I received a message from Priscilla of Priscillamcintire.com introducing me to this list and was pleased to see myself on the list of personal development authors.  The idea behind promoting this list is to add personal connections to bloggers who deserve to be on this list since they use relationships in their blogging.  Well, I think that is really cool and am honored to be on the list.

From Prescilla’s Site:

No one achieves success without the help and support of other people. The book “Personal Development Kaleidoscope”, is a demonstration of the power of connection in action. The Kaleidoscope Relationships List began with only a list of the authors and their web-sites. These authors were eached asked to publish the list on their site, and to add 5-10 people who they feel use or have used the principles taught in this book effectively.

In order to increase the power of our relationships, we are asking those of you who have been added to the list to continue the process. Please post this list on your own site, then add people who you feel are effectively using the power of relationships to increase their own success, as well as, the success of others. Then email Priscilla at relationships@priscillamcintire.com

My Additions to the List

These are the people I communicate often with and definitely value the relationships with that I don’t yet see on the list.  I’ve already emailed each of your sites to Priscilla so I hope to see you added to the list.

Armen Shirvanian (Timeless Information)

Bunny (BunnyGotBlog)

Dragos Roua (dragosroua.com)

Steve Borgman (Success Factors)

Stephen (Balanced Existence)

Alik Levin (PracticeThis.com)

Arswino (Inspiration & Motivation Blog)

Ian (Quantum Learning)

Daphne (Joyful Days)

Lance (Jungle of Life)

Stephen (Rat Race Trap)

The List

Abu Aremu        Positive Self Talk Guide

Adam Kayce       Monk at Work

Adebola Oni      Naija Motivation

Al Ramsey         7pproductions.com

Alex Shalman     Practical Personal Development

Angela Lord at     Angelalord.com

Arthur Hung & Jason Fonceca     Spiritentient

Cheryl Ragsdale     That Girl Is Funny

Chris Cade Think without the box

Chris Marshall     Martial Development

CK Reyes           My Coaching Works

Cinderella S Kelley Kroh   The Krohs Nest

Cindie Wilding   Answers From Within

Corrinne Edwards  Personal Growth with Corinne Edwards

Craig Harper     Motivational Speaker – Craig Harper

Crystal Silver    CrystalSilver.com

Daniel Sitter       Idea Sellers

David Rogers     How to Have Great Self Confidence

David Zinger     David Zinger Associates

Dawn Edwards     Second Hand Roses

Dawna Jones      Management-Issues

Diane Brandon     Diane Brandon.com and Diane Brandon.net

Dr. Susan R. Meyer, Ed. D.   Life Work Cafe

Dr. Venerina Conti    VenerinaConti.com

El Baugher at Thesmilingspirit.com

Ellie Walsh at     Living the Law of Attraction

Frank Butterfield     Life Unfolding Beautifully and 68 Second Videos and Re/Transformation

Gamy Rachel     Mind Think Success

Gary Evans     Good To Feel Good

Gleb Reys        Personal Development Ideas

Gordie Rogers     Lifestyle Design 4U

Gregory Allen Butler     holistic-personal-development.com

Heather Bestel a little bit of me time

Henrik Edberg The Positivity Blog

Isabella Mori      MoriTherapy

Jacklyn Ker     Inspiring and Empowing Lives

Jeanette Maw     Good Vibe Coaching

Jeanne May        Goals and Aspirations

Jeff ‘Yoopersmith’ Smith    Shift-Your-Consciousness

Jennifer Mannion   JennyMannion.com

John Sadler      Bitesize Marketing NLP

Jonathan Fields    Awake At the Wheel

Jonathan Wells      Advanced Life Skills

Jordan Rosenfeld     Make a Scene

Judy Kinney      Dream and Flourish

Judy Martin       The Work/Life Monitor

Justin Wolsey Riggs     Easier Method

Kaya Singer     Awakening Business

Karen Putz     A Deaf Mom Shares Her World

Lexi Sundell     Energies of Creation

Liz Strauss     Successful Blog

Lori Painter at      Inspire2act

Lorraine Cohen     Powerfull Living

Lyman Reed     Free Personal Development Material

Lynn Solarczyk     Livingloa

Luciano Passuello     Litemind.com

M. Farouk Radwan     2knowmyself

Mel Kaye     Monday Morning Power

Melissa Goerke      Melissa Thinks Out Loud

Marelisa Fábrega     Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online

Meryl K. Evans     Meryl.net

Michele Woodward     Lifeframeworks.com

Michelle Vandepas     Conscious Destiny

Mike King Learn This

Mohammad Shafi’e     Ultimate Secrets of Success

Neil Sattin     NeilSattin.com and Natural Dog Blog

Patricia Schiavone     Thriving Together, AtoZEdit.com and Attracting The Best

Patricia Singleton     Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker

Phil Gerbyshak     PhilGerbyshak.com

Priscilla McIntire at    Personal Development Demands Success

Rachel Rofe at      Rachelrofe.com

Rahul Bhambhani    Take-20.com

Robert Henru       Reason4Smile

Robert Higginson    Robert Higginson

Robin Skeen     Robin?s Reflections

Rod Smith      Difficult Relationships

Sam Kotadia     MindSportLive.com

Scott Ginsberg     Hello, My Name Is Blog

Scott H Young    Scotthyoung.com

Sharani Robins     Sharani Girl on a Road

Sherri Joubert       Being The Change I Wish To see

Shauna Arthurs     Follow Your Path and Breathing Prosperity

Slade Roberson     Shift Your Spirits

Sonia Simone       Remarkable Communication

Steven Aitchison    Change Your Thoughts

Sugandi Iyer     Life Business Creations

Thea Westra     MyForwardsteps.com and TimeForMyLife.com

Tina Su     Think Simple Now

Todd Goldfarb     We The Change

Vincent Tan      Health Money Success
Vivienne Quek      Versa Creations

Zorka Hereford     Essential Life Skills

Zubli Zainordin     Your Wisdom of Total Happiness

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For many people, things they do at work seem to come quite naturally in their work but not so much in their personal lives. Especially when it comes to planning and seeing the power of a plan.  There is certainly power in having a plan for yourself, your life, your family, your health, your relationships and the hobbies you take on. Perhaps a plan for the way you are involved with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues. What about using a plan for ensuring you get what is truly most important to you in your life? What about a plan that ensure you stay on track and that your plan is really what you want it to be? Many people I know in my work can easily formulate a plan for some project or set of complex tasks in their job tasks yet they don’t connect the same value when they think about things in their personal lives.

There is More to Life Than Work

Even without getting to the point of how people work too much, I want to highlight the fact that the important things in life include many areas outside your work. I continually hear people say things like work most important since it is a third of your life, which is a HUGE exaggeration! Even working for 50 years in life, a 40 hour work week equates only to a complete total of 12.5 years in an average life of 75 years which is less than 17% of one’s total life. Close to 33% is spent sleeping and so that leaves 50% of life in other areas.  Everything else fits in there from birth to death.  50% of all your living hours are up to you and your family for how they are spent and many people don’t think that’s worth planning!!  That’s crazy!

Categories for Planning Life

Life has so many areas to explore and those areas deserve the same kind of thoughts and planning as work does.  Categories I use to look at specific goal setting and life planning are:

• Relationships
• Spiritual
• Health
• Emotions
• Things
• Financial
• Career

Your categories might be different but ensure you think big picture when your making life plans.  Think about everything that you value and what you wouldn’t want to live without and ensure those areas are covered in your plans.  Think about what matters if this was your last day on earth or if you knew you had only a week to live.  What would you do?  With who?  How would you want to be remembered?  Are these your passions in life now or are you still searching for your purpose and passions in life?

Write it Down

Did you know that only about 4% of people write out their goals and plans for life?  Its true and its scary when you think about it.  There are so many people living life without a written plan. Are you one of them?  Writing down your goals and plans solidifies it, puts added committment to it and makes it something much more real than just a thought or idea.  It gives the plan real substance and provides a way to review it and visualize it.  The power of a plan extends far beyond work in all areas of life and only if its written down will it have even a chance of being realized.

What’s In A Plan

The content of the plan is where the real thought has to go.  You can’t make a plan without some careful time thinking and trying to understand how you want things to proceed.  This is true in day to day jobs and its true in life as well.  The only thing you can do well without a plan are things you’ve done over and over, and learned to do them naturally.  These may be things you need to do but for most people, the natural actions are not the things we wish we were doing in life, or the things we want to change or learn to do.  For most people, learning new things is a challenge and we all have ideas of what we wish we were better at, doing more of or doing differently in our lives.  This requires change and repeating what we’ve always done (since that is what happens without a plan) definitely won’t lead to that change.  Look for the things that matter to you in each of the categories above.  Don’t settle for what you have, ask yourself why that matters or what will you ultimately gain if you accomplish it to drive out the real reasons behind each item.  You should be able to justify true meaning to all your plans and know that they fit into your life’s purpose.  If you don’t know what that is, then clearly you need more planning, not less which unfortunately many people do when first being frustrated about questions of purpose.  Look for the things that impact others and how others impact you, that’s an easy place to start because we all form opinions of what that ought to look like.

