Get this - IT IS ALL ABOUT PEOPLE!!!

Over time you may conclude that I sound like a broken record. I talk about relationships and people a lot. I just can't help it I guess. I really believe success in life comes by knowing how to relate to and how to get along with people. Skills for a particular job assignment can be taught in fairly short order. Knowing how to relate well to people seems a tougher challenge. Years ago I remember a college president telling his audience that business leaders repeatedly stressed focusing on the social sciences in terms of what college education should be about. Skills can be taught once employed and besides, they need to be tailored to the specific job application anyway. Teach students to express themselves clearly and to learn to relate was the challenge from these execs.

I just returned from a trip to Israel. I have led several tours there in the past and this one was doubtless the very best ever. Why? Two of the main reasons have to do with people. First, we were paired up with a wonderful guide. When he met us at the airport on the very first day he said, "You are now my family for the next 12 days!" That set the tone. We were indeed family. In the past I have enjoyed other equally knowledgeable guides but this one had the advantage of being very much people oriented.

The second reason for the success of our tour was that the travelers all related to one another well. There was genuine caring. Concerns for extended family health issues, offers of cell phone use, assisting others when the steps became a challenge to some, were a few examples of caring that took place. At the end, reunions were planned and hopes of another tour somewhere else were expressed. The people liked each other and wanted to be together.

Permit me to introduce two words that may possibly be new to you. They relate to the matter of working with people. One is Modalism and the other is Sodalism. Modalism is about structure and the sustaining of an institution. Under modalism people are not very important. Whether admitted or not, preserving the institution is all that really matters in a modalistic system. Sadly, I am convinced that the government at most levels, industry, and churches and denominations, have become excessively modalistic. For example, do you really believe we will ever see a major paradigm shift in how taxes are collected? Not very likely! There are far too many structures and committees that would become obsolete. Politicians would be out of jobs and more importantly they would lose power and influence. Similarly in the church world, many people become disillusioned because they do not desire simply to keep the mechanisms and gears of the institution functioning. Modalism is a major reason for the disaffection and cynicism that pervades our society today.


Sodalism on the other hand, is mission focused. I would argue that focusing on mission essentially equals focusing on people.

I have spent much of my adult life in the administration of churches. I noticed that when a new church is begun, it is very much in a sodalistic frame of mind. The congregants meet often to discuss, eat, play, plan, work, and dream together. After about 5 or 7 years (students of this phenomenon have varying opinions) a sad change takes place. Slowly but surely meeting together becomes much more infrequent. When meetings take place it is more and more to” grease” and maintain the machinery of the church. Initially, most everyone in the church has the keys to the building. This works well. Over time however, more people join. No one seems to know who has or who does not have keys anymore. Security now becomes a problem. A manual is needed and a policy must be established concerning who is authorized to have keys to the church. Do you see the picture? Modalism is becoming entrenched.

Business is no different. Mom’s and Pop’s who pioneer a business are usually in a sodalistic mode. It is all about people and the mission of the business. Over time, and often when the second generation takes over, the initial vision and mission become blurred. It is a sad but perhaps inevitable shift. Or is it? An organization with which I work at present is spending time to revisit its original mission. They have not done this for a long time. I believe they may well come back to what set them apart at the very beginning. People will begin to matter more again.


Obviously order and structure are necessary. It is imperative to have constitutions, job descriptions, operational manuals, and so on. I am not arguing against structure. To do so would be to invite chaos. I am arguing that we must be wary and alert to keep structure in their proper place. They are means to a much greater end. Structure is by no means the end itself.

As you look at your business, your school, your church--- what mode do you believe you are in? Are you mission and people focused? Is there a sense of community present among your employees? How do you view your employees? Are you keenly conscious that they are people with families, hobbies, aging parents, growing infants, dreams of their own?

Want to talk about it? I would love to hear from you. You can reach me at rick@icarecoaching.com or use the contact portion of my website www.icarecoaching.com.

