Dis-Integrity Among WI Legislators

In her 2001 novel, The High Flyer, Susan Howatch suggested that human beings must have lives founded on integrity…characterized by such qualities as:

• Truth
• Decency
• Unselfishness
• Compassion
• Trust
• Hope
• Love

Without those qualities present in their lives, she says, human beings soon become emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and even physically deformed.

And when a group of people loses sight of its purpose and forgets to manage its shared spirit, as the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly have done over the past several months, all of those qualities go out the window. The result is the most disgusting political deformity this state has seen in my lifetime–dis-integrity (to coin a word) at its most glaring.

Without even the hint of an apology to the voters, these elected fools have given themselves over to:

• Lies
• Degradation
• Selfishness
• Callousness
• Deceit
• Cynicism
• Exploitation
• Manipulation

These negative inclinations may actually seem very exciting to us when they arrive coated in various forms of self-indulgence. In fact, some who have been marinated in the hallucinogenic brine of party politics not only think these are the qualities that are expected of them but that they are the only choices available to them. The resulting destructive behaviors are deadly to sound public policy, integrity, and good government. In fact, they have everything to do with destroying integrity and the reputation of the legislative body…and the reputation of the state as a whole…and creating an incredibly toxic shared spirit among elected officials.

Sadly, these politicans are helpless in the face of their toxic shared spirit, mainly because they don’t even recognize that they have created it. Their negative shared spirit is a powerful, gigantic energy vampire, and it is playing them collectively and individually like a cheap piano.

Their only hope for bringing some iota of credibility back to the Wisconsin legislature is to become aware of “the elephant in the living room,” the condition of their shared spirit (or collective relationship, if you will) and begin to manage it–rather than continuing to point fingers, snipe, and blame one another.

Tragically, this level of irresponsibility and gross incompetence has become the norm in politics at all levels.

I wish I were more optimistic.

Master the Skills of Change

Good News About Change

Every day you as a leader face change. And the changes come at an ever faster rate!

How can you possibly get your team to deal with so much change? People resist change, right? Not exactly. It might seem that way sometimes, but it’s not change that they resist.

When you’ve decided to trade in your old car, aren’t you eager to drive the new one? And how many people do you know who want to watch only one movie over and over again?

You see, most people love change. So why do they appear to resist it sometimes? When you know the answer and what to do about it, your team will turn in world-class performance.

Master Change and Control Your Destiny

Change is inevitable. It confronts everyone in every organization every day. What can you do about it? You can either react — by getting angry or depressed, blaming someone or something, whining and complaining about how unfair life is—or you can anticipate change and shape it to help you reach your strategic goals.

You’ll have much more control over what happens when your team is poised to intercept change and use it to their advantage.

People React to Broken Promises and Undefined Risks

People don’t resist change per se, but they do react to poorly managed change:

1. People become cynical when they’ve been promised substantive, beneficial changes too many times only to be disappointed. (“Oh great! Here comes another new program. How long do you give this one?”)

2. People feel threatened when they have not been involved in identifying and planning a change that will affect them. They feel they have little or no control over what is happening to them.

3. People may fear a change that involves undefined risks. They want to be given enough information to decide for themselves if the risk level is acceptable to them.

4. People rebel against changes that dump unpleasant tasks on them, that appear to be unfair or unjust, or that violate their personal values and beliefs.

5. People resent being left out of decisions when their knowledge could save the organization time, money, and grief. They feel insulted and undervalued.

A Change Process That Works

Have you ever tried to persuade people to go along with a change that has been decided by top management or the board of directors, a change that people don’t like and haven’t been consulted about? Then you know how destructive and futile a top-down change process can be. Managing change is difficult enough without having to fight your own people as well. Instead, get them involved right from the start.

Involving people early in the change process is proactive. Dealing with the fallout of forcing change onto people is reactive. Both take time. Which seems more productive to you?

Create a Climate for Ongoing Change

Preparing your people to be constantly open to change may seem like asking them to accept permanent instability, but it’s actually the opposite. The following steps will give your team solid footing, even when everything seems to be shifting beneath their feet:

1. Clarify Mission, Vision, and Values – As a team, make sure you are clear about your mission, vision, and values and your commitment to them. Take steps to fine tune them if needed.

2. Build Enthusiasm for Change - Invite the team to adopt an attitude that welcomes change. Every good thing that has ever happened to them has probably been the result of a change of some sort.

3. Develop Team Skills – Sharpen your team’s clear thinking skills (e.g., problem solving, goal setting, and decision making) and their relationship skills (e.g., giving feedback, listening, and dealing with conflict).

4. Find a Way to Measure Everything – Adopt a set of measures to help you evaluate all of your critical processes.

5. Look for Better Ways – Encourage your people to continually prospect for better ways of serving internal and external customers. Ask them to be realistic. Reward them for pointing out the flaws in your systems.

6. Spot Trends – Be alert for trends and events in the outside world that may present obstacles or opportunities for the organization.

7. Promote Interdependence – Facilitate better communication and relationships between your team and other departments. To anticipate and manage change well your people need to have a “big picture” view of the entire organization as a set of interdependent parts.

Introduce Change Wisely

1. Set a Clear Goal – When the team identifies a need for change, have them state it as a specific, realistic, time-bound, and measurable goal.

2. Use Group Processes – Enlist the team’s brainpower in projecting benefits, risks, and obstacles, and build consensus on the proposed change. Encourage people to openly share any fears or concerns they have about the change, and then help the team to address every one.

3. Keep Others Informed – Have the team notify all others who may be affected by the change as early in the process as possible. Simply being informed can make the difference between their resistance and their cooperation. (Don’t forget to include your external customers and suppliers.)

4. Set Priorities and Action Plan – Set team priorities and write out a step-by-step action plan with built-in measures of success. Include contingency plans that you can fall back on if things don’t go as expected.

5. Test the Change – Implement your action plan on a limited basis first, if possible, to see how it is going to work.

6. Expect a Performance Dip - When a positive change is being made, there is usually a temporary dip in key performance indicators before they begin to rise again toward your projected levels. Become familiar with the sigmoid growth curve, so that you can prepare your team for the dip and let them know that it’s normal, somewhat like bending your knees before you jump.

Follow Up for Lasting Change

1. Talk About the Change – Once the change has been implemented on a limited basis, maintain a dialogue among team members, customers, suppliers, and others inside and outside the organization. Ask them what’s working and what’s not working.

2. Measure Results – Use the measures you built into your action plan, and also have the team rigorously monitor all of your critical process measures as well. How does reality stack up against the benefits and risks you projected?

3. Make Adjustments – Help the team identify and make necessary adjustments. Let those affected know about the fixes you’re planning to make, and ask for their feedback and support.

4. Implement It Fully – When you have made the adjustments, fully implement the change.

5. Be Vigilant – Vigorously continue your dialogues, feedback, and measurement, looking for opportunities to further improve the systems involved in the change.

6. Show Appreciation – Recognize your team and others inside and outside the organization for their contributions to the success of your change initiative.

Take Charge of Change!

1. Invent the future instead of trying to retrofit the past. Anticipate and visualize what your customers are going to expect five, or even ten, years from now and determine what your team can do now in order to give it to them.

2. Avoid battles. Try to make every change a win-win situation. You’ll build a reputation for integrity, and you’ll gain the support you need.

3. Keep your sense of humor. Be willing to laugh at yourself and with others. Shared laughter heals wounds and sparks creativity.

4. Support your immediate supervisor. Respond to your supervisor’s needs and desires. Keep your boss’s boss off your boss’s back!

5. Forgive. Others will make mistakes. So will you. Forgive them as well as yourself. Complete and unconditional forgiveness is a powerful tool for peace of mind.

Be a Master Decision Maker

An old one-liner goes . . .

. . . “A good leader is one who can make decisions quickly — and sometimes even correctly.”

Now, that’s supposed to be amusing. Unfortunately, an immense number of serious and costly mistakes are made every day in businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies precisely because some managers believe speed is all that counts in being a good decision maker.

 

Master Decision Makers know that decisions have to be made on a timely basis. But they also realize that the best decisions, those that yield value to customers and that others will accept, require a thoughtful, intelligent approach.

