I was teaching my youngest daughter Stephanie (please call me Steph - old habits die hard) how to drive stick-shift. She decided she wanted to learn and she went out, with my guidance, and bought a car with a manual transmission. Nice car, 2000 Hyundai Elantra with fairly low miles.
Watch out for that…tree
I am also teaching my 16 year old how to drive. So I guess I can put this on my resume, driving instructor. Patient driving instructor with nerves of steel. I’ve taught all four of my kids how to drive and two of them I also taught clutch usage. I must be a glutton for punishment.
But my youngest daughter is different. Her eyes start leaking at the slightest frustration or pressure. I say she’s frustrated, she prefers the term flustered. Either way, it is tough teaching her. Once the tears start rolling, the lesson is over. She can’t listen anymore and has blurry vision. Not a good combination when you are out in traffic.
She does well unless she starts to think about what she is doing. That’s when it all falls apart and it is like dominoes. Once the first tear forms, the foot/hand coordination flies out the window. (I should probably shut the window.)
So what lessons have I learned over the process?
Everyone learns differently. You have to feel your way when you are teaching anyone anything. It’s not one size fits all.
Gaining new skills works best when you are in a familiar environment. - Steph drives pretty well in parking lots at this point, but over the road just brings too much pressure.
Some people need a different teacher.
This last one is tough for me to take. I have lots of patience and am a good communicator (which mostly means being a good listener). I have lots of success in the past with teaching old dogs new tricks, so failure is not something I am familiar with - and it’s not something I want to get comfortable with. But I also can step back and say, you know, I’ve taught you the basics, maybe someone else can polish up the act.
If you ever learn karate or any of the martial arts, or ever watch classes, you see this principle in action. The green and brown belts usually teach the white belts and the black belts teach the more advanced classes. This structure could be useful in life. We all need different instructors, coaches and mentors as we progress or for different skills.
Teach what you know and be honest and admit when you need help or you need to pass on the student. My two cents for today.
Today on the Get Inspired! Project we had an interview with Susan Clark of “heartspark” and the one comment she made struck me and inspired me to write a post. Obviously if you’ve read any of my posts lately you realize that all the interviews are striking me and making me re-assess myself on many different levels.
It’s OK to Brag
This one touched on something I wanted to expand upon, and I’d love to get some dialogue going on this, Susan said, “we’ve really been socialized to hide our light under a bushel, so I encourage people to be boastful and give them permission to brag” and that is really something to think about. We all are told not to brag and to downplay our accomplishments, but we shouldn’t do that. If we are unwilling to shine our own light, jumping into the spotlight that we have turned on, what does that say or do to us?
Does that diminish what we’ve done? No, I don’t think so. But does it encourage us internally to repeat the behavior? no.
There is nothing like the rush that comes from recognition of what you’ve done. As an actor and an improv comic, I can tell you that the applause at the end of a scene is better than a paycheck, better than any traditional reward you can imagine, and being able to bow and through that action say, “Yes! That was me, I am good at this and you saw that”
But we don’t get that in everyday life, in the little and big moments of actions and seeing our efforts make a difference and we are told to downplay that?
One site I belong to Fit Connect, is an online fitness community and their tagline is “it’s OK to brag” I love it. And I think it is OK to brag to be proud of your accomplishments. You are magnificent in the things that you do. It’s lying to yourself to downplay that, and it takes away integrity and self-worth, I think.
is that title to grandiose? It’s my hope that it is true, so I will leave it.
I think back to a couple months ago when Toni first proposed the Get Inspired! Project. The initial thought came from going to see the movie Julie and Julia and focused on inspiration. We all thought we could add to the amount of light in the world by focusing on how people thought about inspiration, what inspired them and who they inspired (or thought they inspired)
What I think escaped us was the impact the project would have on us. I think specifically on Toni and me, especially. How is it that we didn’t see how contacting and interviewing these folks would impact us? I mean how empowering is it to contact someone and have them agree to an interview and have them very grateful to be a part of something that was only recently just a thought in our heads?
conducting the interviews has had many aha moments for Toni, I know that’s true, we’ve talked a bit about that and how the project is so much more than we anticipated, but I didn’t know my search for people would impact me so much. It’s crazy to think that world leaders and people on the leading edge of thought and inspiration are so in-tuned with what we are doing. To get a response back from Janis Ian or Noam Chomsky just humanizes the entire world. We are all just people and we all are looking at the same things and having similar dreams and everything.
