The Phone Call

"Hello, this is Frank. <silence for 15 seconds> What's wrong? When did it start? How bad is it? Is it really that bad? Well, let me take a look and I will get back to you. Goodbye." This was a real telephone conversation that I overheard many years ago when a programmer I worked with received a phone call - obviously from an irate customer. It didn't sound good. Sitting at the desk behind Frank was Derrick. Derrick was new. Derrick had just moved his first project into production. Derrick was sitting at his desk, his chair spun around, staring at Frank, his eyes like saucers, and fear etched on his face.
Frank hung up the phone, turned around, looked at Derrick, and with a straight face and a monotone voice said, "It was a wrong number." What a classic "gotcha!" The look on Derrick's face was priceless!
Why am I telling this story? Because too often we take our work too seriously. We should be able to have fun at the workplace. I know there are places and situations where joking around is totally inappropriate. But the workplace shouldn't always resemble a morgue. 
Think about it. When you go out with your friends, don't you joke around with them? Don't you look forward to those times? What if our workplace was like that? What if we built friendships like Frank and Derrick built (they became best friends very quickly)? Frank made work fun. And trust me, he received more "gotchas" than almost anyone at work! Our unit had fun, morale was high, and productivity was even higher! We all looked forward to going to work. Doesn't that sound like the kind of job you would like to have? We can have that kind of job - if we just loosen up a bit, strive to build relationships that turn our co-workers into our friends, and have fun together while we work.

An Attitude of Gratitude

They were a small community. They moved into a land much different from their homeland. They were ill-prepared for the hardships they encountered. They were cut off from their families and friends back home. At the end of their first year in their new home, nearly half of their population had died. To say they lived in a challenging situation would be an understatement. They were out of their comfort zone and barely surviving. What would be their next steps? What would you have done?

The Pilgrims decided to celebrate with a feast of Thanksgiving. They thanked God for helping them survive and providing for their needs in their new home that first year. In spite of losing half their population, they gave thanks! Instead of wallowing in their misery and whining about their misfortunes, they chose to be thankful for what they had. They had an attitude of gratitude. It strengthened them for the coming year. 

In the midst of all our difficulties, what can we find to be thankful for this year?

Happy Thanksgiving!

8 Seconds

8 seconds. It is amazing how powerful 8 seconds can be. I finished reading a book last week written by a recovered drug addict. One of his secrets to beating his addiction was to simply get his mind off his cravings for a short time. A psychologist had told him that if he could resist the urge to act on his impulse for 8 seconds, that it would go away. So he taught himself to shift his mind from the addict's impulse for drugs to some positive image for just those few seconds. And, he said, the urge would usually leave. Of course, there were the occasional, and stronger, urgings that didn't work for and required some additional help; you will have to read Josh Hamilton's "Beyond Belief" to get the whole picture of his experience in breaking the addiction.

That little "8 second" rule got me thinking. Maybe our mother's suggestion to "count to 10" before saying anything when angry really works. Could we use the drug addict's 8-second rule to help us deal with our temper? Could we use the 8-second rule to help us with "snack attacks"? Could we use the 8-second rule before responding to that flame-mail? Could we use the 8-second rule before we roll our eyes or exhibit other negative body language? Where else could we use the 8-second rule? And what would be the positive outcomes of using the 8-second rule?

Take A Risk, Hit A Home Run

David Freese hit a walk-off home run in the 11th inning last night to give the Cardinals the victory in game 6 of the World Series. Earlier in the game he had dropped a pop fly that most Little Leaguers would have easily caught. There is a lesson here for us. David Freese knows that he will fail often during a season. He knows that there is a good chance he will fail often even during a single game. He knows that the top hitters in baseball fail 2/3 of the time, yet they still go to the plate and take their swings. They still take the field, even though they openly acknowledge there is a great risk of failure. Fear of failure is not an option for a professional baseball player. When he begins to fear failure, his career is probably over.
What if we approached our jobs the same way? What if we were not afraid to take a chance? What if our manager continued to put us in the game, even after we had failed once? Or twice? Or three times? What would happen? Would we see more innovative ideas? Would we see a work force that was more comfortable with adversity? Would we see more people learning from their experiences and gaining confidence that they can persevere and even win? I think so!
Does that mean we don't try to manage the risks? Of course not! Baseball teams manage their risks very well. They practice and practice and practice before they take the field. There are six weeks of training before the season. The players take batting practice, fielding practice, and practice throwing EVERY DAY before the game. They scout the other team to know what to expect and prepare accordingly. They put together a game plan, but know it will likely change during the game. The manager watches each player carefully and puts them into the right situations to give them the greatest chance of success. All of that is to manage the risks.
We will never hit the game-winning home run sitting on the bench. We have to prepare to win, practice often, and take risks if we are going to win. Wayne Gretzky once said, "You miss 100% of the shots you never take." If we are going to win, each of us needs to get off the bench and take our best shot!

