Trust and Respect

As a leader, being trusted and trusting others is a critical part of your everyday adventure, in and out of business.  Trust lets us feel safe and valued, warm and respected.  And being trusted builds loyalty.

In Naked Truth, one of my life mentors, Fabian Dattner says:  “Trust honours us and the contribution we make.  Trust in us causes us to trust in turn.  It brings out our best characteristics.  

People who are trusted accept personal responsibility with dignity and commitment.  There is no better way to build business than to have responsible people, trusting one another enough to share information, communicate effectively and to do so with respect for the whole -- and not only the part over which they hold dominion.”

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to use words with little attention to what they actually were intended to mean?  We all do it and as a writer one of my challenges is to consider my words carefully and KNOW their meaning before I throw them into a sentence!

Respect

Respect is one of those words that’s easy to say and slip into conversation, but a look at the word and its origins may inspire and convict us of how significant using this word is:

·         The word comes from the Latin word "respicere", "respectum".  It means to look back at, to pay attention to or to consider. 

·         We express respect when we admire someone and have a good opinion of them or honour someone who’s well thought of.

·         We pay attention to someone we respect and care about what they’re feeling as much as what they’re saying. 

·         Respecting someone is more than being polite, it’s to hold them in esteem and honour because of their consistency over time of their actions and words, especially as we compare them with others. 

·         We consider their contribution and appreciate them because of their wisdom, for example an elder. 

·         We can respect another when we disagree with them, but still hold them in high regard. 

Respect, however is not an automatic response.  It’s something that comes when you make a personal, heart-based commitment to respect and take others seriously someone who earns your respect.  

As you grow older you realise, sometimes with surprise, that you don’t have all the answers; that each person around you has potential gifts and strengths and interests that can bolster your own learnings and understandings. 

This takes humility and it takes extra effort to integrate someone who has differences into the work of your organisation when it’s easier to eliminate or side-line them. 

In leadership building workshops I facilitate using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, there are three ultimate goals: 

1.    To help the participants have higher respect for themselves

2.    To have higher respect for their group as a whole organism

3.    To have respect for the team dynamics in making decisions. 

We create an overall chart of participants and plot all of them on a ‘group overview”.  This allows everyone to see the potential strengths and flow of the participants as they work together, including the leader. 

What we know conclusively is a group made up of individuals who are basically the same will seem dynamic and healthy because they get to decisions easily and quickly.  

Yet their decisions and directions will not be as safe and wise as teams where diversity in the group tests the viability, strength and conviction of the decisions.  Relying on each other requires respect.

Listening

Fear and communication are inexorably linked in every person we deal with.  When effective and well timed communication is missing, there’s always fear.  Where you see fear in a group you know it’s from lack of communication (or of course abuse).  

Yet, communication is not what we say, write or do, it is in the response we get.  Therefore, we must watch and listen!

As we listen, we learn and from learning about someone else’s thoughts, we can better appreciate how to take them seriously and benefit from their insights.  This builds respect.  Getting people to trust you as a leader in your organisation begins with you listening. 

As you take time to listen to the observations of your group, you encourage them to feel confident to share more of what they see within the organisation.  Many organisations, with wise leaders, who listen to their staff members, soar ahead with profits.

Trust springs from a serious pursuit by both leaders and followers of at least seven essential beliefs and initiatives.  Next time we’ll look at “Integrity to Fidelity”.  

Allies from Adversaries

"Keep your friends close and your adversaries and enemies even closer."  Good advice, but better advice is to turn those who are your adversaries into allies -- help them to help achieve your goals. 

How you ask?  It's enough to feel powerless against someone who takes credit for what you've done or who undermines the achievements of others.  You can't ignore them so how can you win them to your side?  Here are some ideas I've found helpful in these situations:

1. Reason - sometimes it's easy to forget how damaging not working together is.  If we don't cooperate with others, we lose opportunities to learn and achieve. 

Start the process of turning "adversaries" into allies by reasoning with them.  Help them consider how working against someone means everyone loses time and experience, as well as resources (people and money).  

Help the other person see the many benefits of cooperating.

