Your Brick Wall Is There For A Reason

Do you recall what it was like having to struggle in order to get something you wanted? Time and time again throughout your life, you have encountered an endless number of obstacles, roadblocks and brick walls.

How well did you deal with them? How well did you understand them? Did you have any measure of appreciation for them?

In many instances you may have become frustrated or irritated. After all, you were in a hurry to get where you wanted to go and to accomplish what you had intended to accomplish. Right? Take a moment to recall the time that you were in a hurry to get to a morning meeting, but failed to purchase gas for your car the night before. Perhaps you caught all of the red lights that morning. Maybe you walked out your front door to discover that you had a flat tire or a dead battery.

While these everyday life events seemed like anything but fun at the time, the may actually have been life savers. I would imagine like most people, you have learned later on about a tragic accident that occurred at an intersection that you normally frequent or along the road that you usually take. The fact that you had to switch roles with your spouse that morning and take your child to school, caused you to take a different rout to work and ultimately kept you from being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The acute awareness that there was a fatal car wreck at the time and place where you normally are and the fact that you were some how spared from being involved is a sobering experience that can give your life new perspective. So, let’s take a few moments to put some of these events into a proper perspective:

Obstacles. First off, obstacles are not a setback at all. An obstacle is simply not going to keep you from achieving what it is that you have set out to do. Regardless of your undertaking, it’s a given that you want to get from Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time. In track and field they are the runners who run the 100 yard dash. For the rest of us along the road of life, it’s more like running the 100 yard hurdles. No matter what you set out to do, you’re going to inevitably encounter a few hurdles along the way. While they’re not ideally wanted, they are readily overcome and are not going to keep you from achieving your goals.

The other thing about obstacles that you need to comprehend is that most of the obstacles in any endeavor are actually “predictable”. The act of becoming a good goal planner includes identifying potential obstacles during the planning stage. By identifying them upfront, you can have ready made solutions in place for dealing with them should they actually arise.

Roadblocks. Contrary to your probable reaction to one, a roadblock isn’t a setback either. Imagine that you are driving to a conference in a nearby city and about halfway there the highway crosses over a river. However when you get there, you find that the road is blocked off, there are flashing lights and a sign that says Bridge Out.

In one regard you have come to the end of your road. But just because a flash flood from the previous night’s storm may have washed the bridge out, it’s not really the end of the road for you. It’s just a “detour”. There are other roads and different routes that will still get you to the conference. Even if you happen to get there a bit later than planned, it’s not a big deal. While you might miss the welcoming cocktail party -- that’s not the real purpose of the conference is it?

Roadblocks are a clear signal that there is a flaw in your plan and that you are going to have to make a course correction. In the end, you will still achieve your goals and objectives.

Brick Walls. In the words of Professor and Disney Imag-ineer Randy Pausch “The brick walls are there for a reason.” When you encounter a brick wall in your life, its purpose is not to block your path to success or to prevent you from achieving what you set out to do.

Rather, it is there to present you with the important question… How bad do you really want what it is that you are after? Are you absolutely certain that you are ready to handle it when you get it? Brick walls are there to separate those individuals who don’t want it bad enough, from those who will not let anything get in the way of achieving their goals -- Not even a seemingly insurmountable brick wall. Those that possess the all out determination and the ingenuity to find a way to get over, under or around their brick wall, will ultimately have learned to respect their achievement and manage their new found success appropriately.

Your ability to scale your brick walls, will keep taking you to new heights of achievement.

Copyright © 2013 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.

Leadership In Decline

A recent Washington Post headline read “Federal leadership on the decline, report says” which was referring to the newly issued report by the Office of Personnel Management for the year 2012.

 

Based on a 100 point scale, the overall leadership score for federal government agencies fell 3.82% (2.1 points) from 2011 to 52.8 points. Max Stier, President and Chief Executive of the Partnership for Public Service stated “it is definitely significant and consequential”.

 

I would heartily concur with Mr. Stier, as this report provides further confirmation of the growing global leadership crisis and the shortage of qualified leaders in our government, business and civic arenas. 52.8 out of a 100 is a failing grade score by any measure.

 

The report also cited that federal employees “feel less empowered to do their jobs and are less satisfied with the way senior leaders are handling their agencies”.

 

Additionally, “Given the current environment, sustained attention to improving leadership is not a luxury, but a necessity.”

 

The House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul stated that his panel “has routinely found that Department of Homeland Security mismanagement and a lack of real leadership has bred dissatisfaction throughout the ranks…”

 

The Office of Personnel Management report also stated that “The decrease in satisfaction with senior leaders is especially worrisome.” One of the specific issues that the report cited was that “Part of the problem is that leadership doesn’t communicate with staff well enough”.

