Ingredients are Baked In

Most, if not all, of the problems and conflicts in organizations, stem from cultural issues, baked in before you started working there.

“This is how we do things here.” (Status quo)

“Isn’t everything going great here?” (False expectations/Poor feedback loop)

“Don’t say anything and it’ll just get ‘better’ on its own.” (Silencing response)

“It’s always been thing way here. Why are you trying to change things now?” (Shaming)

“The last time someone tried that, not only didn’t it work, but they also got fired.” (Threats/Retaliation)

“The pot always gets stirred around here about something.” (Fake/False Conflicts)

The statements represent the issues that can be overcome with courage. But, especially in organizations where the status quo needs to be preserved for people at the top of a hierarchy to “win,” more often than not, statements like those above represent organizational cultures where courage is in short supply.

Baked in fear, power misuse and abuse, failures of courage in leadership, ignoring and avoiding real issues, and denying reality—these are all based in, supported by, and encouraged within cultural milieus that must change.

Or else the future of work, leadership, innovation, and growth will remain far away indeed.

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 7 – Eddie Thomason

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 7 – Eddie Thomason, Speaker & Inspirational Entrepreneur

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #7 - Eddie Thomason

[powerpress]

The fact is, entrepreneurship might be interesting and hot right now, but it wasn’t always this way.

The fact is, being a rapper or a hip-hop musician was seen as being the way to success, not that long ago.

The fact is, becoming an athlete (particularly an elite one) is still viewed as a path to success for many people.

The fact is that these are all narrow doors.

It’s never mentioned (or rarely mentioned) in breathless articles in Inc., or Fast Company, but the vast majority of entrepreneurs would be far happier aiming at making a living creating $3 million dollars in value for clients and the market per year, than they would trying to win the start-up lottery.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs fail; the vast majority of freelancers go back to working regular jobs; and, the vast majority of people are perfectly happy being employees.

But…

If you get your head right about what exactly is on offer, and what exactly it’s going to take to attain and grow your entrepreneurial dreams, then you can stare all kinds of events, people, and incidents in the face and never blink.

Listen to the interview with Eddie and connect with him in all the ways that you can below.

And start the process of staring your dreams in the face.

Connect with Eddie all the ways that you can below:

Eddie’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/unlockyourselfU/

Eddie’s YouTube: https://youtu.be/rxfnHLrv2s8

Eddie’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/unlockyourselfu

 

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 6 – Randy Shain

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 6 – Randy Shain, Author, 173 Pages Every College Student Must Read, Entrepreneur, Speaker, Mentor & Coach

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode #6 - Randy Shain

[powerpress]

Dear 2017 Graduates of High School and College-

Congratulations, you have come to the end of a long, traditional, mostly academic journey, whose steps and path were mainly decided for you by other people.

Now, upon graduation, you are in charge of your own decisions. And, where you may wind up at the end of the path known as your life.

I have been thinking a lot about your path, future conflict, and where you might wind up as adults.

I will not lie to you: Your seeming multiplicity of choices about when, how and why to start on your path really comes down to one deeply black and white choice. No matter what you have been told by professors, faculty members, or parents, the choice really comes down to answering unequivocally and thoroughly one black and white question:

Do you want to work or not?

Your work is not your job.

Your work is also not your passion.

I am not going to write here and tell you to “follow your passion.” That is often given, facile, advice provided to you by well-meaning, but misguided, people who operate organizations that may seek to hire you post-graduation. But more likely than not, they won’t.

But more likely than not, they won’t.

When you answer the much more interesting and pivotal question about whether or not to work in your own mind and heart, and to your own satisfaction, then you can make all of the other decisions that will cascade dividends throughout your entire life.

Let me paint you a picture:

I decided after the first ten years of being in the working world after college, that I wasn’t going to work a job—any job—another day in my life.

Think about that.

Now, make no mistake, I work at my business.

I work at my corporate training gigs.

I also work when I advise clients, take them through the sales process and get profit at the end.

I work when I write blog posts, do research, create videos and even do my audio podcast.

Like the one right here I did today with Randy Shain, author of 173 Pages Every College Student Must Read. But go get it after you read the rest of this.

