, something that transcends the limits of
language.”
Seek that
moment of clarity.
Effective listening is
essential to good leadership. Many MMMs have focused on the importance of
attentive, interactive listening when others are speaking. But that’s not the
only kind of listening that matters. It’s also critical to listen with your
eyes.
You can learn a lot by observing
how people interact with one another. Watch their body language and their attitudes.
Look for team members who are exerting positive or negative influence at work.
Pay attention to changes in someone’s mood or behavior. Watch closely how your
coworkers respond to one another in meetings.
This doesn’t come naturally to
me. I’ve been caught off guard more than once by something that was happening
right in front of me, something I should have noticed. But I’m working on being
more aware. I’ve come to realize how important this kind of listening is to my
leadership.
You can learn a lot when you
open your eyes and close your mouth. Great leaders understand the power of
listening with their eyes.
I once heard a lecturer explaining stress management to an audience.
The lecturer raised a glass of water and asked, how heavy is this glass of water?
Answers called out ranged from eight to twenty ounces. The lecturer replied, the absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes and that's the way it is with stress management.
If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burdens become increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you must put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.
So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work/life down. Don't carry it home with you. You can always pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, set them down for a moment if you can.
Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short!
It is an exciting time of year
for sports fans. Baseball is heading to the playoffs, the NFL is building
momentum, and college football is in full swing. Fans are sporting their
favorite teams gear, yelling at TVs, and sweating their fantasy line-ups. They
are passionate, invested, and all bought in.
Are your employees or team
members passionate fans of your company or organization? Think about that. Imagine
if they felt the same level of excitement about your business as they do for
their favorite sports team. What would it be like to have a team full of
dedicated, passionate fans?
This is likely easier said
than done. I mean it is work, and it does not include cold beer and wings. It
is also way more than just branded gear and a company happy hour. True fans are
invested. They feel like they have something at stake, and they feel a tie to
their team. We should want employees and
team members to feel that way. We want them to be all in on our team winning.
Are your employees rabid fans
of your business?
It is not just about
football season starting…
Labor Day: What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Enjoy your holiday!
Do you know what I mean? Seriously, don’t you feel like you get really productive before you leave for vacation? I try to keep my desk at the office pretty neat, but it is never as neat and clean as it is right before I leave town. Somehow before a vacation I always find a way to get a lot of work done; I become more productive. Some people that work for me might tell you that I just delegate better before I leave town, maybe so!
I really am more focused
and accomplish more before I know I am going to be away from the office. Why can’t we work like that all the
time? Why can’t we always run our lives
the way we do the week before we leave the office, making decisions, cleaning
off the desk, returning calls, getting stuff done?
By the way, I leave town tomorrow! My desk is spotless…
We are all leaders. Some
are formal leaders with titles, others are informal leaders with influence. We
lead at home, church, in our community and at work. We lead our children, our peers, and our
employees. If you do not consider
yourself a leader, you are ignoring an opportunity to influence those around
you. Embrace these leadership points and
do your absolute best to be a great leader!
·
Hope - Great leaders give people hope for a better tomorrow.
·
Consistency - When followers never know what to expect from a leader,
they will stop expecting anything.
·
Influence - People do not respond well when pushed, forced or
directed. They respond best when
influenced by leaders they respect.
·
Honesty & Trust - Trust and honesty are established when words
and actions match up.
·
Accountability - Leaders understand that followers need to see
leaders who are willing to be accountable.
·
Humility - As leaders we should be concerned with what is right,
not if we are right.
·
Respect & Caring - People do not care what you know until they
know that you care.
Let's make this easy. Make it your goal to do “one thing” different in 2024. Pick one thing that is important for you to change, or improve. Then develop a “one thing” plan to make that change not only happen but stick.
We all
know the annual resolutions regarding health and fitness, work goals or
personal habit improvements. If we try to fix all of these at one time, we can
be overwhelmed. I don’t know about you, but I have a long list of challenges in
those areas. I don’t need 15 goals. I need one goal to focus on. One that I can
work on in 45-60 days and then I can pick another one.
Pick one thing…
·
Do less of something (Quantify it)
·
Do more of something (Quantify it)
·
Stop something (Specifically how)
·
Create something (Specifically how)
·
Accomplish something (Specifically how)
We should celebrate things in life.
Certainly birthdays, holidays, and significant accomplishments are worthy of
celebration. But what about celebrations in the workplace? As leaders, we
should celebrate our team, our successes, and our milestones. There is
something fun about celebrating. It brings people together, sometimes people
who don’t always work together or interact. Celebrations in the workplace
create moments of pride. They commemorate shared successes. Events of
celebration are also more casual than our normal work environment. This creates
opportunities for camaraderie and relationship building. Celebrations are about
people! Consider this…What gets celebrated gets repeated.
Who will you celebrate this week?
There is a concept out there that states, “We tend
to become like the five people we spend most of our time around”. Makes you
think about who you are hanging out with. Consider that for a minute regarding
your work world.
It’s easy to think of this concept in regards
to our good friends that we hang out with after hours and on weekends, or even
more so our family and others whom we consider close. But, we spend eight hours
a day in our work environment. Annually, that is 2080 hours. That is more time
than we spend with most other people in our lives. How are those that you work
with influencing you? What good or bad habits might you adopt from the people
that you spend eight hours a day with?