2. Reciprocate - this is the "give and take" part of life.  Sometimes we all must be willing to give something up that's of value to your rival.  Perhaps they need your help or expertise with something they're working on or they need some information you can easily get for them. 

People are aware it's a give and take world.  On your part, it means paying attention and noting what an "adversary" may need and benefit from that you are able to easily supply.

3. Redirect - if you've ever watched children and parents, you can see how they use the simple act of redirecting the child's energy, emotions or desires with the art of distracting them to enjoy something else.  This works with grownups too. 

Make an effort to divert your "adversary's" negative emotions or thinking away from you and focuse them instead on the problem at hand.  You can also accomplish this by bringing up something you both share in common or enjoy -- a shared straw man can serve you well -- something you and your "adversary" both want to fix or change.

Whatever happens guard your own emotions and don't let an "adversary's"  negativity damage your attitude.  It takes time and self-discipline to turn "adversaries" into allies, so watch, listen and use these opportunities to grow.

The 5 Essential Leadership Qualities

Good leaders move us from what we know and feel comfortable with to an unknown place.  

This means change and change is almost always unsettling.

As a leader entrusted with the responsibility of helping others through change, it is important for you to always learn from your experiences. In this way you're better able to show others how to get from where they are to where they need to be.

Here are the five essential qualities it takes:

1. VISION - the ability to identify a "point on the horizon" and to plot out a general direction that moves others toward the vision.  No leader sees every step of the journey, but once you have the vision clear in your mind's eye, it helps you see potential obstacles and solutions to overcome them.

2. CONVICTION - Passion or whatever emotional word you use to describe it is the driving belief in the value of something.  It causes you to focus relentlessly on the vision and eliminate distractions.  This belief must be internal, unwavering, undaunted, authentic and visible in demonstrated enthusiasm.  If it's not, those who follow will hesitate, misstep or stray away.

3. EMPATHY - Empathy is a skill most need to strengthen.  Leaders help navigate to a vision through change.  Change is accompanied by resistance and fear.  The best leaders identify with the emotions of those they lead so they can lead with compassion.

4. COURAGE - is mandatory to pursue a vision.  To encourage others to trust you and also be courageous beside you, takes skills in listening, communicating, motivating, team building, conflict resolution and many other soft skills (as well as empathy and conviction).

5. AUTHENTICITY - This quality should appear in the list both first and last.  Being self aware is the internalisation of empathy and vision.  Understanding why you behave as you do will unlock the secret to being authentic.  This is the foundation upon which others will build their trust.  In the end trust is the only real commodity you have to trade with.

Just having these five qualities is not enough.  However, if these five are lacking you will not be an effective leader.

Consider taking inventory today and pick one of these five that you believe you can do better with and set a goal to strengthen it.  Once you feel it's strong, consider the other qualities one at a time until you have transformed your leadership power.

3 Dangers for High Achievers

We aim to be high achievers and it can be rewarding once you arrive.  However, many smart, ambitious professionals are not satisfied once they climb up the ladder. 

Why?  Because the very traits that propel you up the ladder of success, are also behaviours that can get in your way as you climb and once you arrive. 

They are double-edged traits of high-achievers:

1. Guilt - Guilt often motivates achievers to produce more and more, yet this very trait does not allow them to enjoy their achievements.  They come to believe that no matter how much they accomplish they still must do more.  They feel they aren't doing enough, no matter how high the praise or accolades or awards. 

Set realistic goals and learn the joy of a job well done!

2. Drive - High-achievers can get completely caught up in the tasks they're focused upon.  The focus can be so sharp they fail to be transparent with colleagues and are reluctant to help others along on the journey. 

Collaboration is best...it's better to share than be alone.

3. Needing Positive Feedback - High-achievers truly care about what others think.  They can be obsessed about other's opinions and need them to be positive and appreciative.  They hate criticism and can over react. 

Be sure you take any opportunity to learn from constructive criticism.  Never let someone's counter opinion or idea put you off your game.

