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The Fuse.

“[…] trying to make creative people fit some mold established as conventional wisdom or best practice may not always yield the best results. Lay the groundwork, but put the onus on the creative person to do what they do best—problem solve. Light the fuse and get away.”

Greg Hoy

The Dream.

I woke up the other morning realizing that I have had a fairly consistent dream over the past several years.  While i can’t completely understand the associated timing, I am starting to understand the meaning of the dream.

First, let me share some brief background.

With very few exceptions, I have always considered myself to be a good student.  I love to learn and school has always been a place of pure enjoyment for me.

Ironically enough, I was never interested in my English classes.  I completed my assignments, read the books and participated in class, but frankly I was never enthusiastic about being there.

Not surprisingly, my dream involves my time spent in this class – or, more accurately, my time not spent in this class.  For some reason or another, I either chose not to attend class or I simply decided that the assignments could be left until the end of the semester.

As the dream progresses, the semester eventually comes to a close, and you can imagine my emotional state as I quickly realize that I haven’t done anything and I am left wondering how I am ultimately going to succeed in a class in which I really haven’t participated.  The realization of potential failure turns the “dream” into a nightmare.

Fortunately, the dream always seems to end with me successfully completing the class although it also omits the details regarding how.

As with anything in life, this dream is subject to interpretation.  My interpretation of this dream is that I may be associating success with the existence of a plan. This dream seems to tell me that I can still be successful without one.

Right now, I really have no other choice but to believe.

Resilience I: Self-esteem vs. Self-Efficacy

I recently finished reading  Andrew Shatte’s and Karen Reivich’s book entitled The Resilience Factor – 7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles.  I found the book incredibly useful as it provides a formulaic approach to understanding the reasons why certain events trigger certain emotions, and to develop constructive ways to work through those events / emotions.  Since adversity is a constant factor in people’s lives, improving one’s resilience is critically important for future successes – both professional and personal.

Now having closed a rather turbulent period of my life, I felt the time was right to take additional steps to improve my resilience.  While my creative abilities allowed me to manage through this period in a constructive way, I felt there were some core lessons I was still missing and needed to develop.  When I stumbled upon this book, I knew that this was the piece that was missing from that journey.

Towards the beginning of the book, the authors make several key points that really set the stage for the remainder of the text.  They talk about the need to focus less on developing self-esteem and more so on self-efficacy.  There is a difference as one is a by-product of the other:

“…self-esteem is the by-product of doing well in life – meeting challenges, solving problems, struggling and not giving up.  You will feel good about yourself when you do well in the world.  That is healthy self-esteem.  Many people and many programs, however, try to bolster self-esteem directly by encouraging us to […] believe that we can do anything we set our mind to.  The fatal flaw with this approach is that it is simply not true.  We cannot do anything we want in life, regardless of how many time we tell ourselves how special and wonderful we are and regardless of how determined we are to make it so.”

The authors go on to discuss why self-efficacy is the first step to building self-esteem:

“We know that as people start to build a track record of small successes by solving problems, self-efficacy follows naturally.”

The skills taught in The Resilience Factor equip one with tools to solve the problems in one’s life and to meet the challenges that confront her/him.  These tools allow one to develop self-efficacy, which ultimately translates into greater feelings of self-esteem.  And it’s this unique combination that can empower people to do even more with their lives and experience greater joy from the lives they already have.

The book “works” because of the numerous anecdotal examples presented throughout the text.  In fact, the book’s lessons are best assimilated by using them when adversity strikes.  The adage “practice makes perfect” is indeed valid here.

In my next post on this subject, I’ll introduce a few key points from the text along with some personal examples to illustrate just how well these tools truly work.

Related Article: Recalibration I

Key Ingredients for Success.

(from “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman)

Recalibration II.

Motivation: … the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior.” (Source unknown)

In my last post, I highlighted three main areas where I would like to improve – self-motivation, perseverance and connection.  In this post I’ll continue my exploration of motivation.

All too often, the word “motivation” has a positive connotation.  After all, how often do you hear public speakers or other leadership types exclaim “Be Motivated!”  Because of this, how can one not assume that being motivated is always the right thing to do?

