The Perfect Gift - The “giving season” is upon us – shed some joy where ever you go

Ah, the search for that perfect gift. The one that will light up his or her face, the one that will never be returned or regifted. It’s that time of year again when we know we should be celebrating the joy of the season but we’re stretching our budgets and our time, trying to make sure every person on our list gets from us what they want, what they expect or what they only dreamed of.

We usually end up feeling like we just couldn’t be enough things to enough people which leaves us fetched up on the eve of the New Year too exhausted to make resolutions, let alone keep them, and so deep in debt our first resolution has to be to work harder to pay off the credit cards before next December rolls around.

Not to sound like a cheesy ad for a cosmetic dentist but did you ever consider giving a smile? Doesn’t cost much (unless you’re shopping for the perfect smile instead of the perfect gift), doesn’t take but a second, and it doesn’t need fancy gift wrapping.

When I was very young and very naïve I had a little game I played. It was called “what will it take to make you smile?” I smiled at everyone I met, and sometimes that was all it took. Sometimes it took a little conversation, sometimes it took more than one encounter. But I was out to prove I could make anybody smile.

In my early 20’s I worked at an accounting office in Lawrence, Kansas. The partners all knew about my little game and they told me they knew one client that I could never win against – he would never smile for me or anyone else. This client picked up his accounting every month but he never came in, he just pulled up out front and honked and you had to walk his reports out to his van. He never joked, he never chatted, he never even cracked a smile.

I said, “wanna bet?”

For months I walked out to the van, accounting reports in hand. And for months Dr. B refused to smile. A vet who often had his dogs in the van with him, I thought he might warm up if I let him know how much I shared his love of animals. He thawed a little when he saw that his dogs liked me, but he didn’t smile.

From July to November I played my game, losing to his straight face every month but never giving up. Then came December.

December in an accounting firm is the brink of crazyness. Between month end accounting, year end accounting and gearing up for the impending tax season, holiday parties are an afterthought at best. So I hadn’t even noticed that Dr. B’s accounting was sitting on the shelf. And I certainly wasn’t prepared to look up from my desk and see him standing in the doorway, leaning heavily on a cane and holding a holiday tin in the other hand. He limped slowly to my desk and held out the tin.

He said he wanted me to know how much my cheerfulness meant, especially that last summer when his gout was the worst and he hurt all the time and was embarrassed to try to walk because it was so hard. And he said the chocolates weren’t much but he hoped I had a Merry Christmas.

And little did he know that the true gift he gave me that Christmas was validation – because he was SMILING!

In The Go-Giver the hero, Joe, learns that the Fourth Law of Stratospheric Success, The Law of Authenticity, says the “the most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.” Author Bob Burg recently posted a fabulously amusing and meaningful video on The Go-Giver Blog about validation and the gift that a smile can bring. (Do take time to watch it – it will make you smile which makes it worth the time.)

Dr. B did for me exactly what the hero of that video does for everyone he meets, and what someone finally does for him. He validated the value of ME. Thank you Dr. B – without you I may never have learned how valuable the gift of “me” can be. And worse, I may never have learned how much it means to the giver to have their gift recognized.

Dr. B and I continued to smile at each other. Lawrence is a big little town and we saw each other off and on until I moved away. Even now, every time I feel too tired or too stressed to even smile I think about the effort it took him to get out of his van, the pride it cost him to make his awkward way from the van to my office and the joy it gave me to know that the gift I gave him meant so much.

This holiday season, and throughout the year, no matter how tired or stressed we are please let us remember how powerful a gift we have within ourselves and how easy it is to share it. And let us not forget to give validation to all the people who have given us that gift. You never know when they will look back at that moment of validation we offered and it will be the one thing that puts a smile back on their face. And that is the perfect, never ending gift that you can give anyone any day of the year.

Roadblocks, Speed Bumps and Stepping Stones

So you’re barreling down the Career Super Highway and, oops, what is that you see on your horizon? A roadblock? A speed bump? A warning sign? A detour? Or maybe just a helpful stepping stone to bridge your way between where you are and where you want to go?