 

Smart leaders want decisions to be made at the lowest appropriate level in their organizations. So they develop their team members’ decision-making skills, and then support the decisions they make.

 

Make it a rule never to take on decisions that can be made effectively at a lower level. That way, you’ll have more time for the important decisions that only you can make.

 

Why Are Some Decisions Harder Than Others?

We all make lots of decisions quite easily every day — such as, whether or not to go to work, what to wear, what to eat. Obviously, we do know how to make them. Then why do some decisions that we’re called upon to make as leaders seem so threatening and difficult?

 

In most cases, it’s because those decisions present us with:

1.      Perceived risks – You may think to yourself, “If I make the wrong decision, how much could I (or the organization) lose? Will customers rebel? Will my boss be angry with me? Will it kill morale? Will it hurt my credibility with my team?”

2.      Conflicts and confusion among values – When you’re making a decision about how to deal with a poor performer, for example, you may find yourself caught between your sense of yourself as a “good, fair, patient leader” and your sense of responsibility to get results for the organization as a whole. You may be angry with the poor performer and, at the same time perhaps, feel guilty because you should have done a better job of training or coaching the person.

 

How To Make Good Decisions More Easily

Some skilled leaders appear to make decisions — excellent decisions — quickly and painlessly. What’s their secret? Consciously or unconsciously they follow a thoughtful process that includes all or many of the suggestions coming up. Start using such a process yourself. You too will make better decisions —

decisions others will accept — more easily and quickly.

 

PREPARE

Reduce the Risk By Involving the Right People

As a leader, you have the primary responsiblility for certain decisions. The accountability and the risk for those decisions is yours too, no matter who else or how many people you get involved in the process.

Even so, when you get the right people to participate to the right degree, you reduce your risk of failure and increase the likelihood you’ll end up with a good decision. Getting others involved could be the most critical factor in making wise decisions. Here’s why.

A Good Decision Has Two Critical Elements

1.      The quality of the decision itself. Is it technically, intellectually, ethically, and financially sound?

• Are there technical, legal, or policy standards that require absolute compliance, or are some or all of the quality requirements for the decision flexible? Be clear about the distinctions in your own mind and be prepared to articulate and defend them to others.
• On a scale from one to ten, ten being extremely important, how important is it to meet those standards in order for this decision to be successful?
• What specifically will have to be done in order to ensure that you end up with a decision that meets the necessary standards of quality?
• Do those who will be affected by the decision or called upon to implement or support the decision have knowledge or experience in these technical, legal, or policy areas? If not, what would it take to bring them up to speed so that they could participate in crafting this decision?

 

2.      The acceptance of the decision. Will those who must implement it and those who are affected by it support it?

• Whom do you want or need to accept, support, or implement this decision?

• On a scale from one to ten, ten being extremely important, how important is it for you to have acceptance of this decision from those who will be affected by the decision or called upon to implement or support the decision?
• What would happen if you failed to gain that acceptance?
• What needs will have to be met for people before they are likely to accept the decision? (Clarity? Addressing fears? Feeling heard? Alignment with personal values? Meaningful participation and collaboration? Some level of authority and self-determination? Social needs? Personal growth needs? Need for information and data? Need to do their own research and study?)

• What specifically will have to be done in order to ensure that you end up with a decision that meets the necessary standards of acceptance?

The relative importance of quality vs acceptance varies from decision to decision. Who and how many people to involve is your call, but consider carefully.

 

Involve People Close To the Decision – If the decision involves changing a process or a task, the people who actually carry out the process are more likely than anyone else to spot the pitfalls of changing it. People in other departments who supply something needed for the process in question or who depend on its results to do their work may also have valuable insights. Ask yourself whether you should involve them, at what point, and to what degree.

 

Think carefully about who else could be affected by the decision and how they might react, as well as how their reactions could affect your success in implementing the decision. Should you involve them? If so, when and to what degree?

 

Know When to Choose Acceptance Over Quality – It’s possible that a higher quality decision might be made by one or two people with specialized knowledge of the situation at hand. Despite that, you may sense that acceptance of the decision is so important that you should involve more people and settle for a slightly lower quality decision. The degree of their involvement might range anywhere from (1) your simply informing them in advance that you are going to make a decision to (2) allowing them to make the decision themselves. Between those two extremes are such options as selling the decision to them, getting them to gather pertinent information for you, and soliciting suggestions and recommendations from them.

 

In any case, keep in mind these two truths:

• People tend to support what they help to create.
• Most people want to be involved in designing the systems that affect them.

It’s better to err on the side of getting too much participation throughout your decision-making process than too little. Of course, the amount of time available to make the decision can’t be ignored and may play a role in how much of a choice you actually have to involve others as you’d like

 

Set Clear Criteria For Your Decision

The quality of decisions too often suffers for lack of clear, pertinent criteria. Here’s a straightforward method you and your group can use to keep important considerations — including your goals and values — from falling through the cracks:

Ask your team: When we have a good decision, what will be true in these four areas for our customers, for the team and for the organization as a whole?

1.      What will we be preserving? List what’s true now that you want to remain true.

2.      What will we be eliminating? List what’s true now that you no longer want to be true.

3.      What will we be adding? List what’s not true now that you want to be true in the future.

4.      What will we be avoiding? List what’s not true now that you want to continue to keep from being true.

Check the items you list under each heading against your goals and values, what you and your organization want to become and what you stand for. Then write a “+” before those criteria that clearly advance your goals and values, a “?” before those that advance them in only a minor way, and a “–” before those criteria that clash with or are irrelevant to your goals and values.

If you don’t have your goals and values written out, do it. Making a decision is far easier when you have criteria based on clear goals and values.

 

CHOOSE

1.      Brainstorm For Options – Brainstorm and list as many ways as possible you could frame your decision.

2.      Rank Your Options – Check each option against your most important criteria and put an “X” before those options that meet all or most of the criteria.

3.      Settle On An Option – This is the step that takes courage. You may have had a great deal of input from others, but now the decision itself is on your shoulders. Even if you have allowed a group to come to consensus on what the decision should be, you are still accountable for it.

But don’t worry. If you’ve gone through the process outlined so far, you’ve acted as a responsible decision maker. Your decision may not be perfect — few leaders’ decisions ever are — but it will no doubt be a good decision. Go for it!

 

DO IT!

 

Implement Your Decision

Your decision will have value only if you implement it. If you’ve had a group participate in shaping and

choosing an option, then implementation is a natural next step for them. Get the group to come to consensus and take action on:

1. The steps required for successful implementation
2. Who will be responsible for completing each step
3. Dates each step will be completed
4. Who needs to be informed of each step
5. A follow-up process to make sure the decision “sticks”

 

Two Ways to Enhance the Quality of Your Decisions

1.      Get an Outsider’s Perspective – Remember the story about the large truck that is about three inches taller than an old underpass on a city street? The driver, unaware of the danger, hits the underpass at forty miles per hour, severely wedging the truck. Wreckers and bulldozers push and pull for hours, but can’t free the truck.

Finally, a little girl who has been watching the spectacle says quietly to a nearby police officer, “Maybe if they’d let some air out of the truck’s tires, it would get unstuck.”

Sometimes our intimate knowledge of our own line of work keeps us from seeing some options that are obvious to the outsider. Ask a child or a next-door neighbor what he or she would do in your situation. You may get an answer that leads you to a breakthrough or, at least, to a new perspective.

2.      Listen to Your Intuition – Some of us have a tendency to discount the value of intuition, that “gut” feeling we sometimes get about a person or situation. When we fail to trust our hunches, our intuition, we are dismissing a powerful tool. Master Decision Makers listen closely to their intuition for the knowledge and insight it provides, even though with no apparent rational basis.

Relax for five minutes and just get in tune with your inner voice. Or, if you’re in a hurry and have to choose between two options, flip a coin. As the coin is on its way down, does a voice in your head say, “I hope it comes up tails”? That’s your intuition talking to you. Trust it to guide you to a sound decision.

As You Think

As a Man Thinketh by English essayist and poet James Allen (1864-1912)

A modern English adaptation by Kerwin Steffen

 

THOUGHT AND CHARACTER

The well-known saying, “As you think in your heart, so are you,” not only

• embraces all of your entire being, but is so comprehensive that it

• reaches out to include every condition and circumstance of your life as well.