And to have someone ‘unknown’ speak a few words, a mere 15 minutes, and that impacts hundreds or thousands of people. Amazing. The Internet has linked us and this project is just one small example of the good it can do We’ve had over 1100 unique visitors and over 65,000 hits in 18 days with no publicity and no marketing except word of mouth. we have some big hitters coming up soon, and they will add light and power, and that in turn shines the light on all the virtual unknowns who deserve exposure. I am blown away by the potential.
Do you really want to know? I mean really? Do you want to know what people in your company think? Many people in management say they want to know, and claim to listen, but how many get out on the floor and really get to the real meat? (or tofu for you veggi-saurus folks)
And even if you actually do care and you really do get down in the trenches how do you know that what you are getting is the real deal? The bona fide truth about what people are thinking? Honestly, you never really do. But some companies are working around this by doing anonymous on-line surveys with their people. In an on-line survey people can really speak their minds. Don’t believe me? Try going to a message board under the finance section of yahoo. I know when I worked for Carpenter Technology, based in Reading PA, there were scathing denouncements of the supposed heinous acts of management. And there were also “company men” lurking and posting opposing views. Sometimes you can get at the truth that way, and sometimes it’s just nonsense.
What I am really driving at are the legitimate surveys done by companies that allow their employees to give real feedback without the fear of reprisal. There are a great many companies that could benefit from tools of this nature, but unfortunately, don’t embrace the capabilities of the internet. - and just in case you wondered, no we don’t have an online survey package for sale, it’s just good information…: )
Whether or not managers want to face it, poor management is one of the most often quoted reasons for people leaving their employers. The reason behind that? Lack of skill dealing with people.
In this time of unemployment and recession that may be even more exacerbated. Some managers feel that the people who are working for them should feel lucky to have a job and that that situation entitles them to treat people more harshly. Guess what? Even in this time valued employees are still not easy to come by. Each and every one still deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Given enough ammunition at exit interviews a manager may find themselves the ones looking in from the outside.
A “good manager” is a role model and gives people inspiration, not persperation.
A successful manager will achieve quality results through the team they manage and will help the individuals on that team develop. This can be through education and training, or it can be through personal interaction that makes the person feel appreciated. Appreciation, as I have already discussed is all about respect - respect for the individual, the work that they do and the effort they expand.
If you ask most people about coaching, generally the first thing that comes to mind is sports. And that’s certainly valid. A second thing that comes to mind is the new lexicon of personal and business coaches that seem to grow as time goes on. Some of those have staying power, others seem to move on. But what most people don’t actively think about is that managers and supervisors are all coaches as well.
The difference is that they are usually untrained to some extent, and that can be remedied with the Organizational Development Edition at the PEOPLE Academy, Inc.
My favorite tool is the personal development bulletins and the one on coaching is no exception. A section on that particular bulletin goes into detail on coaching using The PEOPLE model™.
The PEOPLE model™ consists of:
P – Performance Identifying what good looks like (Both current and future)
E – Efficacy The power to produce the desired effect (Skills / Knowledge / Attitudes / Beliefs and their application)
O – Ownership Taking personal control (Accountability / Responsibility / Responsiveness)
P – Possibilities What’s possible? (Creativity / Possibilities / Continuous improvement)
L – Linkage Linking everything to the bigger picture (Aligning goals & Objectives / Needs / Wants / Motivation / Happiness)
E – Evidence Seeking evidence in order to validate (Knowing when it is worth it)
For more information on the PEOPLE model™ and its coaching systems look at our website
As a Six-Sigma trained black belt and a Lean Manufacturing coordinator for a steel mill, I got a great deal of first hand experience with continuous improvement in all its glory and downfalls. Some approaches seem to work better than others; that’s for sure, but all incorporate the basic sections of define, measure, analyze, improve and control.