Rick Penner
Copyright, 2007
www.icarecoaching.com

Hope and Pandora's Box

March is a season of hope. Where I live, tulips are blooming and trees are budding. Hopeful signs of life are everywhere in nature. In American politics hope is a frequent theme and a leading candidate for president has written a book entitled, The Audacity of Hope. More importantly this is also the season of Easter which to persons of faith symbolizes the greatest sort of hope of all--- Resurrection and eternal life!!

So what does Pandora’s Box have to do with hope? Although the legend has been variously understood over the centuries, its roots are in Greek mythology, When Pandora, the Greek goddess opened what became known as Pandora’s Jar, all the evils of the world were released. Only Elpis (Greek word for “hope”) the personification of hope, remained in the jar. In the 16th Century, Erasmus mistakenly translated “jar” into the Latin,“box.” The word has stuck and ever since then we have all been afraid to open Pandora’s Boxes. 

Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances. It is one of the three greatest virtues according to the Bible. It is what has kept many a prisoner of war alive in the most horrible of circumstances. Here are some ways others have expressed their ideas about hope:

In all things it is better to hope than to despair. - Goethe

Hope is the dream of a soul awake. - French proverb

Hope never abandons you, you abandon it.

We can live 40 days without food, 3 days without water, 8 minutes without air but only 1 second without hope.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings without words and never stops at all. -  Emily Dickenson

Hope is knowing that people, like kites, are made to be lifted up.

Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.

Hope is the feeling that the feeling isn’t permanent. - Jean Kerr

He who has health has hope. And he who has hope has everything.

If we do not have hope beyond this life, we are of all men most miserable. - The Bible

The resurrection of Christ provides us with a living hope. - The Bible.

As I work with people in coaching it has become very obvious to me how critical hope is to living a contented life, yes, even living at all. I am troubled when a person gives up hope all together. Such a person has begun to die. We need things to look forward to. We must believe that somehow, someday things will be better; whether this be in the case of a prisoner of war in some filthy cell or someone who has just lost his job or source of income, or if it is a student whose course work seems to be never ending, or if it is about a wayward son or daughter making poor life choices, or whether it is someone whose health is failing. It is one reason why a terminally ill person will go anywhere, try any cure, pay any sum of money, to find healing and relief. Once we lose hope all together, we begin to die.

As I am a person from the faith community. I happen to believe that ultimately hope must transcend the human condition. Ultimately it is not enough to simply have hope in this life. The reason is that for each of us there comes a time when the ravages of disease, the elimination or outsourcing of jobs, the relentless march of time on our bodies, and so on, take their toll. The optimism and eagerness of youth is replaced with the stark reality that some things cannot be changed. We may be able to slow the process down but to date, that proverbial fountain of youth has not really been discovered. It is what Ecclesiastes calls the vanity of life. All is vanity and emptiness on the purely human level.

What are your thoughts about hope? Are you hopeful that your life, your work, and your marriage or family, will get better someday, somehow? Do you have plans to make your hope come alive by taking responsibility for your life? Or are you a person near the end of this life seriously pondering about what might lie ahead of you? Back to that Pandora's Box story for a moment - Students of Greek Mythology offer various suggestions about what the story was really meant to teach. One suggestion is that hope is the one positive in a world of evils. I like that interpretations. This world can be tough at times. When we find that there is too much "month at the end of the money," our optimistic hope can begin to flicker. We can easily conclude that life will only get worse. Maybe you feel that way right now. You can let most anything escape your Pandora's Box, but please do not allow hope to escape!

I would love to chat with you about your own thoughts on hope. If you are a person for whom life has become burdensome and discouraging, there surely must be reasons for hope. A life coach like myself can help you talk about your situation and come alongside you as you try to sort it all out. Even more importantly, if you have concerns and thoughts about a hope that transcends this life, I would be delighted to chat with you about that as well. You can reach me at rick@icarecoaching.com or use the contact portion of my website www.icarecoaching.com. 