You are literally what you think. Your character is the complete sum of all your thoughts. Just as a plant springs from (and couldn’t exist without) the seed, so your every act, everything you do or say, springs from the hidden seeds of your thoughts, and couldn’t have appeared without them. This applies to those acts called spontaneous” and “unpremeditated” just as to those that are deliberate.

Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits. So, you see, you harvest only the sweet and bitter fruit of your own good or poor self-management.

Character and the Law of Cause and Effect

The law of cause and effect is just as absolute and undeviating in the hidden realm of thought as it is in the visible and material world.

A noble character is not a matter of favor or chance. It’s the natural result of a continued effort to think virtuously and unselfishly, the effect of long-cherished association with noble thought.

A vile and wretched character, by the same process, is the result of harboring debasing and self-centered thoughts.

You Are the Master of Your Own Character

You make or unmake yourself. Your thoughts either forge the weapons with which you destroy yourself, or they fashion the tools with which you build exalted mansions of joy and strength and peace for yourself.

By making the right choices and acting out lofty thoughts, you ascend toward perfection. By making poor choices and acting out vile thoughts, you descend below the level of a beast.

Between those two extremes, perfection on the one hand and bestiality on the other, lie all the various degrees of your character, and you are their maker and master.

As a being of power, intelligence and love and the ruler of your own thoughts, you hold the key to every situation. You contain within yourself the transforming and regenerative power to make yourself whatever you choose.

Be A Conscious Master

You are always the master, even in your weakest and most dismal state. But, when you are weak and degraded, it is because you are being a foolish master. You are mismanaging your “household.”

When you begin to reflect on your condition and to search diligently for the universal principles on which your being is established, only then do you become the wise master. Then you begin to direct your energies with intelligence and to focus your thoughts on fruitful issues.

That’s what it means to be a conscious master, and you can become one only by discovering within yourself the laws of thought. And that discovery is entirely a matter of repeated effort, diligent self-analysis, and continuing experience.

Seek And You Shall Find

Finding gold or diamonds requires a good deal of searching and mining. Likewise, you’ll need to look deep into your own mind and heart to find the truths that are connected with your being.

Here’s how you can prove to yourself without a shadow of a doubt that you are the maker of your character, the molder of your life, and the builder of your destiny:

• Monitor your thoughts toward yourself, toward others and toward your life.

• Control your thoughts.

• Alter your thoughts.

• Trace the effects of your thoughts upon yourself, upon others, and upon your life and your circumstances.

• Consciously and diligently link cause and effect, investigating and using every experience (even the most trivial, everyday occurrence) to obtain self-knowledge.

Your effort will require patience, practice, and persistence, but the door to increased understanding, wisdom and power in your own life will eventually open.

 

EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON CIRCUMSTANCES

Your mind is like a garden, which you may intelligently cultivate or allow to run wild. But whether you cultivate it or neglect it, it must and will bring forth fruit. Unless you sow useful seeds into it, an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall into it and will continue to produce their kind.

You Are the Gardener

Just as a gardener cultivates a plot, keeping it free from weeds and growing the desired flowers and fruits, so you may tend the garden of your mind,

• weeding out all the wrong, useless and impure thoughts, and

• cultivating and perfecting the flowers and fruit of right, useful, and pure thoughts.

By following this process, you’ll sooner or later discover that you are the master gardener of your soul, the director of your life.

You’ll also reveal within yourself the laws of thought, and you’ll understand with ever increasing accuracy how the thought forces and mind elements operate to shape your character, your circumstances and your destiny.

Your Outer Conditions Are Related to Your Inner State

Thought and character are one. And the only way your character can manifest itself (or discover itself) is through your environment and your circumstances. So, doesn’t it follow, then, that the outer conditions of your life will always be a reflection of your inner state?

This doesn’t mean that your circumstances at any given time are an indication of your entire character. But it does mean that those circumstances, whatever they may be, are intimately connected with some vital thought-element within you-and, for the time being, those particular circumstances are an indispensable part of your development.

You are where you are by the very law of your existence. The thoughts that you have built into your character have brought you there. There is no element of chance in how you’ve arranged your life. It’s the result of your own choices. This is just as true of people who feel “out of harmony” with or victimized by their surroundings as it is of those who feel content with their surroundings.

As an evolving person, you are where you are at this moment in your life so that you can grow and discover your ability to evolve further. And when today’s circumstances have taught you their lessons, those circumstances will disappear and give way to other circumstances.

You Are a Creative Power

You’ll be buffeted and tossed about by circumstances as long as you believe that your present situation has been created by outside conditions. But when you realize that you yourself are a creative power, and that you’re in charge of the hidden soil and seeds out of which your circumstances grow, then you’ll become your own rightful master.

If you practice self-control and self-purification for any length of time, you’ll clearly discover that circumstances do grow out of thought. You’ll notice that the change in your circumstances will be in exact proportion to the change in your thoughts and attitudes. Try it. Earnestly apply yourself to fixing the defects in your character. You’ll soon start to make swift and noticeable progress, and you’ll pass rapidly through a whole succession of varying states.

Your Thoughts and Desires Reveal Themselves

Your soul attracts what it secretly harbors-not only what it loves, but also what it fears. You reach the heights of your cherished aspirations, and you fall to the level of your unchastened desires. Circumstances are the means which one’s soul receives what it has created.

Every thought-seed that you sow or allow to fall into your mind (and allow to take root there) will produce its own kind, blossoming sooner or later into actions and bearing its own fruits of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.

The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought. And, ultimately, both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions contribute to the good of the individual. As the reaper of your own harvest, you learn by both suffering and bliss.

If you follow your inmost dominant desires, aspirations and thoughts (whether it be pursuing your impure fantasies or focusing on lofty ideals and on service to others), you will ultimately reap their fruit in the outer conditions of your life. In the end, the laws of growth and adjustment always prevail.

A person doesn’t end up a derelict or a criminal through the tyranny of fate or circumstance, but rather by the pathway of groveling thoughts and base desires.

Pure-minded individuals do not suddenly fall into crime through some outside stimulus. No, they have secretly fostered criminal thoughts in their hearts for a long time. And those thoughts have just been waiting for the opportunity to reveal their gathered power.

Circumstance doesn’t make you one thing or another. It reveals you to yourself. It’s simply not possible to succumb to vice (and the sufferings that go with it) without first having had inclinations toward vice.

Likewise, it’s not possible to soar to virtue and its pure happiness without continually cultivating virtuous aspirations.

You, therefore, as master of your thoughts, are the maker of yourself, the shaper and author of your environment. From birth, and through every step of your earthly pilgrimage, you attract those combinations of conditions that reveal your true self, conditions that are simply reflections of your own purity and impurity, your own strengths and weaknesses.

You Attract What You Are

You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are. Your whims, your wishes, and your daydreams will be thwarted at every step. They’re only superficial. But your inmost thoughts and desires will grow in power, because you are continually feeding them with food you’ve created, be it foul or clean.

The thing that shapes your destiny is within yourself. It is your very self. You are handcuffed only by yourself. Thought and action are the jailers of fate-they’ll imprison you if they’re low, mean or selfish. They are also the angels of freedom-they’ll liberate you if they’re noble.

You don’t get what you wish for. You get what you justly earn. Your wishes are gratified only when they harmonize with your thoughts and actions.

In the light of this truth, what does it mean to “fight against circumstances”? It means that you’re continually revolting against an outside effect, while all the time you’re nourishing and preserving its cause in your heart.

That cause may take the form of a conscious vice or an unconscious weakness. But whatever it is, it stubbornly retards your efforts-and it cries out to be remedied.

Improved Circumstances Require Sacrifice and Service

Some people are anxious to improve their circumstances, but they’re unwilling to improve themselves. So, they stay in chains they themselves have forged.

If you’re willing to sacrifice and to serve others, you’ll inevitably accomplish the object on which your heart is set. This is as true of earthly as it is of spiritual things.

Even if your only goal is to acquire wealth, you have to be prepared to make great personal sacrifices before you can achieve it. And if a strong, well-poised life is your goal, your sacrifices will have to be even greater.

