Many learning stories come from youth and the experiences of charging into the world head first sometimes feet first and sometimes flat on our back. It is knowledge that can only come from the collision of innocence and reality; the best knowledge made more dramatic perhaps by the larger proportion of innocence back then.

One bright high school summer day while driving early to work at Santa’s Village (oh yes I have been blessed) I saw a clown standing in the parking lot of some retail establishment waving to the early commuters. He was a real clown of the circus variety with big orange hair, big red nose with big red shoes to match waving with big animated motions. I was impressed. Here was a real clown on his day off picking up a second job promoting the opening of some window shop; got to like a guy who loves his work.

Fulfilling life’s calling, doing what you need to do to make ends meet, second jobs all could have been enough life-learning for one day but what came next meant more. I should disclose that I love clowns. They make me smile; even the tragic ones. I was never traumatized by them as an infant having no older brothers or drunken uncles to taunt me. I know that I am one of the lucky ones.

It’s early on a beautiful summer morning windows down radio up flying to work and I see a clown on my horizon. Life is good. I am approaching the clown and in the groove. This being the mid seventies I do what so many of us did at all things cool – flash the peace sign. Two fingers in a V recognition that all is well with the present; a happy high school kid sharing a moment of work related bliss with this puritan work ethic clown who I had come to admire deeply in those few brief seconds.

As I flew by I felt connected; the waving clown and the peace-out kid. I passed him in a flash and seeking confirmation of my spontaneous humanity I checked the review mirror. What I saw freaked me out. Standing in the middle of the highway was my clown jumping wildly up and down throwing me the finger; actually two of them. I mean this clown was jumping up and down waving his arms from side to side back and forth in highly exaggerated ways – even for a clown. He was mouthing something too. Couldn’t hear but I could guess. I just stared at my rear view mirror as the jumping finger thrusting clown zoomed out to a little dot on the historical horizon.

My instant reaction was confusion mixed with a heavy dose of horrified. And then it dawned on me. As I was barreling down the highway approaching my clown to the left I flashed the peace sign with my left hand. What he saw was the back of my hand with two fingers raised from an angle that apparently let my middle digit extend a bit beyond the fore letting him know he should go do something unnatural with a balloon poodle; which of course was the farthest thing from my mind. But that’s the point.

I had my intention and no time to think about how it would be received if my intention delivery was flawed. Had I used my right hand it would be a wonderful clown day my hand showing flat against the widow with no angle issues impacting perceived meaning; perhaps.

I think about this a lot. Not a lot a lot but more than many other experiences. I wonder how the rest of his day went and whether it carried over to others. Did he stop waving or with less enthusiasm. Did it take a little piece of him away? Or did he have issues which triggered. I mean jesus I would feel terrible if this was the thing that threw his life over the edge. Maybe he wasn’t the happy clown I imagined but rather an unemployed plumber let go for his drinking broke in debt unhappy with his cheating wife and tired of visiting his oldest son in jail. These are the guys that burn down motel rooms with any family members they can round up that day. Or maybe he was just an ass. Andy the Ass Clown.

I learned a great deal in that moment about any number things not the least of which is that if you ever piss off a clown just keep driving. Do NOT look back just keep driving. Past your original destination if needed.

I also learned the unintended impact of actions regardless of their intent. I do think of the residual effect I might impart when trying to communicate, but certainly not enough. Much of dialogue is transactional – I tell you something of little consequence and you reply likewise; it’s the score, the news, the grade, the car. Sometimes it is more and it’s then that we need care. It is a habit hard to break and even more so when there is some disconnect between our own interpretation and theirs.

No, we really can’t plan for it all. But we can more than we do.

Jim

jim@thepeopleacademyinc.com

www.thepeopleacademyinc.com

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The “O” in the PEOPLE acronym stands for “Ownership.” Simply put ownership means that you own something and are responsible for it, and have control over it. In other words, responsibility and accountability. This is a piece of the puzzle that sometimes gets overlooked by management. People are given responsibility and are held accountable, but don’t have control of the process or parts of the process.

