I maintain that leaders are teachers… “Teach to Reach” so you can inspire instead of require to achieve the results you desire.   In the photo above my father is ironing my shirt.  I was doing it, but he observed, not doing it very well or at least as well as I might.  He said, “Can you I show you how to do that?”  Mind you, I was 35 years old at the time…and I knew how to iron my shirt.  I didn’t know everything there was to know about ironing, or about how ironing my shirt collar from the tips towards the center eliminates wrinkles at the tips.  I know now…. because IRON MAN taught me.

Remember;  You’re never too old to learn, and your never too old to teach.

Thanks Dad for all that you taught me, and teach me still.

IRON ON!

Kirk

 

Years ago… WOW nearly 10 years ago now!  I had decided to step away from my regular paying corporate job and start responding to invitations and requests to come speak about corporate culture.  One of the big questions I first faced was.  “Kirk, what do you charge?”  At first I thought well it’s just for an hour so I suggested a price that I thought was pretty high.  Fortunately the person on the other end of the phone loved me enough to give me some coaching….and give me a raise.  The essence of what they said is summed up nicely in the 3 following examples.

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

“It’s you - Picasso, the great artist! Oh, will you please sketch my portrait and charge accordingly! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he in a few short moments completed her sketch. He handed the women his work of art.

“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

“Five thousand pounds,” the artist replied.

“B-b-but, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a few minutes to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded, “No Madame, it took me my entire life.”

(You don’t charge by the hour…you charge by expertise in each hour.)

KNOWING WHERE TO HAMMER

A man was suffering a persistent problem with his house. The floor squeaked. No matter what he tried, nothing worked. Finally, he called a carpenter who friends said was a true craftsmen. The craftsmen walked into the room, and heard the squeak. He set down his toolbox, pulled out a hammer and nail, and pounded the nail into the floor with three blows.

The squeak was gone forever. The carpenter pulled out an invoice, on which he wrote the total of $45. Above the total were two line items:

Hammering , $2
Knowing where to hammer, $43

Charge for knowing where to hammer! 

A few months ago I spent an hour with my dentists… he charged me $400 for that hour - I happily paid him because I was confident that he was going to do the right work on the right teeth.  I paid him for his wisdom and his work.  I paid for at least some of the time he prepared and qualified himself to do the work as well as the work that he did.

in summary… NEVER CHARGE BY THE HOUR

Charge by the expertise and experience you bring to each hour!

Kirk Out

Jim Says it best…

“Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small
hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.”   Jim Rohn

We always talk about the things that are related to our jobs.  How to do this, how to do that…  How many of us actually examine our mental attitude about our job? Are we coming into work everyday just to earn that next dollar?  Do we wish our days away waiting for Friday night?  Is there a way to enjoy our work?  There is if we are willing to change the way we look at things.  

How to begin thinking positively:

1.  Start now.  Turn negative thoughts into positive affirmations.  Tell yourself that you can, even if you feel that you can’t.

2.  Take responsibility for your own actions. Don’t point fingers. Others will succeed when they see your success.  Stop blaming others and start doing the right thing. 

3.  Do what you love and love what you do.  If your job isn’t exactly what you always dreamed of, start taking steps now to change it.  Maybe it’s not your job that is the problem, maybe it’s your attitude towards your job.

4.  Help others.  Helping others reach their goals helps us to become better leaders.  Showing others the way is our greatest reward.  

5.  Watch what you say.  The words that come out of our mouths can make or break the way we look at things.   Don’t say,  “That’s just the way it is”.  Say, “What can I do to change this?” 

6.  Practice. Do something every day to change your mental attitude.  Help your co-workers, smile, approach new projects openly and positively, and do the best that you can everyday!  
Kirk Out

I loved this reply from one of my friends about my mispelling of the word “Positively”… but did I really do it on purpose?