Let Your Plan Change

Plans are much easier if you leave some room to grow it and change it.  Its unlikely that one plan will last many years and you need to adjust it as you learn more about what matters to you. If and how your purpose changes should also spark you to revisit your plan.  It is something you need to refer to often and there is nothing wrong with changing it as life changes.  The more often you look at a plan and change it the easier you can adjust to new circumstances and still ensure you are ultimately on track with the big picture goals and results for that plan.  Also, revisiting a plan lets you avoid complacency as you accomplish the things on it.  Don’t stagnate, instead keep pushing yourself and ensure you add to your plan and let it change as you do to keep you driven with purpose and meaning.

My wish is that everyone I know wrote out their goals and made plans for their life with some idea and thinking of what their purpose is with discussions and relationships founded in what is important in each plan.  This would bring happiness to many and I know the power of what could be accomplished if this were true.  I know I won’t be able to get everyone I know to take this challenge on, but everyone I know who has, has seen great results and now also understands the power of a plan.

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The Pain of Doing Things Yourself

Well there is certainly a lot of pain from the perspective of time, labour and difficulties in doing things yourself as there is really no one to rely on except yourself.  This can be part of the reason to take on a challenge for some, but it is also makes unexpected things much more impactful as there is no one to help get you through it.  My wife and I had lived in our house for 9 years and it was our first house.  We like to credit ourselves that we don’t accumulate too much stuff but after seeing this move and actually have to move everything, I definitely know we still have a lot more than we need and in fact, more than we even want!

There were a few major steps in this move, the first was simply moving to our new house as we bought it with no plans to move very spontaneously (the only house we looked at) and hadn’t even thought about selling our existing home yet at the time.  So, the second step was to sell the current home.  Then finally, the 3rd step was to renovate the new house to have a hair salon since my wife runs her business out of our home.

Moving was the fun step as we cleaned up our belongings, thinned out our junk, packed everything up and got excited about being in the new house.  We rented a 26′ cube van and packed everything in for a one trip move with a couple SUV loads along side.  Thankfully, we had a bunch of friends who helped us move and even though we did it ourselves, it was done in one day and everything moved to the new house successfully.  There was certainly hard labor at stake here and some serious lifting required but all in all, doing this yourself if you have help is the way to go.  We were well prepared with everything in boxes which make loading/unloading a snap.  We unpacked and setup everything in a couple days as we knew we had renovations to focus on so didn’t want to drag this process out.

Step two was the one with much more pain.  Selling the old house.  I had a list of about 30 improvements to make, many urgent before we listed the place and then a number to make as we were packing, moving and listing the house.  I worked every night till 11PM after my day job and in between graphics jobs so didn’t really leave myself much free time (OK, NO free time really).  I spent 2 weeks painting, trimming, fixing, putting up some drywall, dropped ceiling in basement, and many other minor things to prepare to list.  Then we listed the house hoping to sell before we moved out ourselves.  Another pain in this process was then from all the showings that realtors had on our house while living there and trying to finish home improvements.  I can’t tell you how inconvenient that was and I only appreciate having my space in my home and privacy all that much more as a result.  This was one of the biggest realizations from this whole process.  I have a lot of gratitude now for the privacy I do have in my home without having to constantly evacuate, keep everything in pristine shape and be ready to leave or not come home at a moments notice. We moved out and then sold our house a few days later with almost a month of overlap having both houses.  This gave me time to build and move my wife’s salon for her home business.

This final step has the one with really the most committment as there are always a thousand little things do to when you move into a new place to make it feel like your own, but I had limited time to do a renovation and get everything setup.  I had some minor electrical to change (with my dad’s help who is a journeyman electrician) and with nearly any home improvement a small task turns into a bigger own.  Got that sorted out and then started the real labour.  I had carpet to tear out and changes to make to the sub-floor where there was a dropped entry way.  Repainted everything, made the changes to plumbing and electrical and put in a laminate floor.  I’m just finishing the trim and final touches and setting up the salon equipment /cabinets now to polish everything off.

All in all, the pain has mostly been the stress of having fixed timelines, the sheer amount of labour itself, the countless trips off to the hardware store and figuring out how to do home improvements you’ve never done before.  Let alone the strain of being too busy to get together with friends as often as you’d like and the stress that wears away at each other in marriage when things are so hectic!

The Joy of Doing Things Yourself

Now on the other side of the fence, there is a lot of joy in doing things yourself as well despite whatever hardships are encountered. The biggest thing for me personally which has always led me to being a bit of a handy man and home improvement guy is just knowing the work is done well, how its done and then seeing and living with it everyday.  Its very satisfying to do your own home improvements and the sweat and time put into it always feels great once the results are there.

That is the other great thing about doing it yourself, the results.  I don’t do anything partially, when I set my mind to something I do it 100% and I do it well.  My results in my work and in this kind of work at home are no different, I see it done exactly how I want and can be pleased with the results.

Another great thing about doing things yourself is the money you can save.  Moving yourself and doing your own renovations comes at a fraction of the cost of hiring it out.  Moving comes with enough expenses from the house sale itself, let along all the other legal aspects of moving/selling.  Our new house adds to our mortgage of course, but the thousands of dollars in extra expenses I’ve saved from doing these things myself are a satisfying relief on that as well.

And finally, the joy of this that really stands out for me, is the joy of what is learned by doing things yourself.  I’m only a handyman because of what I’ve learned by doing things myself and its enabled me to do more and more of my own work, and to experience the joys of it.  There is always things to learn in taking on a challenge and while during the challenge itself things may not always feel worth it, there are things learned from doing it that last far longer than any of the struggles during.  In part, that is what drives me to put in the time and effort required as I know it will result in so much more and I’ll have learned things I will use again in the future.  Not only skills, but in coping with and handling similar situations or for helping others get through them when their time comes.  All in all, its another experience, story and lesson to draw on in my life and anyone who takes on work themselves would likely say the same.  I know its worth doing and I always love to encourage others to try a little do it yourself (DIY) to make that life experience as well.

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Author: Dave Esler and Myra Kruger

How an Underdog Company Defied the Odds,
Won Customers’ Hearts, and Grew It’s Employees into Better People

I was sent an advanced copy of The Pursuit and Something Better and while I generally don’t like to read new books until I’ve had them recommended and ravely reviewed by others first but I’m glad I didn’t wait for this book, its absolutely brilliant! I read it back to back with The Adversity Parodox and both books are now in my definite top 5 for business and personal development books.  The Pursuit of Something Better is a story of a CEO who takes a mediocre company with high turnover to a thriving culture rich customer focused success.  Jack Rooney is that CEO of the company, U.S. Cellular and he comes in with a passion and belief in culture change being the cornerstone of the company’s success and that belief drives new systems and focus that is unstoppable.  There is more story and insight and example in this book than many others combined and it shows what can be done not only from top down, but also in other levels of the organization, your life and individual self improvement so don’t think this is an executive book only, its much more than that!

Rooney comes into U.S. Cellular and introduces a new concept known as the Dynamic Organization (the D.O.) which he lives and breathes by example and immediate sets new standards and expectations that all associates in the company will also start living that DO culture.  He delivers these systems with a proven track record and overcomes significant hurdles along the way.  I found these hurdles and ways they were addressed to be most inspiring as I see the same items in my work and often they feel like impossible roadblocks.  This story and book are proof and guidance to get past that!

So, I found there are 4 main themes to the Dynamic Organization in the book  and I’ll cover some specific things from each in this review.

Culture

This book outlines an impressive transformation that is built upon a new culture for U.S. Cellular, one far from the conventional business wisdom.  The culture is one that shifts toward a customer focused, caring and value based company.  One that seeks motivational leadership, provides impressive personal development systems and engages and expects every employees to contribute to these new cultural initiatives.  Among these deep messages built into the company come a focus to always do the “right” thing and expect that of all its associates, especially its leaders.

Rooney puts many stages of culture change into place and he does so with much resistance, as would be expected, but his systems built over time and prove themselves to be valid in building a better company and all of the culture changes become sought after both internally between departments and regions within U.S. Cellular and eventually outside the company as well. All three areas below are embedded into the culture and the core to making it all work is that this culture is actually what defines the business strategy.  In fact, it IS the business strategy.  Everything that is promoted in the dynamic organization and the culture for it, are actually the business focus to Rooney and all of the systems, decisions, leadership, and financing is put towards these cultural aspects.  This was the most exciting part to me, to see how the success of a company can come by focusing strategy on things that matter to the employees and customers, that things are done with moral leadership and that the company can focus on initiatives that lead to profits, without directly being steered by profits.