We’ve all had those days, sometimes they turn into weeks, when every step we take seems to lead to one more roadblock. We make plans, they fall through. We set goals and something gets in the way. We worry about things like the stock market, the job market, the farmer’s market and the price of eggs in China. (Okay, I just made those last two up but ‘I’ll bet someone somewhere is worried about them.)

So how do you handle mysterious things that get in your path? Do you come to a screeching halt and think “I’m safe where I am so maybe I’ll just pull over right here and hang tight until that thing goes away”? That’s what I’m seeing a lot of individuals and companies trying to do right now; hunker down, ride it out, wait and see. Well that’s a sure way to stall your career or your business but it is not a sure way to still have a career or business next year or even next month.

Or do you think “well it’s going to be rough so I’d better just step on the gas and try to get ahead of the pack”? Determination is a wonderful attribute but if it really was a roadblock you can do a lot of damage when you hit it and there just may have been a reason it was there.

Or maybe you are a true navigator, you get out your map, your spyglass and your compass and take stock of the situation. You consult with your team and the experts. You know that the thing on your horizon might be a brick wall but it might also be an opportunity. It might mean a detour, but the detour might take you somewhere you needed to go and would have never visited if your way hadn’t been blocked. It’s all a matter of perspective.

The economy is shifting the market. Maybe this is the ideal time to explore new markets, add new services and focus on convenience and customer service.
You just lost a key team member. Maybe this is the ideal time to restructure your strategy, evaluate your remaining team members, train new talent, reassign responsibilities, promote someone who has long deserved the chance to prove themselves. Team building is more than just hiring to replace a terminating employee, it's getting the right people in the right positions and giving them the resources to grow.
Advertising dollars are tight. Maybe now is the time to consider new tactics, try a guerrilla approach, create advertising alliances with complimentary businesses, explore email and text to get your message to your market, do something none of your competitors are doing, hone your message and carve a deeper niche.

Not to be too Pollyannaish, but most set backs also represent opportunities. And the people who have the perspective and perseverance to find the opportunities are the ones who create so much wealth and happiness we often look them and think “wow, how did she get so lucky?” We create our own luck, in the choices we make, the people we surround ourselves with, the resources we tap into, the beliefs we allow to rule our thoughts and our decisions. How we create success out of crisis is part of our mental and emotional programming and ultimately we control that. Crisis doesn’t make or break a person; it reveals their inner strength and vision.

Or to quote Scottish writer Allan K. Chalmers, “Crises redefine life. In them you discover who you are.” Follow that with a quote from another wise man, Epictetus, who said, “First say to yourself what you would be; then do what you have to do.”

Okay, so there’s a bump in the road on your horizon, who will you be and what will you do?

See Yourself - See Your World

A Reflection:

• Image, representation, counterpart…
• Fixing the thoughts on something, careful consideration…
• The return of light heat, sound after striking a surface…
• The bending or folding back of a part upon itself…

Since the beginning of civilization we have sought to see ourselves. We looked for mirror images in still pools of water or polished metal shields. We sought to see our inner selves in our heroes and our gods. Then we started creating images and ideals that reflected our dreams, desires and aspirations.

So what did all that get us? Reflections of reflections? Distortions of our true selves? I had a stimulating email exchange with a dear friend about the way people interpret the advice given by Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet, “to thine ownself be true…” and he commented that the way the quote is understood is a study in how people see things based on their own belief systems. (I’d love to know how you interpret that quote – email me or comment below.)

Our understanding of culture, business culture included, depends on our self awareness and how we perceive ourselves. I think how we perceive art, philosophy, heroes, morals, religion, you name it, is a reflection of how we see ourselves and a key to understanding culture and how it evolves. Reflection requires distance and another surface on which to project an image, be it a pool of water or an idea. We PROJECT our own judgments, fears, hopes, experiences onto the other and then we REFLECT on them, often without recognizing ourselves in the reflected image.

If you are looking to your culture for a reflection of yourself you will likely be disappointed, cultural standards very seldom reflect attainable or even desirable goals. If you are looking to your friends you will find the image distorted by their history with you, by their desire to build you up, by their perception of what you want to hear. And so it goes, we see the world around us through our projected emotions and expectations.

