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Friday Filosophy v.11.04.2022

Friday Filosophy v.11.04.2022

Friday Filosophy v.11.04.2022 brings quotes and words of wisdom from the Chinese philosopher and poet, Lao Tzu.

Lao Tzu was an ancient Chinese philosopher and poet, well-known for penning the book Tao Te Ching. He was the founder of philosophy of Taoism, a religious and ethical custom of ancient China. He is largely respected as a religious deity in various traditional Chinese religious schools of thought. He is also believed by some to be an older contemporary of the famous philosopher Confucius.

Lao Tzu’s journey began as he set foot towards the western border of China, currently Tibet. He was saddened by what he saw around him: men being diverted away from nature and the goodness it brings. A guard he met on the border asked Lao to write down his teachings as he went. This is when he wrote the famous Tao Te Ching, a 5,000-character account of his thoughts and philosophical ideas.

Like various ancient Chinese philosophers, Lao Tzu made use of rhyme and rhythm, paradoxes and interesting analogies to get his point across in Tao Te Ching. In reality, the entire book can be considered as one great analogy.

The ‘Tao Te Ching’, literally meaning ‘The Way and Its Power’ presents the idea of ‘Tao’ as being the end all and be all of existence. It is extremely powerful, yet down to earth. It is the source of all being in the world. The book intends to guide people on how to return to the laws and ways of nature to maintain the balance of the Tao.

Tzu is also the father of the Taoist philosophy. Taoism, along with Buddhism and Confucianism, is the pillar of ancient Chinese thought. It is not only a customary philosophy, but it has also taken the shape of a properly organized religion. Though the two elements of religion and philosophy are separate, they are profoundly connected. Lao Tzu’s teachings have encompassed the depths of both.

Taoism focuses on leading life according to ‘Tao’ or ‘the path’. It encapsulates moral, ethical and religious Chinese customs. Tao is a concept not exclusive to Taoism; it is also found in various other Chinese philosophies. In Taoism however, it plays a major role. As per Taoism, Tao is deep and overwhelming; it is the all-encompassing. It is both the cause and the effect of every existing thing in the world.

Lao Tzu’s philosophy was a simple one. He was against putting effort and striving, as he thought struggle is not only futile but also hinders productivity. In his theory of ‘wu-wei’, he advises to simply do nothing. By this he means not to go against the forces of nature, wait for the gush of events nature brings to you and dive right in. He advised not to struggle to change the natural order of things, but to bring spontaneity to one’s actions as one holds on to the nature’s way of life. Followers of Taoism believe that striving for nothing will never lead them to failure. The one who has never failed is always successful, thus becoming powerful.

By understanding this principle, Taoist debates against Confucianism and its endeavors at domination and standardization of all aspects of life, and strives for a lone, deep meditation among nature. Taoists believed that through contemplation, nature will grant them the keys unlocking the powers of the universe. The logic of ‘doing nothing and achieving everything’ reached the rulers and affected the way the kings treated the masses. Thus, in a subtle way, Taoism took shape of a political philosophy.

Lao Tzu’s works have continued to influence individuals and anti-authoritarian campaigns around the world. Belonging to the sixth century, Lao Tzu, a title given to the great philosopher meaning ‘Old Teacher’, taught the world the importance of the ways of nature and how embracing the principle of doing nothing can help achieve everything.

  • A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
  • Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
  • Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
  • To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
  • Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
  • Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
  • Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
  • When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
  • When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
  • He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
  • Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.
  • I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
  • Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.
  • In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
  • At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

The Time is Now

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Coaches Corner v.11.03.2022

Coaches Corner v.11.03.2022

Guest writer Floyd Jerkins brings us our latest installment of our Coaches Corner, v.11.03.2022.

Can You Improve Your Employees Psychological Income?

One of the most profound human characteristics centers around our need to be appreciated. When we are in a relationship where we feel appreciated and valued, our self-esteem rises, and we are much more open to making changes and being part of a team. Leaders know this and work to create an environment for people to be recognized.

Employees need economic income and psychological income. To reach peak performance, both are needed to have balance in life while the business pursues high profits. When employees enjoy the economic portion, a question is how much more commitment could they make if they had the psychological income to match?