In the traditional understanding of “labor,” both the Marxist and the Capitalist have it wrong: Labor is something that you can do for no money. And that labor—the labor that you decide needs no compensation—will assuredly be the labor that reflects your truest passions, desires, interests and goals.

And—trust me when I write this—money soon follows.

Your job (current or future) is not your work, college and high school graduates. Your job is merely a series of tasks that you accomplish in an organization in the pursuit of someone else’s passion.

This does not excuse you from performing in said job with excellence. As a matter of fact, it is your moral and ethical duty to perform any job task that you take on in the pursuit of working another’s passion, with excellence and moral verve.

At this point, you may be thinking, “This guy is crazy. First, he tells me that he’s not going to tell me to pursue my passion. Then he tells me something that sounds remarkably similar to that advice that I hear very often.”

Let me be even clearer: Many people, from James Altucher to Tim Ferriss talk a lot about “choosing yourself.” This is the idea that no one—not a boss, a parent, an authority figure in government or anybody else—can truly provide your life with security and meaning anymore. The rules, the safety net, and the promises of the Industrial Revolution are dead and gone. They represented a brief, flashpoint in world history and humanity is gradually and fundamentally, moving away from those promises, all the way from cradle to grave. What this means is you have to pick yourself and do the hard work of actually building yourself up. You have to research and employ the tools that are laying around everywhere for free on the Internet—but that you haven’t been fully integrated into for the last 22 or so years—to develop yourself and your truly meaningful work.

This is the work of your life that you have to choose to do. Or not

Yes, answering, truly answering, the question about whether or not you really want to work, means that you will have to commit to doing two—or more—things at once. You will have to delay gratification, show grit and persistence in the face of rejection, and preserve empathy and remain courageous, in the face of dismissal, passivity, and societal apathy.

School didn’t teach you how to deal with this.

Work—in the way that people traditionally think about it—won’t teach how to deal with this either.

The church and your volunteer civic life may have gotten close to teaching you these lessons.

These fine line distinctions that come from committing to one choice and doggedly sticking to it. But I can guarantee you that the rich, meaningful life for which you are searching, will become available to you if you answer this one question firmly, unequivocally and then act on it in the same fashion.

Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about all of those banks and student loan debt that you’ve piled up while dutifully learning and regurgitating the meaningless lessons of a dead, industrialized system. There are plenty of smart people out here who are tap dancing as fast as they can to undo the banking system, which is the second to the last edifice of the old Industrial system.

That is their passion.

Their true work.

If you really want to do something about your debt, go get a job working at one of these organizations.

They are growing, they are hungry and no one sees them coming.

So.

Do you want to work or not?

Connect with Randy in all the ways that you can below and click on the player above to listen to his thoughts on all of this:

Randy Shain on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/randy.shain.7

Randy Shain on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randy-shain-68b03010/

One on One Mentors Website: http://www.oneononementors.com/about/

One on One Mentors Blog: https://www.facebook.com/oneononecollegementors

One on One Mentors on Twitter: https://twitter.com/oneononementors

 

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 5 – Marcus Mohalland

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Five, Episode # 5 – Marcus Mohalland, Co-Author, Silly Nomads

[powerpress]

The nature of literacy in a digital world has changed.

Here’s a story:

I went to the New York Library last year and looked at a Gutenberg Bible. The Bible was clearly a book. You could tell just by looking at it.

The fact that I could tell it was a book is the beginning of understanding the nature and depth of literacy. The fact is, the Internet is changing the nature of literacy and my guest today, Marcus Mohalland has some things to say about that.

He’s using children’s books, connections to the education system, and his unique life story to impact how children get literate and remain so, in a world of screens, and options for distraction.

The nature of books we understand. When I went and looked at the Bible, I understood exactly how to read it, comprehend it, and how to disseminate information contained in it to others.

But we are at the beginning of the digital revolution right now.

What will we be saying in 700 years while standing at a virtual display in a virtual New York City Library, while staring at a mobile phone with Internet access from 2017?

Marcus and his co-author Jan are looking to maintain and grow the fundamentals of understanding that literacy is based on, through re-establishing the fundamentals of reading and comprehension with a generation whose attention spans might be waning.