To a large extent that is what people ask of a coach; to reflect without distortion, to give you back a clearer, truer image - of yourself, of your situation, of your goals, of your patterns, of your roadblocks, of your opportunities. To be that surface that reflects truly and without judgment. The next step, of course is exploring change, supporting change and then again, reflecting the progress so you never lose sight of how far you’ve come or where you want to go.

And as a coach I would say the first step is to be aware of what colors the way you see your world. When you see an opportunity do you look for the catch? When you see your own work do you see it as less excellent and valuable than the work of your peers? What are you projecting onto the things you believe reflect you? And do those filters serve you? Do they make you more willing to move forward or do they keep you mesmerized like the Gorgon (or like Narcissus looking in the pool?)

Unlock your gaze my friend. Forward momentum certainly depends on seeing yourself clearly but it also depends on not becoming so focused on that reflection that you can’t take the first step.

Overcoming Programmed Responses - Or How to Not Lead With Your Knee

Since when does our mental/emotional programming affect our knees? Well, think about what we often refer to as a “knee jerk reaction” – that “no-time-to-involve-the-reasoning-mind” response that we often fall back on when we are cornered, pressured, stressed, attacked or when we even think that we are any of those things.

Knee jerk reactions are the human equivalent of “if then” statements in our programming. Our experience tells us “if someone says or does _____________ then it means _________ and you should immediately do __________ about it.”

Those reactions are based on programming that was entered by SOMEONE ELSE in some other situation. They are one of the reasons we repeat patterns – we experienced that pattern once and, even though we didn’t like the outcome, we learned that one thing will lead to another and we react accordingly. Like driving the same route every day and having one point where two lanes merge into one – at one time, or maybe two times, the car in the other lane zoomed up and tried to cut in front of you. You think “CHEATER, the nerve of that guy” and so from that point on you speed up at that point to keep anyone from cutting in. The road gods had better be watching over any poor out-of-towner who realizes at the last moment his lane is ending and tries to get in front of you, he’s likely to lose his bumper at the very least.

If you want to be in control of your future and break the patterns that don’t move you closer to your goals you have to recognize the programming and when it does not apply to new data and new situations. You have to become aware of when you are repeating patterns, when your responses are based, not on the current situation, but on expectations that were established during another situation which may, or may not, apply. So when you have a knee jerk response you want to ask “is this an old program trying to run or is this a valid response to the situation?” Another good question is “is there another way to look at this?”

The ultimate question is “what response can I make that will resolve this conflict in a way that is most beneficial for ALL parties?” Even though that resolution may not provide as much emotional satisfaction in the short run, it will earn you tremendous kudos in the long run for grace under pressure, for acting with integrity, for being equitable and for being the “bigger man” regardless of your gender. I’ll bet you’ll even like yourself a little better when you lead with your heart and mind, not your knees.

Being Scared Isn't Being Motivated

As motivational techniques go, fear is highly overrated. And yet, it's a trap most people have fallen into at one time or another. We've seen parents, managers, even entire governments try the "if you are frightened enough of the consequences you'll be motivated to do the right thing" trap.

I once sat on a discussion panel with a consultant who told the audience that she thought the number one value she she provided to her clients was to keep the employees on their toes and "put a little fear into them". I told the audience I thought the number one value I provided was to be a resource for the employees to make sure they developed competence and confidence and never had to be afraid of failure. You can imagine how disheartening it was to realize that a large percentage of the managers and employers in the room thought that hiring HER would make their lives easier.

I was, therefore, pretty disappointed in myself when I recently commented to a client that I felt some of the "dis sync" she was having with her ops manager was that this manager was "more afraid of the team than she is of her boss." Right diagnosis, WRONG terminology. My bad.

And I'm happy to say that when my client asked "so what do I do to make her scared of me?" she was (mostly) kidding. Neither of us would want anyone on her team to be afraid of anything because fear of consequences doesn't motivate anyone to do anything more than just enough to avoid the consequences.

And that was exactly what we were seeing in this manager; she was doing what she could to avoid certain consequences, but she was more motivated to avoid the consequences of making anyone on the team unhappy with her than she was to avoid the consequences of not meeting the business objectives. She was asking for increased budgets, pushing back on timelines and making excuses for work from herself and the team that wasn't up to standard. The employees, motivated by a fear of failure and finding an advocate in the manager, were campaigning for a redefinition of success. And the employer, who had a fear of being unreasonable and losing employees, was torn between accepting the lowering of standards and demanding what she knew was essential to provide good value to her customers.