• Take the man who is wretchedly poor. He’s extremely anxious to have his surroundings and home comforts improved, yet all the time he self-centeredly shirks his work and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the grounds that his wages are insufficient.

A person like that doesn’t understand the simplest rudiments of the principles that form the basis of true prosperity. He’s not only totally unfit to rise out of his wretchedness, but he’s actually attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out, indolent and deceptive thoughts.

• Take the rich woman who is the victim of a painful and persistent disease caused by her gluttony. She’s willing to give large sums of money to cure her condition, but she won’t sacrifice her gluttonous desires. She wants to gratify her taste for rich and unnatural foods and still have her health as well.

A person like that is totally unfit to have health, because she hasn’t learned the first principles of a healthy life.

• Take the employer who rules his employees like a dictator, never involves them in making the decisions that affect them and, in the hope of making larger profits, reduces their wages.

Such a person is altogether unfit for prosperity and when he finds himself bankrupt, both in reputation and, eventually, in riches, he blames circumstances, not knowing that he is the sole author of his condition.

I have introduced these three examples merely to illustrate the truth that people are the causers (though almost always unconsciously) of their circumstances. They may aim at worthwhile goals, but they continually frustrate the accomplishment of those goals by encouraging thoughts and desires that cannot possibly harmonize with them.

I could list many more examples, but that’s not necessary. You can, if you want, trace the action of the laws of thought in your own mind and life. Until you’ve done that, don’t use mere external facts and circumstances as a basis for drawing conclusions about others.

Avoid False Conclusions

Human circumstances are so complicated, thought is so deeply rooted, and the conditions of happiness vary so vastly among individuals that your entire soul-condition (although it may be known to you) can’t be judged by another person from the external aspects of your life alone.

You’ve seen this happen, haven’t you? One person is honest in certain directions, yet she’s still deprived. Another person is dishonest in certain directions, yet he still acquires wealth.

Now, the common cynical conclusion is that the first person fails because of her honesty and that the other person prospers because of his dishonesty.

Such a false conclusion is the result of a superficial judgment. It assumes that the dishonest person is almost totally corrupt and that the honest person is almost entirely virtuous.

Deeper knowledge and wider experience will show that such a judgment is erroneous. The “dishonest” person may have some admirable virtues that the “honest” person does not have; and the “honest” person may have some vices that are absent in the “dishonest” person.

To be sure, the “honest” person reaps the good results of her honest thoughts and acts. And she also brings upon herself the sufferings her vices produce.

Likewise, the “dishonest” person collects his own suffering and happiness.

It is pleasing to our human vanity to believe that we suffer because of our virtue. But not unless you were able to utterly do away with every sickly, bitter, and impure thought from your mind and wash every sinful stain from your soul, would you be in a position to know and declare that your sufferings are the result of your good rather than your bad qualities.

An Absolutely Just Law

On the way to the perfection you’re striving for (but long before you even approach it), you’ll find working in your mind and life a Great Law. That law is absolutely just and cannot, therefore, reward good with evil, or evil with good.

Once you have that knowledge, you’ll also know, looking back upon your own past ignorance and blindness, that your life is, and always has been, the just result of your thoughts, desires and actions. You’ll see that all your past experiences, good and bad, have been nothing more and nothing less than the fair and equitable progression of your evolving self.

Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results. Bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. Nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from thistles but thistles.

People seem to understand and work with that law in the natural world. Unfortunately, few understand it in the mental and moral world (although its operation there is just as simple and undeviating), and so they don’t cooperate with it.

Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought of some sort. It’s an indication that the individual is out of harmony with himself and with the law of his being.

The sole and supreme benefit of suffering is to purify, to burn out what is useless and impure. The suffering you encounter is the result of your own mental discord. The happiness you encounter is the result of your own mental harmony.

Happiness, not material possessions, is the measure of right thought. Wretchedness, not lack of material possessions, is the measure of wrong thought.

You may be cursed and rich. The only way to be happy and rich at the same time is to use your riches rightly and wisely.

Likewise, you may be happy and poor. A poor person doesn’t have to be wretched, unless he chooses to think that his lot is a burden that has been unjustly imposed on him.

Indulgence and indigence – those are the two extremes of wretchedness. They are equally unnatural and are the result of mental disarray. Your right state is to be a happy, healthy, prosperous being. And happiness, health and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer, of you with your surroundings.

You begin to be healthy and mature only when you stop whining and railing and start searching for the hidden justice that regulates your life. And as you adapt your mind to that regulating factor, you will quit accusing others as the cause of your condition, and you’ll start to build yourself up in strong and noble thoughts and in service to others.

You’ll stop kicking against circumstances and begin to use them to help you progress more rapidly and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities within yourself.

Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe. Justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life. And righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world.

So, put yourself right, and you’ll find that the world seems right. During the process of putting yourself right, you’ll find that as you change your thoughts toward the world and other people, the world and other people will change toward you.

The proof of this truth is in every person, and it’s easily discovered by systematic introspection and self-analysis. Let yourself radically alter your thoughts and you’ll be astonished at the rapid transformation in the material conditions of your life.

You might imagine that thought can be kept a secret, but it can’t. It rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.

• Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease.

• Impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances.

• Thoughts of fear, doubt and indecision crystallize into weak and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence and slavish dependence.

• Lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary.

• Hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution.

• Selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances of distress.

On the other hand,

• Beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of grace and kindness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances.

• Pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace.

• Thoughts of courage, self-reliance and decision crystallize into confident habits, which solidify into circumstances of success, plenty and freedom.

• Energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of pleasantness.

• Gentle and forgiving thoughts crystallize into habits of gentleness, which solidify into protective and preservative circumstances.

• Loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true riches.

If you persist in a particular train of thought, good or bad, it can’t fail to produce its results on your character and circumstances. You cannot directly choose your circumstances, but you can choose your thoughts. So, indirectly but surely, you choose your circumstances.

 

EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON HEALTH AND THE BODY

The body is the servant of the mind. It obeys the operations of the mind, whether they’re deliberately chosen or automatically expressed. Under the direction of immoral thoughts, the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay. At the command of glad and beautiful thoughts it becomes clothed with youthfulness and beauty.

Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. Sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body. Instances have been reported in which thoughts of fear have killed a person as speedily as a bullet, and such thoughts are continually killing thousands of people just as surely though less rapidly.

The people who live in fear of a disease are the people who get it. You see, anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and makes it vulnerable to disease. And impure thoughts, even if not physically indulged, will soon shatter the nervous system.

Strong, pure and happy thoughts build up the body in vigor and grace. The body is a delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts that influence it. And habits of thought will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon the body.

If you want to perfect your body, guard your mind. If you want to renew your body, beautify your mind. Thoughts of malice, envy, disappointment and despondency rob the body of its health and grace. A sour face does not come by chance. It’s made by sour thoughts.

There is no physician like cheerful thought for chasing away the ills of the body. There is no comforter to compare with good will for illuminating the shadows of grief and sorrow.

To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion and envy is to be confined in a self-made prison. But to think well of everyone, to be cheerful with everyone, to patiently learn to find the good in everyone-such unselfish thoughts are like the portals of heaven. And to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring you abounding peace.

 

THOUGHT AND PURPOSE

Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment. The majority of people allow the boat of thought to drift upon the ocean of life. Aimlessness is a vice, and you can’t continue such drifting if you want to steer clear of catastrophe and destruction.

People who have no central purpose in their lives fall easy prey to petty worries, fear, troubles and self-pityings-all indicators of weakness that lead, just as surely as deliberately planned wrongdoing (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness and loss.

You should conceive a legitimate purpose in your heart and then set out to accomplish it. You should make this purpose the focus of your thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object. Whichever it is, steadily focus your thought-forces on it.

Make this purpose your supreme duty and devote yourself to its attainment. Don’t allow your thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings and imaginings. You’ll be on the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if you fail again and again to accomplish your purpose (as you necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character you gain will be the true measure of your true success. It will form a new starting point for future power and triumph.

If you’re not prepared to take on a great purpose, fix your thoughts on the faultless performance of your duty, no matter how insignificant your task may appear. That’s the only way you can gather and focus your thoughts and develop resolution and energy.