Managers Becoming Experts in Finding the Things That Go Wrong

More often than not, managers are on the job to find the things going wrong and fix them. Many become experts at this. One of the most serious challenges in motivating people is that over time if all they hear are the negatives, it breeds a less than average mindset or one that goes all out to protect themselves from ridicule. It’s hard to build a team of high-performing champions if all they hear is what they are doing wrong all the time.

The “emotional bank account” is a theory and a practical application. The theory suggests that the more deposits you make into someone’s emotional bank account, their self-esteem increases, trust builds and makes them more open to changes. You are overdrawn in the account if you don’t make purposeful deposits. The person then closes down and isn’t up for much of anything because they are always suspicious of your motives. The practical application is to be well invested in the emotional bank account with your teams through your leadership and communications style and the consideration you show.

Catching Team Members Doing Something Right

Many times, all a leader hears in a day are the negatives. Some staff will bombard you with every negative there is. As a leader, you are often the center of communications, and this can become draining if you don’t frame these issues correctly.

This is one of the biggest keys to making happy employees. As a leader, we often forget to praise someone when they do a great job. Our heads are into other business-related issues. I don’t bet but only on sure things. And I’ll bet your business has all kinds of positive service points of contacts every day. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t last long in the business. Do you see them? Can you make it a daily practice to praise your staff when they perform the correct customer service behaviors you want to see?

A client of mine owns a few McDonalds. They installed the “thank you” process. Each employee was to say thank you when another employee did something for them, or they witnessed a fellow employee performing an uncommon act of service. All the managers started the process weeks before they rolled it out with all the staff. My friend said it was amazing how quickly this caught on and the improvement it made to the attitudes of the staff. It became contagious.

An example from another client. If an employee goes over and beyond to help a customer or assist a teammate, they will get a “good job card” with their name on it at their monthly manager’s meeting. These cards can come from managers, other employees or from customers telling management. They then would get to put their cards into a box. The manager would draw a card out of the box with a name on it. That person would then win a gift of $100 in value. A few of their people didn’t care about getting a card until they saw the same people winning. Then they joined in by trying to go over and beyond at customer service or helping another teammate to win. It became contagious.

Strategy to Make Emotional Deposits: The Magic of Dimes

Business owners go to great lengths and expense to recruit and hire the right people. I’ve always wanted people who worked for me to come to work and enjoy what they are doing.

As I mentioned in this article’s opening lines, we all have basic human tendencies. As a leader, we can nurture people through our leadership style and grow the talent we need to continue to achieve the goals and mission of the company.

Try putting ten dimes in one pocket and moving them to the other pocket one at a time with each positive message you give to someone throughout the day. The idea is to try and break old habits, and I am sure that is what many of us have. How many dimes do you have at the end of the day? Track this for a couple of weeks; you’ll be surprised. If you do well, you will also notice a change in the people around you. It is magical.

You can’t be fake about this, nor be insincere. Remember, in the absence of leadership; people will follow the strangest things. With leadership, ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

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Observations from Rural New Mexico

Observations from Rural New Mexico

Guest writer David Jensen shares this week’s blog post with his “Observations from Rural New Mexico.”

“Work, really? 

Again?

Didn’t I just do that yesterday?”

I recently observed a t-shirt with the above phrase. It seems to sum up the current attitude among many regarding work.  Clearly the individual is in disbelief that we are to return to work the next day.  If you Google the statement, “My Work is ……”  some of the top responses are as follows:  boring, makes me ill, is killing me, is stressful. At the risk of sounding as old as I am, I do not understand how the current generation views employment. From my teen years working in my father’s store to the present, I have found work to be the source of many important life lessons. So, what is up with this generation? Is it a generation that been “bubble wrapped” to the point that the slightest disappointment is too much? In a current TikTok, an individual was denied requested PTO (paid time off) so he hijacked the phrase PTO to mean “Prepare The Others I am quitting!”  Is this a generation of quitters? Is this idea of work life balance gone too far? Recently, an associate of mine was preparing to offer an applicant a job when this would be employee spoke up and offered a list of demands: no nights, weekends off, two weeks’ vacation and all federal holidays off. The applicant did not get the job! 