We should work someplace where the people we
work with make us better. Think about that for a minute. Are the people you
work with daily making you a better person? Are you learning and growing
because of the people that you hang out with between 8:00 and 5:00 every single
workday? The concept of who our five closest friends are is a powerful one, but
it needs to be viewed within the context of our work environment. You may not
be great friends with the people that you work with every single day, but you
do spend at least eight hours a day with them. That’s a lot of time. Their
habits, their behaviors, their responses, cannot be ignored.
Do you work with people who make you better?
It’s
not just about BBQ and the start of football season…
Labor Day: What it Means
Labor
Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is
dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It
constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to
the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Leadership is not easy, and not always
fun. Good leadership can feel like a constant weight on your shoulders. The
successes can be exhilarating, and the accomplishments awesome, but it is hard
work.
Leadership requires intentionality, and
if you are good at, it is a burden!
“If leading and serving people isn’t
both your greatest gift, and your greatest burden, you probably aren’t doing it
right.”
-
Craig
Groeschel
“A
relationship is like a house. When a light bulb burns out, you don’t go and buy
a new house, you fix the light bulb.”
-
Anonymous
I came
across this quote after writing last weeks’ MMM on relationships. It struck me
as the perfect follow-up. We don’t throw relationships away; we invest in them.
We work on them. (Unless they are toxic.) Just another reminder of the power and
importance of relationships.
How
are the light bulbs in your relationship houses?
I am not good at this. I am so easily distracted. This is not easy
to do in our social media, text message, internet world. How much more
productive would we be if we could do this? Even if we could just do it during
work hours. How much would our productivity go up?
It is a simple concept, not so easy to put into practice.
How are you at this?
It occurs to me that character and reputation may at times become
confused, the words even used interchangeably.
It is probably obvious, but they really are quite different.
Reputation – The beliefs or opinions that are generally held
about someone or something.
Character – The mental and moral qualities distinctive to an
individual.
We live in a world that is very image oriented. What people drive, where they work and what
they wear can dictate their reputation.
We all know these things have little to do with one’s true character. Great emphasis may be placed on how we
outwardly appear in public, but that is not what really matters. Our character, who we are on the inside, what
we stand for, what we hold dear, are the things that really matter. We should concern ourselves more with those
things than what others see on the outside.
When we do that, a good reputation will follow. A person’s reputation is not insignificant,
but it may not be accurate. Our goal
should be to be a person of great character on the inside which will lead to a
great reputation on the outside.
It can’t be! People work in businesses and people
can’t be all business all the time. We have issues in our lives, there is
family, and of course there is drama.
It is important for leaders care about the people on
their team. They need to know what is going on in their lives. Many leaders
disagree with this. They believe that it is possible, and even preferable, to
completely separate business from their team’s personal lives. I believe it is
more nuanced than that. Leaders don’t have to be best friends with their team,
but they do have to care. If a team member is facing a personal challenge, it
will impact their work. Leaders need to understand that. Business is not all
business, because we are human! Remember this….
“People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care”
-
John Maxwell
Ever wonder what makes a person or team give 100%? What if greater
than 100% is achieved? Here is an interesting math fact that might shed some
light on this.
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L
M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
is represented by:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
Then: K N O W L E D G E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
And: H A R D W O R K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
But, A T T I T U D E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
Hard work and knowledge will get you close, but attitude is what
gets you to 100%!
I
completed my 40th year in the post-college workplace this month.
Spare me the “old” jokes. As a good friend suggested, I prefer
“seasoned”. My first job in June 1982 was at InterFirst Bank in Conroe, Texas. I thought I
would spend my career in banking. Little did I know…
Your
path of life experiences makes you who you are. They may be good, bad, or
indifferent, but you are the culmination of those life experiences. Yes,
we can influence the direction of our lives. We can certainly change
course, grow, and improve. However, what we experience and learn along
the way plays a huge part in who we become. I never would have guessed
that after 15 years in banking I would end up in the manufactured housing industry.
I also would not have thought I would become an entrepreneur after age
50. Along the way I went through a divorce, had a bought with cancer,
lost my dad, a mother-in-law, and one of our adult children. There are too many
lessons and experiences to count. Many of them have provided the subject
matter of the MMM over the years. All summed up these lessons and experiences have
made me who I am today.
Embrace
who your life has made you. Make all of your life lessons positive ones
even if the experience associated with them was difficult. Don’t let
failures, disappointments, losses and missed opportunities get the best of
you. Make it a point to create positive experiences and do the same for
those that you lead!
I was
getting ready for work one day last week and found myself gazing at an “ABC”
list of life advice sign in our home. It
is a list of great life suggestions we received from some wonderful
friends. The “G” caught my eye, as I
have clearly done that! More
importantly, the “Y” jumped out at me. In this contentious world we need more
of this. In glancing at the rest of the list, there are several that I need to
be more conscious of doing, maybe the “N”. What about you? They don’t all apply
to everyone, but most of them do. Life is short, here are 26 things to do while
you can…
Avoid Collagen, Bloom Late, Celebrate, Dance At
Weddings, Eat More Chocolate, Fall In Love Again, Go Grey, Hold Hands, Inspire, Jettison Grudges, Kiss Like
You Mean It, Laugh, Mend Fences, Nurture
Friendships, Open Doors, Perspire With Aplomb, Quit
Whining, Rekindle Romance, Spoil Babies, Teach
Someone To Read, Upset
Convention, Volunteer, Wear Red, eXpect Joy, Yield Gracefully, Zing
