Leadership Principles in a Changing Workplace

Change in the workplace is accelerating. Technology development and
infusion into new products is almost a daily event. Companies are in
endless pursuit to drive costs down to become more competitive.
Rightsizing, downsizing, reorganization with layoffs are the norm.
Changes driven by Six Sigma or Continuous Improvement are commonplace
events. Global competitive pressures require new thinking,
redeployments, and radical new ways of conducting business. The
workplace is filled with the turmoil of change, and many people question
the value of these changes. In this article, I will examine the changing
workplace, leadership principles, and present a call to action.

The Changing Workplace

Change is and has been a universal constant. Civilizations have risen
and fallen. The Wild West in America was tamed and populated. The model
T Ford was mass produced and made an affordable means of transportation.
Refrigerators were invented, and the ice box became history. Men
traveled to the moon and back. Computers and the Internet shrunk the
world. Moore’s law promises even greater leaps in productivity, quality
of life, and unimagined changes.

Humans adapt well to change over the long-term. The short-term is
another story. Many people exert a measure of effort and work to achieve
some status, goal, or outcome in life. When they arrive, they hold the
belief that they have earned their way, and now life owes them. They
often become comfortable, content, relaxed, complacent, and stagnant.
All the while, changes occur around them, slowly making their skills,
competencies, and value obsolete. Others embrace change, race to be in
front of the wave of innovation, and find energy and opportunity in
their world of work. I have described two different types of people. One
person rests on their laurels unconcerned with change. The other person
exercises effective personal leadership to adapt to change.

Leadership Principles

Principles are comprehensive and fundamental laws or rules. Researching
leadership principles, I found that the Marine Corps had listed 11.
Other organizations had similar lists. Examining and organizing them, I
discovered that effective leadership principles in the changing world
are actually unchanging. They are constants of the universe just like
change. People have been exercising effective leadership principles in a
changing workplace since the dawn of time. Here are the timeless
leadership principles I have identified.

Life Vision
Human beings are endowed with unlimited potential and greatness. They
limit their development, what they enjoy, and the success they achieve
by what they learn and how they think about work and life. Ignorance is
the enemy of people developing and enjoying greater success. Destroying
ignorance is called self-development, personal growth, building personal
leadership, or developing mastery of your job and life. This requires
knowing yourself, seeking wisdom, and forming a vision of what you can
become. That vision is essential in breaking free from the routines of
work and life that trap many people. That vision must include embracing
change.

Guiding Values
When you don’t know what you value, then anything that comes along
catches your eye and diverts you from your vision. List all the things
that are important to you. I’ll bet there are upwards of 100 or more.
Don’t worry, I had the same problem. Organization being one of my
strengths and over several years of work, I finally found three
foundational values to guide my work and life. They are:

Integrity. Keep every commitment that you make, even those you make to
yourself. Be honest, honorable, truthful, self-disclosing, trustworthy,
and authentic.

Stewardship. Be responsible and accountable for every resource you
manage, be responsive, and develop/grow as a person. Manage your money,
time, attitude, and people in your life to achieve the very best
results. Exercise courage and risk where it counts.

Love. Love is the greatest power that exists in the universe. Love,
accept, and nurture yourself first. That equips you to love, serve, and
share with your fellow human beings. This means extending unconditional
respect, dignity, and fairness to everyone. It’s about having gratitude,
appreciation, and awe for everything at work and in your life.

Purpose
Every person arrives on this earth to fulfill a specific purpose. That
purpose is unique and essential to the proper functioning and evolution
of the earth. Finding your unique purpose is critical to working with
your natural gifts and competencies. If you discover your purpose, your
work and life will become seamless and easy. Your life will be filled
with more joy and happiness.

Mission
What you do at work and in life is called your mission. You fill certain
roles like husband or wife, father or mother, provider for your family,
homemaker, business leader, or manager. In each role you provide
specific services. Looking over all the services, some common themes may
emerge. Your mission may also include the quality of your services like
the standard of “excellence.”

Call to Action

If you are clear about the vision for your life, then you will be
learning, growing, and seeking greater wisdom. In pursuing your vision,
you will develop more of your unlimited potential and greatness and
serve your fellow human beings more effectively. Identifying and knowing
your guiding values helps you stay on course during your journey.
Without clear values you will wander aimlessly and arrive wherever.
Getting in touch with your purpose gives you the big “why you exist.”
Knowing that, your journey has great value and can fill you with
enthusiasm and passion. Becoming clear about your work and life roles,
the services that you provide, and the standards of your toil, make your
work and life meaningful and important to yourself and other people.

Embracing these leadership principles will equip you to adapt and even
embrace the changes that are ever present in the workplace. Without this
solid foundation of personal leadership, change becomes an obstacle to
creating the life you were meant to live. Developing personal leadership
skills and competencies will assure that you ride the wave of change and
opportunity. Embracing change, thriving on it, and growing as a person
will assure an exciting workplace and life filled with success, joy, and
happiness.