Customer Service

The customer deserves the focus and the customer gets priority are also embedded into this Dynamic Organization and it is taken to great extremes in many cases with long term benefits that certainly didn’t seem profitable in any way when first introduced.  Much of these initiatives in the story were created at a time when there was huge growth in the cellular industry and most companies were purely after capturing market share quickly to expand and take advantage of the available growth.  While this mattered to U.S. Cellular, it wasn’t a focus and the customers were treated better than competitors, service was of its highest quality and the company had expectations from every employee that decisions and actions were taken to ensure the customer would benefit as a result.  Many of these things were costly in the short term but they slowly saw the market shifting to recognizing this customer service and the loyalty of their customers grew.  It allowed them expand and ultimately hang on to market share while their competitors were still struggling to capture new markets without a loyal customer base.  The long term benefits of this payed off and the book outlines many of the challenges that were faced in doing this and how this customer focus was created and maintained at U.S. Cellular.

Leadership

None of this great change could happen without great leadership and there are impressive stories and systems employed that can be modeled to help companies build stronger more focused leadership.  The Dynamic Organization expected drastic contributing to the new culture and that was reinforced with regular leadership development and feedback systems.  Peer based feedback systems for all leaders drove much of these expectations and it allowed all associates to identify the desired leadership factors which seemed to enable more and more grass roots leadership.

Ethics

I think the sheer volume of attention put to ethics in the Dynamic Organization was impressive and one of the most inspiring aspects of the book.  It shows how a company can still operate (and do so very successfully) with strong ethical boundaries and expectations.  Business competition often stems unethical behaviors and greed that dominate our news and media channels which is so obvious today.  These kind of stories and examples of doing the right thing no matter what the costs and the way U.S. Cellular put ethical boundaries and expectations into a company’s core culture is something to be honored and admired.

So, I’d highly recommend The Pursuit of Something Better to anyone interested in culture change, leadership, ethics and moral leadership and customer service.  I believe some of these changes can occur at any level of an organization but its especially useful for driving systemic changes and strategic change in your company.  I can’t say the book is really a clear guide of exactly how to do this, but the stories are inspiring and many of the systems and actions are described in detailed and will be easy to use as a model for similar systems in your own company.  I know I can use some of these in mine!

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Review: The Shadow Effect

with Debbie Ford

I received a free copy of The Shadow Effect to review and am actually having a tough time reviewing it. The Shadow Effect is about discovering and knowing the so called, “Shadows” in our lives which are the flaws, the bad actions, the painful things, the adversities we’ve faced which we avoid and try to keep secret from the world around us.  Some of these shadows are outlined and they include how we sabotage ourselves of our desires, our feelings, our egos and our persona’s we display.  All these things we hide and reject are buried inside us and we can’t keep them bottled up since it consumes so much energy to do so and it prevents us from allowing our brighter side to truly be revealed with our dark side together.

So, my first reaction was one of disappointment as I was really hoping for something with more of an impact to me and something that I could connect with.  However, that didn’t happen for a number of reasons.  First, the movie just seems to drag on saying the same thing without getting to many real discoveries and it has many old cliches which I found kept me out of the movie’s atmosphere over and over.  The movie presented a number of obvious biases as well.  There are certain media figures used as examples for the dark “shadows” while others are presented as great shining light examples.  I found these examples seemed to pinpoint and promote specific names with media clips while chastising others (I won’t even repeat the names used here) and that turned me off immediately.  It was completely unnecessary for the point in the movie.

Also, many of the examples are described with no real evidence or research, everything is presented as “probably” and “likely” this person that or that person must have done “this” at some time in their life.  These are not examples of the shadow in any way, it’s simply made up.  I could find those types of things in anyone’s life, especially if I am making assumptions about what they must have thought years and years ago which formed the so called shadow.  I found this just ridiculous.

I think the points being made about how our thoughts and emotions can cause later problems in our lives when they are not dealt with are great but the movie talks only about how rejecting these feelings is a problem without providing any really guidance to in fact deal with them instead.  The movie tries to drive you into your own mind of suppressed emotions and does nothing but stir those up and talk as if this “shadow” can be resolved to then “let our light in our awareness” to begin processing them.  Those are the words in the movie, not mine.  That really doesn’t mean anything to me and I’m not sure how it can help anyone.  I realize there are lessons to be learned in any dark experience and that they can lead to being a better person.  The way this is outlined as the shadow with dark and light seems off base to me.  The movie references a few spiritual aspects in terms of the shadow and this is where I really disconnected.  I can’t connect to something that is describes so strongly as spiritual yet they refuse to say anything about right and wrong, or good and evil, or God for that matter.  They use light and dark instead.  It’s just a way of hiding what the shadow really is if you ask me, which contradicts the whole point of the movie. The whole movie is based on revealing those hidden truths inside ourselves that we hide from the rest of the world. The light and brilliance of hope, grace and love by God versus the dark, evil, and tempting ways of Satan.  It seemed to me they want the viewer to feel like they have exposed something great and that there is a “divine recipe”, while they don’t even bring God into the picture of dealing with these types of evils inside of us.  The movie goes into some great points on forgiveness and how it is required to move forward to shield our spirits but I just can’t believe God again, was left out of this.  Sorry, forgiveness is not in ourselves, it’s by the grace of God and his Son, Jesus.  They dared not touch any of this subject in “The Shadow Effect” though, its all left quite universal.

Another area I absolutely disagree with were the points about how you can’t hate something that you don’t deeply desire yourself.  The movie says that anything you show that you hate or detest in others is really because you deeply desire it yourself.  This is ridiculous!  I can hate evil, murder and other horrific things without that desire or even a glimmer of desire inside me.  There isn’t a perfect balance of the so called “light and dark” in every person, like the movie claims.  These balances might exist in the universe, but they certainly shifts inside individual cultures, generations, amongst turmoil and absolutely in individuals.  Can people change? Yes. Does it require outside help and intervention?  Yes.  I’ll put my faith for that in God, not myself thanks.

The movie ends without giving you any tools to change, instead its feels like an infomercial for enticing you to buy the interactive DVDs and attend “The Shadow Effect” seminar processes.  There are many inspirational messages about light and references for brilliance and happiness and while the movie is motivational, it’s not something I feel can make any lasting change for someone.  It still requires more of the process (whatever that is) to allow any change to occur.  The movie reminds me very mush like, “The Secret” for its repetitive strong message without really telling you how or what is necessary to make any the movie’s promise actually happen.  Personally, I’d say not to bother with this movie, as it just doesn’t give any real things to learn or change from.  I haven’t read the book but if its anything like this movie, I’ll save myself the time and avoid it as well.

I’d encourage you to still go check out the trailer and decide for yourself.  I truly watched this movie with an open mind and wanted to learn what was so transformational, but I personally didn’t see that and the style in which the movie teased with no real actions disappointed me throughout.

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Armen (at Timeless Information) inspired me to build my own 100 lists ( 100 ways to be a leader and 100 Ways to Simplify Your Life and Mind ).  A few people have continued with the trend. Here were some new ones and a few I came across while browsing.

• 85 Ways to Motivate Yourself by Arswino.
• Not continued from the 100 lists, but this is a great one as well.  88 Important Truths I’ve Learned About Life
• 100 Clevel Ways to Change Your Habits and Improve Your Life – I found this stumbling and even though its not new, its a great article.
• 100 Ways to Birth your Entrepreneurial Dream at Divine Purpose Unleashed
• 100 Ways to Improve Your Blog and 100 Ways to Live a Better Life by Dragos

A few additional articles I’ve come across and really enjoyed are here:

• Sharpen Your Conversation Skills by Brian Tracy
• How to Achieve the Impossible
• The productivity magazine is a superb free resource and issue #3 is now out.
• 11 Traits of Highly Creative People

I don’t normally include videos in my content or much of my stumbling but I watched this advertisement and it is truly an amazing one.

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Author: Seth Godin

We Need You to Lead Us

I recently read Tribes and its the first book I’ve read by Godin, believe it or not.  I definitely want to get into a few more of his titles now since this book had some real gems in it on leadership.  The message throughout that book is that there are many ways to connect a group of people together for a common purpose and today’s technology, especially the web enable so much of that to happen.  It allows the formation of like minded people or “Tribes” that can collectively work together and create a movement for change.

Godin highlights a few areas of why business has changed and what Tribes enable people to do now.  A few points here really stood out for me and they are about how companies expect more people to lead than they ever used to.  Leaders are expected much more now at all levels than classic organizations where only few were expected to lead everyone else.  This is encouraging to anyone to be more involved as a leader.  Another point is about, how much influence and impact individuals actually have now on areas needing leadership, new products and just the rate that business operates.  Things change much more quickly than ever before in business and this opens many doors for new leadership to exist at all levels.  The final one of these points for me was about how exciting and fun leadership and new innitiatives can actually be and that so many people want to be involved in them.  This leaves many opportunities for anyone to help collect and lead a tribe toward a common goal and common passions and aspirations.  All these points show the benefits and need for more and more tribes and Godin does a fantastic job of calling out his readers to step into these so called “Tribes” and make an impact directly.

