Abundance

Have you ever worked with someone who tears people down in order to build themselves up? Man, I have and those people just plain suck.

It reminds me of a story of a man that wanted to have the tallest building in his city. His was the second tallest. Rather than figuring out how to make his building taller, he just tore down the tallest building. Same result but much different method.

People like that have a scarcity mindset. They compete with others and use competition exclusively as a measure of their own success. These scarcity people think that there is only so much fortune, success, fame, or recognition to go around .... and they want it all before it dries up.

An alternate mindset is an abundance mindset. Rather than competing against others, people with this mindset use their influence to complete those around them. They realize that fortune, success, fame and recognition are limitless. There is more than enough for everyone.

Leaderment

The last two weeks I've been listening to a 26 CD set created by John Maxwell called "Lessons on Leadership". It's been very rich and challenging me.

Can I be honest with you though? It's one thing to understand leadership principles but it's a whole other challenge to know how to apply it. I have poured about 9 hours of leadership teaching into my brain the past two weeks and yet I still feel like the same leader I was two weeks ago.

I blogged last June about leadership and spoke briefly about managing and leading. I mentioned that there is a time for both. Reading it again, I must say it's a really good blog. I asked you if I could be honest, remember?!

I believe the key is to understand leadership principles but then more importantly, know when and how to apply them to your specific situations. For this, I came up with the word, "LEADERMENT". Here's my definition:

Leaderment - the ability to lead others through effective management principles which produces healthy, motivated, and productive teams.

Correction

Here are seven steps to correcting ones behavior that I just read in the book, Maximum Achievement by Brian Tracy. These steps can be used with your children, friends, or people at work.

Step 1: Protect the individuals self-esteem at all costs. Treat it like a balloon with your words as potential needles.

Step 2: Focus on the future, not the past. Talk about "What do we do from here?"

Step 3: Focus on the behavior or the performance, not the person. Replace the word "you" with a description of the problem.

Step 4: Use "I" messages to retain ownership of your feelings.

Step 5: Get clear agreement on what is to change, and when and by how much. Be specific as well as future-oriented and solution-oriented.

Step 6: Offer to help. Ask them "What can I do to help you in this situation?".

Step 7: Assume that the other person wants to do a good job and that, if he or she has done a poor job or made a mistake, it was not deliberate.

Feedback

Earlier this year I started working for a new company that has a totally different culture than what I was used to. It has been a fantastic change for me, but not without it's challenges. One such challenge has been to give and receive feedback freely. Not only with my subordinates, but giving feedback to my peers and my boss. I'm not sure which has been more of a challenge for me, giving the feedback or actually receiving the feedback.

Here's some tips to giving feedback:

1. First things first, you need to have credibility with the person you are speaking with.
2. Tell the individual you are going to give them some feedback.
3. Tell them the behavior they displayed and the impact that it had.
4. Offer a suggestion for doing things a different way.
5. Thank them for being open to your feedback.

Here's some tips on receiving feedback:

1. If someone asks you if they can give you some feedback, respond with an energetic, "Yes!".
2. While receiving the feedback raise your eyebrows and smile.
3. Ask any clarifying questions, then repeat what you have heard.
4. Thank them for helping you.
5. Take a day to reflect on the feedback and decide if you need to change. Bounce this feedback off of a trusted co-worker/friend to see if it has merit.
6. If change is needed, then change!

By no means am I able to do this stuff 100%, but I really see the benefit of improving those around you and being open to how I can improve.

Value

If you ask someone how much they make, they will say something like, "I make $15 an hour". This isn't totally true however, because if they made $15 and hour they could just stay home and collect the $15 every hour. They don't get paid by the time they get paid by the value they are providing to the marketplace. The marketplace has determined that $15 every hour is a fair price to pay for that particular level of work.

Here's the really cool thing. . . are you ready for this? If you want to make more money then you need to become more valuable. That's it! The more valuable we become, the more tools we have in our toolbox. These tools will help the marketplace expand and make more money, consequently the marketplace will want to pay you more money. Wal-aaa!

We all know people that want to make more money, but they typically just focus on their boss not handing them more money. A lot of times, people expect more money for doing the same level of work (creating the same value). They think that the company "owes" them this for their loyalty. Or since other companies are paying more, they should get more. Putting this responsibility of making more money on everyone but themselves.

The next time a friend complains to you about making more money, ask them what they are doing to increase their skills. How are they improving themselves? What additional tools are they gathering so that they can add those to the marketplace?

The new federal minimum wage is $5.85 per hour which equates to $12,200 a year for a full-time employee. Any guess on the highest pay last year? Try a cool $40 million. That works out to be over $19,000 an hour!

A lot of people think "that's not fair". There is too much disparity between the lowest paid people in our society and our highest paid. If this is your thought, then move to a communist country. You would fit in much better there. The reason we have such a disparity in the lowest paid people in the country and the highest paid is that they highest paid provide the most value. There is a huge difference between $19,000 and hour and $5.85 an hour but the beauty of America is that it's a ladder with several rungs. Anyone can climb these rungs up from $5.85 and the way that they do this is by working on themselves. One by one adding tools to their toolbox. Little by little creating more value to the marketplace. And little by little increasing their pay. That's empowering!