Rick Penner

Copyright, 2007

www.icarecoaching.com 

Thoughts on last month's survey

Thank you to those who responded to our follow-up survey last month.  Here are a few observations that are interesting to note:

Those who responded have defined what success means to them and they do so in the context of spiritual or biblical values.

How well we are differentiated is intriguing.  We rely on or feel concerned about, the opinions of others.  Half of the respondents feel pressure to perform on the basis of what people expect of us.

While a high percentage of us begin each new day with an eagerness and an anticipation, only about half of the respondents feel that they have reached a point where they consider themselves successful.  Still, all of those who responded feel that they are comfortable “in their own skin” in terms of success.

Over 80% view their “cup” as half full rather than half empty.

I found considering your responses to be an illuminating process.  Thank you for taking the time to respond.  We plan to create additional opportunities for feedback and discussion on the blog and through the newsletter in the months ahead.  

Rick Penner

Copyright, 2007

www.icarecoaching.com 

How do you define success?

Our society is obsessed with success and winning. When Atlanta hosted the Olympics some years ago, billboards in the city displayed this statement: YOU DON’T WIN SILVER, YOU LOSE GOLD!

Think about this for a minute! There are over 10,000 athletes who compete in a typical modern summer Olympiad. Approximately 600 or so win gold medals. All the rest are losers according to the message of the billboards. What do you think about that? How foreign is that to the Olympic ideal of sportsmanship, fair play, competition, friendship building, and so on? Olympic officials persuaded the powers to be to remove the billboards because their message so contradicted the Olympic spirit. And yet?? I submit that many in our society have bought the line!

I believe this misguided philosophy will only lead to frustration and discouragement. Unless you happen to be in the elite group of 600, all your efforts, hard work, training, sacrifice, and focus, are for nothing. You are a loser! It is nonsense to think such a philosophy can work for us. May I suggest another?

I have the privilege of knowing a retired college football coach who knows a lot about winning and success. He is one of the top 10 winning coaches in the history of college football. His teams have won four national championships. He was recently inducted into the National Football Foundation College Hall of Fame. I guess we could say he has been in the elite company of the 600! However, he defines success and winning in very different ways. I am indebted to him for some of the ideas I wish to share with you today.

What is success? Is it the end of the road for you? Or is it the road itself? If winning is the be all and end all, most people will fail. A real winner believes that winning is not the road to success. Winning is the success road! That is, winning is in the journey itself! Winning is an attitude. Winning becomes a by product when we measure success in terms of giving our best. Success is not a comparison of my achievements with the achievements of others. Success is what I do myself in relation to the potential I have to do things. There is a great excitement that comes from personal achievement and becoming the best we can be. A by- product is that our performance level increases. Individuals will gain a new awareness of their personal worth. Confidence will increase. Morale will be raised.

The definition of success as described by our coach friend causes me to measure success in terms of what I can do compared to my best self, not what I can do in relationship to others. This is key. I have learned that comparing myself to others will always lead to frustration. One reason is that my spirit never is satisfied. I may begin by comparing myself to someone I can surpass with my skills and talents. Then I find someone more successful with whom to compare myself. If I am fortunate enough to surpass this person, I will always find still another person even more successful against whom I feel I must compete. Eventually I will meet my match and will find myself falling short and feeling very disappointed. Now I am a failure because I will generally find someone somewhere who makes more money, has a better house, a fancier title, and so on. It is a false measurement.

Do you remember the 1986 Winter Olympics? The movie, Cool Runnings depicts the story of the Jamaican bobsled team in these Olympic games. The very idea is humorous and sounds oxymoronic! Jamaica? ….. Bobsleds? The two do not go together. You will remember that this team raced through the icy curves and corners only to have their steering malfunction near the finish line. Buffeted by the wild ride, the athletes picked up the sled and carried it across the finish line where they were greeted by thunderous applause and cheers from the crowd. This illustrates my point. These Jamaican athletes were winners! We all have failures and disappointments. You may feel that your “steering mechanism” has broken down often as you race through life. Your attitude now becomes the key to your success.