When you’ve done those things, there is nothing you can’t accomplish.

Once you know your own weakness and believe that strength can be developed only by effort and practice, you will begin to exert yourself immediately. Adding effort to effort, patience to patience, and strength to strength, you will never stop developing, and you’ll eventually grow invincibly strong.

Once you put away aimlessness and weakness and begin to think with purpose, you enter the ranks of the strong, who recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment; who make all conditions serve them; and who think strongly, attempt fearlessly and accomplish masterfully.

Having chosen your purpose, mentally plot a straight pathway to its achievement, looking neither right nor left. Rigorously exclude doubts and fears. They are disintegrating elements that break up the straight line of effort, making it crooked, ineffectual, useless.

Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplish anything. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy and the power to accomplish (in fact, all strong thoughts) end when doubt and fear creep in.

The will to do springs from the knowledge that you can do. Doubt and fear are the great enemies of that knowledge. When you encourage them instead of slaying them you thwart yourself at every step.

When you conquer doubt and fear, you have conquered failure. Your every thought is aligned with power, and you’ll bravely meet and wisely overcome all difficulties. Your purposes are planted in season, and they bloom and bring forth fruit that doesn’t fall prematurely.

Thought teamed fearlessly with purpose becomes creative force. Once you know this, you’re ready to become something higher and stronger than a mere bundle of wavering thoughts and fluctuating sensations. And once you do it, you have become the conscious and intelligent wielder of your mental powers.

 

THE THOUGHT FACTOR IN ACHIEVEMENT

Everything you achieve and everything you fail to achieve is the direct result of your own thoughts. In this justly ordered universe, individual responsibility has to be absolute. Your weakness and strength, your purity and impurity are your own and not another person’s. They are brought about by you, not by someone else. They can be changed only by you, never by someone else.

Your condition is also your own and not another person’s. Your suffering and your happiness evolve from within you. As you think, so you are. As you continue to think, so you will remain.

You can’t help a weaker person unless that weaker person is willing to be helped. And even then, the weaker person has to become strong by himself. He has to, by his own efforts, develop the strength he admires in someone else. Only he can alter his condition.

You can rise, conquer and achieve only by lifting up your thoughts. You can remain weak, abject and miserable only by refusing to lift up your thoughts.

Before you can achieve anything, even in worldly things, you have to lift your thoughts above slavish animal indulgence. You might not give up all animality and selfishness, but you have to sacrifice at least the major portion of it.

There can be no progress, no achievement, without sacrifice. Your worldly success will be in proportion to your sacrifice of confused animal thoughts and to how resolutely you fix your mind on the development of your plans and the strengthening of your determination and self-reliance. The higher you lift your thoughts and the more noble, upright and righteous you become, the greater your success will be and the more fulfilling and enduring your achievements will be.

The universe does not favor the greedy, the dishonest, the vicious, although on the mere surface it may sometimes appear to do so. It helps the honest, the magnanimous, the virtuous.

All the great teachers of the ages have declared this in varying forms. To prove it and know it for yourself, persist in making yourself more and more virtuous by lifting up your thoughts.

Intellectual achievements are the result of thought dedicated to the search for knowledge, beauty and truth in life and nature. Such achievements may sometimes be connected with vanity and ambition, but they are not the outcome of those characteristics. They’re the natural outgrowth of long and arduous effort, and of pure and unselfish thoughts.

All achievements, whether in the business, intellectual or spiritual worlds are the result of definitely directed thought and are governed by the same law and come about by the same method. The only difference lies in the object of attainment.

The person who wishes to accomplish little must sacrifice little. The person who wishes to achieve much must sacrifice much. The person who wishes to attain highly must sacrifice greatly.

 

VISIONS AND IDEALS

The dreamers are a blessing to the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so people, through all their struggles and disappointments, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers nor let their ideals fade and die. It lives in those ideals. It recognizes them as the realities that it shall one day see and know.

Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage. These are the makers. The world is more beautiful because they have lived. Without their work, laboring humanity would perish.

People who cherish beautiful visions and lofty ideals in their hearts, will one day realize them. Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he reached it. Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it.

Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all ideal environments.

To desire is to obtain. To aspire is to achieve. Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you will one day be. Your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.

All great achievements were at first and for a time dreams. The oak sleeps in the acorn. The bird waits in the egg. And in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

Your circumstances may be uncongenial, but they won’t remain so for long if you just perceive an ideal and strive to reach it. You cannot travel on the inside and stand still on the outside.

You will realize the vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, because you will always gravitate toward that which you secretly love most. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts. You will receive what you earn, no more and no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, stay where you are or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire, and as great as your dominant aspiration.

The thoughtless, the ignorant and the lazy, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune and chance. Seeing a person grow rich, they say, “How lucky he is!” Observing another person become intellectual, they exclaim, “What special advantages he has had!” And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another person, they remark, “Everything goes his way!”

They don’t see the trials and failures and struggles that these people have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience. They have no knowledge of the sacrifices these people have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, so that they could overcome the apparently insurmountable obstacles and realize the vision of their hearts.

They don’t know the darkness and the heartaches. They only see the light and joy and call it luck. They don’t see the long and arduous journey. They only see the pleasant destination and call it good fortune. They don’t understand the process, but only perceive the result and call it chance.

In all human affairs there are efforts and there are results. The strength of the effort, not chance, is the measure of the result. Gifts, powers, and possessions (material, intellectual and spiritual) are the fruit of effort. They are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.

The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart-this is what you’ll build your life by. This is what you’ll become.

 

SERENITY

Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom, the result of long and patient effort toward self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience and of a greater than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.

You become calm to the degree that you understand yourself as a thought-evolved being. Such knowledge, the result of thought, also fosters your understanding of others. And as you develop a true understanding and see more clearly the internal relations of things and the action of cause and effect, you stop fussing and fuming, worrying and grieving, and you remain poised, steadfast, serene.

If you are calm, having learned how to govern yourself, you know how to adapt yourself to others. They, in turn, reverence your spiritual strength and feel they can learn from you and rely on you. The more tranquil you become, the greater your success, your influence and your power for good.

The strong, calm person is always loved and revered, like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land or a sheltering rock in a storm. Who doesn’t love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered, balanced life? It doesn’t matter whether it rains or shines or what changes come to those who have these blessings. They are always sweet, serene and calm.

That exquisite poise of character which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture. It’s the flowering of life, the fruit of the soul. It’s as precious as wisdom, more desirable than gold. How insignificant mere money-seeking looks in comparison with a serene life-a life that dwells in the ocean of truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of tempests, in the eternal calm.

Many people we know sour their lives and ruin everything sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers. They destroy their poise of character and make bad blood! It would seem that the great majority of people ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control. How few people we meet in life who are well balanced, who have that exquisite poise unique to the finished character!

Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt. Only the wise person, whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and storms of the soul obey.

Tempest-tossed souls, wherever you may be, under whatever conditions you may live, know this-in the ocean of life the islands of happiness and fulfillment are smiling, and the sunny shore of your ideal awaits your coming. Keep your hand firmly on the helm of thought. In the boat of your being reclines the commander. He’s only sleeping. Wake him. Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power. Say to your heart, “Peace, be still!”

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© 1984 Kerwin W. Steffen

 

How To Put the Five-Sense Tour To Work in Your Team

The Five-Sense Tour is a fun, easy-to-use tool to get your team energized and focused. They’ll make hundreds of little changes in the physical environment that will add up to big changes in the way your customers and others perceive their experiences with your organization. And the Shared Spirit of the team will take on a new vibrance.

Conducting the Tour

1. Divide the workplace into areas small enough so that one person can easily complete his or her part of the tour in twenty minutes or less.

2. Select five “tourists” from among the team for the initial tour of the area, one for each of the five senses. (If you’re certain that there is nothing in the area that a visitor might taste, use only four “tourists” and give one of them responsibility for both Smell and Taste.)

3. Make sure each “tourist” has pen and paper to write down observations.

CAUTION: Don’t use managers/supervisors as Five-Sense Tourists. The tour can quickly take on the appearance of an inspection and lose its appeal.