How are you doing? Evaluate yourself in these areas. If you find that
there is a need to change, you have a choice. Stay the way you are or
find a way to develop more effective personal leadership and live the
life you were meant to live. The choice is yours.

By Joe Farcht: the founder and president of Leadership Advantage, Inc.
http://www.leadershipadvantageinc.com.

 

ONLY TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE?

Getting along with other people and working together cooperatively is the fundamental foundation of successful outcomes in the workplace. This is true teamwork at its best. Organizations without this foundation don’t grow or prosper, at least over the long haul. Instead they have costly turnover, unhappy customers and employees and poor bottom-line results.

Although learning, growing and improving is a very universal and natural part of life, there are some things that inhibit this process within each of us, including managers and leaders. One major way this can happen to us is when we allow ourselves to fall prey to the dualistic trap our minds lead us into. We are all a victim of the unproductive, irreconcilable habit of dividing all things into this or that, either-or, exclusive categories—good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, yes vs. no, valuable vs. worthless, etc. We tend to keep score and assign people to either one side of the basic life equation or the other.

Consider the following partial division between how people can think and act at work. Go down the list and recognize co-workers, and yourself, if you dare. Then consider how we are convinced that the right side of this listing is the only thing that can lead to long-term success. (I suspect there is agreement with this even with people operating from the left side of the list). At any rate we can get easily troubled, annoyed and frustrated when we try to deal with people who are different from us—those being on the other side from where we are (more so by people on the right because they know they are right!) Ha to that! The temperature is equal on both sides and we know it!

Pessimism, negativity vs. Optimism, positivism
Individualist vs. Team player
Closed-minded, know it all vs. Open-minded, eager to learn
Critical, judgmental vs. Accepting, understanding
Disagreeable, argumentative vs. Agreeable
Overly aggressive vs. Assertive
Extreme, unbalanced vs. Temperate, balanced
Over-emotional, irrational vs. Reasonably rational
Taker, self-serving vs. Giver, other-serving
Dishonest, manipulating vs. Honest, spontaneous
Rigid, stagnant, stuck vs. Growing, flexible
Chaos-creating vs. Order-restoring
Destructive vs. Constructive/productive
Disabling others vs. Enabling others
Arrogant, egocentric vs. Humble
Over-talkative vs. Good listener
Insensitive to others vs. Empathetic with others
Impatient vs. Patient
Impulsive vs. Thoughtful

Now the trouble is, we have created an un-reality with this extremely artificial polarity with such a marked division—we all know we are never always one way or the other, but somewhere in between. And even keeping score to determine how someone is most of the time isn’t really that accurate or reliable. Our memories aren’t as accurate as we want to believe.

We all have a right to choose which side of the equation we will be on with these things, depending on what we find works best for us most of the time. That is reality, but guess what? We can easily make two critical mistakes with our choices: (1) we may think we are operating from one side but really from the other, unknowingly (2) there might be times where both sides are needed for the most productive resolution between the two opposing sides.

Then again everyone and everything can serve a positive purpose—the people on the left side of this list may serve the purpose of showing others how not to be, or reinforcing the correctness of being on the right side. Of course that is an unfair judgment from the right side. Our perspective always gets in the way of what we are trying to see.

There only seems to be one way out of this conundrum that won’t go away in today’s workplace (the dualistic demon in our minds which creates artificial polarities, just so we know whether we are coming or going, so to speak). The wise approach is to separate the person from the situation, unconvincing yourself of the truth that a person is really just one way or the other, and then realizing we all think and act in both ways and a lot in between, depending upon conditions and the corner we paint people into unfairly (and inaccurately) or corners they paint us into.

Here is the good news: Our world is finally beginning to make the needed transition from the old either-or, win-lose mentality to the reality of the and-and, win-win one, and we should take great pleasure in that shift. In the meantime, we can all make our effort to reduce the overload of toxic psychic pollution in our atmosphere, by realizing the artificiality of polar opposites that our dualistic minds have deceptively convinced us really do exist. Nonsense to that unreality!

If the right side of this equation is the best way to be, then being that way consistently and persistently will allow the other side to reconcile the current power struggle between the two sides that undermines organizational synergy and performance. And if that is not possible it is because it is the very movement from the left to the right side of the list that is the main purpose for us all; and we can all make better progress together helping each other grow and improve by being the way we aspire towards and pretend we are already there. Self-perceptions are strange that way! Up with acceptance, down with judgment.

By William Cottringer, Ph.D.  Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net

 

Staying Positive in a Negative Environment

Probably one of the hardest things we must do as leaders is to stay positive when everyone else around us is negative. It’s not easy to maintain a positive attitude and not be drained or consumed by the negativity that surrounds you. But as a leader, that’s exactly what you must do. You have the opportunity to be the beacon of light for others around you. You can demonstrate and teach by your actions and responses how to behave in an appropriate, positive, and professional manner.