Kirk,

Love the title. It caught my attention on the misspelling of the word positive and then provided a thought of “Hey, I noticed that it was misspelled rather than thinking of the actual message presented”. I then pondered just how many times I find fault in something first rather than to be accepting of the imperfections and focus on the real message!    You just become more auesome to me every day!    I know I know I was just trying to use your technique on catching ones attention by misspelling awesome.   Matt

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.   ~ — Alain De Botton

   I have often reflected on a simple statement offered by Dr. Stephen R. Covey as replied to this question.  “Dr. Covey of all that you have taught people of principle centered leadership and in the 7 Habits, if you could emphasize one teaching above all the others what would it be?”  “To remember that a persons greatest need is to feel and be understood.”

Understand? 

Kirk Out

“People from the top down must be allowed to be open about their feelings.”   -Nigel Nicholson, Professor, London Business School

Of course that would require a culture of trust… and that would require a leader to go first in being not only trustworthy, but able to demonstrate that they trusted others as well.  Vulnerability -based Trust is what Lencioni calls it in his wonderful book “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team”.   On a website called “Project Connections“  I came across this wonderful piece written by Geof Lory, PMP.  http://www.projectconnections.com/articles/112006-glory.html

While I have pasted the 1st installment of his series below if you are interested in more you’ll need to visit the link above.  I think it’s brilliant and something we would do well to talk more about and to build into our workplace cultures.

Geof writes - In many of my articles I have referenced the importance of trust in projects and families. However, I have deliberately avoided writing an article specifically about trust because I was searching for a way to convey such a large subject in the brief spot this column entertains.

So, in true agile project management fashion, I decided to break the topic of trust into more consumable and deliverable chunks. This article is the first in a series on understanding, building and maintaining trust through the life cycle of a project and the stages of team building. Naturally, it will be related to the life cycle or maturation of the parent child relationship. I hope I can do it justice.

Understanding Trust

In preparation for presenting on “Trust as a Foundation for Creativity and Innovation” at a recent PMI seminar, I pulled down every self-development, team-building and leadership book I have on my office shelves. I went though each table of contents and index looking for the word “trust” or any topic that might be related to trust. As expected, every single book made some reference to the importance of trust in building and maintaining relationships. Most dedicated at least a chapter, and not surprisingly, it was usually one of the first chapters.

So, why all the fuss about trust? Is it really that important? At the risk of over-simplifying, I see trust as both the glue that binds and the oil that lubricates all relationships. It is what fills the emotional space between us. Without it, we randomly clunk together creating friction or exist as separate and independent islands. Either way, without trust, we are individuals unable to leverage our collective interdependence or protect ourselves from the abrasion of our differences. I think understanding the paradoxical nature of trust-both glue and oil-is key to uncovering some of the basic components and value of trust.

Trust Helps Handle the Unknown

When my children were young, I enjoyed watching their movies with them, especially the ones where the cartoon characters’ voices are those of some of the great comedians of our generation. One of my favorite was Ferngully, with Batty the bat, voiced by Robin Williams. In one scene, after frenetically flying hither and thither as bats do, he clumsily smashes into a tree. As he is slowly sliding down the bark with a dazed look on his face, he says, “Gravity works.”

Gravity works. You can count on it. The outcome is predictable and even formulated. Newtonian science is founded on it. You could say you “trust gravity,” but in reality it’s a given. The certainty of the outcome does not require trust. It is in the uncertainty of relationships that trust comes into play. People are just not as reliable or predictable as gravity. Trust is necessary when the future is unpredictable.

Three Elements of Trust

In general, I consider myself a trusting soul. When reasonable and prudent, I am pretty free in trusting others. But what constitutes “reasonable and prudent”? As you might guess with all relationships and interactions between people, it is situational. What determines the situational risk is the level of trust (commitment and competency) weighed against the willingness to be vulnerable (reason and prudence).

For every situation, and in every relationship or interaction, we make a decision to trust someone based on three things.

