10 Lessons on life from an MD

10 Lessons on Life

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

10 Lessons on life from an MD

The Platinum Rule

One of the top comments I get from managers and leaders I work with is, “Mark, today’s young people don’t have a work ethic”. My response to that is, YES they do, they just don’t have YOURS. If you are going to be an effective leader it means understanding how different generations think, how they communicate, what motivates THEM. Too many of us were brought up with the old Golden Rule mentality – Treat people the way you want to be treated. That is exactly the reason we have so many relationship and communication issues. Not everyone wants the same things as you or me.

In some organizations today we are dealing with three, four and even five generations. And then you factor in the four different personality/behavioral styles of the people in our lives. It’s important to be multi-lingual, and I don’t mean by ethnicity. To effectively lead people you must understand the wants, needs, desires and communication style of each generation and personality style, then speak THEIR language. It means dropping the golden rule and adopting the platinum rule – Treat people the way THEY want to be treated.

Feel free to contact me if you would like to learn more about personality styles or working with different generations. Here are a few helpful links for dealing with Generation Y (born between the years of 1982 and 2000 and are currently ages 7-26)

Managing Generation Y

Managing Generation Y as They Change the Workforce

Communicating with Twentysomethings

A Boomer's Guide to Communicating with Gen X and Gen Y

Gen Y v. Boomers: Generational Differences in Communication

The Platinum Rule

Self Esteem Deficit?

Did you Know that over 85% of people have some sort of self esteem deficit?

Great piece by Sharon Wilson

Self Esteem Deficit?

There is NO "gray area"

A good article on sexual assault and date rape however i take issue with the title, "A New Kind of Date Rape". NOTHING NEW ABOUT IT! And there are NO gray areas as she calls it. You either have consent, which is a YES. Or you dont!

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/sex/new-kind-of-date-rape?

There is NO "gray area"

Just talk to me!

Just think about it, we Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, text, email, instant message and more. Imagine if a device is developed which actually allows us to TALK! ;)

Just talk to me!

Change

The Change Report, based on 1306 online interviews conducted by Southeastern Institute of Research has a lot to say about interpersonal communication and relationships so I thought I'd post a few items based on this report. The part of this research that has been highlighted by the press is its survey of the top fears that people have now and had in 1967 (when the Social Readjustment Rating Scale was published). There are some interesting differences and although the researchers caution that statistical comparisons should not be made, they do note that the findings can be interpreted as relative and directional. [Respondents were asked to give a numerical value (from 1 to 100) to a variety of stressful events.] In 1967 the death of a spouse was rated 100 but in 2007 it was rated 80. The death of a friend, on the other hand, showed a different direction. In 1967 it was 37 but in 2007 it was 58.Also interesting was the rating given to divorce--in 1967 it received a rating of 73 but in 2007 it had dropped to 66. It seems relationship stressors are easier to navigate today than they were in 1967.On the other hand, stress from being laid off from a job went from 47 in 1967 to 62 in 2007 and changing job field went from 36 in 1967 to 47 in 2007. It seems that job stressors are getting worse.

Change

Great leaders hire great people and build great teams!

Great leaders surround themselves with great people. Lone ranger leadership is doomed to fail, there is no one great person that is going to transform an organization it takes a strong team and a great leader. If you look at the life of anyone who has achieved success, such as Jack Welch, Bill Gates and others, you’ll notice that they surround themselves with great people. But! It’s not that easy, the trick is to known what great looks like, "How do you know the great people when you see them?" An article by Peter Carbonara from Fast Company provides help for leaders looking to identify and select the right people for their team.

The proposition is undeniable: you can’t build a great company without great people. But how many companies are as rigorous about hiring and comfortable evaluating job candidates as they are deciding on an investment proposal? The all-too-common reality, in far too many companies, is that hiring processes are poorly designed and shabbily executed.

Of course, making the commitment to hire great people raises an even more basic question: How do you know them when you see them? Over the last few years, a number of companies have asked themselves that question. They’ve analyzed what separates their winners from their losers, good hires from bad hires. These companies compete in a wide range of industries — from airlines to steel, computers to hotels — but they all arrived at the same answer: What people know is less important than who they are. Hiring, they believe, is not about finding people with the right experience. It’s about finding people with the right mind-set. These companies hire for attitude and train for skill.

The article proposes that by using the following four principles you can improve your chances of selecting the right person…..

1. What You Know Changes, Who You Are Doesn’t - Popeye was right: "I y’am what I y’am." The most common — and fatal — hiring mistake is to find someone with the right skills but the wrong mind-set and hire them on the theory, "We can change ‘em." Davidson’s response? Forget it. "The single best predictor of future behavior is past behavior," he says. "Your personality is going to be essentially the same throughout your life." As evidence, he points to U.S. Air Force research on personality types that began in the 1950s. For decades, researchers tracked their subjects by observing their behavior and interviewing their families, friends, and colleagues. The conclusion? Basic personality traits did not change, Davidson says. "Introverts were introverts, extroverts were extroverts. The descriptions were constant."
2. You Can’t Find What You’re Not Looking For - Bill Byham, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on hiring, is president and CEO of Pittsburgh-based Development Dimensions International (DDI) . He’s also the father of a hiring methodology that goes by many names ("Targeted Selection" is the most popular) but revolves around a simple idea: the best way to select people who’ll thrive in your company is to identify the personal characteristics of people who are already thriving and hire people just like them. In the Byham model, companies work to understand their star performers, identify their target behaviors and attitudes, and then develop interview questions to find people with those attributes.
3. The Best Way to Evaluate People is to Watch Them Work - A few companies take this rule literally — none more so than steelmaking giant Nucor. In many ways, Nucor is to steel what Southwest is to airlines: innovative, fast-moving, eager to break the rules. One of Nucor’s best sources of new steelworkers are the construction workers who build its plants. Managers monitor their construction sites, look for plumbers and electricians who demonstrate the work habits they value, and then hire them. At Nucor, the dirty and dangerous task of building a steel mill is one long interview for jobs running it.
4. You Can’t Hire People Who Don’t Apply - Companies that take hiring seriously also take recruiting seriously….. Companies that hire smart usually start their recruiting efforts close to home — with their own people. SGI’s Lane estimates that 65% of his company’s new hires began as referrals from current employees. It makes sense: it takes a certain kind of person to thrive at SGI, and those people tend to spend time (personally and professionally) with people like themselves.

One of the central tasks of leaders is the selection and development of people and teams. Leaders tend to recruit too hastily and take too long to remove those who are under-performing. The key to recruiting great people it to be clear about what you’re looking for in others. What are the characteristics of people who succeed in your team? Do you actively look for those characteristics in the people you’re looking to hire?

Great leaders hire great people and build great teams!