Whenever we are looking at changing a process you have to consider the customer at the top of the list. I would define customer as the end user, but also as the next operation in the process. Often these two are overlooked as changes are being implemented and later people ‘downstream’ are heard from as the change impacts them.
This is part of the overall “internal communication” picture. Effective communication within the business is essential to continuous improvement. By disclosing performance measures, everyone understands what the business is trying to achieve and where it stands in relation to where it wants to be. Only if employees have this information will they gain commitment to and accountability for the way forward.
This in turn leads to the buy-in from the shop floor which is critical to the success of any system implementation. If you have buy-in from the employees and give them some level of control over the process you are sending the message that they have the authority to match their particular level of development and expertise.
Continuous Improvement is only one of the fifty topics covered in the personal development bulletins that are included in the packages available at The PEOPLE Academy, Inc.
Life is cyclical and as I get older I realize it more and more. There are highs (and in my life some really highs) and some lows (and I’ve dipped into extreme valleys) and somehow we weather the storm. I’ve had wealth and I’ve declared bankruptcy. I’ve been married and divorced and remarried. Marriages also have their ups and downs.
Last night I had a glimpse of something and it went right along with this “cyclical nature of life” theme. Very young in life, I had a tricycle. I graduated to a bicycle and experimented with a unicycle. As I aged eventually I got a motorcycle and traded up on those a few times. All those different cycles forgotten, rusted, sold, wrecked…and still in my memory. And the next generation starts anew. It seems like yesterday my youngest son was riding with training wheels and now he is ready for his drivers license test. Time flies. And if you are on a cycle of any sort, you are one with nature. It’s not like in a car where you are basically looking out a window at the world. On a cycle you are part of the world. If it has a motor it flies by more quickly, but still you smell the land. Pine trees, flowers, apple orchards, cow manure…not all good smells but all real. One with the world.
I am on another cycle in the midst of an up-swing in the sine wave. The important thing, I have found, is to never give up, never back down. I will continue to pedal my try-cycle, because I know as long as I try, I will have another upswing. I will persevere, to quote a certain chaplain, and I will prosper. How about you? Are you staying on the trycycle or do you need a push? Drop us a line if we can help.
The bottom line is that a manager manages people to perform tasks and achieve objectives. Beyond that you have to have ‘people skills’ so everyone working for you feels they are personally appreciated and important and their work is also appreciated. So how do you go about doing that?
1. Know your objectives - Unless you know your objectives clearly and precisely you cannot communicate them to the people under you.
2. Make sure team members know their objectives - Everyone should have well defined objectives and timelines so they know exactly what is expected of thm and when it needs to be completed. They should also have an idea of how their conribution fits into the ‘big picture’ so if priorities and deadlines shift, they have some idea of why things have changed.
3. Know each member of your team personally - As things ebb and flow in people’s personal lives it inevitably spills over into their work life. This is to be expected, and it should be minimalized as much as possible, but as a manager (and a human) you should be aware that sometimes their is that spillover. If you know each person personally (and it doesn’t have to be intrusive) it can help you to understand why your star performer has an off day or is distracted. People know when someone has a sincere interest and will appreciate your understanding.
4. Show interest in their output and be appreciative - It is easy to set objectives and collect results, but you still need to realize that peope want you viewing their work and showing genuine interest and being appreciative. The tasks are expected, after all that’s what they were hired for, but it only takes a half a minute to acknowledge it.
5. Meet one-on-one on a regular basis - This goes right along with the previous two points, but still bears saying. It is easy to make the daily or weekly comments and communications, but there needs to be ongoing regular meetings to make sure that everyone is on the same page and to ensure continued understanding. These don’t have to be long meetings - ten to fifteen minutes is generally enough time to touch base, but you also shouldn’t have meetings just for the sake of meeting. Have one or two specific items to talk about, and know the real purpose is to listen to what they have to say.