1. Our belief or understanding of the other person’s competency (ability to perform)
2. Our belief or understanding of the other person’s commitment (willingness or desire to perform)
3. Our willingness to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the potential outcome if our belief or understanding is wrong and the trust is betrayed

Competency can be externally and empirically measured and as such is usually easier to assess and determine. You can test for competency and see its results. Competency typically grows with experience. It is usually slow to develop and equally slow to be lost. Competency is the growing outcome of the learning process. (See “Learning by Layering” for more.)

Commitment, on the other hand, is more difficult to assess, but can be inferred in many ways. Commitment is about prioritization, focus and intent-putting your money where your mouth is. It is easy to say you are committed, but if you don’t follow the words up with action, it is wishful thinking or self-serving lip service. Action and intent speak to the level of true commitment.

Competent and committed, willing and able-together they create an environment for trust, based on our perceptions of and belief in the other person. However, trust will only be developed if we are willing to be vulnerable.

Willingness to make ourselves vulnerable is our personal choice. It is this willingness that is the limiting factor in developing trust. Competency can be developed. Commitment can be inspired. But the willingness to drop our guard and extend our trust when the outcome is uncertain is the basis of vulnerability-based trust. The first two speak to how trustable the other person is, the third is about how trusting we are. For trust to exist, both sides are required; and we have greater control over our side of the equation.

I don’t know that I have ever heard of anyone explicitly measuring trust by calculating it mathematically, but I do believe we all do it subconsciously. We assess the person’s competency and commitment (using our experience with them as a stating point), and take into consideration the situation (our options and willingness to be vulnerable). That determines how much we will trust them.

The Challenge - Extending Trust

I trust my local car mechanic. He has demonstrated competency in auto repair and is committed to doing a good job so I will remain a happy customer and provide repeat business. My vulnerability is cost and inconvenience, both of which I am willing to extend to him. However, as good a mechanic as he is, I would not trust him to manage my investments or fix my computer. He has no demonstrated competency in either and to my understanding would not be committed to either.

Extending trust became more personally risky when my daughters first started driving. (See “Practice vs Experience.”). And just recently, I bought my mid-life crisis car: a five-speed sports car which they were both very eager to learn to drive. After several hours of herky-jerky practice in the local cemetery (a great place to safely develop driving competency with your teenagers), I was mildly comfortable with their competency. Then, one afternoon the request came. “Dad, can I use your car to go to a party at Samantha’s?”

I enjoy my sports car and have a lot of fun driving it, but not nearly as much as I enjoy the trusting relationship I have with my daughters. Of course the answer was, “Yes.” And of course I held my breath the entire evening wondering if it was a reasonable and prudent decision. And when the car and my daughter came home safe and unscathed, our relationship took a major step forward.

It is often said that trust isn’t given freely; it must be earned. Surprisingly, she has not asked to borrow the car since that evening. Perhaps I was being tested, or maybe it was just the novelty. I don’t know. But taking chances-making yourself vulnerable-after assessing situational competency and commitment, builds trust.

There are many other ways to escalate the development of trust. In the next article we’ll talk about how to create an environment conducive to building trust, and what we can do to increase our own willingness to venture into vulnerability-based trust relationships at work and home.

Some days seem may seem mundane, average or invisible.  They are perhaps just ordinary, unremarkable and ordinary days.  As we go through those “normal” days it is easy not to treasure the fact that they are not bad or terrible days.  It only takes a bad day to make a normal day a more treasured one.  I enjoyed reading the following quote. ~ Kirk Out Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are…Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.– Mary Jean Iron

Just for fun I have inserted a picture of my lovely wife Rebecca Weisler below… actually I am doing an experiment to see how long it takes search engines to find this jpg and make it a part of their search results.  Not that anyone will every actually read what I am writing on this low traffic page.  Still if you do…  let me know at kirk@kirkweisler.com

   

        

“I’m not happy. I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.”  ~  Beverly Sills - 1929-2007, Opera Singer

I’ve decided to be happy, cheerful, and COOL.  Because Snoopy is my idol.