Rekindle Your Passion

Gas for the car. Food for the body. Electricity for the home. These all provide the power for the object that needs it. Without gas, the car won't move. Without food, the body dies. Without electricity, few things in our home will work. Without passion, our jobs are boring and unfulfilling.
Passion provides the greatest incentive for our work. It helps us get up in the morning and look forward to the the day. It keeps us motivated when the job is not going the way we would like. It motivates us to higher levels of quality and productivity. Passion truly is the fuel that keeps our engine running at work!
What do we do when demotivators hit us in our jobs? What happens when imperfect people (which are all of us!) say or do something that hurts? What happens when we are passed over for the promotion we thought we deserved? What happens when the hours are long and the stress levels are rising? We must return to our passion and let it refuel us to keep us motivated.
We can feed our passion by taking a look backwards. Remember how excited you were when you started your new job? Why were you excited? Didn't you feel a passion for the work? Didn't you see how this job was a good fit for your skills and abilities? Weren't you focused on how your job piece fit into the larger company puzzle to serve the community? Going back and remembering can help refuel our passion. In our day-to-day routines, we often forget what was once obvious in the beginning.
We can also feed our passion by counting the benefits the job has for us. Obviously it brings money into your family; hopefully the job has other benefits too! Do you have some good friends that you wouldn't have known without this job? Have you learned some new things that you would not have known? Have you seen other people's lives improved directly or indirectly from your work? Counting our blessings can refuel our passion.
Speaking of seeing others lives improved, I believe the best way to light our passions is by taking our eyes off ourselves and focusing them on other people. When we strive to be helpful to others, when we are encouraging others, when we focus on being for others what we would like them to be for us, we will find a stronger passion than we dreamed was possible. I don't believe our jobs are ever about "us"; every job is about serving others. Regardless of our job or title, we are serving someone.
Refueling our passion rarely is a one-time event. We may rekindle some passion for our job, only to have a demotivator hit us and we are in danger of losing it again. Like anything worth having, passion needs to be constantly rekindled and nourished along. Maybe we should take a few minutes at the end of each day to look back, count our benefits, and consider how we have helped others. Maybe that would help us keep our passions high, which will result in higher job satisfaction, higher productivity, and better quality in our work. Come to think about it, those results ultimately lead to promotions, more responsibility, more recognition, and so on - all things that further fuel our passions and make the job more enjoyable!

What Are You Reading?

What are you reading? Reading is one of the most powerful tools we have to change our lives and the direction of our careers. We are blessed in this day and age to have a ready supply of books available to help us resolve problems in our life, to give us expert advice on our careers, and to keep us motivated when our will power is starting to fade. No other generation has had the quality and volume of books so readily available to the general population.

What we read can help us improve our lives - or it can simply entertain us. If our reading focus is strictly fiction, then we will be entertained - that is the intent and end result of a good novel. I like to compare reading a novel to eating cookies. It is nice to eat cookies every now and then, but eating too many of them makes me fat. Eating cookies is not a part of my regular diet anymore. Instead, vegetables and fruits have risen significantly in value to me as I get older and my metabolism slows down.

Reading books that serve as guides to better living and a better "me" are like fruits and vegetables. They don't taste as good at first, in fact they seem boring. But the more you partake of them, the better they taste and the better you feel. 

I am not saying to completely forgo all fiction; they fulfill an important need for recreation (meaning to re-create, or re-energize). So I read fiction when I am on vacation or over a long holiday weekend. But the rest of the year is for the good stuff - the fruits and veggies of the printed world!

I have become very intentional about my reading, and I will share my selection process in a later posting. But suffice it to say, that I read on topics that I know will assist me in various aspects of my life - parenting, marriage, work, spiritual, and personal improvements. 

The first suggestion I have for someone who knows they need to make changes in their lives is to put away the fiction for a while and take up a book that will impact your life in a positive way. A good book provides vital nourishment to your soul. Dig in and feast on a good book to find the secrets to a better life that is waiting for you!

Our Circle Of Influence

Everyone has a circle of influence. There are people who are your friends, your family, your co-workers, neighbors, fellow church members, etc. who listen to your opinions. I have never yet met someone that has zero influence on others.

So the question is not if we have any influence, but what kind of influence do we have? Are we influencing people to help them better their lives and the lives of others? Or are we a negative influence, a weight that is holding people back or pulling them down?

You know the kind of person I am referring to. There are people in our lives that want to drag us back to "reality." They discourage us from dreaming of what could be. They pigeon-hole us into categories with expectations of failure based on their categorizations. I hope and pray that you aren't one of those people! Or are you? Someone is, because we all know people like that.

Do you feel compelled to point out the mistakes of others? Are you the one who is constantly "setting the record straight?" Do you enjoy playing the role of "devil's advocate?" If so, you might be a negative influencer. Is that really the type of influence you would like? If these questions hit a little too close to home, ask someone you trust and who will be honest with you if you have a tendency towards the negative side.