If you've read Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, you've already guessed that this team was dysfunctional in all five areas. They didn't trust each other enough to have conflict, in fact, the manager and the employer were both more scared of conflict with the team than they were of not meeting their objectives. They weren't committed to their goals, in fact the buy in for their goals was so low that everyone was trying to negotiate a new definition for attaining them. Accountability was so low that everyone pointed to everyone else as the reason things weren't getting done and the manager was pointing to the employer as the person setting unreasonable goals. So of course, no one was focused on team outcomes, they were too busy trying to protect their backsides.

Did I just overstate the diagnosis? Maybe, as with any team some days are better than others and some players better than others on any given day. But if you looked at the entire "season" that pretty well describes why they didn't have a winning record.

In this equation everyone was motivated to do what they were doing by a fear of consequences so ALL of them were doing only what was necessary to avoid those consequences. Fear was, in fact, blocking their ability to be truly motivated toward excellence and growth. They were no longer striving to succeed, they were desperately trying not to fail.

To determine if you are building a motivated team ask yourself "what are they striving toward?" If, in fact, they are working harder to "try to avoid" than they are "striving toward" you don't yet have a motivated team, you have a lot of scared individuals.

The Blog Stalker

When I first started exploring the idea of sharing my thoughts through blogging one of my networking buddies recommended that I visit the blog of a well known tech blogger. He made that recommendation because I said I didn't want to write about facts and events, I wanted my blog to be about ideas, notions and random connections and to invite people to agree or disagree but mostly to inspire them to think and challenge their own perspectives. It may seem odd that he thought I should read a tech blog but that was exactly the point - it wasn't purely a tech blog, it was a blog by a techie who wrote as much about the impact technology was having on our lives as she did about the technology itself.

But when I did visit her blog the last several posts weren't about technology at all. They were about her traumatic experience with a stalker. This person started with comments on her blog, progressed to emails, then to written letters. It started with derogatory raving and went to death threats and explicit pictures. It ended with her being under police protection and having to cancel an appearance at the Emerging Technologies conference, which, ironically, my friend and client Wendy Gauntt of CIO Services (read her humurous and informative tech blog here) attended.

I was horrified, I was sympathetic, but I wasn't scared. This stalker wasn't taking these actions because of anything she'd written, he was obsessed with HER. Therefore, I reasoned, this wouldn't happen to me. And it didn't, at least not to that extent. But earlier this month I found out there is someone out there who IS monitoring me through the internet, someone who pays attention when my name or company name shows up in new content, someone who is interested because it's ME.

It's freaky. My first response was to do some online searching, what kind of content was this person able to get to? (check out Wendy Gauntt's blog post about Twitter and Seurat's art - I think the minutia of our lives do form a picture.) My next response was to do some soul searching, how comfortable was I sharing my stories and random ramblings, not only with strangers but with this very interested party?

I quit writing. I second guessed everything I thought about writing. I berated myself for not writing, for my completely unreasonable response. And I asked myself a couple of questions; "What are you really afraid of?" and "How much of your life are you willing to surrender to fear?"

And then I second guessed the answers, but ultimately I got to the heart of it. My answers aren't the point, those weren't even the right questions. The right question was this: "How do I live a life that is not compromised by fear?"

Because we all have fears. Lots of them. We fear loss, failure, pain and death. We fear ridicule, loss of face, weakness and being alone. We fear being backed into corners, making promises we can't keep, not having choices, the list goes on forever. And all of our fears are reasonable because all of those things are possible (and some are inevitable extensions of living.)

Living a powerful life does not mean living a life that is free of fear, it means making your life choices regardless of your fears, building enough personal strength to have the confidence to face your fears and, every bit as important, it means surrounding yourself with enough nurturing elements that when the fear seems overwhelming you have a safe harbor to rest in until you are ready to set sail again.

So here's to reaching our destinations, regardless of shallow water, storms and sharks. The threats may be real but the prize is just as real and worth the risk!