You can complain, blame others, and talk about how unfair life is. Or, you can respond with dignity and class to what life brings you, get up, and continue the race! We cheer when we see athletes like the Jamaicans. We admire their class and competitive spirit.

This story illustrates the two points I am trying to make today.

Give your life the best shot, your personal best! Don’t compare yourself with others. Compare yourself with yourself. Attitude is the key!


Here is how a poet put it:

You Can If You Think You Can!

If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win, but you think you can't,
It is almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost,
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will.
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are,
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But soon or late the man who wins,
Is the man who thinks he can.

~ C. W. Longenecker ~

Want to talk about it? Know anyone who would like to be encouraged on the success road? A life coach can help you on your journey to success and winning. I invite you to contact me so we can discuss your success road in more detail. You can reach me at rick@icarecoaching.com.

Dr. Rick Penner
Copyright 2008

What About Those New Year's Resolutions?

I write this in the middle of the first month of the new year! 

So how are you doing about those resolutions you set for yourself just a few weeks ago? What resolutions? …. Painful question? …. Maybe it is and if so keep reading. Let me offer some suggestions that will help you.

1. Are your resolutions wants or needs? The question is about motivation. If you made a resolution to lose weight, eat more wisely, or whatever--- did you do so because you truly want to or is it because you know you need to? A want is a stronger motivator than a need! Determine which it is. Wants come from deep within. Needs tend to be more external.

2. What is it that you have passion for in life? Often we make resolutions out of pressures that come to us from family members, friends or relatives. We may never really have a sense of ownership of these resolutions. Take some time to think about what it is in life that you truly feel passionate about. This takes time to do well. I am talking about real passion here. What is it for you? What makes you want to leap out of bed in the morning? What would you truly make sacrifices to accomplish? Develop a short list of your passions and then base your resolutions on these core values. The question of passion in life is one that a life coach will often ask a client. It is a way of knowing who another person really is and what “makes him or her tick”. 

3. Make your resolutions measurable. Determining to be more loving, more considerate, more thoughtful, and so on, sounds great but….? These are really only nice thoughts. However, planning to write 5 thank you notes per month to people you appreciate for example, is a very measurable and worthwhile resolution. Planning at least two nights with the family per week is also measurable. Supporting a favorite and worthwhile charity at $100 per month is also a very measurable resolution. You get the picture. Can you take stock every once in a while to determine if you are actually being successful in carrying out your resolutions? They must be measurable and specific for you to be able to do so.

4. Find a group or an individual for purposes of accountability. Human nature is what it is. If I know that someone will ask me weekly or monthly about a decision or commitment I have made, I tend to be more motivated. I have pride and do not want to face my friend or accountability group having to admit that I did not fulfill what I promised or purposed to do. It just works that way. We do not want to let others down and even more, we want to present the best possible impression of ourselves to others. 

Life coaching could be a wonderful investment for you at the start of a new year! Will this year be just like all the previous ones? Will you start out with the very best of intentions only to find that this year is nothing more than same old, same old? I invite you to break the cycle and consider the services of a life coach. It will make a difference and may well help you follow through and assist you to see your resolutions for the year to become reality in your life. What a happy prospect! I invite you to contact me at rick@icarecoaching.com or to use the contact portion of my website.

Happy New Year!

Dr. Rick Penner

Copyright, 2008

GEARS OR PEOPLE --- TOOLS OR PLANTS? WHAT ARE THEY?

What I am writing about today is not new and plenty of articles and books have been written about it! But apparently we still don’t seem to get it!!!