Kirk OUT

Those who turn good (organizations) into great (organizations) are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.   – Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great”

I’m still amazed at the number of people who are not familiar with this highly influential book.  The audio version can be listened to in less than a week of typical commute time and I have yet to meet the person who said the book didn’t strengthen their life and ability to lead in some way.  This book has been the deliberate focus and center of discussion at many a CEO roundtable and executive retreat.  If you haven’t already…go ahead and move from Good to Great. (listen or read)

Make it Great… Read Good to Great.

Kirk Out

 

 Today’s T4D comes from Don Spradling, who was once my commander in the 19th Special Forces Group. He’s an amazing human being and has always been someone I admired and looked to as a mentor. After retiring from the Army he became a consultant for the Franklin Covey Group as well as starting his own executive coaching program called “Pathfinder”.

One of the many great things I learned from Don was how to use stories to teach principles of leadership. In seeing his masterful use of stories I observed that nearly 100% of the time the stories that were of himself were not stories of how he had failed at something or had not succeeded at the level and standard he had expected of himself.

Teaching with Failure - here is a man who had lead teams of elite soldiers on high-speed (way cool) missions around the world, who had completed several 100 mile endurance runs, obtained state sporting records, hosted famous Hollywood stars and so much more. I knew of those things because I knew the man. But I never heard him tell or teach with those stories. Instead he taught with the missions that went arie, the runs he didn’t complete, and the relationships that didn’t go well. He taught… what he learned from those situations and how they had changed him. Or rather how he had allowed himself to be changed by them. He wanted to do better, he wanted to be his best and so a careful review of why that didn’t happen was the best way to make the necessary changes so that on the next attempt improvements would be evident. 

The picture posted at the top of the blog is of a fun staff energizer program we put together in 2002 called “MIB” or Motivators in Black… the idea was to inspire leaders to move from Managing in Bureaucracy to Motivating In Black (or inspiring towards profitable results).   We still get to teach together a couple times a year and stay in touch.  He recently sent me the following really fun exercise to keep in shape.  I am certain you will enjoy it!  Have a FUN and Fantastic Friday!

Exercise for people over 50

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface where you have plenty of room at each side. With a 5-lb. potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides, and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax. Each day you’ll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple weeks, move up to 10-lb. potato sacks. Then try 50-lb. potato sacks. Then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb. potato sack in each hand, and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I’m at this level.)

Once you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each sack.  

 

Nearly 10 years ago, before I had even considered the idea of becoming a public speaker, I had the opportunity to do some work down in Cape Town S. Africa.  From all those years ago I still stay in touch with a remarkable young lady named Anthea Flink who recently sent me this wonderful piece that I now share with you.  It’s called  “Scatterd Paper”

Thank you Anthea!

Once upon a time an old man spread rumors that his neighbor was a thief. As a result, the young man was arrested. Days later the young man was proven innocent. After been released he sued the old man for wrongly accusing him.

In court the old man told the Judge: “They were just comments, didn’t harm anyone.”

The judge, before passing sentence on the case, told the old man:  “Write all the things you said about him in a piece of paper. Cut them up and on the way home, throw the pieces of paper out. Tomorrow, come back to hear the sentence.”

Next day, the judge told the old man: “Before receiving the sentence, you will have to go out and gather all the pieces of paper that you threw out yesterday.”

The old man said: “I can’t do that! The wind spread them and I won’t know where to find them.”

The judge then replied: “The same way, simple comments may destroy the honor of a man to such an extent that one is not able to fix it. If you can’t speak well of someone, rather don’t say anything.

“Let’s all be masters of our mouths, so that we won’t be slaves of our words. ”

If only we could eat our words but once they leave our mouths they so often seem to breath, breed and take on a life of their own.  Truly words are living things… they create the realities of our lives and can forever impact the lives of others.

Word Out  : )  Kirk