4. Initially, assign people to their own specific work areas rather than having them tour one another’s areas. Later, when the Five-Sense Tour has been accepted as a useful and fun process, you might propose that they tour one another’s areas. They may even decide to bring in outsiders, perhaps current customers or vendors. The important thing is to always keep the process non-threatening.

5. Meet with the group of “tourists” and remind them of the purpose of the Five-Sense Tour: to remove the filters from their senses. By focusing on only one sense and by simulating as closely as possible what a customer experiences, they will notice elements in the physical environment that they might otherwise miss. Go over these four objectives of the Tour:

• To identify positive sensory elements that should be preserved.
• To identify positive sensory elements that are absent and could be introduced.
• To identify negative sensory elements that need to be eliminated.
• To identify potential negative sensory elements that should continue to be avoided.

6. Make it clear to the group that the Five-Sense Tour is a means toward creating positive service experiences and even healthier Shared Spirit. Assure them that no penalties will be imposed on anyone for deficiencies that are uncovered in the tour. Focus on improving (future-oriented), not on blaming (past-oriented).

7. Clarify each “tourist’s” level of power to solve the problems they identify during the tour. If there are certain kinds of problems they do not have the authority to solve on their own, make sure they know what to do. Should they refer the problems to you? Should they contact the appropriate person or department themselves?

8. Provide recognition or rewards for the group if positive changes, no matter how small, are made as a result of the tour. If no positive changes come about, let the group determine why, and help them to come up with a plan for making the next Five-Sense Tour more satisfying and fruitful. Sometimes groups identify only the larger needs, which often involve capital outlay and more time to implement. Encourage them to look for smaller items next time. Everything counts!

9. Post a cumulative list of the changes that have been made as a result of your Five-Sense Tours. Include positive comments from customers and staff in other departments that have come as a result of those changes.

10. When you identify problems that cannot be solved immediately or that require planning and budgeting, inform your team on a regular basis of the progress being made toward solutions.

11. Repeat the Five-Sense Tour at least once a quarter, and make sure all team members get involved in the tours themselves, as well as in the group discussions.

12. Encourage all team members to conduct their own mini-Five-Sense Tours of their areas every day—Observing, Evaluating and Acting.

The Sixth-Sense Tour

When your people are comfortable with the Five-Sense Tour, have them move on to a Sixth-Sense Tour: using their intuition to identify critical areas for improvement that may not register with any of the five senses.

MAKE WINNING PRESENTATIONS

How To Reach People and Build Shared Spirit with Your Message

“Please make a presentation on this at our next meeting.”

Do your palms perspire at the mere thought of speaking to a group? Are you afraid that your knowledge of the subject is inadequate? That you’ll turn your audience off?

Professionals know that the secret to a successful presentation is to take the focus off yourself. Know how to put your audience’s needs and expectations first, and you’ll reach them with your message every time.

 

SKILLFUL PRESENTERS CONNECT WITH LISTENERS

A well-done presentation is a powerful tool for getting results. The skillful presenter informs, persuades, and inspires others to excellent performance.

You don’t have to be a smooth talker or a polished performer to get outstanding results. You just have to know and follow a few simple steps as you prepare and deliver your message.

 

THE SECRET OF A COMPELLING MESSAGE

The best way to reach and move others with your presentation:

1. Find out your audience’s hopes, fears, and needs regarding your topic. Ask questions ahead of time, if possible. Strive to understand their perspective.

2. Frame your message so that it sincerely addresses those hopes, fears, and needs. Make sure it helps the audience solve their problems and meet their goals, while it accomplishes your own purpose as well.

When you aim your presentation at the concerns of your listeners, both you and your message will seem more interesting and worthwhile to them.

That does not mean that you just tell your audience what they want to hear. Sometimes you have to give them bad news. Even when that’s the case, deliver the message in a way that shows you recognize and are responsive to their needs and desires.

 

BLUEPRINT FOR A WINNING PRESENTATION

Small group or large group. Co-workers or strangers. Months to prepare or only a couple of days. Whatever the case, follow these simple steps and your presentation will get results.

DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE

1. Focus – Your message should have only one theme. Define it in 25 words or less and stick to it.

2. Main Points – What are the three or four major points related to your focus that will form the structure of your presentation?

3. Desired Result – Define specifically what you want your audience to do.

SHAPE YOUR MESSAGE

1. Motivate Your Audience. Your opening statement should show that you know your topic. Follow with a statement that will grab this particular audience emotionally. (I know you’re tired of being hit with unpleasant surprises. I going to show you how to have more control over…”)

2. Do Your Research. Determine what else you need to know about the topic and learn it.

3. Tell True Stories, Not Jokes. True, pertinent stories that are well-rehearsed can be powerful. Jokes, no matter how funny, cheapen your presentation.

4. Involve Your Audience. Poll them for specific responses (“How many of you do X when Y happens?”) or ask open-ended questions (“What are some ways we could solve this problem?”). Be sure to plan the questions in advance.

5. Use Handouts. They reinforce your message.

6. Keep Language Simple. People will be listening, not reading, so avoid long sentences and repeat the important points.

7. Avoid the “Ism’s.” Today’s presenter has to be sensitive to avoiding language that is perceived as racist, sexist, ageist, etc. Saying “the girls in my office” can cost you your credibility as a speaker.

8. Plan a Compelling Ending. Your call to action must be clear and specific, and it has to stir the emotions of your listeners. Make sure it gives them a clear picture of what’s in it for them.

 

PREPARE YOURSELF MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY

1. Write Your Speech Out. Even if you plan to deliver it without notes, writing it out is the only way to be sure it’s clear and sensible.

2. Rehearse. You’ll be more confident and fluent in your presentation if you practice it and get feedback.

3. Get Control of A-V Equipment. Confirm when it must be delivered and set up. Test the condition of all equipment ahead of time and practice using it with your materials. Prepare flip chart pages whiteboards in advance, if you’re using them.

4. Expect Success. Close your eyes and clearly visualize yourself enthusiastically and skillfully engaging the audience.

5. Welcome the Butterflies. A little stage fright raises your adrenaline level and enhances the force of your message.

 

PRESENT LIKE A PROFESSIONAL

1. Watch the Time. Keep your presentation as brief and concise as you can.

2. Plant Your Feet. Nervous movement or rocking and shifting directs attention away from your message.

3. Make Sure You Can Be Heard and Understood. Speak loudly enough to be heard by the person farthest from you, but not so loudly that you strain your voice. Check to see whether everyone can hear you. Articulate every word with crisper consonants and longer vowels than you might use in casual conversation. Lazy consonants and clipped vowels are the unmistakable marks of an amateur.

4. Use deep, diaphragmatic breathing. It will help ease your nerves and make your voice sound richer and more commanding.

5. Stick to your plan. Audiences are easily confused and bored by a speaker who wanders.

6. Thank, Don’t Judge. Don’t evaluate responses from individual audience members. Simply thank the person, using his or her name, if possible.

7. Pause and Check for Understanding. Periodically ask if anyone has questions.

8. Make Eye Contact. Rest your eyes with one person for two or three seconds, and then move on to the next.

9. Keep the Focus on You, Not Your Media. If you use PowerPoint or other visual media, blank the screen except when you specifically want the audience to look at it.

 

CHECK YOUR RESULTS

1. Ask for Feedback. Ask two or three trusted colleagues to observe your presentation and give you constructive, future-oriented, written feedback. (Do not ask for “criticism” or “a critique,”)

2. Follow Up. Use personal visits, phone calls, or brief meetings to determine how well your call to action has been heeded. If it appears that your presentation has not achieved its purpose, find out why so that you can re-evaluate and plan other strategies.

 

ACCEPT WHO YOU ARE…AND SO WILL THEY!

It’s easy to let your concerns about your appearance, your voice, your age, your gender, or your level of education and experience interfere with planning an effective presentation. Decide to drop your hang-ups!

Change whatever you can between now and the time you are to give your presentation. Accept the rest.

When it’s time for you to get up in front of your audience:

• Tell yourself, “I completely accept the unique person I am at this moment. There is no one else quite like me.”

• Tell yourself, “There is power in who I am and in what I have to say today. These people are going to want to listen to me.”

If you decide to be comfortable with who you are and focus on your purpose, your audience will respond to the power of the real, authentic person before them.  And if your message is one that serves them, helps them get what they want…you can’t help but succeed.