Check out Silly Nomads for your children (or the children of people you know) and connect with Jan and Marcus in all the ways that you can below:

Silly Nomads Twitter: https://twitter.com/NomadsSilly

Marcus Mohalland on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcus.mohalland

Marcus Mohalland LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusmohalland/

Silly Nomads Book Website: http://mohallandlewisllc.com/home

Silly Nomads Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillynomads

[Strategy] Truth and Fairy Tales

The uncomfortable truth is that an understanding and appreciation of the impact of human emotions is required to address the conflicts of the present day.

The comfortable fairy tale is that everywhere human beings are freed from the impact of their emotions by more economic choices, more scientific knowledge, and more opportunities to engage rationally with an ordered world.

The uncomfortable truth is that people very often refuse to change their behavior and walk the hard emotional path from awareness to competency unless a radical catastrophic (either positive or negative) personal or social event occurs to them.

The comfortable fairy tale is that humanity (both individually and collectively) is trending inevitably toward an integrated, united, globalized mindset, less captive to the paradigms, conflicts, and drivers of humanity’s conflict-ridden past.

The uncomfortable truth is that some people don’t want resolution (or closure) to the conflicts they are experiencing, and seek instead to inflict the consequences, process, and results of their personal conflicts on others.

The comfortable fairy tale is that resolution would be easier to get to if only irrational actors ceased acting irrationally through the auspices of more knowledge, more data, but less received, conceived, or perceived wisdom.

The uncomfortable truth is, the more that we think about the very nature of the human beings with whom we are in constant contact (and with whom we are in constant conflict) the better we get at managing, not the conflicts of others, but the reactions in ourselves.

The three areas in which we grow are often overlooked, but as conflicts, and the confusion about why they occur, increases, these areas will become more critical to engage in with mastery:

Intentionality—no more accidents. Yes, it seems exhausting to always be consciously aware of what we say, what we do, what we think, and what we feel. But it’s equally exhausting to experience the results of a lack of intentionality.

Self-awareness—physician heal thyself. Yes, it might be a more entertaining and distracting approach to be filled with the noise of others (and the constant pitch of the world). But healing yourself requires coming to terms with the signal coming from inside yourself.

Hearing—rather than listening to speak. Yes, it requires patience to listen to others with whom we disagree, and with whom we agree. But when we miss a critical conflict message because we didn’t hear it, we will have to be far more patient with the consequences as they roll out in our lives.

As the framing of more and more comfortable fairy tales run up against the wisdom of uncomfortable truths, it becomes imperative for those who have eyes to see, and ears to hear, to become more strategic around these three areas.

[Advice] Prepare for the Baby

Before a new baby comes into the world, usually a family diligently prepares for its arrival.

The family prepares the environment that the baby will thrive in, from the set-up of the room to the clothes the new baby will come home in.

The family prepares their emotional life as well, changing their hearts and minds in preparation for a new life, a new voice, and a new perspective.

The family prepares their financial life, hopefully putting money aside, creating a savings plan, and otherwise prepping for the addition of a new person who will have needs and wants that must be met.

The family prepares their spiritual life as well, shifting their mindsets, their worship and even thinking about new traditions and how to integrate the new baby into their lives.

When a new baby comes into the world, a family prepares at all levels for the arrival of the baby.

In the Western world, there’s a reason that Thanksgiving precedes Christmas and Christmas precedes the New Year.

The transition from holiday to holiday is not about materialism, commercialism, or even marketing.

The transitions are about gratefulness (preparing the heart), arrival (the baby is born), and possibility (the future is bright).

In conflict, let us not forget the importance of growth into these transitions. Let us prepare our hearts, and our relationships, as diligently as we prepare for the arrival of a new baby into our homes, our communities, and our neighborhoods.

[Advice] Listening to Hear

Most of the time, in conflicts, we engage in listening to the other party long enough to create a counter-argument that supports the narrative we already have in our heads.

This is not active listening, it’s passive consumption of content while idly waiting for a turn to speak.

This passivity in listening is particularly acute when, in the middle of a statement (or idea) being expressed that we have already dismissed as irrelevant, uninteresting, or not fitting our narrative structure, we pull out the computer in our pockets and start surfing for distractions.

