is often not the real issue.
The employee struggling with a project could be facing a real challenge in their personal life.
A child that is getting in trouble a lot may have discovered that it’s a way to get a busy parents attention.
Our presenting issue is often not the real issue because we are not that good at reflecting on our behaviour or maybe not that skilled in naming our emotions.
It’s been well said that it’s easy to look like an angel until something ruffles your feathers.
Each year many businesses become insolvent, people lose their Jobs, stock markets have 50% of their value wiped in just days.
The last statistics I saw about marriage showed that a third of marraiges in Australia will end in divorce. Each of those would have expected to grow old together, but instead it they we’re left with a part of them broken.
People die every day that should have had many more years. Those people had family and friends that felt the impact of this lose very deeply.
It could even be a significant disappointment. However it happens, you will beat all the odds if you can get through life without finding part of it unravel.
However much it hurts, appreciating that this is normal helps to put it into perspective.
As Scott Peck so eloquently puts it at the beginning of his Book The Road Less Travelled
“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
One of my friends shared with me how in the the toughest year of his life, he really struggled with pornography. He explained that looking at porn made him feel OK in the midst of a very painful part of his life. He went on to explain that the OK feeling was very temporary.
Aformer colleague always had a glass of wine when she arrived home. She would sometimes talk about really needing looking forward to it today.
One of my mates works 10-12 hours a day, some times as many as 7 days a week, he is a tradie. He picks up and egg and bacon role, and flavoured milk every morning on the way to the job.
In each of these cases they said either, I need this, I deserve this, or both.
This is self medicating.
Most often self medicating is a symptom of pressure in your life.
Not all pressure is bad but sometimes our responses can be.
If we are showing the beginning of addictive behaviours, we do what we can to make an appropriate adjustment to save our selves from going too far down this road.
If your not able to do anything about the the pressure, acknowledging it is there can make a difference and gives you the chance to choose your actions rather than have them dictated to you by your emotional world.
Will you allow yourself to be ruled by your emotional world, or will you do something about it?
How are you at committing yourself?
I have a number of friends who have one foot out the door of their jobs, their position on a NFP board, even their role as the leader of their organisation.
It’s important to know when to pull the plug on a project, job, career, even a business, but It’s probably a long way after most of us start thinking about it.
The problem with entertaining thoughts of moving on is that it’s very hard to do so without putting one foot out the metaphorical door.
You turn up to work, but only half your heart does.
With one foot out the door you make different decisions. You’re thinking short term not 5 year plan.
It’s also a dangerous place to be because your not giving 100% and most likely your not acknowledging it.
If the reason you have one foot out the door is because your not enjoying your work, allowing yourself to disengage is probably the worst thing you can do as it will lead to a continual decline in your enthusiasm.
You’re more likely to enjoy something put every part of yourself into, if you disengage there is very little chance that things will get better.
Having one foot out the door is not fair on your colleagues, your boss, the organisation you work for and it is probably one of the worst career moves you can make.
Check yourself. If you’re not `all in` decide to commit.
If your genuinely not committed then stop procrastinating and do something about it. Be careful however, because most often the problems we experience in our workplace are problems that will follow us to our next Job, because they are created by us.
One of the coolest movies I’ve ever seen came out in 1999, it was called The Matrix!
In one scene Neo is in the Oracle’s waiting room and there is a young bald headed kid waiting to see the Oracle also. This kid is practicing bending spoons with his mind and says “there is no spoon”. Click here to watch the clip
We all have an opportunity to bend reality.
You may be able to change the course of events, a life, or a community.
At the moment I am organising a number of events and I have found that every day obstacles are thrown up that should mean that I can’t go forward with the plans. I have discovered that deciding that I am going to achieve my goal actually makes the rest of planning and negotiation much easier. I know that I have to get it done, and so failure is not actually an option. If we can’t do it that way, then we will do it this way, but we will do it. Before I came to this realisation I let every obstacle challenge the feasibility of the event, and so it was off again on again… and it was much harder to move forward.
I’m a big fan of waiting on and listening for Gods guidance, and I recommend you do to if you want to be involved with things of eternal significance (see Ecclesiastes 3:14).
The point here though is not to be fatalistic in letting obstacles communicate to you God’s will. Sure, sometimes God will close the door on something, but there are also normal life obstacles and of course if you’re having a real impact you could well have obstacles from other places too.
If you are about the work of change you are going to face obstacles, but it’s also how you make a difference.
Information is so easily distributed now with the Internet, ebooks, blogs, email lists, and with rss feeds. It is now possible for anyone to publish a book through Amazon, just upload your pdf and hey presto your a writer.
In the past publishers acted as the gate keeper of information distribution. Now days every one has an opinion and an outlet to share it.
For people like myself who work in broadcasting it’s creating quite a stir. The playing field has been leveled and everyone in traditional media is still coming to terms with it.
The person with the content people want to consume will grow an audience.
Back in 2005 4,045,000 watched the Australian Open Men’s Final, to this date it is the highest viewing audience in Australian television history.
There is a guy called Darren Rowse who pulls over 5 million readers to his three Blogs.
The communication world is changing. The playing field has been leveled, this is your opportunity…will you take it?
As a manager it’s an important question to ask.
If you have particularly driven personalities working for you, highly experienced employees, or people who feel they are under performing then you’ll find all three types of employee will try to set your agenda.
The driven personality won’t believe that you have a clear plan and solid direction, because like a backseat driver they don’t have control, and assume because they don’t, you don’t.
The employees who are highly experienced will see that you are not running your business with the values as they would and the difference will be seen as your lack.
The person who feels like they are under performing will point his finger at you in an accusing way, will be quick to see your short comings, and will tell you what you need to do, all of which is an attempt to divert your attention away from seeing them. They may come across confident, but they are really not at all.
In all three cases holding these employees to Key Performance Indicators will make a big difference in the long term to how they feel and how they perform. By holding them to KPI’s you will take the initiative back.
In the long term all these employees will experience wins as part of your team and this will translate to trust and respect.
You are the only person who should set your agenda.
George Lucas has just vetoed the creation of a life size replica of a AT At Walker by a star wars enthusiast. You might remember the Walker from the orginal star wars movies, particularly the scene of warfare in the snow.
George isn’t just a party pooper he understands about the value of controlling your brand.
Imagine if the project went ahead but the person developing the tourist attraction didn’t have the same level of care for the brand or same level of business skill, something that looks like a win for star wars fans could end up as a rust bucket and negative representation of a movie franchise that has developed a cult following. Too many projects like this gone wrong could severely damage the brand equity Lucas films has developed.
When it comes to your brand only trust others with your brand when your convinced they understand it and will provide the appropriate amount of care for it.
One of the most successful business people I know goes through every bill he receives with a fine tooth comb. Recently he noticed a power company had added a new charge, he questioned it, and they took it off. That one bit of investigation saved him $8,000.
It’s a great habit to get into and will help you keep a track of where your money is going.
One of the most valuable lessons I learnt from my time working for Kodak is that most stores empower their staff to make a discount or throw in a bonus if it means getting a sale.
If your business doesn’t empower your staff to ‘get the sale’ then maybe this is something you should consider.
Another way you can put this into practice, and possibly save a lot of money is by taking another look at all your bills. Go through them all one by one and see if you can get a better deal.
I just received a 45% discount on my business phone lines by doing just that.