In contrast to public opinion, I believe that being motivated to do something isn’t always the right decision.  Why?  Because you could be motivated to do the wrong thing – i.e. something that is misaligned with your core values and/or for the wrong reasons.  In the above definition, it’s easy to assume that the goal or “reason for the action” is clearly known, but in many cases it may not be.

In thinking about this concept, my belief is that truly understanding what motivates one to do something can ultimately help one achieve a particular goal faster than if that level of awareness is left unchecked. Along a similar path, gaining this understanding early on can also highlight whether the goal should be abandoned entirely – i.e. is being motivated truly the right path in a given situation?  In short, I think one needs to have a clear understanding of the goal (and the reasons why achievement of that goal is worth the pursuit) before being motivated to act.

Let me share a personal example to illustrate this concept in more depth.

I grew up in a family where education and success went together.  Over time, I started to believe that my success (the goal) was primarily dependent upon my education.  Not withstanding my desire to learn, even after my master’s degree I continued to take classes in the hope that I would eventually acquire enough knowledge to be “successful”.

My business coach challenged this long-standing belief late last year when I started formulating the basis for Big Generator.  Up until that time, I never thought that I was truly ready to move forward.  Did I know enough?  Did I have enough experience? The answer is that I’ll never know enough.  Thus, I consciously decided to accept this fact and the rest would need to come with more experience.

This example is relevant because being motivated to continue with my education vs. moving forward with my business could have been the wrong decision over the long-term.  Thus, being motivated to carry out the wrong goal for the wrong reasons doesn’t make the activity right.  Instead, being motivated to advance the business while continuing to gain knowledge is the right decision for me at this time in my life.

Formal education, while deemed worthy in nearly all contexts, is actually the direct opposite in this example.  In essence, formal education was employed as a “motivator” to help me meet a goal that I call “success”.  However, “success” takes more than being well-educated.  Thus, taking inventory of what I wanted to do and identifying the right motivators allowed me to break out of this cycle and make alternative decisions.

This isn’t to say that there will not be times when the mantra of “get motivated” doesn’t have value – particularly in situations where you aren’t excited about the path you’re on, but there really isn’t any choice but to use an alternative (positive) perspective and go ahead with the task at hand.  However, in the grand scheme of things, it’s important to understand what it is that you want and build a motivation framework to help you achieve that which you are seeking.

In my next post in this series, I’ll go into more depth about this framework and show some guidelines to make sure that you are motivated for the right reasons.

My personal leadership philosophy

My personal leadership philosophy focuses on empowerment and setting people up for success.

Empowerment means that a person has specific responsibility over a particular area or effort / project, and that everyone has a clear understanding of her/his role.  This latter piece plays a significant role in setting them up for success.

In contrast, leveraging people to simply “help out” with a particular task is ill-suited for true long-term growth.  I encourage people to not just “help out”, but to “take ownership” over a specific deliverable and ensure that all aspects of that deliverable are analyzed and managed accordingly.

(The key precursor to doing this is to analyze the problem at a high-level and partition accordingly.  Utilizing a “divide and conquer” strategy is key.)

Another aspect to this leadership philosophy is to leverage an individuals strengths AND interests.  For example, if an associate excels at requirements analysis but loathes the activity, it’s not going to be in either party’s interest to put that person in that particular role.  You might be empowering them, but you are not setting them up for success.

From a managerial perspective, I focus more heavily on “foundational” elements before empowering associates to take on new tasks / assignments.  One of these foundational elements focuses on valuesWhat an associate values will play a significant role in helping them choose one direction over another.

For example, if an associate values “harmonious relationships” over “advancement”, it’s likely that the associate will be happier in a group with a good team dynamic than vs. being promoted within a team  lacking such a dynamic.

Once a person’s value assessment is complete (there should be 10 core values), a formal “talent builder” and “skills assessment” should be next on the agenda.  This will help the associate refine their current tasks to align with their interests, and it can also help guide the associate towards a new role if there is existing misalignment.

It’s only after these two steps where both short-term and long-term plans can be formulated.  Once this is performed, then the leadership principles discussed earlier can be applied.