If you are interested in leadership and new business practices and in any way wanting to expand your own influence, then “Tribes” by Godin is a worthy book.  It was packed full of good advice and great challenges to help intice you to do more than learn about it, read a book about it and understand tribes, but to actually go and get involved in them and to become more of a tribal leader yourself.  The content of this book is really packed in and condensed as well, which makes for a short read yet there are many key messages and phrases that really deliver a powerful punch to inspire more leadership. Keep this in mind as Godin leaves out any practical advice on HOW to lead or make these tribes a success, he simply puts the challenge out their and leaves the responsibility solely up to each tribal leader, just how it should be.

I definitely recommend this one to anyone looking for more leadership ideas, inspiration and simple to those who wish to explore a bit more of the social media and internet style of communities, as this is explored throughout the book.

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The One Communication Mistake We All Make

There is one mistake everyone makes from time to time in the way they communicate.  This is when we send our message instead of communicating in a way that ensures our message is in fact received.  This happens when we are impatient or not considering the other person’s perspective and we simply think that making our voice heard and our message sent is in fact communicating.  Well, it is not.  Communication is all about how you actually deliver your message and so you cannot simply send your message without knowing it is actually received.

Don’t make the mistake of sending your message simply to get your ideas out without regard for others.  Keep your ego at bay when you want to be heard and consider whether it is an appropriate time for the receiver as well as you to communicate.  Remember, if they are not going to hear it, then it isn’t worth saying.

Getting Past Being Right

The next mistake often made in communication is that of having to be right.  Many of us just love to be right and it is a conversation and healthy communication killer.  If you do not stop to listen to other perspectives and accept new ideas in the way you communicate, this having to be right habit will surface often and it a tough problem to break.  Trust me, I know from experience.  I can’t say I’ve broken this habit myself but its something I’m much more aware of and I do notice it and stop myself often.  If you simply state that you disagree AFTER listening to another person’s angle and actually ensuring you understand it, you can still debate things in conversation but if you have a habit of telling someone else how they are wrong, you can immediate kill the conversation.

Criticism

Criticism for some people is very easy and its often the first thing on your mind when you hear other people’s ideas.  I think this is closely related to the bad habit of having to be right and this one comes more subtle but even more dangerous because often it isn’t even founded in anything.  Being critical and voicing it often comes very easy to most.  Its a way to express creative ideas but unfortunately, when it is delivered as critism, it is often a power trip for a creative mind to show their creative powers over another’s idea.

All three of these bad communication habits lead to adversarial communications and they can harm your relationships with other people.  Be aware of these in your conversations and look to eliminate these bad habits by replacing them with good communication habits.  Listen more than you speak, try to actually understand what others are telling you before debating it and don’t tell them they are wrong or make generalizations about people with words like always and never.  Keep your criticism at bay and do your best to keep conversations going by showing interest in others, inquiring more about what they want to talk about and by staying open minded of other’s ideas.  These steps will help you practise good communication techniques and can lead you away from the bad habits that bring upon adversarial communication.

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Author: J. Barry Griswell and Bob Jennings

An Unconventional Guide to Achieving Uncommon Business Success

The Adversity Paradox is a fantastic business book.  It looks at how obstacles and setbacks in life (adversity) can create the experience a person needs to overcome such challenges and development themselves to improve their circumstances and prepare themselves to be better equipped in the future.  It’s a book with stories and a close examination of what are the main contributors to people overcoming tough circumstances in life to be successful.  It specific looks at this paradox of how great challenge and some times suffering can lead to so many later great things.  There are a number of factors in those challenges that if handled well allow a person to overcome it and turn things around.  This of course is not something that happens to everyone, but those that do overcome the paradox seem to have a lot of similarities and understanding them and learning from them allow each of us to better prepare for adversity and to achieve more.

Business Savvy

The book first looks at the term business savvy and explains it as those who understand how to do well in business, consistently achieve their business goals and to be proficient in the realm of business.  This is something you develop through practice and experience and there are a number of core competencies of a business savvy profile:

• Systems and linear thinking: Big picture perspective with ability to execute smaller consecutive tasks
• Continuous thinking: Having forward or visionary skills to steer and react quickly to future events
• Synthesizing: Able to turn data into meaningful and useful information
• Knowing what you don’t know: Seeing gaps, working to fill them through learning and through the help of others
• Communication: Solid skills to communicate at all levels
• Empathy: To recognize and understand the thoughts and feelings of others

“And Then Some”

Throughout the book the stories are shown to have each of the characters practicing an over arching theme where no matter what is expected, no matter what the circumstances and no matter how difficult something is, you should always work to go above and beyond which is described and doing the task or job “and them some”.  Always that little bit more.  Each of the characters practiced the idea of “and them some” and it continually payed off, not immediately, but eventually, it always payed off.  This is big contributor to overcoming these challenges.

This concept is put forth as a universal one where you can practice “and them some” in anything you do, which I personally think is a great message on its own in the book with or without the paradox of adversity.  If you gain anything from the book at all then I hope it is this concept since it is so simple yet so effective. I can’t stress enough how powerfully this is portrayed in the book and the chapter on “and them some” is easily worth the price of the book alone and I’ve already gone back several times to re-read pieces as it truly is brilliant!

Next, this chapter expands to look at the concept of “and them some” in a general sense of self improvement and outlines in text and pictures two main steps.

The first step, that any adversity has two options:

1. Wallowing and pessimism
2. Acceptance and analysis

It takes a step to progress from 1 to 2 and this is the key to overcoming adversity.  Move from 1 to 2 quickly and then get into the next main step of the self improvement process.

The second step requires using introspection (more on that below) to look specifically at the other human capital components to identify what can be done to better oneself.

Human Capital

1. Introspection

This is the practice of observing and evaluating oneself to assess your personality, goals, performance, ideas, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.  This skills collides with our egos and so an honest assessment is very difficult and this skill takes time to hone.  One cannot truly assess the other human capital components until this skill develops.  However, it must be conducted with the help of what the authors call, “mirrors” or other people who can honestly provide feedback about our character and human capital components.  This understanding helps us grow and realize what we need to change to direct our efforts to improve ourselves.

2. Values

This component outlines the values and beliefs a person has.  What is it that they are founded in and can rely on for extended periods through their life. Matching your behaviors then with these lasting values is what allows you to stay consistent and stay on purpose through your career.  Doing what is right and good is outlined as an important factor to success and moral leadership is hinted at as something that defines true success.  I love that and I definitely agree with the authors that this component ought to have a spiritual foundation where the values steer a person towards a purpose in life and that only living that purpose can deliver true lasting happiness.  Ahh…

3. Work Character

It just keeps getting better and I particularly loved this component as its one that I have changed a lot with (my own introspection) and so now I value this component a lot to how it has impacted me personally and in my career.  Anyway, work character is outlined here as how committed and hard working you are.  Of course it goes deeper than that and to me its a lot about the attitude you have when it comes to work as well and its an easy place to practice the “and then some” concept from above.

4. Purpose and Passion

This one connects with work character because to have a good attitude about work while consistently working hard and always putting in a little more than expected, you really need to love what you do.  You need to find a way to enjoy your work and be passionate about it.  One line from the book that I think deserved far more attention is this piece of great advice:

The trick is to view work as a means to far greater benefits or enjoyment.

This is just brilliant and I hope that you take a minute to really think about that and your own work.  I personally can find joy in my work easily and be passionate about it because of that statement above, not always the work itself.  I find it troubling that people always say they work 1/3 of their lives so you need to love your work as its the majority of your life.  I hate that message and its really not true anyway.  People only work 17% of there entire lives so there is clearly much more to life than work.  Let your work feed your passions and bring your passions and purpose into your work, not the other way around!  Anyway, back to the book, purpose and passions are obviously important to have included in your work and they are definitely an important component in this human capital outline from the book.

5. Thirst For Knowledge

And the fifth component wraps this up well with a look at learning.  How appropriate as the enitre book is about changing from adversity and improving oneself to have business success.  This thirst for knowledge and the power of applying knowledge is transformational and can keep you on an upward success trajectory for life.  Life long learning is obviously something I write about often, I completely feel the same way about it as the authors and I too, have had that shift in my life where I realize life long learning is now a given for me, not some kind of band wagon I am on.  This type of realizating and the transformation it brings can be sparked by overcoming adversity through knowledge but its more than it, it feeds life long change, powers you to be excited about doing what you are asked “and then some” and it keeps you looking for more and more areas of introspection and building your work character.  Knowledge brings on curiosity and these thigns are absolutely essential to great business success.

Summary

So, I don’t have much criticisms about the book.  Personally, I thought that 80% of the content was packed into the first few chapters and the second half had lesser value but overall, the stories and expansions in the second half of the book certainly added more understanding and were still well worthwhile reading.  The first half is simply brilliant and I know I will be recommending this to more people and re-reading sections of it again.  The concepts and messages are realistic and can be applied whether the adversity is experienced first hand or not.  The book states, there are no secret insights, quick success steps or other tricks or promises, its straight forward and offers accounts from those tested with adversity to put those misfortunes to good use and gain business savvy from them.