What Really Happens When All Things Are NOT Equal

In my last post I quoted Bob Burg’s line of “all things being equal, people do business with, and refer business to, people they know, like and trust.” I then hypothesized that “all things NOT being equal, people will STILL do business and refer to people they know, like and trust.”

A quick flurry of emails later Bob put it back to me that there are a lot of reasons that all things would NOT be equal and people would NOT do business with, or refer business to, someone they know, like and trust. And most of those reasons fall under the trust category. For instance, what if people know, like you and trust you personally but your product really isn’t competitive? What if they know, like and trust you personally but your company policies are so stringent they just won’t just through all the hoops to do business with you. What if they know, like and trust you personally, but your company’s customer service just stinks? You get the picture.

On the other hand, I’ve seen people continue to refer business to people they know, like and trust after they no longer do business there. Take the healthcare field, I’ve seen patients of a dental practice that offered great service continue to refer people even after their insurance changed to a “proffered provider only” plan. And I’ve seen patients return to that practice even though it meant paying a higher out of pocket cost because they realized the value offered by the doctor and his staff.

I’ve seen a client continue to get referrals from an office manager after she moved to a new position where she was no longer in control of vendors because he had taken such good care of her in the past.

Just remember that when we put our trust in you as an individual we expect that we will be able to trust you AND the product and company you represent. If you and your product and company deliver on that trust you’ll likely still be getting business from us even when all things are no longer equal. If we experience a “dis sync” between what we can expect from you and the value we receive from your product and your company you may not be able to count on our business or referrals because that “dis sync” is all it takes to shift the equation to “all things NOT being equal.”

Defining Irredeemable

I was sitting at lunch with Bob Burg last week and asked him a question. (That’s right, I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been very busy living with no time to comment on it, but some really cool stuff happened during the last two weeks including a great event with Bob Burg, the author of Endless Referrals and co-author of The Go-Giver! I’ll be updating you all in upcoming posts.)

So anyway, back to the question - I asked Bob, “what percentage of people do you think are irredeemable “Go-Takers?” (Go-Takers, as you know if you read Bob’s blog posts at www.thegogiver.com/blog, are the opposite of Go-Givers. Bob defines them in the blog post as “that person who feels almost entitled to take, take, take without having provided value — to the other person, to the relationship, to the process, etc.”)

Well Bob said he didn’t know and I certainly didn’t know, but it got us talking about Go-Takers, belief systems how to know a Go-Taker and how to work with them when the situation demands it. We never did define “irredeemable”, maybe because neither of us likes to think that anyone is an irredeemable Go-Taker, we just know there are some people we won’t be able to reach.

I think a lot of the “yeah, buts” that we hear about being a Go-Giver are either from Go-Takers or from people who have encountered a lot of Go-Takers in their life. We know they’re out there, in the book Joe was a Go-Taker until he met Pindar and decided to give the “Trade Secret” a try. So if Go-Takers are the biggest reason you think that applying the principles of The Go-Giver might not succeed let’s talk about how to recognize a Go-Taker and how not to let them get in the way of your stratospheric success.

Before we start the stereotypes remember this: we are all a “product of our raising” as a client of mine likes to say. I call it programming, some call it nurture, but whatever you call it unless we consciously override that input it will define our belief system and that belief system will define our behavior and our outcome. So when you see someone behaving like a Go-Taker remember that their behavior is only reflecting their belief system and a belief system can be changed if the person is willing.

So here are a few stereotypes I believe are Go-Takers:

The “let’s make it mutually beneficial because I want to be damned sure I benefit” type. This type talks a lot about how they can help you because their belief system says that “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” and “you’ve got to give in order to get.” So they start by telling you what they are willing to give or “pay” in order to get what they want. Once they get over the shock of meeting someone who will give just for the sake of giving they are usually pretty easy to convert. In fact, this type is often a disguised Go-Giver who would like to give without keeping score but doesn’t want to be seen as an “easy touch” or who just hates to ask for anything or owe a favor. I still fall into some of these patterns and beliefs so I totally get how this happens.