Living in rural New Mexico in an agricultural community, nights off and no weekends sounds very foreign. Our livestock operates on their schedule not ours. Although, since only 6% to 8% of the population works in agriculture, maybe “weekends off” is a thing. That said, what is really going on with this generation? Perhaps the researchers who survey worker attitudes and then mark the trends can help provide the answers.

The Gallup Survey

Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup, in a recent book entitled Blindspot suggests that world leaders have missed the level of employee unhappiness (subjective wellbeing). The belief that an improving GDP benefits all is false. The “misery index” which includes among several indicators a measure of employee dissatisfaction over the last ten plus years is trending higher. Regarding worker dissatisfaction, the Gallup researchers found, based on survey questions that workers can be sorted into three categories. 

  1. Employees who were thriving at work (engaged), who felt they had meaningful employment, equaled 20 % of the population. 
  2. Employees who were indifferent at work (disengaged), who were “quietly quitting” just enough effort not to be fired equaled 62% of the population. 
  3. The remaining 18% were miserable and were actively disengaged to the point of working against the goals of the organization. 

If you have 100 employees, on average 62 are slow walking the effort and not significantly contributing to the success of the enterprise!  Worse yet, you have on average, 18 who are actively working against the goals of the organization. 

Lessons learned! Or relearned! …The Engagement Check List

So, this current generation is not a lost generation after all. The workers are simply disengaged. Lesson learned by leaders are sometimes forgotten. You may recall what the General Electric classic research into experimenter bias taught us. Simply paying attention to the workers improved productivity and the lights had little to do with the outcome. In a time where competition for skilled a worker is ever increasing, the challenge and opportunity that organizations face is to move some of those 62 employees into thriving category (engaged). 

Below is a short check list for getting started:

  • Item 1. Company culture needs to promote positive assumption regarding their employees. People come to work to succeed not to fail. That assumption allows the company to design programs and processes that work to ensure that success is guaranteed. 
  • Item 2.  Employees who come to work to be successful deserve quality supervision.  Training supervisors in best practices for engagement is essential. Engagement should become the center of the plate for the “employer brand”.
  • Item 3. Work rules that are designed to protect the company from the 18 employees that are seeking to undermine company success should be reconsidered.  Any HR policy that communicates a negative value or lack of trust to the 62 we seek to engage, should be eliminated when possible.  Fair employee treatment and equal employee treatment are not same.  It is important to provide fair and valued treatment to the 62 that we seek to engage.
  • Item 4. Connect and engage the employee’s family to the “employer brand”.  Extracurricular company activities for the family. Company logo shirts and caps for the family. Anything that supports a work/life balance can lead to engagement.
  • Item 5. Encourage employees to volunteer in the community. A community volunteer is less likely to be indifferent and disengaged at work.
  • Item 6. Provide opportunities for employees to contribute and learn in their jobs. Skill building and career development is another essential part of “employer brand”
  • Item 7. Encourage employees to recruit a close friend, shared experience between friends can enhance the work environment,

Conclusion: Organizations should develop their own list of actions to enhance engagement. To succeed in a competitive job market with fewer workers, engagement strategy is an essential part of the employer brand.  Otherwise; “Prepare the Others” (PTO) I am leaving!

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Another Look at Success

Another Look at Success

Learning Without Scars is pleased to introduce our new guest writer, John Andersen. As one of the original owners of PFW Systems, John Andersen was the first person in the industry to be labeled an Evangelist.  Over his 30 years with the company, he visited thousands of dealers in North America sharing a unique vision of the heavy equipment industry from a dealers and customer perspective.  With over $150 million dollars in sales credited to his commercial teaching skills he later aided in the transition to CDK Global where he continued as Director of Sales before “retiring” in 2016.  John now operates as a freelance consultant bringing vastly diverse experience bridging technology, consumerism and sales to several industries. We invite readers to join us as we take another look at success.

