Personal Strength on Mt. Everest

A late January weekend and one WHOLE day spent in front of the TV! Seems like a waste, but we tuned in Everest: Beyond the Limit(three season’s worth!) – and it wasworth it. This Discovery series had everything: stimulating, edge-of-the-seat examples of leadership, teamwork, individuality, compassion, perseverance, fortitude, failure, astonishing success, humility, courage, self-confidence, gratitude, effort, tolerance, commitment, responsibility, patience, decisiveness and more.

Discovery filmed teams making the Mt. Everest summit approach from the famous south side, but also from the north side of the mountain. These people invested months – and a great deal of money – in the dream/obsession/goal of summiting the world’s tallest peak. Their reasons for taking this on were different, the people themselves were very different, but each was determined to make it. One man was 71 year old, others live daily with physical disabilities, one man was raising money for a cause close to his heart, most were “regular” folks who had determined this was something they had to accomplish!

While summiting Mt. Everest wouldn’t be my particular dream at any age, it’s always mightily inspiring to watch others working toward something they really want – what they’re willing to contribute, how they’re willing to devote themselves and how they endure unspeakable hardships. Each person also learns something about him/herself through this process; after all, you’re facing yourself in some grueling situations, it’s life and death, so how do you behave?

I could stop here; just watching the series impressed me so much I woke this morning reliving some of the climbers experiences. But I also found myself thinking about the expedition leaders – these were the experienced climbers whose job was to “see the big picture” and manage communications, weather forecasting, coordination of sub-teams, guides and Sherpas. The leaders didn’t actually make the climb – they’d done that many times, but they oversaw all aspects of their teams’ experience; in fact their leadership was vital.

Climbing Mt. Everest has changed dramatically from the phenomenal feat accomplished by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953 – today there are hundreds of climbers in any one short season and those who plan to survive usually use a commercial outfitter who provides the radio communication, climbing guides, indispensible Sherpas, safety ropes, ladders and weather forecasting from a base camp. As I said, the leader is below the climbers to see the big picture – lots of tension, nerves and finding a balance between “allowing” a team to continue or recalling a team or members for any number of reasons.

The leader is in charge, he’s there to provide expert advise, but after all, he’s not on the climb and cannot force climbers to do as he recommends.

As I thought about all the strengths we saw exhibited in this series, I mentally tallied the Personal Strengths ProStarCoach has built into it - strengths any one us can work to improve whether we ever climb Mt Everest of just deal with the daily challenges life throws our way. We all need the strengths I listed earlier: leadership, teamwork, individuality, compassion, perseverance, fortitude, failure, humility, courage, self-confidence, gratitude, effort, tolerance, commitment, responsibility, patience, decisiveness (and more!) and that’s the beauty of ProStar – it’s an online development system that structures exercises and provides resources for each of us to select and work on our personal growth – check it out here and use the 15 day FREE pass to explore the system. You  never know what challenge you’ll decide to take on in this life – get yourself prepared!

A Successful, Happy Life - It Takes More Than You Think

"A Successful, Happy Life - It Takes More Than You Think"

Read Dr. Denny Coates' insight into what it takes and why to be successful and happy:

"... Failed careers, failed marriages, and worse...

It happens all the time.

The reason is simple. To build strong relationships and prevail against adversity, a person needs to develop skills and strengths that are almost never taught in the home or in schools. This model illustrates the areas of ability a person needs to develop..."

When you look at ProStar Coach, you'll see the connections and the HOW-TO's of developing personal strengths and people skills - for all aspects of your life.

Your Life Bank Account

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each  morning by eight o'clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved  perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. 

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After  many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled  sweetly when told his room was ready. 

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description  of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.  "I love it", he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just  been presented with a new puppy. 

Mr. Jones, you haven't seen the room; just wait. 

“That doesn't have anything to do with it,” he replied. 

“Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. 

Whether I like my room or not doesn't depend on how the furniture is  arranged ... it's how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it.  'It's a decision I make every morning when I wake up.. I have a choice;  I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the  parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful  for the ones that do. 

“Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I'll focus on the new day  and all the happy memories I've stored away.. Just for this time in my life. 

“Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you've put in. 

"So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank  account of memories!”

We’re all still depositing. 

Remember the five simple rules to be happy: 

1. Free your heart from hatred. 

2. Free your mind from worries. 

3. Live simply. 

4. Give more. 

5. Expect less. 

Getting Ready for the Dance!

Workplace learning is becoming increasingly informal and more social, with the integration of Social Media tools. All this is changing the traditional classroom, event-based training approach to one of more user control.

To keep pace (or set the pace!) training professionals must become facilitators of a new learning process by integrating social media into their training activities. For example, Learning 2.0 means more collaboration, learner-to-learner connections, and the ability to contribute to a vast body of organizational knowledge so that workers can easily access 'learning in real time' and become more effective.

"Getting Ready for the Dance" means preparing now for new models of workplace learning. In their book, The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop and Keep Tomorrow's Employees Today, Jeanne C. Mesiter and Karie Willyerd wrote:

"Thriving in the 2020 workplace will require organizations to understand the various needs, expectations and values of all the generations. Companies will need to start making some fundamental changes in how they design jobs, careers, learning programs and even benefits."

Join Vital Learning for our next webinar, "Learning Becomes Social: Getting Ready for the Dance with Vital Online 2.0" on Thursday, September 15 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time (1:00 p.m. Central, 12:00 p.m. Mountain, and 11:00 a.m. Pacific)

Registration Link

Read the entire article

How Could This Be Handled? #3 Resolving Team Conflicts

This edition's Leadership Problem: Resolving Conflicts within the Team

How many types of conflict can a team leader have to deal with among team members?! At least as many as there are people on the team...and more!