9 Questions About You and Burnout

Have you ever wondered if you are heading for job burnout?  Well here are nine questions to help you identify the warning signs:

1. Have you become cynical or over critical at work?
2. Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, backaches or other physical complaints regularly?
3. Have you become irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients?
4. Are you missing the satisfaction from your achievements?
5. Do you drag yourself to work each day and have trouble getting started once you arrive?
6. Are you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or simply not to feel?
7. Do you feel disillusioned about your job?
8. Have your sleep habits or appetite changed?
9. Do you lack the energy to be consistently productive?

Job burnout is a real condition that comes with a host of physical and emotional symptoms.  It is important that you understand that the key to protecting yourself is being able to recognise the symptoms and diagnosing them well.

Only then can you take the necessary steps to cure it and prevent its return.  The Mayo Clinic has a special site for you to explore burnout, how it affects you physically and how to cure it.

Moral Purpose and Leadership Challenge

Leaders must foster the trust of those who will follow the vision they reveal.  This is a given and a bit of a golden thread through this series on leadership.  But like a fragile new plant, trust is not easy to grow.  Ideal conditions require moral purpose and personal commitment. 

We develop a moral purpose when we choose to take on the responsibility of another – be that in a love relationship, a family relationship, a community or work relationship.  Moral purpose understood, accepted and practiced as a common consciousness, is a special treasure for all leaders in all types of businesses that leverages humility through this type of responsibility.

As Max De Pree wrote in the last chapter of his book Leading Without Power, “Without moral purpose, competence has no measure and trust no goal.  This defining thought gives me a way to think about the place of moral purpose in our organisations.”

Let Me Contribute

In our cynical, breakneck-speed, instant-access-and-answers world, how can we manage this?  People, in every walk of life long to contribute!  The highest motivator is to achieve...to make a difference...most want to reach out to help others, from the person working next to them to some grand world out there -- and not only just for money or we would be without charities and simple, everyday good will. 

Yet many organisations create constraints and measurements that foster only internal competition.  Did you realise that fully 60 percent of the activity within an organisation is devoted to internal competitiveness!  When we all know that the competitor is out there, across the street.  Or are the words of Walt Kelley’s character, Pogo, still ringing true, “We have met the enemy and they are us!”

Responsible Leadership

As a leader, you have the responsibility and privilege to identify and put individuals’ gifts and talents and learnings to good use.  Leaders have a choice to be authentic in a world where we innately appreciate authenticity and deplore imitation, manipulation and insincerity and use this quality to seek and develop those who work with them. 

When our organisations become centres of sharing, where we belong and have the right to own our ideas and see them respected -- centres where we can demonstrate values such as trust and keeping our word to our employees, managers, suppliers and the community at large – then we are exercising the full value of our responsibility.

Where’s the Boss?

There’s been a flurry of television reality shows over the last decade...a fad of “authenticity”.  Some focus on a “Prince and the Pauper” approach within businesses, where the owner/leader takes on the “disguise” of being one of the workers in their own company at an entry level. 

They get a job, report to work and begin learning things they were rarely, if ever aware of with regard to on the shop floor realities and heroic efforts their very staff work with. 

The changes a leader, who goes through this experience, can see to make, in an effort to reach their vision, are inspiring.  Needless constraints and hurdles are easily identified and can be eliminated or minimised.  People’s lives are touched as they are appreciated in areas their efforts would have been never been seen clearly in before. 

We can’t all take the time, or make the effort, or risk our emotions or ego to take a job in our own organisations, but if we did I wonder what we would discover about our own leadership from that perspective.  

Don't Major on the Minors

Most leaders find they need to refine their focus regularly because leading means having the free time to think clearly.  They look around to see what can easily be managed with a few clever tricks. 

Life is just filled with complicated, mundane and distracting things, such as what to wear, how to get to the office each day, what to eat for lunch.  These types of decisions rob you of energy and take your focus from your purpose as a leader.

Take at least one hour this next weekend and do some serious planning to eliminate as many mundane distractions as possible...then enjoy running on autopilot.   For instance:

• Think about breakfast.  What do you like that gives you lots of energy to get through the morning?  Make this your choice every day.  It makes shopping, budgeting and cleaning up easier.  Most of all you don't have to think about it each morning. 