Pain

My 2 year old daughter Brooklyn was playing with her Mommy out on our deck. I could see and hear them both through the kitchen window. The playing ended in a thud on the deck, followed quickly by shrill crying. You know what I'm talking about? The type of crying that peels paint off the walls. The type of real crying where something is wrong and requires a parents' immediate response.

By the time I got to the window, Mommy was already holding Brooklyn in her arms and was assessing the damage. Brooklyn had lost her footing and fell on her face. Typical 2 year old clumsiness I suppose. Blood was beginning to pool in Brooklyn's lips and around her teeth. No permanent damage, but a hurtful event with blood (which we told her was paint) nonetheless.

About 4 seconds after Mommy picked up Brooklyn an interesting thing happened. Brooklyn started to chant, "Mommy kiss it! Mommy kiss it! Mommy kiss it!". But that isn't the interesting part. After Mommy gently kissed her swollen lips the crying stopped. No whimpering, fussing, or sniveling. She instantly turned back into a happy, sweet little girl.

This painful event in a 2 year olds life was fixed in an instant. Logic tells me that kissing the wound did not take the pain away. I don't know much about the physiology of pain. But I can't accept the fact that pain signals from Brooklyn's mouth instantly stopped telling her brain about the trauma. However, somehow in some unexplained way, the pain was gone and she was able to move on with her life.

Allow me to take a stab at explaining how we can make pain a temporary event in our lives:

1. Realize that pain is inevitable, but wallowing in it is a choice. We all are going to experience pain in our lives. We don't have to focus on it. Don't dwell on the question "why me?!" for too long. Time spent rolling around in your pain is not time well spent.

2. Tell yourself how things could be worse. If you stub your toe, at least you didn't break it. If you broke your toe, at least you only broke one. If you broke multiple toes, at least you didn't break your foot. If you broke bones in your foot, at least you didn't break your leg. You see? It could always be worse so focus on how you are fortunate that it isn't any worse.

3. Make the conscious choice to focus on positive things. Yes, you lost your job. But you have your family don't you? That is something to focus on. Something that can bring you joy despite your momentary pain.

4. Ask for help. God is the obvious choice here isn't he? Do you think God wants you to live in constant pain? Of course not. He wants you to experience joy! So ask him continually how to get there. You can also ask those around you. Tell them your hurt and ask them to help you out of it. We aren't meant to live life alone. We are designed to share in each others joy and help each other through the pain.

We all make a choice on how to react to things in our lives. Slips and falls will happen. That's OK. It's just important to get through it as quickly as possible and move on with our lives!

Leadership

The subject of leadership is something not easily defined. I do believe that some people are born leaders. They have a natural ability that others want to follow behind. The reality is that there are more needs for leaders than leaders available. I have read several books on leadership, talked to hundreds of people and have observed many, many people leading. Below are a couple thoughts that I have around leadership.

1. Managing and leading are different . . . most of the time. I have many years experience managing people, but not near as many actually leading people. Just to put it simply, managing people is basically telling people what to do. If they do it, you reward them. If they do not follow direction, you punish them. You can manage the heck out of someone but not ever truly lead them. I heard it said best, "Leadership says where. Management says how."

It is possible to manage and lead. Sometimes you need to focus on where you are taking your team. Other times you need to focus on how you are going to move your team in that direction. It is very important to understand when you should do the managing and the leading. An acid test for all you managers out there that think you are leading is to ask yourself this question, "Would my people follow me even if they didn't get paid?"

2. Leadership inspires people to achieve more than they thought possible. Think back to those few people in your life that believed in you to the point that you achieved more than you thought you could. Leaders don't see the man now, they see what the man could be.

A pet peeve of mine is when people say they are giving 110%, 150%, 1,000%. That's a bunch of crap to me. You can only give 100% . . . that's it. You wouldn't say, "there was one pizza, but we at 1 1/2 pizzas because we were really hungry!" One pizza is all you had therefore it would be impossible to eat more than one pizza. That's the same as giving all you have. 100% is ALL you have. Here's the rub, most people aren't operating at anywhere close to 100% their full potential. They only think that they are. So when someone says they are giving "150%", they probably were only giving 50% to begin with. Leaders can see when someone has more to give and they are able to; motivate, manipulate, push, pull, and inspire them to achieve more of their potential.

3. You can't choose to be a leader. In order to lead, you need followers. Followers have the choice on if they want to get behind someone they believe in. I think of the character William Wallace in the movie Braveheart. He was going to fight the British by himself it he had to in order to protect his homeland. He didn't set out to lead anyone. He simply followed his conviction and inspired people to follow behind him.

4. Leaders have conviction and actually believe in what they are doing. I am an amateur on a lot of history, but when I heard about a speech Winston Church gave it gave me goosebumps. My limited knowledge of WWII is that Hitler's war machine was relentlessly bombing Britain in order to break them. It was 1941 and America was just forced into the war because of Pearl Harbor. In October 1941 Winston Churchill the Prime Minister of Britain gave a speech at a University. He told the students, "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." I encourage you to read this imagining a big older man saying it while pounding his fist to the podium and with a red face and veins throbbing on his temples. This type of conviction kept a country together even despite overwhelming pain and suffering.

I'm sure if I would blog about leadership 6 months from now my list could be totally different. I heard a quote about a Supreme Court judge asked to define pornography. He said, "I can't define it. . . but I know it when I see it." I think that is a good way to think about leadership. Although it can be a complex subject to define and articulate, you'll know it when you see it.