If you are given a car and unequivocally  told to get in the car and drive a certain distance, and the car runs out of gasoline prior to arrival, are you responsible? Perhaps. Can you be held accountable? Maybe. If you had no gas gage or means of purchasing fuel, did you have control of the situation? No. A simplified example to be sure, but it makes a point. (I hope.)

Unless you can have personal control over a situation, it is impossible to be held totally responsible for a given outcome. If you can’t control the process, then you can’t predict your responsiveness, either. Before someone can truly take ownership of a process they need to know who they need to respond to, what they are responsible for and levels of accountability.

These can be tough things to define, but until you really examine them, you can’t begin to solve barriers that may be holding you back.Ownership, properly defined, can help take your processes, employees and thus your business to the next level.

Performance is a common word, but one that people sometimes don’t really think about as they use it. A performance is something that you attend for entertainment, or perhaps you look for a car with high performance, and those uses have something to do with the way we use the word at the PEOPLE Academy, Inc.

A performance is the way someone does some action. Generally in a professional sense it means how someone does the actions involved in completing their defined job functions and that little extra that isn’t defined in the traditional sense. That means that both parties have to have a clear notion of what is expected to be achieved.

The phrase “what does good look like” is one way of defining what needs to be achieved. What does a good performance look like? What needs to be accomplished to have “good” results? What have those results looked like in the past? What do they look like now, and what do they look like moving forward?

This may seem pretty basic, but this is a shortfall that many companies have. Business owners and managers have one concept or idea about what good looks like and they know the driving force behind the reasons, but perhaps supervisors and team members don’t. They may have an idea about what is expected in their basic job function, but they may not have a handle on the “why” and the why is a huge part of motivation for the things we do.

Defining “what good looks like” is step one in the process. Having the tools to make it happen is the rest of the story.

Efficacy is the ability to bring about a change. That change can be something in your personal life or in your professional life. Efficacy is also the first E in the acronym of the PEOPLE model.

It is something that employers really need to look at when they assign tasks to folks. Often a team leader, a supervisor or any employee gets asked to perform certain tasks and they are doomed to failure right from the start because they can’t perform it. This inability to perform a task is because of a lack of “X”

“X” may be the authority to order a tool, be that tool a software package or even something as simple as a screwdriver. Have you ever heard “for the loss of a nail a battle was lost”? There were a lot of steps in between that nail and the potential victory, but what it boiled down to was the efficacy of a blacksmith to order the nail to shoe the horse, etc, etc.

If that smith would have been given the authority to order the nail, things may have gone an entirely different direction. do you have someone in your organization who should have authority over some aspect of a task they’ve been assigned? Or maybe that person is you and you need to have a discussion with someone higher up about your efficacy.

This is just a thumbnail view of one of the six aspects of the PEOPLE model, and hopefully just seeing this small portion gives you something to think about.

This has been the strangest year for weather. We’ve had t-shirt weather in December and now suddenly it is the frigid tundra and we’ve had our first snowfall of the year. It worked out that it happened the night I had a show to attend in Philly, so that was a pleasant ride. Swirling wind with large lazy snowflakes riding on it. My only consolation was that someone else was driving for once.

But there I was in the third row seat of a van, not really able to see where I was going, with the windows fogged up from the conversation and hot breath of six excited people.

My head is like that ride sometimes. I know I am headed in the right direction but I am not quite in control. That can be alright, and/or it can be really scary. That’s when it’s good to have people to reach out to. But what if you are the one that people are reaching out to, and you don’t know what to say or a direction to take? You can’t tell people what to do, you can only help to guide them through their thought process.

That’s easy enough if you have the right tools. I have found that going through the PEOPLE model framework helps to define that journey. To learn more, go here and sign up for the e-mail series on client exploration. This short series (7 e-mails) contains a lot of information on growing your business and talks about tools you can use.

