Posts By: optimus

More on Success!

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What is success anyway? For me it is about teamwork. Yes I’m serious. It’s not about money or fame; it’s about accomplishing worthwhile goals towards a personal mission that benefits humanity and life while working with others. This is new for me and it has come from realizing certain things about myself and about living life.

After all, who is life for, the animals, insects, what? No it is for human beings to enjoy the feeling and experience of being alive and to understand who we are and why we are alive.

So if we do things for anything else other than that, we are contributing to what? Probably to our own false ideas about what is going to make us happy, like a new shiny this or that. It means we are focusing on ourselves and our own needs rather than the needs of others. Of course I don’t mean we should ignore our own needs to serve others because that doesn’t work either.

Here are two examples to illustrate what I mean and why taking my approach will not only transform your own way of being, but it will also change the world as we know it.

Yesterday a good friend who works in the public health care system was telling me about a committee meeting to work on an important project regarding the care of terminally ill patients. She found herself at complete odds with some of the staff members who she felt were inflexible in their thinking and could only see things from the perspective of following policies and procedures. She told me that this so demotivated her that she doesn’t want to work with people anymore. I was shocked to hear this because she is such a kind, caring and intelligent person.

The other day I had a phone conversation with someone I collaborate with on a project as volunteers. I had started action on a project and she felt that I was acting to quickly and wanted to wait for a meeting to happen so a plan could be put in place. My immediate response was to tell her bluntly that this was not necessary and we needed to move forward. But I bit my tongue and instead thought of what caused her to say this. I realized instantly that it is because of the type of person she is. In the approach to knowing myself and others called types of people (http://threebrainsynergy.com), her type is called the Planner type. Planners are careful decision makers because their inborn tendency is to work with a plan and strategy and they have a talent for research, planning, and logistics.

My response instead was to listen, acknowledge her response as being understandable and valid before then offering to clarify my perspective. In the end we agreed to continue with my proposed action but called a meeting for next week to create a longer term plan with more details.

I also understood that my own type, the Idealist wants action and goal accomplishment and when this does not happen I can get pushy and agressive. So right there was two opportunities, one for conflict and the other collaboration. It would have been much more difficult to choose the collaborative approach had I not understood how and why we are different. In the past, I would have thought her way of thinking and seeing things was wrong and would have tried to convince her to see things my way. This would have just escalated the possibility of a conflict or would have forced her to agree on the spot and then perhaps harbor some resentment towards me.

The point I am trying to make is that through by my understanding the types of people approach and the importance of collaboration and seeking to understand the others person’s perspective, I have found a way to combine teamwork with the determination of my goals and mission. This is a huge step for me and it made me think that if everyone could learn what I have and make an committed effort to apply it, we could transform ourselves and our organizations and beyond. The difference is to put the goal and the way to reach the goal through mutual understanding first with no compromise to this value.

Thus it is important that leaders learn and embrace personal success from the perspective of collaborating with others towards goals that contribute to a more enjoyable experience of life for people. And that does not mean having more money to buy the latest gadget or a bigger home and fancier car.

Does this make sense to you? Please post your comments and visit ThreeBrainSynergy to check out the demo lesson to understand yourself and others. It all begins there.

Freedom to Choose

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This morning I decided to ride my bike to work this morning http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=3254831111694224707&hl=en-CA) and that got me thinking of how lucky I am to be able to have the freedom to choose this mode of transport and to live close to my office and next to a beautiful forest. I don’t have to cut through the forest to get to the office but it sure is a nice diversion especially now with the leaves changing colours.

Fifteen years ago when I first started in this field I would never have considered doing this. I would spend all day on the phone cold calling business owners to get appointments to talk about their concerns and challenges and share some ideas for change and success. Some days I would dial well over 100 times with very little results. I probably could have afforded myself the luxury of going for a walk or bike ride back then but the fear of failure and the need to survive was too strong. I have learned to trust that I have what many people want and they will find me. It doesn’t mean I don’t market my services anymore. In fact writing this blog is one way of marketing myself, but it means I no longer live and work focused at the survival level. My goal is to continuously grow my knowledge and skills because that’s what I have that is marketable and helpful to others who want to do the same. And I think we all are aspiring to do that in some way or another.

So what is the secret to work less, make more and enjoy life? This is the theme and focus of all my energy, writing and work right now and will be for some time. This is what it really all boils down to for business owners and executives. When I say work less, I mean spending your work time on what most interests you, what you are best at and enjoy the most. The challenge is to accomplish this through developing superior leadership and people skills. This is how we can create incredible visions for ourselves and build a team of people to help as accomplish it. But the vision needs to be worthwhile and inspiring. Some businesses owners may have a hard time doing that with their business. For example if you own a waste disposal business, how can you create an inspiring vision and mission for that type of business? Well I think you can because it does not have to be what you do in so much as how you do it. If you become a great financial success by being a hard nosed business person and treating people like dirt or developing a task oriented leader dependant workforce, is that success? Not according to me and others who share my outlook on life and work. Success is about helping others grow and face challenges and build collaborative relationships. If people learn how to do that at work through a visionary and skilled leader, it will affect all aspects of their lives for the better. That will be a great legacy to leave behind and take with you.