 

Effective communication is not only a critical leadership issue, it is an essential attribute of an authentic leader. In the words of Gilbert Amelio, President and CEO of the National Semiconductor Corporation, “Developing excellent communication skills is absolutely essential to effective leadership. The leader must be able to share knowledge and ideas to transmit a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to others. If a leader can’t get a message across clearly and motivate others to act on it… Then having a message doesn’t even matter.”

 

When you consider the results of a recent Salary.com survey report, there are a lot of messages that apparently don’t matter to the American workforce at large. According to a Salary.com report, 84% of all American workers are either dissatisfied or unhappy with their jobs. Concurrently, 86% of American workers are not fully engaged in their work assignments.

 

On “National Boss Day” in 2012 it was reported on Yahoo! News that “Two-thirds of American’s are unhappy with their jobs to the point that they would rather have a ‘new boss’ than a pay raise.”

 

Good communication is a basic concept and a clear necessity for building mutually beneficial working relationships in business and government. This requires nothing less than a basic comprehension that every human being is unique and that they have genuine “value”. Effective communication and meaningful business relationships are built on the foundational building block of mutual “respect”.

 

People can only take appropriate actions if they are first appropriately informed about both the current situation and the work that needs to be accomplished. Regardless of how brilliant the ideas and plans of leaders may be, if they can not be effectively communicated, little progress will ever be made to achieve or implement them.

 

George Bernard Shaw once observed that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Amidst the hustle and bustle of daily work routines, the fatal mistake is that all too many supervisors, managers and executive leaders assume that their people know what they know and consequently “understand” what is at stake as well as the work to be done.

 

One of the primary reasons that leadership is in decline is the failure to comprehend that communication is the language of leadership.

 

Copyright © 2013 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.

The Top 5 Signs That You're Stuck

How many times in your life have you heard someone say “I’ve got to get my act together”? Or you may have heard it expressed as “I need to get my priorities straight”.

Be honest now… How many times have you said these statements to yourself? How many times has someone else said them to you? I would imagine that over the years, it’s been quite a few times.

These self professed acknowledgements are sure-fire indicators that something is potentially out of balance in your life or in your work. Perhaps both. While there are numerous potentialities for what may be occurring (or not) in your life, there is a high likelihood that you are stuck in one form or another. Worse yet, you may not even realize it.

Following below are the Top 5 Signs That You’re Stuck:

You’re Floundering. The most common sign of floundering is indecisiveness. This typically takes the form of waffling about making decisions and initiating the actions that you deep down know must be taken. One part of you says that you don’t know what to do or aren’t sure about what to do. Conversely, there is another part of you that instinctively knows what the right thing to do is, yet you can’t seem to pull the trigger.

You’re Disorganized. When your normal state of organization deteriorates into an inefficient state of chaos it’s a sure sign that you are not coping well and that something is affecting your life to a significant degree that is sufficient enough to disrupt your ability to remain organized.

You’re Procrastinating. Putting off your least favorite tasks or chores temporarily while you work your way down to the bottom of your list is reasonably normal. However, when you start putting things off for longer periods of time or even indefinitely this is not normal. The problem with true procrastination is that you disproportionately skew in your mind that which needs to be done. You build the task into a monumental event far beyond the scope of reality, i.e. cleaning out the garage is going to take me all weekend and will cause me to not be able to play golf with my buds on Saturday. Plus I’ll miss out on… (You get the picture).

You’re Avoiding. The act of avoidance differs from simple procrastination in that is not merely circumstantial, rather it’s 100% “intentional”. In variably what you are avoiding has a clear consequence associated with it. Consequences are generally painful, which may not always impact just you. Often times, what you’re avoiding will also cause pain or disappointment to someone else.

You’re Distracted. There are times in life when you will find yourself in a state of “overwhelm”. In such circumstances your state of overwhelm is going to cause you to be easily distracted. When your conscious brain becomes overloaded it enters into search mode looking for a way out of the pickle you find yourself in. Everything then becomes a distraction which only serves to further cloud the issue of what to do next.

In that you are a perpetual work in progress, the reality is that you will never truly “get your act together”. You will however find yourself stuck in a ditch along side the road of life from time to time. While it’s never a pleasant experience to endure, you will in the end get through it.

The correct mindset to adopt when you find yourself in one of these roadside events that will actually make more sense than the aforementioned adage… is “To get your life back on track”. Don’t allow your life to get put on hold for any appreciable length of time. Call a tow truck (get real help), get yourself out of the ditch and get yourself back on the road of life. Then put your foot on the accelerator and get back up to speed.

In the process, you would be wise to heed adage #2 from the intro above and seriously consider what is genuinely “important” and further enhance your recovery process by prioritizing the most important issues and tasks that will get you back on track, back up to speed and back in control of your life.

Copyright © 2013 Developing Forward | Thomas H. Swank, CBC | All Rights Reserved.