While the world needs the occasional devil's advocate, it shouldn't be our only role in life. It is far better to be the type of person who is a positive influence on the lives of others. This person will have no shortage of friends. This person will be sought after for advice. This person exalts in seeing others grow and succeed!

A positive influencer will help people overcome barriers instead of erecting barriers. A positive influencer will help guide others to success instead of sabotaging their efforts. A positive influencer will encourage others to reach new heights instead of raining on their parade.

Sometimes we get jealous of others who are able to influence the power brokers in our world. We wish we could have the position and the power they seem to have. Rather than being jealous of others, take a look around you. Who can you influence in a positive way? I believe that when we become a positive influence on those around us, our circle of influence will continue to enlarge. As our circle of influence grows, we might be surprised to find who is listening.

Leadership Lesson #1

It wasn't pretty. As a new supervisor, I thought I knew what leadership was. After all, I had over 20 very productive years in IT. I had observed some good supervisors and some bad, and some very bad. Surely I had learned a lot from all that observation! Wrong.
We were having a team meeting and I had just finished a sentence that began with, "It can't take that long to..." when one of my team members exploded and started to leave the room. I had become a bad supervisor. I expand »wasn't listening to what my experts were telling me. I was assuming my strong technical background of the past had given me some kind of infallible wisdom for the future. This episode got my attention.
I suddenly realized that I needed help to learn how to lead people. John Maxwell, Ken Blanchard, Peter Drucker, Paul Glen, and Stephen Covey came to my rescue. The books these guys wrote were gold to me. They helped me understand what I was doing wrong and change my way of thinking. They helped me understand that leadership is more than knowledge, it is caring about people. Truly caring - not just paying lip service. As Maxwell is fond of saying, "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
I learned a valuable lesson that day. Strength and knowledge in one career field doesn't translate into strength and knowledge in another. Being an expert in one field of knowledge doesn't automatically make me an expert in another. My challenge to all leaders today is to assume you don't know everything and trust the wisdom of those that know what you don't know. That is a key to gaining trust between leaders and their teams.

Stuck In A Career You Don't Enjoy?

Louis L'Amour is my favorite writer of western novels. I read all of his books that were published before his death in the late 1980's. He lived a very interesting life that holds some lessons for us as well. Louis' family lost their home in ND after a bank failure. They moved from place to place, following the work that was available (like skinning cattle and baling hay), doing what was necessary to survive. Louis had little formal education.

When Louis was older he kept up the family tradition of moving from place to place, working wherever he could find work. One thing separated him from others in his situation though - he discovered public libraries. He read every moment he could and provided himself an education that his family had been unable to provide. Once he began writing, his life was forever changed.

If a poor migrant worker can educate himself using public libraries, and become amazingly successful in the process, what is preventing you from reaching your dream? Don't feel like you are "stuck" in a career that doesn't fit you. There are ample opportunities to attain your dream using resources that are readily available, and often even free. Wayne Gretzky once said, "You miss 100% of the shots you never take." Take your best shot.

How Do I Compare?

Our American culture is obsessed with keeping score. We track the scores of our favorite teams on our cellphones. Businesses are rated against similar businesses. My family regularly checks the user and critics ratings for movies before we go to see them. We keep score on everything!

What about our career? Do we keep score on how we are doing in our career path? I know, we like to compare ourselves against our co-workers! Usually. I don't think the best way to keep score of our success is by comparing ourselves to other people though. And it's not best to compare our success by our title or salary. Those measures never really produce long-term satisfaction. 

A better question to ask yourself is: "Am I progressing towards my full potential?" We are all unique individuals with different talents, likes, dislikes, education, etc. So comparing ourselves to others is fruitless! The only person we should compare ourselves to is the person we are capable of becoming. That is the score that matters. Imagine your full potential as a whole person, not just technical ability. What is your potential in every facet of your life? Where are you now in each of those areas? How can you grow in each area? Who can help you grow in each area? These are just a few questions to grow on.

The New Comfortable

We are certain we know our limitations. With the help of our critics, we have learned very well what we can do and what we cannot do. We have listened to the experts tell us what is possible given our race, our education, our heritage, our IQ, etc. We have listened to family and friends who didn't want to see us fail, so they told us to "face reality." All our lives we are told what we can't do.

I read a biography while on vacation last week, "Unbroken" - which is about Louie Zamperini, an American POW in the Pacific Theater. The story of what he was able to endure and accomplish was remarkable! Clearly, we don't know what the human soul is capable of accomplishing. Clearly we underestimate our limitations.

It is good to set goals in our lives. People who set goals, and write them down, are far more likely to achieve more than those that don't. But don't assume the goal is your limitation. It is not! As we push ourselves beyond our comfort zone, we create a new comfort zone. What was once frightening to consider becomes the new comfortable. But we should never remain comfortable for long. To remain comfortable is to settle for less than our potential.

To achieve what looks impossible, we have to bust out of the comfortable.