Just-In-Time Coaching and Feedback

 

Why should I coach team members and give them timely feedback?

1.      Your team members want it – Some of us hesitate to coach and give timely feedback to others. We’re afraid they’ll feel threatened or criticized. So we wait for quarterly, semi-annual, or annual performance reviews. But the fact is that people in the work setting want to be clear on a daily basis:

• “What’s expected of me? What do you as my leader want me to do?”

• “What are the benefits to me, the team, and others of doing it well?”

• “How well am I doing in relation to what’s expected of me?”

• “Do you as my leader care about me as well as about how I’m doing?”

2.      Your group’s shared spirit will grow healthier and more positive – Teams that want a breakthrough “spirit of community” create among themselves a culture of expressed appreciation, encouragement, and clear expectations. Extraordinary relationships in a group are fueled by sincere and timely feedback, especially from managers and supervisors. And extraordinary relationships in a group provide fertile soil for achieving one success after another.

3.      Productivity will improve – Studies showed that productivity increased more than 20% in organizations that adopted vigorous, well-prepared programs of coaching and giving timely feedback. Overall morale went up too.

4.      Your team will build an ever increasing capacity for excellence – Skillful coaching and timely feedback will develop your team members’ ability to delight your internal and external customers and meet the needs of your organization in more and greater ways—without the need for you to micromanage.

Whose responsibility is it to set expectations and provide coaching and feedback?

Effective organizations follow the principle known as “unity of command,” which requires that each team member should have one and only one leader to whom he or she is directly responsible. And that leader is the person who is responsible for working with the team member to agree on performance expectations and then to coach the team member and provide ongoing, timely feedback.

That said, it should be noted that every team member is responsible for providing ongoing feedback and encouragement to every other team member.

How much time will it take?

Some experts hold that you would do well to work toward spending about thirty percent of your leadership time each week coaching your direct reports and giving them individual feedback. Do it as the need or opportunity arises.

 
Can I wait for an annual performance review to let my people know how they’re doing?

Only if you want to shoot yourself in the foot. First of all, there is little or no evidence that an annual performance review has any beneficial effect on performance. And there is ample evidence that annual reviews, by themselves, can be destructive to relationships and to staff performance—especially if the annual review brings up performance issues that are a surprise to the person being reviewed.

 

Plan your coaching and feedback sessions

Remember that effective coaching and feedback sessions—even those that happen in the moment—require focused thinking and preparation. Here are some tips:

·        Decide to care. It is a conscious choice a leader makes. When you care about the other person, it shows in your words and actions—and in the results you get.

·        Set a time for the session that works for both of you and a place that affords privacy. Always avoid embarrassing the person by giving feedback in front of others.

·        Practice in front of a mirror, when you have the time. Observe and evaluate yourself from an outsider’s perspective. Watch your eye movements and body language. Listen to the tone, volume, and pacing of your voice and your choice of words.

·        Make a commitment to listen openly to the person, and continually challenge your own assumptions.

·        Be prepared to write notes. A record of coaching and feedback sessions is valuable to the ongoing development of the employee.

 

Lay the foundation for successful performance

It is important to preface this section with a reminder to get broad participation from your people in making decisions, setting goals and objectives, and defining standards. People tend to support what they help to create. That said, here are some tips for laying the foundation for successful employee performance through coaching:

1.      Set expectations – Lay out goals, objectives, and standards of performance for the employee. Relate them to the overall purpose of the organization. Make certain they’re mutually agreed upon.

If changes in those expectations should occur later that are beyond your control, make sure you communicate those changes to this person immediately. Express your compassion and understanding of how such changes in expectations may affect the person adversely.

2.      Outline the reasons and background – It is in your best interest to position your people to be able think for themselves as situations arise. Provide complete information on why a task or project is important or why a particular strategy or procedure has been chosen. Welcome differences of opinion and work for shared understanding and mutual agreement.

3.      Clarify benefits – Explore the benefits to the organization, the team, and to the person of meeting the expectations.

4.      Define boundaries – Sometimes you are encouraging the person to be freely and openly innovative in accomplishing the task. At other times, you need to have strict adherence to a prescribed course of action. Be certain the person knows which approach you expect in this situation and why.

5.      Facilitate learning – Together, list the gifts, talents, and skills the person brings to the task at hand. Identify any pertinent learning needs the person might have, and agree on a plan for meeting them.

6.      Check for mutual understanding – Ask for and listen carefully to the person’s understanding of what is expected, for instance, what standards need to be met and what deadlines need to be met.

7.      Provide encouragement – Once again, state your confidence in the person and express your appreciation of the knowledge, skills, and talents he or she brings to the task. Offer your own availability to advise the person, as appropriate.

 

Ensure ongoing success with timely, positive feedback

The purpose of feedback is to help the other person succeed. So avoid negative feedback. It can damage relationships, the team, and the entire organization. Instead, always look for and expect the best from your people.

Keep in mind that criticism may stop a negative behavior, but only praise or the promise of a benefit encourages a positive behavior. So you will do well to use exclusively appreciative and constructive feedback.

Appreciative feedback is praise, telling people what they did right. It reinforces the desired behavior and builds self-esteem. Here are three ways to make this kind of feedback work well for you:

1.      Be sincere. Few people enjoy praise that’s given routinely—cheap praise, so to speak. Build trust by being selective and sincere about your feedback. And make sure your body language gives the same uplifting message as your words.

2.      Be specific. Tell people specifically what they did that worked. Specifics help them to understand your expectations and repeat the desired behavior.

3.      Describe the beneficial result. Show people how what they did fits into the bigger picture. Words such as “the vice-president of sales has asked to borrow your charts for the national sales meeting” are much more rewarding and motivating than “those are really good charts.”

Constructive feedback is correction, telling people why a particular behavior does not meet standards or expectations. But, if done effectively, it is just as positive as appreciative feedback. Here are five ways to make constructive feedback more effective:

1.      Again, decide to care. For some personality types, receiving corrective feedback is emotionally, spiritually, and even physically painful. You would do well to spend some time considering 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 before attempting to offer constructive feedback. The most effective attitude going in is, “I’m giving you this feedback because I care deeply about you, and I want you to succeed.”

2.      Ask permission. If you ask for a few minutes of their time, they will most likely oblige. If you demand their time or interrupt their day with feedback, you may lose their respect and their trust, and you will probably not get the quality of response you want from your feedback.

3.      Use “I” and other first person pronouns. “I understand from experience how hard it is to calm an irate customer, and yet we are called to…” is easier to accept than “If you want to stay here, you’re gonna have to learn that dealing with angry customers is part of your job.”

4.      Be specific. Get to the point and be brief. State specifically and objectively how the person’s behavior affected the organization, you, and the rest of the team. Then move on.

5.      Be future-oriented. Don’t dwell on mistakes. Instead, restate your positive expectations and your confidence in the person’s ability to choose the desired behavior in the future. Explore the benefits of the desired behavior and help the person identify and meet any additional learning needs.

 

Avoid making excuses!

Keep these negative thoughts from getting in the way of timely, effective coaching and feedback:

 

·  “I don’t have time.”

RESPONSE:  Rethink your priorities. Managing the relationships with and among your people is your most important leadership duty, so make time.

·  “My people already know whether they’re doing a good job or not.”

RESPONSE:  That may be true. The point is that they need and want to hear how YOU think they’re doing.

·  “My words might not come out right. I might upset them.”

RESPONSE:  If you sincerely care about helping them become more successful, your words, your tone, and your body language will convey that message. They will respect and appreciate your feedback.

·  “This is just not something leaders in this kind of organization do!”

RESPONSE:  Then be first. Be the one to start something that will strengthen every link in the chain and put your team out in front. Remind yourself of the old saw, “If not now, when? If not me, who?”

Thoughts on Effective Group Facilitation

 
1. What’s the first requirement for a successful facilitator of group process?

You have to believe that the issue can be resolved, and you have to trust that the group will work through it. You are there only to remove obstacles and make the process easier for the group.

2. What’s the second requirement?

The ability to get the right people in the group: Who has special knowledge of the issue or insight into it? Who will be affected by the outcome? Whose turf might you be treading on? Who could block your decision from being implemented?