• Look at your wardrobe.  What do you feel most confident and comfortable in?  What colours, fabrics, what style?  Reduce your work wardrobe options and create set outfits around these choices.  When you go shopping for work outfits, stick with your chosen colours, styles and fabrics.  Save yourself time and feel even better each day!

• Getting to and from work can be stressful.  Pull out a map or Google the best route for you.  You may like to keep moving as you travel or you may not mind sitting in traffic.  Once you have plotted the best route, stick with it each day so you don't waste energy and time exploring new ways.

By eliminating so many extra and unnecessary decisions from you every day, you free your mind to focus on what's truly important. 

Packing Time

Leonardo di Vinci was born in 1452 out of wedlock to a poor couple.  He was an Italian Renaissance polymath:  

• painter
• sculptor
• architect
• musician
• mathematician
• engineer
• inventor
• anatomist
• geologist
• cartographer
• botanist
• writer 

His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal.  He had "unquenchable curiosity" and a "feverishly inventive imagination".  One of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.

He made important discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamic. Busy man by all accounts, who once was noted to say "that time stays long enough for those who use it well."  

It would be one of his great secrets.  

In our busy lives today it seems "time flies" -- what with always being available, always having another meeting or person to catch up with.  There seems little time to even think some days -- let alone invent or be creative.  

Yet, Leonardo is a good example of someone who didn’t make excuses for how he used his time.  He discovered instead that paradoxically, when you use time to its fullest it seems to slow down so you can pack in more memories and lessons that fill you and heal you for your next challenges.  The idea is to be aware of each moment.  

Or "carpe deum" (sieze the day)!  

Time is a gift  

Unlike  power, position, intellect or  money’  with time we are all equal.  We all get the same amount to use each day and we get a fresh 24 hours the very next day too!  

Finding ways to be aware of the present moment and remembering the lessons of the moments that pass you by is critical to your daily success.  The past moments are saturated with educational lessons and growing experiences that you can build upon.

Take some time to analyse your use of time and prioritise some life changing habits.  To create a new habit, you just need to consistently follow a new action for three weeks for it to sink in.  

In the meantime, enjoy this short Ted Talk about just a few technology shortcuts you probably do not know about. 

Introduction

I wrote my first “book” when I was 14 (a long time ago and it was terrible).  

Today, I'm an internationally published author - my first book was published by McGraw-Hill before they stopped publishing business books.  It was also translated into Chinese and Spanish.  It sold out four times and is still available through Amazon.com.  (Customer Response Management Handbook).  

For the last few years I have been enjoying working with a variety of clients who need effective content for their business. 

Background

My writing skills developed under the apprenticeship of a squirrelly PhD in epidemiology.  He started his own medical publishing company (today known as Medical Economics Press).  Under his tutelage I learned the value of words in the persuasive art AND science of direct mail marketing. 

After five years helping make his 16 professional newsletters a financial success and training up a brilliant team, I started my own consultancy.  

I developed a successful business, writing direct marketing promotions and writing/editing eleven monthly newsletters (before a blog existed or LinkedIn was even a gleam in anyone’s eye).  They covered a variety of topics from industrial food service, medical, aerospace technology, construction law, etc. 

Technical Writing

One of my unusual gifts soon became apparent -- my ability to “translate” highly technical information (legal, medical, technology, financial, scientific, electronic, etc.) into “common/palatable English” that anyone can read and understand without pulling up Google!  The buzz term for this is "Technical Writing".

Lots of Media! 

Today, I enjoy using my lifetime experience in database analysis, psychology and education to identify and understand the “heart of the reader”.  I have spent the greatest part of my “visible” career in customer service by non face-to-face channels.  

I've consulted with over 50 organisations in a dozen countries and have written untold numbers of magazine articles, white papers and blog content for others, as well as writing eight blogs myself.

I’ve authored and written about 100 different workshops with take-home workbooks for participants and trainers.  I even teach a course on business writing that’s effective because it’s fun.

I've been writing a lot of articles recently for others who have blogs and thought it was high time I had a new blog.  This one is dedicated to you.  It will feature learnings I've had that may be of benefit to you as you go through your work day and your life.