People are not gears or cogs in a wheel! They live and breathe. They have emotions and moods. Gears and machinery don’t. Machines can be thrown away and replaced easily. People --- that’s another story!

I work with a board for a non profit organization. Recently a few board members from this organization have been on a crusade to get rid of their executive director. They have accused her of all sorts of shortcomings and wrongdoings. As is sometimes done in such situations, they called for a performance review. I am all for performance reviews. I believe they ought to be done regularly and thoroughly. But this review had all the indicators of a witch hunt. There were no objective criteria by which to measure performance. As so often happens, this kind of performance review would be based on very subjective, emotional kind of data. I could see the handwriting on the wall so to speak. The ED was doomed!

This experience again reminded me of how we hurt ourselves and others by our insensitivities and carelessness in how we treat people. When Marshall Field first began building his department store he used to watch his employees leave work at the end of the day. With pride he would say, “There go our greatest assets!” How right he was. Our people are our greatest assets indeed!

By contrast I think of the words of the leader of a church based mission agency. He told his missionary force of several hundred that they were like gears, belts and pulleys on a huge machine! How inspiring! I am sure we all would love to be viewed as some gear or bearing on a machine. That would make me feel really valued! I could not wait to sign up to be part of his “machine”! I hope you catch the sarcasm.

How do you treat people? You may be a business owner with several or many employees. Perhaps you are part of a church leadership team and constantly work with people. Perhaps you are part of a social or civic club of some sort. Perhaps like me, you serve on various boards and committees. How do you view your colleagues and fellow board members? What is the “DNA” of your company when it comes to how you value people?

Tools we use to accomplish tasks are designed for one purpose. A wrench is not for cutting things. A pair of scissors is not designed to secure nuts and bolts to each other. These tools will never be anything but what they were designed to be. Plants are very different. They need to be watered, transplanted, pruned and fertilized. If we do that they will grow. Some will produce beautiful flowers. Others will produce delicious fruit. People are like plants not tools! They too need to be “watered and fed”. They will be more productive if we nurture them.

Here are some practical but powerful steps you can take to treat people like plants instead of tools!

1. Give recognition. 

I recently transferred some investments to a new company. Precisely ONE day after we had made this transfer a Thank you card signed personally by the partners in the investment company was in my mail box. I was impressed. By contrast, earlier this year, I transferred some other funds from an account manager who had not contacted me even once in over 5 years. Even when I closed out the account I received no inquiry or contact from him. See how simple this is? It does not take much to make a positive impression.

2. Keep communication lines open. 

No one likes surprises. If there are issues that may affect another person, be sure he or she knows what you are thinking and that it may impact the other person. I once was told via phone call that I would no longer be receiving remuneration from a certain organization I was with. It was a bolt from the blue and came from the board chairman who was vacationing in a sunny clime. He did not decide this while he was away and could have easily told me in person along with his rationale, well before he left town.

3. Be a person of your word.

If you make a promise, keep it! People latch on to things you say. A promise you make registers in the memory of the person to whom you make it. A broken promise erodes confidence and trust.

4. Be human. 

No one expects perfection. If you blow it, admit it! Don’t make excuses or blame others. If you forget to do something you said you would do, or if new circumstances arise that change things in one way or another, explain what happened, express your regrets, ask for forgiveness, etc and move on. People tend to give each other a lot of slack as long as they trust and believe in each other and believe they are being dealt with in good faith.

5. Laugh often. 

Scripture says that laughter is like a good medicine. I have walked into offices where the atmosphere is like the frigid arctic. I have also been in offices where there is good will, laughter and even frivolity. We take ourselves and life in general, too seriously at times. Share a great joke; don’t be afraid to be one too! Your colleagues will see your humanity. They will be more productive.

6. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

This is so simple yet so profound. Simply stop and think a minute. How would you like to be treated? What makes your day? What is it that draws you to a certain kind of person? Why would you gladly spend time with one person and perhaps not another?

