Over 30 years ago I had a conversation with a teenager that caught me completely off guard - and reminds me of a valuable principle to this day. While I have a very well-honed skill for catching people doing things wrong - if I want to be an effective leader, I need to catch people doing things right. I work on this every day, with clients, peers, and bosses - greatly because of the jumpstart this conversation gave me.
Cultivating a spirit of gratitude makes life more fulfilling and meaningful. But have you thought about how YOU can cause someone else to be grateful? There are lots of ways to enhance the lives of others--one of the most valuable of which is to give them your attention.
Not long ago, two close friends of our family, Terry and Jacqueline, thoughtfully shared that their lifelong passion for antiquing as a small business had changed. More specifically, the couple observed and explained that over the last few years that their business had seemed to transition from finding and providing rarities that people from around the world sought and would purchase to add to their own personal collections, to a growing line of inquiries in which individuals who were intrigued by a unique piece from the past only wanted a picture.
Choose to make the decisions that will take you to the end that you have in mind. That means being proactive, not reactive about life and what it might present to you. The wisdom of Winnie the Pooh in the 2018 movie Christopher Robin is useful on this point. Winnie The Pooh: I always get to where I'm going by walking away from where I've been.
A topic that has been discussed a lot this week in the office with my clients is employee engagement and business results. Employee engagement is the degree to which employees demonstrate commitment, belief in organizational values, pride in their employment, and motivation to excel. When organizations prioritize employee engagement, they are investing in the retention of successful employees and helps boost the organization’s overall level of performance.
I recently published a book, The 9 Dimensions of Conscious Success – It’s All About YOU!, based on challenges and lessons learned over my 40-year career. I wondered whether those who enter the workforce today face bigger challenges than those I had encountered when I launched my career journey. My research verified that, in some ways, the “deck is stacked” against the current generations.
If scientific thinking can be learned through application to large challenges, the hope is the behavior will be applied to all challenges without effort or thought. As the administration has embraced lean production and Toyota Production System, it is no surprise kata is the chosen methodology.
The position of the kicker on a football team has always intrigued me. Here is a player that for most of the time is practically anonymous. Many of the rival fans and neutrals watching won’t even know his name. He runs on, unannounced and unnoticed, a few times in the game just to kick the ball between the posts, and then disappears again, whilst everybody is generally consumed with the much higher profile players and the more dramatic plays.
In 2019, tech will continue to take over the HR industry and disrupt the way candidates are recruited, hired, and engaged in the workplace. You’ve heard of AI and machine learning. However, have you heard of robotic process automation, or RPA? RPA has also been reducing costs and improving data management for HR. Robotic process automation performs rules-based, highly transactional processes in HR departments that require little or no human judgment.
As the New Year begins and our work life starts to move into first gear, we can be tempted to think back to yesteryear and ponder the ‘if only...?’ question. Not that reflection is a bad thing mind you, indeed, done purposefully it can be positive. That said, there is a lot of wisdom in what Walt Disney had to say. Curiosity is what impels us to move forward.
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