I will very soon introduce you to the ThreeBrainSynergy method to develop yourself into a highly skilled leader who possesses great people skills. We will be launching our new coaching system and website to help business owners, executives and leaders at all levels do just that. Subscribe to this blog through the RSS service to be advised of this important announcement or sign up for my newsletter from Optimus Performance, my Montreal based training and coaching business here http://visitor.constantcontact.com/email.jsp?m=1101315990171&p=oi

Stephen Goldberg

Delegating Up!

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If you cannot delegate down you can always delegate up, or try at least. That’s what often happens in a lot of organizations and it is a dangerous situation and trap to fall into. There was a time when management training programs had gone overboard and were teaching managers to be helpers, that there job was to support and help their direct reports to do their jobs well. This is true to some extent but can easily become overblown to the point where the manager is actually doing the job of the person and thus shirking some of his own responsibilities. And what do you think ends up getting neglected? It’s usually the soft aspects of the job like coaching and training staff, taking time to have problem solving meetings for getting people to participate in continuous improvement etc. Managers often claim they have so much work and responsibilities that they don’t have time for those extra things, other than just getting their production tasks done.

I do volunteer work for an organization where I have a leadership/management role and yesterday another manager sent me an email asking me to find someone to translate an important document that is needed quickly to meet the need of an upcoming event. My immediate reaction was no, this is not my job and I need to tell her that it her responsibility to find a translator. She wanted me to do her job and solve her problem. So I carefully formulated a reply to let her know that that was her job not mine and suggested two people I thought could help her right away.

Different people would respond differently to her request. I look at it in terms of the type of person I am, based on the Three Brain Synergy approach that I learned from Fritz Glaus and that we are currently teaching to leaders and managers. My main motivation is accomplishment and my qualities are action oriented, practical, motivated to do the right thing amongst others. So her request that contained a sense of urgency would have been easy for me to do because I like getting things done fast and well. I could easily have forwarded her email to the two people I knew who would do it quickly. I also know from my Profile XT report that I score a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 on accommodating. That means I have developed a personality trait that seeks to help others and at times I find myself being too accommodating and getting taken advantage of.

I knew instantly that if I complied with her request I would not only take time away from other important matters but I would also be solving her problem for her rather than encouraging her to take full responsibility for her area. There is a fine line between providing support and saving someone by solving the problem for them. Good support would be to encourage them to use their own ability to think out of the box and solve their own problems. If she finds that my response indicates I am not helping her sufficiently, it is an opportunity for me to explain to her my position and discuss further so we can both learn from it. Perhaps she is doing the same with the people in her team, accepting to do things for them rather than supporting them in having them take full responsibility.

Stephen

Are You Also Stressed?

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Last week I worked late and got home to find two messages on my phone service about my cat. It seems some good cat loving Samaritan saw my cat Finnigan outside my condo and thought it was lost. Finnigan has the weird tendency to follow strangers who pass in front of the building. The good Samaritan checked his tags and got the number of the vet and Finnigan ended up there for the night. So the next morning at 7:30 I had to drive about 10 kms to get him. My office is close to home and the drive is fairly easy with usually light traffic.

However, traffice this morning through the suburb streets was awful. Not only was their a large volume of cars but the abundant street repairs was causing road havoc. This indicated to me  one of the causes for high levels of stress at work. It starts with the drive (or maybe at breakfast) and continues and builds throughout the day. What makes me say this?  I recently read an article in Les Affaires  that in Quebec 2 out of 5 employees claim high stress levels for the most part of their workday. According to the article which took it’s news from the Quebec Institute of Statistics, the main causes for the stress in 46% of employees is a low use of their competencies followed by a 41% expressing weak decision making authority and 40% saying they feel strong psychological pressure.

I find this amazing because when I think about how much time and money is invested in education and training it does not make sense not to be fully utilizing this wealth of knowledge and talent. why would organizations invest so much time and money in hiring good people if they are not being given the opportunity to  fully contribute?

I see this as a result of poor leadership. If leaders are under-utilizing their staff members it means they are not delegating enough responsibility and if people are afraid to make decisions, it is probably because they are being too highly supervised and controlled. Furthermore, if staff members feel pressured, it is probably due to their boss pushing them too had with inadequate feedback and recognition. Also throw in some nasty comments from others as well and you end up on meds.

The reason leaders cause this situation is because there is too much focus in getting things done and not enough on developing people. Leaders have been inadequately trained in people skills and do not know themselves and others well. and rather than take the lime for explore and understand themselves, they reset to behaving like everyone else. This is the safe way to play the game of life and be seen as nomal and accepted.

The only way to be different and live life more fully is to take risks and grow, This involves asking questions and working had on oneself The three brain synergy leaning method I am working on with my partner Fritz Glaus is the ideal solution for both self and leadership development as it provides an easy way to understand your true nature and how that affects you as a leader. Without that knowledge one cannot properly apply the leadership techniques that most popular training programs teach and claim are the answers to self improvement. I know this is true because I have taught several different courses over the lasts 15 years and none compare with the three brain synergy approach that we will soon be making public on our new website and e-learning training program. I will elaborate more soon.

Stephen