I certainly learned a lot from the book and as you tell from this review, I loved the content and the message of the book so yes, I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in business success or really, any level of self improvement since the patterns can be studied and learned from in any area of life.

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After Armen’s list of 100, my own 100 Ways to be a better leader and now several readers creating their own lists of 100 topics, I thought I would continue this trend and build one more on 100 ways simplify your life and mind. I’ve written a couple articles before on this topic and I’ve kept a few items from those articles on my list here, but most of this is new and it is really a useful way to find things to start doing. As with any of these 100 lists, obviously you can’t do all of these things (I certainly don’t) but you can pick some items on the list and start with them to simplify things in your life. I’d love for you to comment and add your own items or why not create your own list of 100 items, link back to these if they have inspired you and challenge your own readers to do the same and keep these lists going!

Simplify Your Actions

1. Start everyday with your most important task, leaving other ones undone
2. Do what you said you will do first
3. Say no when you are already committed and asked to take on more
4. Ask others for help whenever you need it
5. Finish things completely, don’t leave it only to have to come back again and again
6. Pick one thing at a time to do and focus on it
7. Make the most time for your passions and purposeful work
8. Leave spare time for yourself unscheduled and uncommitted
9. Prioritize your todo list
10. Keep one todo list and keep it short (only the most important things should be on it at any time)
11. Take time to be in solitude
12. Take time to pray and meditate
13. Make wasteful actions (like TVwatching or pointless internet surfing) more difficult to do to help avoid them.
14. Find and eliminate other wasteful actions in your life
15. Develop habits and daily routines to practise important actions
16. Read every single day
17. Plan your week and all major tasks for that week
18. Review your accomplishments each week
19. Be grateful for what you have, what you can do, and for everything in your life
20. Turn off your cell phone
21. Turn off all notifications on your computer from IM, email or other popups
22. Eat simple meals and don’t cook things that don’t need to be cooked
23. Eat less, which lets you also prepare less and cleanup less and store less
24. Automate any bills, payments, and money transactions that you can
25. Ignore distractions from media
26. Commute by bicycle or public transit instead of the busy freeway
27. Use commuting time wisely by reading or listening to books
28. Consider a career or job change to reduce stress
29. Find and maintain routines for day to day things

Simplify Your Stuff

30. Get rid of clothes you no longer wear or have worn in 6 months
31. Sell or give away household items you rarely / never use
32. Eliminate 2 things for every one new thing you acquire
33. Lend things out to friends often and don’t ask for it back if you don’t need it
34. Buy less stuff by only buying basic needs
35. Move to a smaller house or living space and get rid of all extra stuff
36. Give away books when you are done with them and let someone else enjoy them
37. Give up some electronic gadgets and do without them
38. Engage in simple hobbies that don’t require a lot of stuff (music, art, perhaps writing?)
39. De-clutter your living space and don’t keep any trinkets or excessive decorations
40. Consider going more green since this requires reducing things that consume power / energy
41. Get rid of your televisions or at least reduce the time you spend watching
42. Get rid of other media distractions in your life
43. Put a sign on your door/mailbox asking not to receive any flyers or unsolicited mail
44. Don’t carry all your credit or debit cards, just a small amount of cash for emergency
45. Downsize your vehicles or sell one
46. Clear out all clutter and extra stuff from your vehicle
47. Spend a weekend and pretend you are going to move, then clean out and get rid of everything you don’t need
48. Have a place for everything and keep it organized in place
49. Label, simplify and organize your file systems (both physical and electronic)
50. Consolidate your email accounts, bank accounts, RSS feeds and others
51. Recycle and reuse as much as possible
52. Give to those who have less than you
53. Volunteer your time for service to others
54. Keep a vegetable garden
55. Grow some plants and flowers
56. Enjoy nature’s company

Simplify Your Relationships

57. Be honest with others (it will help avoid complex issues and conflict)
58. Treat everyone with respect, not just your close friends or relationship
59. Treat everyone fairly, don’t complicate things with favoritism
60. Trust others without them having to earn it first
61. Accept people for who they are and don’t expect them to change
62. Compare yourself only to yourself from the past, no one else
63. Learn to say, “No”
64. Ask your friends and family for things they are looking for, and give them any items you can do without that you have
65. Keep all your contacts and address book items in one place
66. Involve your whole family with simplifying your life
67. Tell your friends about what you want to achieve by simplifying
68. Pick some of the actions above and do them with a friend
69. Focus on activities for doing things instead of buying
70. Spend less time with the “negatrons” around you and more time with positive people
71. Apologize quickly for any hurtful actions
72. Spend time in private with a significant other each week
73. Go for walks and have time to just talk with your friends and family (you don’t always need to be doing anything)
74. Make a gift for someone else instead of buying one
75. Write a personal thank you note or letter to a friend
76. Call someone you care for with no reason other than to tell them you were thinking of them and wish them a wonderful day
77. Walk away from all gosip and don’t participate in those conversations
78. Put family meals at home first and don’t let work get in the way
79. Stay completely disconnected from work on weekends and vacations
80. Listen to others and stop talking so much yourself

Simplify your Thoughts

81. Be content with life for health, love and happiness instead of with belongings
82. Keep less goals and plans (focus on just 2 or 3 at a time)
83. Exercise often as this clears the mind and keeps you healthy longer through life
84. Make time to do what you love and to provide relief from stress
85.Make a list of all your simple pleasures in life and pick an item from it to do every day.
86. Evaluate new things by asking “Will this help to simplify my life?”
87. Let go of perfectionism
88. Find what calms you and visualize it to reduce stress
89. Be positive and look for the best in things
90. Be anxious for nothing and live more in the moment
91. Let go of things from the past
92. Face and get over your fears
93. Always look for ways to improve oneself
94. Note and express gratitude
95. Know and stick to your limits for commitments
96. Seek knowledge only to apply it as wisdom
97. Look for and express love to yourself and others
98. Choose to be happy and at peace with yourself
99. All that you express, comes back to you, so think and express what you want for yourself
100. Seek and love God and He will provide, you need not worry about anything else

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What is Moral Leadership?

First, I need to explore what moral leadership is. It’s more than leading others and having influence, it introduces how one does that into the equation.  It needs a leader to act, follow and call others to a higher standard, a standard that is directed by what is thought to be good or right by a common standard.  That standard is generated by a group of people, recognized by some authority and may even be based on spiritual foundations.  It’s these types of standards that are expected in decisions and actions of moral leadership.

More and more is our world experiencing global crisis and needing leaders to join forces to battle for the greater good.  There seems to be continual uncovering of unethical behavior in business, politics, religion and all areas of society around the world.  There are no shortage of leaders making this happen as behind each one of these stories lies a leader who brought about the action and behavior in question.  They chase money and let greed bring them into a position often seen as heroic leadership where ruthless actions, self centered decisions and environmentally disconnected standards allow them to feel what they are doing is acceptable and unfortunately, their followers, many of society’s success criteria and the media encourage this kind of destructive leadership.  This is exactly why moral leadership is easy to debate because there is no easy to agree on good or right way to lead.  I hope to make a difference on that in my own leadership and I know that there are just as many morally grounded leaders out there as there are ones in question here.

Demonstrating Moral Leadership?

As you know, leadership is about leading others and influencing them to behave a particular way.  Moral leadership requires you to always look at what is right and lead others towards that.  Moral choices come from a person’s character as well, they do not always come about by rational thinking.  This makes moral leadership more difficult as there is a personal characteristic that must be evident to onlookers to believe choices are in fact moral ones.  Directions that a moral leader takes do not always please the most people and so it is often counter to what people think a leader ought to do.  Leading by popularity and influence alone will not typically create a moral path and the sacrifices that must be made around moral dilemas are often costly ones in terms of popularity, fame or wealth.

With morality formed by different sets of values and principles it is often difficult to truly have agreed upon standards and so moral dilemas do not always have an clear right and a clear wrong.  They also often face a decision where there are two competing goods. One must choose based on the greater good in this case defined by their own principles and standards.

However challenging moral leadership may seem, it also brings about an opportunity to be a leader of morality.  Can you look at your decisions and actions and say that you do so by a moral standard?  Do you demonstrate decisions based on what you know to be right regardless of the circumstances or influence it might bring about? Let me suggest that you start with considering your own moral ground. What principles do you want to demonstrate when leading?  Are those principles known to your followers?  Would your decisions be based on what is right for others?  Do your decisions promote respect to others and do you practice servant leadership?  It’s these types of actions that most would agree are for the greater good and for what is right.

Teaching and Promoting Moral Leadership

Seeing as moral leadership is greatly needed in this world of struggles I want to also encourage people to look at teaching and promoting it.  Teaching morals is something done by those with influence, parents, teachers, business leaders and anyone in a leadership position.  Morals are something that must be rooted in your character, your decisions and your actions so that teaching it is a matter of demonstration, intention and deliberate choices.  Our children and youth could clearly benefit from it but also those around us in our lives and businesses.