Conflict can become a daily happening without warning, disputes flaring up unexpectedly and over things that will surprise you. Very often the conflicts seem trivial, based on nothing! But of course, they surface from somewhere don't they?

Maybe it's been a long-simmering-below-the-radar dispute between two team members, perhaps someone came into work that day with lingering issues on the home front, someone new has joined the group or assignments have altered - pick any topic, any situation and it has the potential to cause disruption among team members!

Read the entire article

How Could This Be Handled? Issue #2: Motivating Team Members

Sometimes it seems impossible to reach certain team members – you may even wonder why they get up to come to this job each day because they seem so uninterested and removed.

But…they work here and you have to unlock the door that gets them turned on about working here!

Volumes have been written on this topic, yet the bottom line always comes back to “you can’t motivate others, they’re motivated by their own desires”.
 

If that’s the case, what are you, the team leader, supposed to do to light the fire in some team members?

Well, you CAN - and as an effective leader, you MUST - address the situation!

Read more here…

How Could This Be Handled? Issue #1: Burned-out Team Members

How Could This Be Handled? #1

This is the first issue in a series of Leadership Dilemmas.

Today’s quandary is about dissatisfied and burned-out team members:

“Your team members are working hard, but you're seeing signs of frustration and discontent. As you've talked to team members one-on-one the theme is best summed up as "I'm tired, I'm burned out and I just feel stuck.’”

Read the entire article here

The Age-Old Question: What is Great Leadership?

I’m reading an engrossing book on leadership: Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders by Rajeev Peshawaria – in the intro he poses the question: “Of all the bosses you’ve had in your career, how many would you call truly great leaders? For the purpose of this question, a great leader is someone who inspired you to show up every morning and do your best possible work, someone who made you believe in yourself, someone who genuinely cared about your success, and someone whom you wanted to follow willingly.”

 

Peshawaria’s comments following  this question are sadly revealing about the lack of great leadership, but his book goes on to outline some outstanding leadership practices.

 

I also like his statement: “Effective leaders take it upon themselves to dig deep and find solutions to the most pressing problems of their times. They feel deeply about the inadequacies of current reality and decide to do something about it. They do not wait to be appointed to important positions before doing so. It is their deep desire to change the status quo than makes them leaders.”

 

Well said! Anyone with some work history knows that leadership isn’t about titles and positions, but about influencing others.  His core principles of leadership are explored at length in the book and I suppose I like it because it meshes with my beliefs about leadership. He begins with how important it is to clearly define your purpose and values.

 
Coincidently, I’ve been following an interesting discussion on LinkedIn where someone posed this question: “If there were one 'master problem' that, if solved, would enable leaders to really breakthrough to new levels of sustainable business and prosperity - what do you think it is?” It's interesting how many responses are tied to crating a culture where values are continue to grapple with a very old question: “What is great leadership?”

Give the book a try.

Circle versus Graphs?

If you use DiSC Profiles, which is easier to remember, the graph or the circle version? People are finding the circle has more personal meaning and application – learn more…


Read the next installment in the Everything DiSC Blog: http://blog.everythingdisc.com/527/disc-circle-disc-classic-graph-memorable/#more-527

Leaders as Teachers

So often leaders forget – or overlook – their role as teachers, but teaching is a BIG part of successful leadership. Ken Blanchard’s current newsletter has  great article on the topic  - it begins with:

"A lot of leaders are disappointed these days. They work hard to create clear messages to their people but often, when they follow up at the end of the month, they find that little has changed. It’s a pattern that Vicki Halsey, Vice President of Applied Learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies, has seen many times.

"It’s because leaders confuse telling with teaching," she explains. "If leaders want people to develop new behaviors, they have to become better teachers of what to do and how to do it."

Most leaders are trained in how to succeed in business. They know how to create strategic initiatives, allocate resources, and implement plans. But few leaders have been trained to teach..." Read the entire article here

...A Fire To Be Kindled"

We completed watching the mini series From the Earth to the Moon last night and one of the flight directors offered this quote from Plutarch: “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” He was explaining why the later Apollo missions had to be so much more than just getting to the moon, they had to have scientific purpose, a search for the origins of our own planet and I was very taken with the quote – had never heard it before. But you can Google it easily enough!

In this particular episode, it was delightful to watch the astronauts learning geology, asking new questions, developing an awareness of the landscape around them; it was equal delightful to watch the geology professor break through their minds, to light the fire – and it paid off in what the astronauts brought back from the moon.

 “…a fire to be kindled” -  I suppose that’s why our ALD mantra is You Never Stop Learning – we hopeto  kindle fires, not just fill vessels.

Don't Be Fearful of Trying a New Behavior

Most of us know how uncomfortable it can be to try a new behavior – think of any sport where you’ve developed habits, but it turns out they’re the wrong habits to really good at the swing or the return.

It’s the same for any new behavior we attempt to put in place – change is tough! Whether it’s:
• quit smoking
• rising earlier each day
• going to gym steadily
• giving feedback to your team members more regularly
• listening with intent to hear
• being more patient with others

– wow! The list can go on and on, can’t it?

To help make the transition, listen to my colleague, Meredith Bell’s video:

How to Go from Awkward to Automatic When Learning a New Behavior

You’ll appreciate the tips. I can also suggest that you sign up for the Golden Eggs Ezine where this kind of useful counsel is always provided – Golden Eggs arrives weekly, is free, yet worth so much more. Please register here and begin enjoying the golden nuggets.