Or our eyes cease to focus on the person making the statement and we begin to look around the room.

Or we begin to fidget and move around, impatiently awaiting the end of whatever is being said.

Children tend to behave like this, and one of the functions of parenting is to curb such ADD-like behavior and channel the energy devoted to not listening to active listening.

And to hearing.

When adults behave like this (as increasingly we are seeing) it leads to the top three cause of conflict: miscommunication, poor communication, and fumbled communication.

There are some ways out of this, and the researcher in listening, Jim MacNamara, offers seven canons of listening (go and check out his talk with the London School of Economics and Political Science. It’s fascinating):

  • Recognition
  • Acknowledgement
  • Attention
  • Interpreting
  • Understanding
  • Consideration
  • Responding

To get to appropriate responding in a way that acknowledges what was said by another party, listening (which is an active, and transactional act) must become part of the listeners’ conversational DNA.

And in a communication world that rewards impatience, inattention, passive (or little) recognition, endless noise, a lack of consideration, poor interpretation, and inattentive responding, what are we as individuals to do to increase our listening, and decrease our speaking?

[Strategy] Communication Channel

The voice is a communication channel.

So is a pen, a piece of paper, a keyboard, a desktop computer, or even a mobile phone.

So is a television screen, a computer screen, and a mobile phone screen.

The eyes, the hands, the body are communication channels.

So are mobile applications, Internet platforms, and even websites.

The ability to miscommunicate effectively comes about when we confuse the channel, with the message coming through the channel.

Or we confuse the medium with the message itself.

We seek nuance through these channels in a vain attempt to connect completely with another human being. The problem is that these channels are flawed because they are channels that exist of human making, human molding, and even human compromising. The nuance that we seek through using these channels—the clarity, courage and candor we ultimately seek—will not only come through such channels.

Conflict is easy when the medium and the message are confused. Conflict relies on obfuscation, confusion, miscommunication, and disconnection.

Blogging, tweeting, “facebooking,” Snapchatting, or using whatever the platform of choice to communicate with nuance, will result in more conflict not less. This is because nuance is sacrificed when using these platforms to communicate ideas that are easy to understand, but hard to manage, and may not ever result in resolution.

Reading is a communication channel.

So is thinking.

HIT Piece 11.29.2016

Sometimes a presentation doesn’t “work.”

Sometimes there’s no connection with the audience.

Sometimes the presenter talks more to themselves than they listen to the crowd.

Sometimes questions aren’t asked (or answered) by the audience or the presenter.

Sometimes there is no active listening on the part of the audience.

Sometimes there is no active listening on the part of the presenter.

Sometimes the content is not what the audience expected.

Sometimes the content is not what the presenter expected.

Sometimes personalities clash.

Sometimes the content is exactly what the audience needs to hear, but not in the way that they need to hear it.

Sometimes the presentation is just a failure, and there’s nothing that the audience (or the presenter) can do at all to “fix” it.

Sometimes trying again, with a different audience, is enough.

 

[Opinion] The Listicle is Simple and Seductive

Three points need to be emphasized at the beginning of any training, workshop, or seminar.

Your way of thinking about conflict, communication, and persuasion must shift before anything else can happen.

Your way of consuming information, your attention span, and your level of caring about the content you are about to hear, must shift before any deep learning can happen.

Your way of listening to the delivered content must shift from passive to active, for without that shift, nothing else can happen.

The desire, of course, from some of the participants is for these three things to happen. And these points being made out loud makes those participants relieved.

But there are other desires in the room.

The desire to get the tools, get the skills, get the listicle version of the information, and then to leave.

The desire to get the lecture, get the knowledge, but to not engage in any deeper change. After all, such change is challenging, and if there’s no support in the environment from which you came for change that needs to happen, well then it’s easier to ignore the calls to change.

The desire to not care. This is reflected in the phrases, the questions, the statements, and the observations that spring forth from the participants. Typically framed by some participants as “I hope that you can keep me awake,” or “You kept me awake more than any other facilitator I’ve ever sat through.”

The desire for the listicle version, the shorthand, the summary, the 30-second point, is seductive. But ultimately, changing the philosophy about how we think, matters more than applying shortcut tactics to achieve an outcome we might not enjoy.