It’s easy to be positive in a positive environment. It’s when things are emotionally draining and negative that you are challenged to step up to the plate and behave differently. By doing so, you make a difference — a positive impact that sends ripples throughout the community in which you work. The fact is that positive energy catches on just as quickly as negative energy. Sometimes, people are simply stuck in a habit or pattern of behavior. They are accustomed to acting a certain way. If the environment is really caustic, then it’s been that way for a long time. This is what people are used to; it’s familiar to them, and it may be all they know. In addition, by the very fact that it’s been happening this way for this long and no one has done enough to change it, it’s considered “acceptable” even though it’s not.

It takes some time and effort on your part, as well as a commitment, to do something different in order to create sustainable change. You must be willing to identify and stop tolerating what’s not working, do the right thing even if it’s unpopular at first, and then teach others to do the same.

Here are five things you can do to be the positive force in your workplace.

1) Observe yourself in action. In what ways are you contributing to the negativity around you? Are you listening to gossip or participating in conversations where the only focus is to denigrate, diminish, or criticize people or things? If the conversation feels bad, it’s probably negative. Stop being negative! Stop saying or doing anything that is negative. It all starts with you. Language matters. Everything you say has an impact, and when you say something negative, not only does it dishonor the person you’re speaking about and the person you’re speaking with, it makes you feel bad even if you don’t realize it. Putting someone else down is disrespectful of them, and it disrespects you. Learn to respect people’s humanity and their right to be themselves. Complaining without end does not focus on creating solutions; rather its impact is only to perpetuate and magnify the problem, wasting everyone’s precious time and energy.

2) Recognize negativity when it occurs around you. Sometimes you can even feel your energy being drained by the words being spoken. Again, if it feels bad or uncomfortable, then it’s negative. These feelings are your inner messengers. They are a form of intelligence similar to a tap on the shoulder letting you know something is not right. How do you feel? What is happening? What behavior is being displayed? If you can identify what is happening, then you can make good choices about handling it. The first step is awareness.

3) Speak up! Tell the other person how you feel. Use the words, “This doesn’t work for me.” It’s non-judgmental and it’s about you, not them. People often don’t realize they are being negative. Point out to the person that they are being negative in a gentle and caring way. “Do you realize you are complaining?” Sometimes just bringing it to their attention is enough to shift the conversation. Over time, people will learn what they can and cannot talk about with you, and it won’t be an issue. If you say nothing, then your silence gives them permission to continue.

4) Make your conversations constructive, meaning that the conversation should be positive, meaningful, and beneficial. What’s the point or purpose of the conversation? Is it to hurt or help? And at the end of the conversation, what would you like to have happen? Is there an action step to take? Constructive conversations feel good. They are empowering and have the effect of leaving people a little better off from having participated in them. Become the kind of person who takes your time seriously and who takes your words seriously!

5) Offer praise! It’s amazing what a few words of praise and acknowledgement can do to make people feel good. You want people to feel good after being in your presence. You want to be the kind of person people gravitate to because they know they will be uplifted by you, not put down or drained of their life-sustaining energy.

Learning how to be positive as you navigate through life is part of life’s lessons. And no matter what is going on around you, you control your inner environment and how you choose to respond to external events and situations. It’s your responsibility to become the kind of person you enjoy being and with whom others enjoy being around. It takes a true leader to walk a path different from the crowd. So when others are negative, stretch your boldness muscles and be positive in spite of what others do or think. It’s the only way to create a ripple of change. And we know that from small beginnings come great things. If each of us does our part, then slowly but surely, we will make a difference in our work environment and the community at large.

By Julie Fuimano

 

Creativity is a Round Process

In a world of fast change and fierce competition, the ability to find new and innovative solutions is necessary for your survival. Thinking power and creativity are your primary competitive advantages. Unlocking new ideas, and multiple possibilities begins with a “Round Process”.ResearchTo produce creative output, you need creative input! Collecting a variety of information, without worrying how it fits, is the foundation of the research phase.

-Explore your environment for new ideas
-Seek inspiration in nature
-Develop abilities and talents, enhance your education
-Analyzing data and historical trends

Squidoo.com is a Great Starting Point for Research

Originate

The second step is the most fun, because in this phase, everything is possible. Bring together team members and peers for a short, but lively session of Originating. This process works well with a diverse group, people with very different skills, personality styles and experience

-Brainstorm and “what-if.”
-Generate many, many ideas
-Use your imagination, think, ponder, daydream

Unite

As you review the ideas you have generated, you select a few to explore in greater detail. As you embrace these ideas, you unite related concepts, look for connections and ways to build on the ideas of others.

-Borrow ideas from others
-Invent and innovate
-Make decisions

Nurture

In the next phase, you refine and improve your ideas. By identifying and eliminating obstacles you nurture the best ideas, giving them the chance to blossom and grow.

-Objectively evaluate an idea
-Reject what doesn’t work
-Simplify the over-complicated

Do-It

Finally you must commit to a course of action. In the Do-It phase you make the decision to go forward, and never give up.

-Market your idea
-Deal with critics
-Survive success
-And Begin Again!

Bring Creative Thinking to Your Organization!
By Lorraine Ball