The “isn’t it nice that you’re having some success, now how can I catch a ride on your coattails” type. This type follows the belief that “it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you” but they don’t really get to know people more than superficially because they are always looking past this encounter to see if there is someone more important they should be meeting. They live on borrowed success, they are quick to name drop and to exaggerate relationships. They pretend to influence they don’t have and commit to making things happen when they can’t deliver. They will do anything for someone they view as higher on the ladder but seldom have time for any relationship they can’t capitalize on. In their concern for making the most out of their contact list they forget that the secret to stratospheric success is all about people – we add value to people’s lives, we serve people, we have influence with people, we offer our personal value and we receive from people. So engaging with an opportunity, with a title, with a status symbol or with anything other than the whole individual will never lead to sustainable, stratospheric success no matter how high on the ladder you climb or whose coattails you catch a ride on.

The “can I negotiate one more drop of blood from this engagement” type. This type buys into the belief that you should never leave a dime on the table, never be a sucker and never miss a chance to add a little to the bottom line. As Ernesto says in The Go-Giver, “will it make money isn’t a bad question, it’s just a bad FIRST question.” It’s also a bad last question. If, as Ernesto says, the first question should be “will it serve” then the last question we should ask might be “did I serve?” Because if we served and made money we weren’t suckers and neither was the other party. Because if, as Bob said in his presentation on Friday, “all things being equal, people do business and refer to people they know, like and trust” then we shouldn’t ask them to do business with us if we were so concerned about being a sucker that we made suckers out of them. (Here’s another belief system that holds true in these economically “troubled” times; “all things NOT being equal, people will STILL do business and refer to people they know, like and trust.” Just something to think about.)

I’m sure there are many more Go-Taker stereotypes and I hope you’ll comment and blog on your experiences with them. But let’s take this last paragraph to think about how to keep them from ruining your success. Bob’s advice was simple, “know who you’re dealing with and plan accordingly.” Yup, that simple. Notice he DID NOT say “act accordingly.” You still follow those 5 Laws to Stratospheric Success. But if you recognize a Go-Taker you will want to also take extra care with your contracts, be clear about the commitments you are making and what you can expect from the other party, pay attention to your gut when it says “you’re being taken advantage of.” And there is nothing that says the path to stratospheric success includes losing, just giving. You aren’t being asked to be a martyr, just a giver and receiver. So if there is nothing in it for you, not even the satisfaction of serving, walk away.

I believe that most people would prefer to be Go-Givers if their belief system supported equating giving and receiving without keeping score and stratospheric success. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be able to redeem every Go-Taker and neither will you.

Which Would You Rather?

I once had a friend who liked to play a game she called “which would you rather?” It went like this; Jan would give you two choices and you had to choose one and tell her why you would make that choice.

So she would greet you by asking, “Which would you rather – have to chew broken glass or have a needle poked in your eye?”

Did I mention that Jan and I met doing community theatre where the more bizarrely thought provoking the question the more seriously it would be taken? I’ve since lost track of Jan (if you’re out there girl I’d love to hear from you) but the “which would you rather” phrase still puts a goofy grin on my face.

While Jan delighted in coming up with equally unappealing activities, we quite often feel we must choose between equally desirable or even necessary options. “Should I opt for ordering the appetizer or the desert?” (Or have both on the theory that you only live once?) “Should I hire the candidate with the best experience or the one with the most enthusiasm?” (For more on resolving that dilemma read the May 30 post; “How Much Experience Should You Hire?”)

Here’s another dilemma that impacts everything from employee selection to business culture– which would you rather, dependability or innovation?

Do you need someone who will predictably and consistently maintain status quo? Is your culture about stability and steady growth? Or should you be looking for people who will innovate change, who will foster a culture of being open to every possibility?

Dependability breeds commitment just as innovation breeds excitement.

What business can prosper without commitment, from their employees, their clients and their community? But what business can prosper without excitement, about their services, their products and their brand?

Of course, every business needs both commitment and excitement. So every business needs dependability and innovation. The key is to not only hire the right people and put them in the right roles, but to also insure that everyone in your organization fully embraces the importance of both roles and honors what the other players contribute to making sure you never have to play the “which would you rather” game.