Take note of the morals you teach and look at what you stand up for as a leader.  Are you willing to stand out in a group, do what you know is right even if that is not the consensus or immediate reaction or preferred response.  If you don’t promote what is right, who will?

This whole subject started when I was reading an article called, “Valueless Leadership” at All Things Workplace and that article includes several examples of leading with values and the comments got into moral leadership which I wanted to expand on.  An example there was one of a a student returning a purse with $1000 in it and that the fellow students all concluded she should have kept the purse.  The teacher didn’t say anything and didn’t want to impose their own views of whether this was the right or wrong thing to do.  My reaction, “Unbelievable!”  Of course I would expect a teacher to impose some teachings of right and wrong and I would hope that teachers of young students would in fact do so.  There was a perfect opportunity to teach the class what was good in this and she was afraid to take it.  So my friends, please make your stand for what is good in this world and take every chance you get to teach and promote treating others how they want to be treated, demonstration respect and good judgement of right and wrong in your own moral leadership!

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.  ~George Eliot

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Here are a few of my favorite items I’m either been sent or have come across in my browsing and reading online in the last little while.  Not as big of list as usual, I’ll admit.  Its due to much less reading lately online and work with other things, either way, here are some gems I’ve come across, I hope you enjoy em!

• How Giving Changes Everything at ZenHabits
• I made another list of top 50 productivity blogs over at EvenCarmichael
• An interesting series of 5 articles over at BunnyGotBlog called, Advertising Towards Dummies
• A 2 part article that is most interesting on Thinking Traps
• An excellent 3 part series on Comparing Ourselves to Others
• 33 Things You Should Stop Doing to Double Your Productivity
• Five Essential Pre-Interview Strategies for Job Seekers
• 100 Inspirational Blog Posts for Personal Change
• First Comes the Fear Then the Blessing – I love this examination as it lets us look at what creates the fear and also what benefits we could have if that fear is eliminated
• Top productivity and personal development blogs
• If you don’t already know about David Zinger and the employment engagement network, check out some of his top reading list blogs and join the network!
• An excellent article on valueless leadership with a discussion well worth reading.

Carnivals

And as usual, I continue to publish some content to blog carnivals for promotion and to expose to and read from other bloggers.  Here are a few of the ones I’ve used recently:

• Carnival of Inspiration and Motivation at Positive and Successful Lifestyle Tips
• The June 7th Leadership Development Carnival
• Blog Carnival of Personal Power for 31 May 2009

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Bunny, Arswino, Dragos, Lance, Jonathan, Stephen, Positively, anyone up for the challenge?

Leading People

1. Volunteer to help before you know what you are really needed for
2. Show up early for a meeting and welcome everyone with a handshake as they arrive
3. Facilitate a meeting for someone you work with
4. Prepare for a meeting before you attend and present your thoughts on the meeting topics first.
5. Highlight several strengths or skills you see another person has and tell them<
6. Admit a mistake you have made
7. Tell stories of times where you have learned something new from a failure
8. Apologize for some wrong doing or hurt you have caused to someone
9. Display or publish your own personal values to your co-workers
10. Introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know in the workplace
11. Start a relationship with a colleague outside of work12. Develop and use a consistent positive response to greetings like, “Hi, how are you?”
13. Share with someone one of your vulnerabilities
14. Always treat others respectfully
15. Outline for your boss each month all your accomplishments, plans and lessons learned
16. Make calls to maintain your network and to keep your contacts informed of your presence and lend an offer of help should they need it
17. Be transparent and share personal stories
18. Provide regular feedback to others about behaviors and actions you can see and hear19. Share your vision
20. Dream big
21. Define, build and maintain your reputation
22. Spend more time with those performing well than those not
23. Keep business performance and expectations independent of any personal relationship (business is business and personal is personal)
24. Admit when you are not right
25. Communicate clearly, inquire deeper and paraphrase often
26. Spend time communicating with people in private
27. Ask about and learn what motivates other people to help them achieve it

Leadership Skills and Development

28. Start an informal learning time at lunch with colleagues and pick various topics to cover on a regular schedule
29. Send out on email your favorite learning websites
30. Tell others about how you learn new skills
31. Offer to help someone develop an area you are already familiar with
32. Teach a skill you have learned to others
33. Learn the DiSC profile (or another type of behavior/personality profile) to help describe and communicate more effectively with others
34. Put at least one thing into action from every course / book you ever complete
35. Show empathy and compassion to others
36. Find a mentor to focus your own development with
37. Mentor someone else in an area or role you excel at
38. Create/write your own training manual and share it with others
39. Write down all of your goals with end dates and ensure they are measurable
40. Write your desired legacy or epitaph
41. Increase communication by using open ended questions
42. Actively pursue and encourage continuous improvement for yourself and others
43. Continue to grow and raise your expectations over time

Leadership Actions

44. Accept responsibility for your own actions and make that point known
45. Smile at the first people you see each and every day
46. Complete the one thing you have procrastinated the most before anything else!
47. Start procrastinating things a leader doesn’t do.
48. Encourage and promote change. Be a change agent.
49. Add enthusiasm and passion to your presentations
50. Say no to unimportant requests
51. Bring up and engage in a difficult subject or conversation
52. Keep your actions and decisions aligned with your values
53. Read books and share them with others
54. Be first to demonstrate and practice the Golden Rule
55. Choose to promote someone else’s idea over your own
56. Pick 3 low value things you can stop doing and stop doing them from now on
57. Listen and think more than you talk
58. Show appreciation and thanks to others
59. Be bold in your actions
60. Tackle your biggest fear by facing it to overcome it

61. Step up your business attire a notch and keep it that way
62. Memorize and share your favorite leadership quotes
63. Be persistent
64. Do one new leadership action every day
65. Maintain and uphold any professional ethics
66. Practice what you preach
67.Be confident in your abilities and decisions
68. Strengthen your unique attributes
69. Do what you say and carry through on your commitments
70. Work hard and play hard, you need to show an ability to balance both
71. Let go of perfectionism for yourself and others
72. Be willing to take risks
73. Take initiative
74. Reduce and even eliminate things that are distracting
75. Set time aside for planning and strategy
76. Review and recap your progress and accomplishments

Servant Leadership

77. Take a day off work to go volunteer for a non-profit group
78. Always give credit to those you work with or who work for you
79. Admit and accept fault for what you are involved in even if its not solely yours
80. Don’t judge others, offer help to promote change instead
81. Be open minded for other people’s ideas and opinions
82. Stay calm and control emotional outbreaks in all situations
83. Sacrifice your own time or personal goal to help achieve a collective goal
84. Take on a task or trade a task for one that no one else wants to do
85. Contribute for free to personal and career development systems like wikis, blogs, articles, interview, speaking opportunities or other related systems
86. Find your own passions and connect with others in a community sharing that passion
87. Engage in a conversation with a stranger
88. Do something nice for a complete stranger or homeless person
89. Use the 5W questions to investigate learning and teaching
90. Keep complacency at bay and drive through resistance from others
91. Let go of having things done your way and accept alternative paths
92. Let others share their opinions before you
93. Express gratitude and appreciation for what you have
94. Put love into what you do and how you do it
95. Build trust by offering to trust people before expecting it to be earned
96. Rely on and reveal your spiritual guidance that helps you be the leader you are
97. Make decisions that build a team, not an individual
98. Do the right thing even if it won’t be liked
99. Give first and without any expectation
100. Be humble and willing to serve others

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Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Why Some People Succeed and Some Don’t

Gladwell continues to intrigue me with his unconventional research, presentation and writing.  I’ve enjoyed both of his other books, The Tipping Point and Blink and so I fully expected another enjoyable book.  I can happily say he delivered yet again as I definitely enjoyed his latest book, Outliers as well.  Outliers is a book not unlike his others, where he presents a collection of findings and stories that uncover a truth that is not your expected outcome.

There are two basic messages that Gladwell outlines in the first half and second half of the book.  First, there are those who have surprising success not by their skills, work ethic and own abilities, but by circumstances, advantages and inheritances from there life and environment that contribute to those individuals’ success.  The notion behind this is explained with various examples of how our environment shapes our lives and behaviors to a large degree as well. One example used is how professional hockey has ended up with a high statistical number of players born very early in year and extremely few players born near the end of the year.  This is caused by how age categories are split from hockey players at young ages when developing their skills.  Those who who born early in year are older and statistically have more months of practice by the cut off point for each age group.  This gives them a serious advantage from an early age and it is these players that get coached the most, move up the leagues and become the superstars more than the players born near the end of the year.  These age categories result in similar distributions in other sports and in other countries where different birthdates and splits are used.  They all seem to have a bias or advantage based on factors outside the skill of the players.

The second message is how an individual’s intended contribution is largely a factor of the time required to become an expert in some area.  He reveals that this time frame is around 10000 hours of practice in order to become an expert.  Those who are considered to be more skilled or even genius are really just evidence of a person who has put in more time to become a 10000 hour based expert sooner than others.   So while it is typically believed that there is a huge difference between very smart or talented students over average, his findings show that this is really just a case of practice.  Students who are initially worse at a skill or expected to be worse develop just as well as the next student who seems to impress others and appears to be a smarter or quicker student.  This implies that anyone, regardless of circumstance can become an expert if the time to practice is applied.

