“I want every man to have the chance – and man is entitled to it in which he can better his condition – when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him.  This is the true system.”   ~ Abraham Lincoln, New Haven, Connecticut, March 6, 1859

It is more than fitting that our nation, founded on this absolute set aside a day to come together in resounding thanksgiving … to lift up and encourage each other to continue pursuing our dreams, growing our businesses, balancing our lives …

Let us together keep building this nation … the honest labor that builds sterling character in each of us, for all of us.

Behind random service acts are moments of truth, that is, acts that fulfill the service promise while enriching the care provider’s job.  This mutual engagement requires knowing what matters and what mattered. The core motivating fact is that relationships matter now just as much as they have always mattered.  What has changed are the how to’s of maintaining engagement – the mutually continuing of each one’s story.

When meaningful, personal development for the care provider takes a back seat to day-to-day work, the door to mediocrity has been opened; the job gets done but with little that matters beyond the moment. The ultimate question remains: will this short run service event matter in the long run?  Hope fades and joy becomes a word to mock when little matters longterm; life is then lived in disconnected spurts: I have a job; I do it; I finish my shift; what matters most to me is outside of my job.  Worse, as the virtual world has changed us, the workplace and personal lives are knitted together sometimes degrading the moments we have committed to serve.  Priorities get overwhelming then confusing.

Confusion is not joy. Our responsibility is to take what cultural changes occur then fold them into an even better relationship with people serving  alongside us and those depending on our promises of excellent care.

More things to learn from Sandra:

Understand engagement in job is where things matter for a consistent focus on the story lived out in each moment – moments of truth.

Understand that the road to preferred patient/provider experience comes through us, to the patient, then back to us, i.e., TTT formula.

Hear the soul of each patient, not just the illness or disability.

Create ongoing development practices that people are excited to leverage. The need to lead patients to an appreciation of their continuing story has never been needed as much as it is now.

Understand that what is done is the story the patient is living regardless of who they once might have been.

Understand engagement in job is where things matter for a consistent focus on the story lived out in each moment – moments of truth.

Extend the workplace realization to a new connection with personal lives on a continuum, not disconnected, random happenings.

How to perceive more calmly a 15% drop in the stock market?  Not a Correction, Not a Crash but a Sale! And a sale that you would have a hard time missing.  If Walmart, Macy’s or Ford offered 15% off everything sale, there would be a mad dash to take advantage of the sale; We gleefully consider a sale a great time to buy! However, since every media outlet would not be promoting the retail sale, we might miss it.  Not so with a Stock Market sale; every outlet announces it if not one, two times an hour.  It would be very hard to miss this buying opportunity.

Be calm, move forward! Events in our world are heating up and we can either heat up with them or take a calm, grounded perspective on all things.  Yes, ALL things.  God is still in Heaven and still rules every single thing that happens on earth.  The end is coming and has been foretold clearly.  Play it out without panic.

Don’t get caught in the euphemisms for a 1000 drop in the Stock Market, i.e., crash, correction, all time low … .  See it with new eyes and remain calm.

For questions, call Sandra 817 714 7377

The business community stands in partnership with the education community. Future staffing comes from education’s deliverable – graduates. Companies are now spending over $3 billion annually on community volunteer programs and are increasingly linking such efforts to business training goals — for example, building employees’ interpersonal skills, improving customer loyalty, strengthening company image, and boosting recruitment, hiring, and retention. For example, Umpqua Bank encourages their employees to reach out to their communities. Their program is an industry leading, employer-paid volunteer program that promotes a strong commitment to youth and education as well as community development. They polled employees to determine the impact of volunteerism. The results showed that the volunteering enhanced employee loyalty, increased morale, encouraged a greater sense of satisfaction with employees’ current work environment and encouraged volunteerism in general. Now the volunteer program is part of its benefits package. Eighty six percent of employees felt a greater sense of satisfaction with their current work environment.

After all, whether a work place promotes volunteerism or not, it really comes down to people helping one another. Mentoring can only do good. It will improve the community by helping kids and giving them the opportunity to be successful. The R’s Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and ‘Rithmetic, are in place. Today , however, what gives them force is “Relationships” – the mentor-to-students connection power. An organization becomes what it allows, more than that, encourages and supports its members to achieve individually. Now is the time to engage experienced productive citizens as mentors to extend a hand in “training up” emerging productive citizens. There is a bridge between today and tomorrow, mentors can help navigate the terrain to get over the bridge and beyond for new contributions to society.

The assumption seems to be that rules create order so more rules create more order.  Wrong! A rule book does not produce an engaged, productive workforce; instead it ofte produces a challenge to defeat it.

The policy manual could never be big enough to prevent all loop holes and the bigger the manual is the bigger the challenge to find loop holes; that is, if one is more interested in playing gotcha schemes a huge policy manual serves that one well but underserves the customer and the business at hand_only the disengaged would have or find the time needed to read it.  The 3% who live for “beating the system” or getting someone’s “blood to boil” eagerly read every word of the policy manual and can quote many parts verbatim.  HINT:  Do you have folks who know the policy manual specifically and with immediate recall?

A better path to order and productivity remains a better use of time than to create and update a policy manual.  A focus on communication and relationship rightly rewards the 97% who are not the show-stopper malcontents that can become the worst part of the customer’s or the department’s day.

Relationship savvy beats a rule book any day!  Enter StrengthBank® Communication WorkOuts®.  The negative co-workers or customers may remain but hve lost the ability to distraact from the company’s mission.  Cope with the #% so that the 97% do not get infected with the language of distrationl

Participants in the session bassed on the above will learn:

• How to target time to serving customers, not “counseling” the unhappy.
• How to develop a trust environment and hire to it.
• How to deflect distractions from non-essential agendas without a “war.”
• How to keep the rule book in the drawer, engagement (relationship) tools on the desktop.

Influence stirs up personal achievement and trust. Successful contributors use a well-thought-out, practiced, strategic approach. Applying and fine tuning personal strategies remain a significant need and are the essence of executive coaching sessions.

For more information, contact Sandra Shelton at 817 714 7377, sandra@sandrashelton.com