I use the Kolbe A index to tell me how I can expect a team member to take action - by stabilizing and maintaining systems or by innovating new solutions - and put together workshops to explore and develop synergy in teams. The Kolbe MO is only one of three aspects that should be taken into consideration when selecting an employee for any role, but I find it to be the most predictive.

How do you make sure you aren’t choosing between commitment and excitement? Are you putting people in roles where they can do what they do naturally, whether that is by creating and maintaining dependable systems or innovating new solutions? Does your company culture embrace both or are you playing the “which would you rather” game?

How Much Experience Should You Hire?

Have you ever hired a resume? Sure you have. You’ve looked at the perfect accumulation of knowledge and skills in the “Experience” section and thought, “I’m going to like this person.” So you did.

And a few months (or weeks) later you were still trying to like this person. That’s usually the person being referred to when I’m in a conversation with a business owner or manager and they say, “Well, I’ve got this person…”

We’ve all got one of those people – or we have had one of those people. They have the kind of knowledge, skills or even potential that we hate to see get away, but somehow they just aren’t contributing all of that knowledge, skills and potential to our organization. Or maybe they’re giving 120% but they have such an attitude toward the rest of the team that productivity is still in a downward spiral.

So let me share my priorities when I’m working with a client on employee evaluation or selection – they’re pretty simple:

#1 – Attitude – that’s right, attitude. Since it’s the hardest to change and the hardest to tolerate if it doesn’t work in your favor I make this my first assessment.
#2 – Aptitude – not “have they done the job?” but “do they have the potential to do a great job?” (This is where the Kolbe A assessment comes in to the equation.)
#3 – Experience – understand that I don’t think experience isn’t valuable, it’s worth a lot to hire someone who can hit the ground running. And if they have a great attitude and the aptitude to get even better you’ll never be sorry.

Don't Look a Go-Giver in the Mouth

Have you ever read one of those books that puts a language to a whole realm of "things you knew to be true" but could never really put in a nutshell so that you could share them with everyone else? Two books top that list for me; "Pure Instinct" by Kathy Kolbe and "The Go-Giver" by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Anyone who knows me knows about those two books, they've been that impactful in my life.

So when I read the blog post by Bob Burg "Go-Getters are Also Good" explaining that the opposite of a go-giver" isn't a "go-getter" but a "go-taker" a light went on.

But you know, living in a world overwhelmed with "go-takers" can make it tough to convert to being a "go-giver". I recently connected a well seasoned, highly knowledgeable, business consultant with a young cinematographer. This young man has loads of talent, a real passion for what he does and an impressive body of work and I felt he was ready to hear some feedback on his business strategy. So after their first lunch together I asked the young man how it went. He said he thought he’d done something to upset the consultant but didn’t know what. We talked for a bit and finally I asked him, “Does it make you suspicious when you can’t figure out the other person’s agenda?” His answer? “Well, yeah,” delivered in the tone we usually use when we say “Well, duh!”

So I asked him, “Do you think you might have upset him because you didn’t trust him?”

Brief pause then the light went on.

Sure enough, when I talked with the consultant he confirmed the “dissync” – he didn’t like knowing this young man didn’t trust him. And all for the lack of a self-serving agenda on the part of either party!

I hope this story has a happy ending and that these two terrific guys will connect again. That I can’t promise. What I can promise is this – if we look for “go-takers” we will find them. But if we look for a “go-taker” in someone who is really a “go-giver” we will only be confused and suspicious and we’ll miss out on some of the best opportunities that will ever come our way.

What “go-givers” might you have a “dyssync” with? Is it possible that you might have turned away the offer of a lifetime because of unfounded suspicions?

Who do you answer to?

I sat there in my car, facing West on I-70 looking at the tail end of a semi trailer in front of me and the grill of another one in my rear view mirror, moving about an inch per second. Not an auspicious beginning to what would now be an even longer than usual trip to see a client of 12 years who, if he and his team weren’t such a joy to coach, I would have dropped long ago just to avoid this very kind of situation.

This required more than music to distract me, it was either return some calls or tune in to NPR. Too frustrated with my current traffic dilemma to return calls – let’s see what NPR has going on.