Aligning Expert with Circumstance

Gladwell takes things even further then at examining the 10000 hour expert level.  Not everyone who becomes an expert in something by practice also has the circumstances contributing to them to help them find success.  Therefore, there is a required alignment of expert level practice and contributors from one’s environment that must both occur to truly bring someone into the highest success levels.  The examples in the book not only highlight some of the evidence for these findings but also make evident the problems that many of our societal systems impose limitations on people or put unintended hardships for success in place.  Overcoming this requires that our systems look not at categorizing or classifying people early on, but instead provide equal opportunities for those who do put in expert levels of practice

In finishing this book, you will have a very different idea of what makes a person extraordinary.  It’s not their intelligence or skills as much as it is the circumstances and environment that contributes or triggers them to develop key abilities.  The date a person is born, the social atmosphere one learns their work ethic from or even the attitude one develops from overcoming hardship are key items that shape a person’s behaviors and ultimately their lives.  This is contrary to most people’s beliefs and the book directly challenges some of our political and social development systems which is one of the reasons I really like it.  I see a lot of parallels with problems areas I’ve already been exposed to, especially school systems and this book makes one think twice about the typical success factors we tend to focus on.

For me, it leaves me encouraged to continue to promote expert practice levels as obviously that is important in developing skills but it is also a wake up call to examine systems I’m involved in that form unintended prejudice because of circumstance or environmental influence.  We can’t really impact chance circumstances but in spending more time working towards something, we do increase our exposure to related areas which I think does improve our opportunities, as long as we can recognize them and take advantage of them.  Also, we ought to remove as many limits and boundaries imposed on people as possible and provide equal opportunity to teach, train, develop and coach anyone who is dedicated and committed, regardless of their environment.

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Build your Connections

Building your connections means that you make extra effort to meet people, get to know them and to build a relationship with them beyond just the connection itself.  Unfortunately this is often a lot harder than it seems.  The world of blogging and social media (for those of you that are familiar) seem like this is easy to do with friends, followers and every other type of connection and RSS feeds that are out there.  This is where it SEEMS easy.  These types of connections are very shallow and not really all that helpful for either party involved.  What is needed is more effort to build the connection into a real relationship.  This can definitely be done in these social media systems but it takes more effort than secretly following someone to have a valuable connection with them.

Build connections by communicating both ways, learning about each other and by offering your.  Provide value to them and ensure that value is at a personal level. In the face to face business world this requires real relationships to develop and some interest on both parties to stay involved.

Another important thing with building connections is to no limit the connections you do build and develop.  In the world of work a network of connections can easily lead or branch out in ways you would never of expected.  A friend of your caretaker, the uncle of a hairstylist, an old school roommate’s new girlfriend, any of these people could add a value connection to your network which is exactly why you should never limit who you develop connections with.  In fact, it is important that you purposefully diversify your business connections and make an effort to branch outside your direct work circles because of these amazing opportunities that do come about via people you would least expect it to.
Give First Without Expectations
The easiest way for you to ensure others want to stay in touch and connected with you is to offer to help them or provide value to them if they should ever need it.  If you give first to the relationship more often than not you will end up having the same in return.  You can’t expect anything in return though because if you want to true give value to others, you ought to do it so they get more out of the relationship than you do.  At least they need to feel that way and be offered a chance for that.  If you do this and give first to a relationship it is quite likely you can build a strong connection with that person and that connection will last.

Keep Track of Your Connections

Building a few connections is easy without any system or methods for tracking.  However, you should be growing your known connections every month and so you will quickly find yourself needing to keep track of connections.  There are many options here and tools available for tracking.  You can use just an address book (paper or electronic) as long as it can add notes to each entry.  You might also want to combine your address book with a calendar to help schedule some and remind you of certain connections.  A customer relationship management (CRM) software is another excellent way to track your connections.

I find that one of the most important things with tracking connections is knowing when your last contact was and if there were any special discussions or actions that came about since or as a result of that last contact.  A regularly scheduled phone message or quick note on email is a simple task that is easy to schedule in any calendar or CRM software.

Ideally, you then continue to contact people that you haven’t frequently contact and just let them know you were thinking about them and wanted to stay in touch and that they are welcome to ask or contact you if they need anything from you.  Obviously you will not be able to fulfill any request but its the offer that counts the most.  It’s that offer that carries a lot of weight in the relationship with a business connection.

Rely on your Connections

If and only if you have had your connections for some time and that you have given first your offer of help to them, will you ever be able to rely on your connections.  Relationships need to work both ways and if you’ve made an effort to develop them, then you can much more easily rely on them.  Ask your connections for help if you need it. Get them to help you find a new position or to offer assistance or advice in a role you are struggling in.  Whatever the need is, if you’ve built your connections and put some time in yourself first, then you can always rely on them in your own time of need.  It’s an amazing feeling to know you have business connections who support you and help you out when the time arises.

Additional Tips

Obviously, there are some tips mentioned already about how to best build your business connections, here are those summarized with a few additional ideas.  I’d love to see any comments of additional tips to build your connections at a deeper level than your friend count in Facebook.  Please share your thoughts on this as well!

• Schedule time for weekly contact to your connects
• Use the phone or face to face whenever possible over electronic messaging, its more personal
• Offer yourself for help or advice when the chance arises with your connections
• Make at least one new connection per week
• Follow up with EVERY connection you have at least every 6 months, some more frequently
• Keep a diverse set of connections, it will expand the opportunities available

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Don’t Wait Until You Need a Resume

Whether you have been working at the same company for 10 years or have changed jobs every 6 months or are out of work, the best thing you can do to keep more career options open is to develop a great resume.  A resume is the tool that gets you an interview and it’s that all so important first impression of you.  Many people make the mistake of thinking that the resume is not that important and that it’s the interview that really matters, while that may be true for getting an offer, it isn’t true for getting that first call for an interview in the first place and so if you don’t get called, it will never do you any good.  The resume and cover letter are the first step, the interview the second and the negotiation is the third.  Each are all important and should be handled separately and carefully with any job search.

So don’t wait until you need a resume before you ever put any time into it.  Your resume is one of several of your career tools and it needs to be maintained to get the most out of it.  At any point in your career, you could come across a surprising layoff or cutback or a new job opportunity even if you are happy where you are.  It’s best to be prepared for that and have a ready and waiting resume that is up to date.  Put some time in a few times a year to review your accomplishments and update the content you have on your resume.  This is especially important if you have been with the same company for some time.  Updating your resume frequently will help you to capture your best accomplishments as your position at that company has progressed and it is a lot easy to think back over the last few months than it is over the last few years.

Resume Content

You should always have a resume to use as reference with all of you accomplishments and jobs over your entire career.  You use this as a reference since it will contain much more than you ever should deliver to a hiring company.  Keep a reference copy for yourself with all the detail you could ever need and then when you deliver a resume for a particular job, you have content you can pick and choose from that is most applicable to that job you are seeking.  The resume you actually deliver should always be tailored for the job, with relevant accomplishments and positions listed and nothing more.  As a hiring manager who has reviewed literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of resume’s I’ve seen that far too many people include a generic resume with all of their experience and no attention or focus on the most relevant points and experience.

Keep your resume short (1 page or 2 at the most) with specific points under each experience time frame that demonstrates the qualities expected for the role you are seeking.  Your points should always be based on the results you got and the accomplishments you had in doing the related tasks, don’t waste any space listing what the responsibilities were.  An interviewer or hiring manager is much happier learning about your responsibilities by seeing what you accomplished with those responsibilities.  Those accomplishments should be the areas you can talk about in the interview as well and will ensure you stand out from the competition.

Don’t put character traits or a description of yourself on your resume.  If you can’t prove it from the results and accomplishments you list, it won’t be believed anyway.  Saying that you are a hard working dedicated employee who loves to excel in their work and deliver results towards the goals of the organization is completely useless on a resume. Let your experience, references and interview demonstrate that for you.

Customizing a Resume for a Job

An objective is a great item to include on your resume, but ONLY if it is specific to the job being sought.  Trust me, nothing kills a candidates chances more than a vague objective proving they don’t know what they want.  Either make your objective specific to each job that you apply at or don’t include one.  A specific objective shows confidence and demonstrates the candidate is looking for the right job, not just any job they can get, which is very important if you want to stand out from the competition.

Next, your work experience and detail or summary points within each should be selected carefully for each job.  As mentioned above you should make your points about accomplishments and results in each role you’ve had and then pick those according to the role you are applying for. Ideally, your reference resume after you’ve spent time building it up with 10-20 accomplishments and results will leave you with a great set of items to choose from.  If you are applying for a technical role, pick the technical points that most demonstrate your abilities to succeed in that area.  If it’s for a leadership position then pick the points that show accomplishments where you have influenced a team or helped others to perform well in your previous work.  Select only 4 or 5 of your most appropriate points for each position.  You can leave an impression that that covers only a small amount of your accomplishments (which should be true anyway) by titling your experience areas according to the job as well.