I have been surfing a total of one time in my life. Wait, maybe you could call it surfing or you could call it practicing drowning with a large piece of fiberglass tied to my ankle and sticky goop stuck to my sparse chest hair. (if you aren’t familiar with board wax, don’t worry about the goop)

The odd part of my partial drowning was that I enjoyed it. I spent hours trying to stand on a board in the midst of waves and never succeeded beyond kneeling, but I ‘got it’ from a psychological standpoint. I could feel the ‘one-ness’ with the ocean and I could see that given time (and possibly a couple lessons) I could grow addicted to it.

But what would it gain me? Possibly some Zen-like moments. Definitely a feeling of mastery over something. Quite likely some core exercise for my body and stuff. Alone time, which I like sometimes. I’m not sure what else.

What would it cost? Well, easily a great deal of time and some money. Waves are free, but driving back and forth to them and buying a board, etc. Time I don’t really have abundance of. I have lots of temptations, but all things – new things – have me deciding what I am replacing. If I spend four hours a week on X, Y has to go. What can I eliminate?

You might wonder what this is really about. I’ve heard a lot about the ‘newest thing’ from Google, Google wave, and I’m not sure whether I should ride this one or not. I am weighing the pros and cons and asking everyone I know who uses it; what is the cost/benefit of this.

Life is like that. Best bet, if you want to get the most out of anything, get a tutor/coach/mentor/instructor to teach you. Learn the basics, at least, from an expert, and then go from there.

Now, back to surfing the waves on the ocean, maybe I made a mistake trying to learn on my own. Maybe I made a mistake thinking I don’t need any help (definite) and maybe the waves hitting the Texas shore aren’t the best introduction to the sport.

I’ve written about this before, and there are some days that the lesson really comes home to roost, so to speak. You can’t know too much. You just can’t. So young people who graduate from high school or college and figure that they are done with the books, either revise their thoughts or most likely end up in a dead end position wondering why their life is the way that it is.

Working on my knowledge base, this week I am reading Creating Magic, which is an insiders view of the management of Walt Disney World. The book was written by Lee Cockerell, who was the executive VP f operations at WDW. Interesting stuff. Without going into detail here, he gives ten common sense leadership strategies. (to get the details, read the book)

1. Make sure everyone matters..and that everyone knows it

2. Know your team

3. Let your team know you

4. Greet people sincerely

5. Reach out to everyone on your team

6. Make yourself available

7. Listen to understand

8. Communicate clearly, directly and honestly

9. Stand up for the excluded

10. Forget about the chain of command

Interesting stuff. The details are what really bring all of that to life and where all that comes from is Mr. Cockerell’s experience. By writing the book he is sharing things that he has learned over a lifetime of experience and, perhaps, I will gain some fraction of that knowledge by reading the book. That leverages my experience, which is awesome, in my opinion, because then I can use that, and my own experience, to leverage the experiences of those I work and interact with. That’s what it’s really all about.

Knowing where to go for the experience and the knowledge can sometimes be the most difficult part of a journey, and that’s why coaches add such value to life. Their experiences and guidance can make a huge impact on your life progress, whether that be in business or in your personal life. One thing that struck me while listening to the interviews on the Get Inspired! Project was that so many of these very successful people still have coaches to help guide them.

Even more interesting to me was the fact that they looked for very specific coaches that matched up with their needs at the time; again looking for the experience that would complement their own.

Food for thought. I know I’m thinking…

Have you seen that commercial where the kitten walks out soaked from inside the family’s Thanksgiving turkey? It was disturbing to me although not in ways obvious at first. If you haven’t seen the commercial it opens with the quintessential family seated for Thanksgiving feast; mother, dad, two kids and grandma. While the conversation centers on mom’s attempt at grandma’s famous stuffing the shot cuts to turkey shining brightly in the center of the table.