7. Invest in people.

In a business this may mean providing certain kinds of perks and benefits. A family member called me this week to tell me about a 3-day trip his company had provided for him and his wife. The company does not know that this employee was seriously considering leaving. This little investment in him has changed his mind. Professional development is well worth it. It speaks volumes to people. It says your company values you. It believes in you and that you have the potential to become an even more productive employee. My work in the LIFO Survey for example is a wonderful way to increase productivity and enhance group morale. I always find it fascinating to observe the positive change in attitude of people who take this helpful training. Investing in people is like watering and feeding plants. They flourish. 

People are our greatest assets! Let us never forget this. If you would like some encouragement in working with people, or if you would like information on the LIFO Survey productivity instrument, please feel free to contact me at rick@icarecoaching.com or take a look at the LIFO Survey section on my website www.icarecoaching.com

Copright, 2008

Dr. Rick Penner

Integrity Check

If you have integrity nothing else matters. If you do not have integrity nothing else matters!

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity!”

US president Eisenhower stated, “The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity.”

Ronald Reagan said he was proud to be called a P.I.G.! To him it meant …. Persistence… Integrity… Guts! 

Oprah Winfrey has expressed what many others have tried to say to explain integrity. It is that real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody is going to know whether you did it or not! 

Everywhere in our culture integrity is viewed as a supreme quality. Maslow put it at the very top of his hierarchy of needs pyramid. Much has been written about the idea of integrity and the above are just a few of myriads of examples. 

What is integrity anyway? You might think it is easy to define but in reality it is a little more complicated than we might think. We use the term in various ways. There is for example a self integrated kind of integrity. This involves keeping ourselves intact and being harmonious in a prioritized system of values and desires. In this scenario we define our own kind of integrity and seek to live consistently with it in every area of our life. 

We also speak of integrity in terms of remaining true to a commitment. This commitment might be to promises, to people or institutions, to ideals or principles, or projects. If a person remains consistently supportive of a particular athletic team whether it is winning or losing, we say such a person has integrity. A person whose word is good has integrity. Someone has said that it is better to have an enemy who keeps his word than a friend who does not!

Some like Cheshire Calhoun describe integrity as a social issue. Here integrity consists of being true to one’s community. Therefore a terrorist or any kind of fanatic has integrity because he or she lives passionately for his community, maybe even to the point of being willing to give his life for his community. There is no moral code as such in play here. 

Perhaps the most common understanding of integrity involves morality. Elizabeth Ashford calls this objective integrity. A person with integrity is one who shares our moral values. A question I would raise here is this: Who defines moral values? On what are they based? Can they change with time? 

The word “integrity” has Latin roots. The word speaks of wholeness or completeness. Other dictionary definitions declare integrity to involve a firm adherence to a code of moral values, an unimpaired condition or purity. 

I enjoy theories but basically I am a practitioner. I like to get to the basics. 

So, can we talk about integrity in very simple terms? I think so. 

Let me make it a little simpler! The definition I like most is that we have integrity when what we THINK… SAY… and DO are aligned into wholeness.

The closer these 3 qualities line up with each other, the more integrity we possess. If these 3 circles are not superimposed one over the other we do not have integrity. The farther apart they are the less we are practicing integrity. 

Want to do a little inventory of your life and see what kind of integrity you have? Look at this list of some common virtues. Think about your life. In each of these areas is what you THINK, the same as what you SAY? And, do these 2 also line up with what you DO? The more you are able to answer, “Yes!” , the more you can be certain that you are practicing integrity!

Honesty.

Courage. 

Fairness. 

Sensitivity. 

Humility. 

Adaptability.

Communicativeness. 

If you are concerned about being more “whole” or if you would like to develop a more complete lifestyle of integrity, give me a call or send me an email at rick@icarecoaching.com. I would love to talk with you! 

Dr. Rick Penner

Copyright, 2007

www.icarecoaching.com