For example, if you are applying for a technical writer position, then label your experience section of your resume as “Technical Writing Experience” and labels your points or details as a summary of your accomplishments.  This leaves you with more to share if you are selected for an interview.

Additional Thoughts

Keep in mind most resumes are only looked at for a minute or less and so you don’t want anyone reading or even glancing over things that are not relevant and that is why you should only include the best examples and experience you have. If they like what they read, you’ve done your job and this will make you much more likely to get an interview.

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Please go check out the interview at TimelessInformation.com

You can comment there with any thoughts or additions you have.

If you want to check out more of Armen’s content directly here are a couple of my favorites from his site:

• Your Main Source of Competition is Yourself
• Honesty Is Tough But Worth It
• Insert Goals Into Larger Goals

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Exceptional Perspectives

Everyone of course has different perspectives in life and it is based largely on their experiences and understanding of things.  People are taught different in their upbringing, develop very different habits and work ethics and build their own unique beliefs around how things ought to be for themselves in life.  So of course there is no exact way to describe what is exceptional.

Comparing to the Exceptional

I think the only way to describe something as exceptional is to describe it in relative terms and quite likely, that is how you define exceptional as well.  Something that is exceptional is something that is much better than most similar things.  The same goes for a person if they are exception in one skill area.  They are comparatively better at that skill than most other people.  It’s that comparison that makes them exceptional.  The perspective comes into play again here though as the people or things you have to compare to are always subjective.  To one person, an exceptional athlete could be very different than to another if they have never seen anyone close in comparison in skill level.  So one might say they are exceptional and another person could meekly say they are average.  This is exactly what draws me to think more on this label of exceptional.

Making Exceptional Personal

Exceptional is therefore a perspective you can share with someone else but since you may have totally different levels of comparison it loses its value, at least with individuals who have a different basis.  However, it definitely has meaning to you as an individual based on your comparisons and personal experiences.  Making it personal allows you to see and recognize the best from your point of view.  After all of this, there is still no way to define what is exceptional but there are ways that individuals look at it and use it for comparisons in their life.  Then whether you use those exceptional ideals as an aspiration for future goals and achievements or by you recognizing your own exceptional abilities to be confident in or share with others, you are left with little way to portray it to others.

Exceptional Stories

Perhaps you don’t need to share the definition of exceptional though and instead the value comes from the experience and stories that set the beliefs of what exceptional things are all about.  So, asking for the stories from others of exceptional times in their life or career are an excellent way to see and learn what exceptional really is for those people and it shapes your own perspective of what it means as well. One can draw on those stories and share their own for the benefit of others to learn from as well.  Ask others to describe their own image of what they consider to be exceptional and encourage them to look for and use stories as the basis for that.

Stories have always been great learning tools and everyone can think of times where a story has inspired them to change or fed them new ideas and hopes for the future.  Stories are often remembered and shared because they add to your experiences and to the mind they are remembered as how something happened, even if you were not there directly and so they shift your beliefs and understanding. Because of this ability of stories, they allow one to form the ideas of what exceptional is all about and then models are created based on the most exceptional stories that are heard and shared.

Living to be Exceptional

So finally, my directional with all of this is in looking at how you can live to be exceptional and to experience exceptional things.  What if you actually plan to create your own exceptional stories and to do exceptional things?  Setting your own goals, standards and life plans around building exceptional things ensures you are striving to be the best you can be. The way it is always your own comparison so you need not answer to the expectation of others.  You can build your own stories, set your own ever rising standards and continue to seek out and learn from what you consider to be exceptional.

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Here are a few of my favorite items I’m either been sent or have come across in my browsing and reading online in the last little while.  Not as big of list as usual, I’ll admit.  Its due to much less reading lately online and work with other things, either way, here are some gems I’ve come across, I hope you enjoy em!

• 100 Clever Ways to Change Your Habits and Improve Your Life
• Top 10 Thinking Traps Exposed — How to Foolproof Your Mind, Part I
• Dragos – 7 Ages of a Business
• The Master List of Free Language Learning Resources

Online Graphics and Paint Application

I’m just so impressed with these online tools I have to share them with you as well.  They are three online paint and image applications that allow you to create and manipulate photos and other images in your browser.  They have many features of commercial applications but these ones are free, run from anywhere and don’t require any installation.  Definitely worth having a book mark for, check em out!!

• pixlr
• Aviary
• SumoPaint

Blog Carnivals

And as usual, I continue to publish some content in blog carnivals and have continued to see other great resources at them for related topics and good sources of personal development and leadership content.  Here are a few I’ve either participated in or found that I enjoy recently.

• Carnival of Family Life: In Praise of Mom Edition
• Carnival of Personal Development – Final Edition

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Since I have really only looked at how appreciative inquiry is used for strategic planning and thinking, that is what I am going to angle the methods for this article as well, but keep in mind these could easily be adjusted for other purposes.  So, again the method is to discover what makes an organization “alive” in the sense of its life blood or vitality?  What makes it tick and be at its best?  Then to take that discover and use the learned experiences by imagining a future and then designing the processes and structures that will enable it to become the future reality.

Creating and Focusing on Positive Goals

All too often we position a situation based on what cannot be done or we hear someone say what can’t be done.  A great tip to respond in a meaningful inquiring way instead of simply, “Why Not?” is to ask, “What would you need in order to respond on this way and what would it take to enable that if you had to?” This positions the question to look more at what is possible instead of what is not.  Focusing on the problems and limitations just puts borders in place that makes it harder and harder to achieve what you do desire.  Take the resources from the past to build on your strengths.

Affirmative Topics

As with focusing on positive goals, if you spend time looking to resolve problems by talking about the problems, little focus is actually spent  building from experiences of great experiences.  With appreciative inquiry, you can take any topic and change the wording to make it a more positive for what you want, instead of a topic based on things you don’t want.  Arswino wrote a recent guest article here on setting a new mind pattern which follows the same approach of setting and wording topics to be that of which you do want more of, not the things you don’t want.

Paired Interviews

This inquiry tool is a great way to discover more about the strengths, aspirations and dreams of another person.  Paired interviews with a set of questions that work well with the SOAR (stengths, opportunities, aspirations and results) framework as a focus will help you to discover more about the core factors, values and strengths of a person or organization.  During an interview, focus on basing the questions on the best past experiences and dreams or hopes of a person and stay focused on the questions and as being an active listener. There are many examples of questions to use for interviews some of the ones I’ve used for paired sessions are listed below:

We’ve all had times of nostalgia and thought back about past experiences and how great they were.  Think of the best moments or timeframes in your career (not only at AMI) when you were having the time of your life, your high point in your professional life or your most rewarding peak points.  Recall that time and tell the story of the situation?  What made the experience exceptional to you?

Without being modest, what is it you value most or are most proud of about yourself in your career? What do you most value in the nature of your work? What about in the organization?

What is strong in the organization that enables people and the organization to operate at its very best? Without those factors, the organization would cease to exist or at least be very different than it is today.

Describe an exceptional customer experience you have been part of? What made it exceptional?Describe an exceptional customer experience you have been part of? What made it exceptional?

Fast forward five years into the future. Think of the organization now how you would like to see it. Everything the organization and you have strived for has become a reality and the core strengths and values have been preserved. The organization is thriving. You look around and see evidence of many successes everywhere you turn; in business results, in technology and services, and in the way people interact and work to unleash the power of one another. What do you see that is new, better and different? Describe it in detail.

Creative Design

Creative design can be done in many ways.  The idea of this one is use an exercise that has a creative focus to build or design the ideas for the future of what ought to be.  Getting people to think outside of their normal box and to expand in some new creative way is one of the best techniques to ensure there are new ideas and an active imagination, which is exactly what you want for planning the future of what you want to have. There are many different ideas here and you only need to use something that forces people out of there comfort zone.  Some starting places for an exercise might be any of the following:

• create a poster or collage to demonstrate what you want things to look like
• perform a short skit and act out an example of what you are designing
• draw a picture or build a craft / example of what things will look like
• write a poem or song to demonstrate it
• create a story to describe what things will be like

Application of Appreciative Inquiry

One of the great things of AI is that it can be applied in many different ways.  It can be used in informal ground up methods of inquiry right through to structured full on organizational change driving systems with projects and cycles of each phase.  Os course not only systems can benefit from using appreciative inquiry, but many areas in life.  It can be used in explore the a new purpose, discover what experiences and practices make up the best, most vibrant systems.  As well, it can be applied for setting new vibrant goals that have focus on both the positive results desires as well as having room for imagined dreams and aspirations.

Appreciative inquiry is also a useful method to building closer relationships through the stories and understanding it drives out.  It emphasizes learning and change with a strong positive core.  And finally, AI is also very helpful for coaching others, as it enables the relationship to be strengthened and helps to change things in the present in such a way that one’s dreams and hopes are more likely to become reality.

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