Well then! All of a sudden its sides start to move like it’s almost breathing! Such crazy intrigue from these crazy advertising types! No one seems to notice this save for the little girl who watches open-eyed as a tiny little kitten pet (I’m guessing it’s theirs) walks out from the bird’s cavity soaking wet presumably as testament to how good retread grandma’s filling really is. Though how a tiny little two pound pet ate six pounds of 160 degree stuffing is beyond me. This cat is not dead!

Then the little girl says something like, “That’s nasty” which of course it is NOT because the little kitty, alive, just walked out of a 160 degree turkey. That’s COOL! Now if the family had cut into the turkey only THEN to find the little kitten, well THAT would be nasty. So, after the girl utters her emotionless line, no one else says or motions or moves or nothing. Nothing; nobody says nothing! Then they look in the phone book for pizza to make an advertising point or something advertising clever. And who even uses a phone book anymore?

The point is, and this is why quintessential. They did absolutely nothing. Here they were faced with something, (if not horrific then perhaps unsettling or at the very least the kind of unusual that might spark a little water cooler conversation), that deserves a LITTLE emotion or a holy shit or pass me the gravy. Something! Give me something America. But sat there they did. Maybe they were waiting for the YouTube video . . . to comment upon . . . and share . . . and laugh . . . or otherwise emote.

In the old days if kitty eats turkey - kitty gone. AND the child whose responsibility it was to feed the kitten that day - he gone too. But life was simpler then; the advertising better . . .

Maybe we are too overwhelmed with the tragedy of the day, huge, seemingly insurmountable, issues which are presented to us through conflicting lies so that we may better “understand” (and when the lies become conflicting it may truly be time to shut it down). The systems themselves we do not trust and the system owners we trust less. We tune out helpless. We blame this seasonal apnea on the turkey but it is really much more than that.

My wonder is with the osmosis at a closer level; the effect on family friends community and work. Of course I see caring and sometimes a great deal. But I also see the uncaring and sometimes a great deal. ‘News’ is principally to blame for the ‘great deal’ and the world will be better when it is gone having been replaced by content washed through a magical filter squeezing out the slanted conspired lobbied bullshit then injected with truth, enlightenment and occasional wonder. (This machine represents a great business opportunity so if you know someone who’s good with tools and currently out of work . . .)

The world is filled with people trying to (and in some cases actually) making a difference. So perhaps there is hope on the macro level. I do believe in the all mighty power of the un-mighty and the indomitable spirit of the human. But doesn’t it seem more and more that there are a lot of stupid people running around; something is rubbing off and we need to act. There are opportunities to coach that caring back but we must be aware and we must be willing.

It takes no great effort to open a door for someone (even not older than you!). It is considered good manners to politely correct someone who is uttering total bullshit particularly if it is incessant uttering. And if you cannot politely tell them, well, then just turn off the teevee. Share your lunch with a coworker or better yet with someone who use to be a coworker. They may need it and the company more than you can imagine. Read stories to a kindergarten class. Take an elderly to their parked but hidden car in yours when you see they can’t. (And don’t even think of doing that when you see me wandering around the local grocer’s lot because I am not elderly, yet, and I have NOT forgotten where my car is I just like looking around sometimes – you know just to see what’s new . . . you know to . . . what was I talking about?). Oh there it is.

Coaching is about listening; to others AND yourself. So let’s all pay attention just a little bit more inside and out. Remember that it’s a season of Thanks as well as Giving. Try a little of each with those you know and those you don’t.

As you gather around the family table remember the spirit of the season and that while it IS considered polite to correct the utterance of bullshit, when it comes incessantly from your drunken brother- in-law it is probably best to follow the wisdom of the quintessential-ad-family; keep your mouth shut, do NOT look at one another, show no emotion and have another glass yourself because while that never leads to trouble it does make drying the cat more fun.