3. What’s the third requirement?

To define Purpose, Process and Payoff. Where do you want the group to end up? What’s your strategy for getting them there? What’s in it for them when they get there?

4. What else?

Set ground rules with the group!

5. For instance?

Make sure the group comes up with:

- We will start and end on time.

- There will be no judging of others nor any putdowns of ideas expressed.

- We will practice mutual respect.

- Everyone will take responsibility for participating.

Other ground rules might be:

- What’s said in this room stays in this room.

- Decisions will require consensus; no voting.

6. What makes a facilitator effective in getting results with a group?

- Have a grasp of the situation and the makeup of the group.

- Know the group’s objective for the session and develop a clear strategy for helping them achieve it.

- Be well-prepared.

- Listen actively (to what’s said and what remains unspoken).

- Provide encouragement to group members.

- Clarify points that are made.

- Ask open-ended questions to spark thinking and discussion in the group.

- Reflect questions from participants back to the group rather than simply answering them yourself.

- Summarize and chart the points made in the group’s discussion and activities.

- Keep the discussion focused and on task.

- Above all, TRUST THE GROUP, focus on their needs and have FUN with the process.

7. What are some of the processes you can use? (If you are unfamiliar with any of these, Google them.)

- SWOT Analysis in Key Results Areas

- Brainstorming

- Brainwriting or Nominal Group Technique

- Asking a question in more than one way

- Storyboarding

- T-Charts

- Force-Field Analysis

- Contingency Diagram

- Decision Matrix

- Sticky-Note Flow Diagram

- Action Plan

- Communication Board

- Troll Search

- Affinity Process

There are many others, some more complex, but these are fairly simple and can help a group resolve most issues.

Pickin’ Up Elephant Poop (Words and Music and mp3 File Below)

A realtor in a small town not far from where I live – let’s call him Howard – tells me he still feels angry and used about something that happened ten years ago.

The Chamber of Commerce, of which he is a member, decided that they should sponsor a circus. Howard volunteered to be on the circus committee. As it ended up, there were four committee members who did all of the work of bringing the circus to town — arranged for the park, put up all the posters and handled all the publicity, sold all the tickets…did everything.

The circus was a huge success. And the big circus parade brought a huge crowd to the Downtown. The stores, restaurants, and taverns did record business.

When the circus packed up and left town, they left piles of elephant poop all over the Main Street parade route, and in the park as well. The city manager told the Chamber, “It was your circus, it’s your elephant poop to clean up, and you’d better have it cleaned up before the end of the day or we’ll fine you for creating a public health hazard.”

It was a Friday. The other three members of the Chamber’s circus committee had important business commitments that day. They couldn’t help clean up the elephant poop. The business owners on Main Street who had profited from the circus were too busy running their businesses (and counting the money they had made). They couldn’t help clean up the elephant poop.

Howard’s conscience just wouldn’t let him walk away from it. Somebody had to clean up the mess the elephants had left, and it appeared that he was it.

So Howard had to find a truck. That was no small task. Who wants to end up with a truck that smells like elephant poop? But he finally found one that a fellow Chamber members, a used truck dealer, said he could use if he agreed to scrub it thoroughly before he returned it.

And he had to find a farmer who would let him dump the elephant poop on his manure pile. The first four farmers he asked were afraid that the elephants might carry some dread disease and that the poop would infect their livestock. But he finally found one who agreed to let him dump it.

So he drove slowly along the circus parade route that Friday morning, stopping to shovel pile after pile of elephant poop into the borrowed truck. People called out to him with smart remarks about how voluminously elephants poop and how he must have really sinned to get such a job. Howard tried to laugh and be a good sport, but his good nature was wearing thin.

His fellow chamber members were conspicuously absent. Not one of them acknowledged or thanked Howard for taking on this malodorous task. The other realtors in town just gave him amused glances as they drove by him on their way to show houses to prospective buyers.

But Howard says the capper was when he was cleaning up the piles of elephant poop in the park, the city manager himself came up to him wheeling a wheelbarrow and said, “Hey, Howard, would you fill my wheelbarrow with some of that stuff. I want to try it on my gladioluses.”

It was after dark on Friday evening by the time Howard had returned from dumping the elephant poop and scrubbing out the truck. The used truck dealer found a spot of poop on the license plate and complained that Howard hadn’t done a very good job of cleaning up the truck.

Howard had done his fellow Chamber members and his community a good deed by volunteering for that circus group. And all he got for his trouble was being left to clean up elephant poop.

Sometimes it seems that work groups are themselves a lot like elephants: It’s hard to have a “circus” without them, but they invariably leave a certain amount of “elephant poop” to clean up.

So, next time you hear…

“Mary’s got her nose out of joint because she wasn’t asked to be on that committee!”

OR

“Jack’s upset because nobody told him we had changed the date of the meeting!”

OR

“Nobody remembered to apply for the parade permit, and the mayor’s office says it’s too late now!”

…just get the group together, put a twinkle in your eye, and start to sing the song below. Then do what needs to be done to get things back on track. Singing this song will help you all put the situation in perspective and move on.

Words and printed music on PDF File…

…and an mp3 audio file for sing-along:

Turn Conflict Into Food for the Shared Spirit

PREPARE YOURSELF

You don’t have to be a psychologist, but you need to plan ahead if you’re going to help your team transform conflict into food for a healthy Shared spirit.

1. Brush up on people skills, such as listening and giving feedback.

2. Sharpen process skills, such as brainstorming, decision making and problem solving.

3. Review your organization’s mission, vision and values. Then jot down exactly how they relate to your team’s purpose.

4. Know how you’re going to respond when conflict arises in the group:

• Be authentic, the real you. Don’t use language or a style that your people might perceive as phony.
• Strike a balance between overreacting and doing nothing when conflict arises. Be intellectually involved but emotionally detached.
• Welcome conflict. It’s an opportunity for improvement, not some undesirable or antisocial behavior to be hushed or smoothed over.

 

PREPARE YOUR GROUP

Skilled interaction in a group seldom occurs spontaneously, especially in the face of conflict. Have the group:

1. Set ground rules, for example:

• “Everyone will be present and on time so sessions can start promptly.”
• “Everyone agrees to participate fully in team sessions, both listening and speaking.”
• “Comments or behavior that are judgmental toward a team member are not permitted.”
• “Language that may be offensive to some members is prohibited.”
• “Minute taking will rotate among all members.”
• “Pagers and cellular phones will be turned off during sessions.”

1. Clarify the team’s purpose. Check for individual and team goals that may be in conflict with this purpose.

2. Pause to evaluate group process frequently. Are you following your ground rules? Do certain skills need sharpening?

3. Treat all problems as *group* problems rather than blaming individuals. Talk in terms of “we” rather than “I .”

4. Make it a point, as individuals, to examine your assumptions and objectively explore your beliefs with the group.

5. Value your team’s diversity as a source of strength and innovation.

6. Promote a “big picture” view by encouraging dialogue with other departments. If people understand one another’s problems and goals before conflict arises, they are far better equipped to respond intelligently and creatively.

7. Recognize and thank one another for effective behavior that helps the team.

 

GUIDE THE INTERACTIONS

Follow these steps and you’ll find that friction in your group will begin to generate light rather than heat:

1. Trust the group. Resist the urge to take control of the discussion when things heat up. Instead, just guide the process and the group will bring themselves back on course.

2. Don’t permit abuse of any member.

3. Strive for mutual agreement on issues. Effective teams do not vote on issues. Majority rule (win-lose) is not an option for them. Don’t accept compromise either, where everybody gives up something (lose-lose). Always go for collaboration and a unified spirit (win-win).

4. Evaluate the session. Have the group review how well they did. What do they need to do better next time?

 

KEEP YOUR ROLE IN PERSPECTIVE

• When conflict arises in your team, leave the responsibility with the team members. Don’t try to fix their personalities or solve their personal problems. Each team member is accountable for his or her own behavior. Reflect counterproductive behavior back to the group and let them deal with it.

• Know when it’s bigger than you are. When a conflict becomes impossible for you to handle or threatens the performance of the team, admit it. Ask for professional intervention immediately!