I came into the middle of an interview about happiness. As in “are you happy?” and “how happy are you?” But also as in “why are people in their 40’s and 50’s so unhappy?” and “is there a limit to how happy you can be?” Huh?

Yup, turns out that there are studies that indicate that people are more likely to suffer depression in their middle years. And other studies suggest that we all have a “happiness set point” that determines how predisposed we are to being happy and just how much "happy" we are able to sustain.

Since I know that success in coaching means tapping into that “happy” that they were discussing and many of my clients are, like myself, in the age range they were saying is less likely to be able to tap into that “happy”, I "happily" listened to every theory put forth by the author, the show host and all the people who called in to comment on the air. I found it unsettling to realize that the theme of the views being aired was that we lose touch with our “happy” in our middle years because we aren’t able to realize our dreams. Then as the years continue to pass by we slowly come to terms with the loss of our dreams and become content and able to connect with our “happy” again. So they concluded that if we “lower our sights” and “accept our limitations” earlier in life we can avoid that middle age depression. Now that is enough to make ME depressed.

I thought about “happy” for a long time after I passed the construction that had caused my traffic snarl. Zipping along toward Kansas City I asked myself what I thought it meant to be happy. Did sitting nearly motionless on I70 make me unhappy? Not really. Frustrated, yes, but not unhappy. So I started a mental list of the things in my life right now and about each one I asked myself “does that make you happy or unhappy?”

Interesting and mentally entertaining (you might try it sometime) but not the heart of the matter here. The real discovery came when I started questioning why we would be more prone to depression in our middle years. Now I’ve had my share of clients who suffered from depression and not all of them were between 35 and 65. And I’ve had many clients in that age range who weren’t depressed (or at least didn’t let on to me if they were.) So I pondered our life cycles and my experiences with clients of all ages and I have a different theory to propose:

What if we get depressed, not because we lose sight of our dreams but because we lose sight of our lives?

Think about it; when we are young adults we don’t really answer to anyone more important than ourselves. We have parents, professors, bosses, etc… but we have the option to ignore them or exchange them. We are “big girls and boys” and we can make it on our own. We can drop that class. We can get a new job. We can choose! And when we reach retirement age we give up many of the people we answer to. Our parents have often passed on, if we have professors it is because we’re taking classes for the joy of learning and we can always walk away and if we still have bosses we also have the light of retirement shining within reach. Our children are grown, our relationships have become less turbulent. Again, we have choices!

But in those years in between we usually add lifemates, children and bosses that control the success of our careers. We may add employees and clients. We often are now caring for our parents and so answer to them almost as dependably as we did when we were children. We have a place in society and answer to the expectations of our peers. Nearly every moment of our lives is spent answering to someone other than ourselves. Even if our dreams are still intact and still within reach we don’t have an ounce of energy to reach for them.

So maybe keeping “happy” within reach means making sure you are still reaching for your dreams without giving up your life. So here is a challenge worth doing if you want to keep your “happy” in sight. This is an adaptation of an exercise called the Priority Bullseye which was developed by Kathy Kolbe, the theorist and author behind the Kolbe Wisdom. I use it often with my coaching clients.

Answer this question: “If I answered ONLY to myself what would I want to accomplish?” Now write it down. That’s easy, isn’t it? (If it isn’t easy you may have just discovered one major “dissync” that is keeping you out of reach of your “happy”.)

Next, jot down a list of all the people you answer to. Not people who want something from you but the people whom you either choose to or must try to satisfy.

Next, take another sheet of paper and draw a big circle, and a smaller circle inside that and a smaller circle within that and a little circle in the middle. (If it doesn’t look a lot like a target go back and do it again.)

Next, in the bullseye spot (the circle in the middle) write down the most important person you answer to right now. That one relationship that, if you screw this one up will cause everything else to suffer. Then in the space between the bullseye and the next circle write the person who comes next and so on until you've filled in the spaces in all the circles.

You’ve already guessed the next question, haven’t you? Where are you on the target? How much of what you would want to accomplish if you answered to yourself is "in sync" with what you can accomplish by answering to the people you’ve listed on your target?

Are your dreams and your priorities perfectly in sync? If not, how will you answer the all important question: “How do I bring accomplishing my dreams closer to the bullseye?”