Another Look at Success

I read a recent blog from Learning without Scars about success and its various definitions.  Insightful as all of Ron’s blogs are, this one really sat with me for a long time.  The definition of your own personal success and measurements of it can really shift over time.  The most important takeaway for me was that long term success seldom happens by accident and recurring themes like hard work, dedication and sacrifice always bubble to the top.   You don’t often hear someone talk about a myriad of miscues, wrong turns, or potholes along the way, but I believe they are the catalyst to continued success.

I have been known to bring a box of mistakes with me to a presentation just to illustrate.   It’s filled with items like a RIM Blackberry, a Hughes Satellite terminal, my Grandmother’s pressure cooker, and a treasured Dick Tracy watch from my childhood.    The reactions are always the same when I present these items one by one.  Nods of approval or, “I remember that”.   Each has been replaced with a more successful or refined success like a Google phone, a Starlink system, an Instant Pot, or even my trusty Apple Watch.  This kind of evolutionary success doesn’t happen on its own. 

For each success someone has taken the time to look at the result and ask what could be better.  On rare occasions the answer jumps out, in most cases it requires a hard look followed by harder work and even greater investment.  This begs the question, what would happen if you looked at your own success with that same intention.   What would you look like if you went from a 1960’s pressure cooker to a Ninja Foodie?

The first step is the toughest.   It takes an incredibly difficult look in the mirror. A stripped down, honest, humbling introspection is the hardest thing to do when looking for a model of success. Let me share a story.

 I always viewed the peak of my success was in 2010.   I was 46 years old with a thriving lifestyle.  I traveled the country as the evangelist for a growing software company.  I was married to the love of my life and together we had a 10-year-old princess.  I collected interesting cars; we celebrated birthdays in Disney, and we cruised the islands a few times a year.  We had completed our dream house and were just settling into the most “successful” part of our lives.   In July of 2010 I walked up the stairs and dropped from a heart attack called the Widow Maker.   Lies, I’m still here.   Shortly after that my beautiful wife was given a terminal diagnosis of stage 4 cancer.  I left my career to take care of my family, my heart, and those who shared my heart.  That was my sole mission for the next 5 years.

As rewarding as that was, I felt like there was more left to do.  The measure of success hadn’t been met in my eyes.  I worked for a few folks, took on some side gigs, even tried my hand at some new industries but nothing gave me that feeling.  I was forever looking for that opportunity.  Fast forward through Covid when like everyone else I had the time to finally take that hard look over the wall.   If my new role was that of caretaker to my family, then I better be able to do it both mentally and physically.

I started with a lifestyle coach.  That meant a huge change in what I was eating followed by what felt like ridiculous amounts of exercise.  I had a group that helped with the physical and mental side of getting healthy.  I know now that’s the the trinity of well-being: mental health, physical fitness, and sustainable healthy fuel.    What’s the worst that could happen?  I lose a few pounds make a few friends.   Perhaps it would help me sleep better, snore less, walk easier and smile more. 

I could not have predicted the result.  I was evolving into my own success model.  I found myself changing from a Blackberry to an iPhone, or a Hughes satellite to an Elon Musk powered Starlink.   The transition was slow at first but like most good ideas it started picking up steam.  Pounds fell off, energy levels went through the roof, sleep came peacefully, and most of all…. I felt great!

So, what does success look like a year after the hard conversation with me?  For starters I’m 70 lbs lighter.  I go to spin classes at 6am twice a week, I go to the gym three times a week, and on Saturdays I RUN!  I mean 5k, 7k, even 10k and nobody is chasing me.  I run in the heat.  I run in the cold.  I run and listen to Ron Slee podcasts.  I smile when I run, and I think deep thoughts when I run. 

I would have to say my most successful time is now.  The love of my life is still here and still fighting, my daughter met all of her goals so far (she even runs with me sometimes) and I have found my version of the fountain of youth.  I think clearer, everything is a half-step ahead, and most importantly opportunity now seeks me.  

Seeking success requires a first step.  Take a hard look at you, your goals, your dreams and most importantly your “why”.  Everything you are already good at will remain, but the add on skills will put you in a new stratosphere.  Measure yourself honestly, painfully, and accurately then just do something.  You don’t have to be a 1960’s pressure cooker.  You literally own your success. It just takes a difficult conversation with yourself and then, like every success: hard work, dedication and investment.

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