Years ago when I worked in the steel industry we would get a flyer annually on the in-house education process. This included workshops and training sessions designed to enhance our performance at work, but this also included health, fitness and specialized classes for general information and skill building. I remember taking MS Office, aerobics, general fitness, animal tracking and web surfing, but there were pages of offerings designed for personal and professional growth. The company used to have a path designed for you, but now, you need to plot your own way and try to stay on track.
These days it is almost unheard of for a company to offer any classes that don’t directly improve job performance, so this is in our own hands. I really got a lot of of one of the bulletins on the PEOPLE Academy, Inc website that talked about self-development. It gave eight areas to concentrate on to improve your standing in the eyes of those around you, and also general how-to self-improvement exercises. I wanted to talk a bit about a couple of those.
First, think success. You know that you are an asset to the company, but have you really dug down and listed all of the ways you contribute to it? This exercise really made me sit up and think, wow, I have been through a lot of training and have contributed on many projects. My list included going through Six Sigma Black Belt training, Lean Manufacturing enhancement workshops, Job Hazard Analysis training, ISO Auditor training and a few other items. Sometimes as you move along, you tend to downplay or even forget the trainings that you have attended and when you reflect and write them down, you realize the worth you bring to the table.
A second point was be aware of the contribution you make on a regular basis and keep that in mind as you carry on in your assignments. Again, it is easy to get sidetracked by tangents, but by keeping focused on your main objectives, you will be seen as an integral part of the projects you are involved in. Understand how you contribute to the success of the team and even though you may not get feedback from your peers and supervisors, they are aware of your efforts. Recognising your own contributions is an important part of attitude. If you are not getting much feedback, ask! It can be easy to think that your efforts are not being noticed, but if you ask for specific areas where you could make improvements or specific examples of successes, you may be amazed at what has been noticed.
I don’t want to make this blog entry too long, so perhaps I’ll visit the self development bulletin again sometime in the future to touch on the other five bullet points.
The PEOPLE Academy founders realized that, based on years of experience with direct client engagement, there was a missing piece in both business and life coaching that would connect PEOPLE. The missing element was a universal business development strategy or framework that could be easily understood and implemented by all types of businesses and indeed all people.<p>
The aim of the PEOPLE Academy was to create a powerful, impacting performance coaching system that could be easily understood and used by coaches and clients alike.
In this time of unemployment and recession that may be even more exacerbated. Some managers feel that the people who are working for them should feel lucky to have a job and that that situation entitles them to treat people more harshly. Guess what? Even in this time valued employees are still not easy to come by. Each and every one still deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Given enough ammunition at exit interviews a manager may find themselves the ones looking in from the outside.
If you ask most people about coaching, generally the first thing that comes to mind is sports. And that’s certainly valid. A second thing that comes to mind is the new lexicon of personal and business coaches that seem to grow as time goes on. Some of those have staying power, others seem to move on. But what most people don’t actively think about is that managers and supervisors are all coaches as well.
As a Six-Sigma trained black belt and a Lean Manufacturing coordinator for a steel mill, I got a great deal of first hand experience with continuous improvement in all its glory and downfalls. Some approaches seem to work better than others; that’s for sure, but all incorporate the basic sections of define, measure, analyze, improve and control.
Last night I had a glimpse of something and it went right along with this “cyclical nature of life” theme. Very young in life, I had a tricycle. I graduated to a bicycle and experimented with a unicycle. As I aged eventually I got a motorcycle and traded up on those a few times. All those different cycles forgotten, rusted, sold, wrecked…and still in my memory. And the next generation starts anew. It seems like yesterday my youngest son was riding with training wheels and now he is ready for his drivers license test. Time flies. And if you are on a cycle of any sort, you are one with nature. It’s not like in a car where you are basically looking out a window at the world. On a cycle you are part of the world. If it has a motor it flies by more quickly, but still you smell the land. Pine trees, flowers, apple orchards, cow manure…not all good smells but all real. One with the world.