Jim

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimreece

I fell off a cliff once and ended up in the hospital. It was a learning experience to say the least. I’d heard of people who fell off cliffs and read accounts, but you know, it just wasn’t the same as being there, flying (briefly) through the air, and then really touching base with mother earth.

I had a similar experience yesterday. I’ve been “involved” with the PEOPLE Academy, Inc, for about a year, I guess, and for a lot of that time I didn’t fully ‘get it.’ It’s easy to say that the PA Inc is a collection of HR and coaching tools that you can refer to whenever you run into a situation you aren’t sure about. Maybe you have a client who has control issues or a co-worker who dominates meetings. You don’t know what to do, what steps to take, so you click on the PEOPLE Academy’s website and find a video teaching what you can do. Or you find a bulletin that covers it, or a step-by-step workshop document that helps you work through it.

Yeah, I got that. Tools you can use. Everyday. Tools that are focused on your clients and tools that can help you to resolve pretty much any situation. I get it. No, I really didn’t get it.

Now, maybe I do. We had a meeting the other night and I mentioned to Toni that I have been feeling a little, um, disoriented or uninspired or maybe just plain lazy. I was feeling a bit of “what’s the point” to a lot of things that were going on in my life and I really didn’t know why. She offered to give me a bit of coaching.

She sent me a worksheet on “The Change Cycle.” I didn’t even know what a change cycle was. I ride a Harley, so I’m familiar with motorcycles, but change cycles? Huh?

So I’m reading through this and it’s all about me being laid off and the steps that people go through when they are in a state of change. I’m reading that this is imposed change rather than internally driven change and I am going to go through 5 steps. I sort of felt like I was Ebenezer Scrooge visiting the 3 ghosts, but these were  5 steps. (not 12 steps, but 5) 1. Denial 2. Defense 3. Discarding 4. Adapting 5. Normalizing

These each come with details and descriptions and even a nifty sine wave showing my level of self-esteem as it dips and climbs, and I realize that this stuff is really accurate and I am in the third stage and working toward the fourth stage. I also realize this applies pretty much universally, which makes me think that I am not alone in all of it.

Toni then calls me and we talk about the transition that I am in and it all makes sense. She took this existing tool and it applied to me and is helping me to move along. Wow. I mean really. It’s like reading about falling off a cliff and then actually falling, or probably more like reading about climbing Everest and then doing it, since I am moving onward and upward and am done with falling.

Then I have the aha, thinking this site is full of these guidances. (which is not a real word, but I am using it anyway)  These are all tools that can be used to either take you or your client from point A to point B.

I get it.

How do you get things done in your organization? If you are just a cog in the wheel of industry perhaps all this means is what tools you use to get your job done; spreadsheets for cost management, or memo’s for communication, for a couple of examples. But if you are a manager or a supervisor, how do you get jobs done? Basically there are four management techniques:

1. Directing - As a leader, you tell people what to do. You say take that package, lift it with that crane, put it on that truck. Simple concise instructions with no room for confusion or leeway.

2. Coaching - You are still the one in charge. You are making decisions, and you are getting feedback and incorporating the information ‘on the fly’ and encouraging your people to take part in the communication process. This teaches them to be a part of the team and also helps to motivate them and builds confidence. The people under you, are under your control, but are contributing to the idea flow and the success of the operation.

3. Supportive Role - Your people know the tasks and you have provided them with direction. They can roll with any changes that come up and are confident with how they fit into the system and how they do their jobs. if something particularly unusual comes up, they know they can come to you for ideas, direction and support. You are also stepping up to the plate and providing additional support and services to make their jobs easier. You grease the wheels and keep the process flowing smoothly.

4. Delegation - You know your people can handle the tasks and the details. You are the quarterback ‘handing off’ assignments to the competent people in your organization. They take the task and run with it. They can handle it responsibly and are willing to take charge.

Every great leader uses all of these techniques. She picks the one that works in any given situation. Knowing your people and knowing the work environment helps you know the best route to take. Getting things done is simply a matter of knowing the task and the right tools to us.