Posts from — April 2008

Today I have been talking with a friend of mine, Dominic Siano. He and I are in the process of developing a new system that will blow most social networking communities out of the water. Dominic is the master mind behind it and I will provide some resources and specific coaching in the areas of business development, leadership, and performance improvement to the system.

While we were talking on the phone and exchanging some ideas and sending each other files with new stuff and products as well as contacts for our future cooperation, Dominic told me about one of his favorite inspirational stories. He allowed me to provide it to you via this blog. I like it a lot because it encourages people to take action. That’s the main ingredient required to be successful.

So here it is - one of Dominic’s most favorite stories and one I like very much myself.

We both hope it becomes one of your most cherished ones as well.

How many marbles do you have?

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, of maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the kitchen, with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it. I turned the volume up on my radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning talk show. I heard an older sounding chap with a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business himself.He was talking about “a thousand marbles” to someone named “Tom”. I was intrigued and sat down to listen to what he had to say. “Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital. ” He continued, “Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.” “Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime.

The subheading to this article could read:

“How the little guy gets squashed by the establishment”

You might say: “So what’s new. We know that that happens all the time.” - And you are probably right.

Let’s start at the beginning: This morning I was sitting at the breakfast table reading the newspaper when I ran across an AP-article about an accountant in a small town bank. The story said that he is a teacher of accounting now, and that he uses his own story to teach his students.

Don’t you sometimes hope the little guy wins?

Are you sometimes frustrated that the establishment, being it the city administration or government, a corporation, or a large organization seems to get away with things you, as a private person, never would?

Not all battles are the same, and not all of them are worth fighting. In one of our communities here a single student wrote a letter to his school demanding that the paintings and sculptures of a warrior Indian be removed form campus. He feels they are offensive and portrait Indians as war-mongering. The school board recently decided to keep the name “Warrior” but remove all signs of the Indian head from everywhere, including letter head, athletic gear, everything. After 80 years of tradition and pride to be a Warrior, one student’s letter is enough to get the whole community up in arms. In my view it’s a huge waste of energy and time.

I myself am involved in a fight on a smaller scale. As a former employee of a company that went bankrupt, a group of my friends and I are still hoping to get some of the compensation the company owes us. We have been waiting and fighting for 3 years now.

Then there are the other fights, like the one I read about in the paper, of the teacher named Dave Welch. In that case I really hope the little guy wins. Here is what happened. During times of massive corporate scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc. Mr Welch refused to sign the financial statement of the bank he was working for. As the accountant he has to attest with his signature that all the numbers are correct. He suspected that things weren’t all clean, and so he didn’t sign.

The federal government, in the form of the US Congress, had passed a law to protect whistle blowers, like Mr. Welch, from repression in case they found or suspected something was wrong. The article I read in the paper this morning speaks about the fact that the protection as originally intended doesn’t really seem to exist. Of a total of 1091 cases, the little guys only got a favorable ruling 17 times; that’s less than 2% - some protection, if you ask me.

As you can imagine, after being fired from his bank for not signing the financial statements, Mr. Welch didn’t find work in his little town. Even when he applied further away the fact that he was a whistleblower has been seen as a risk for employers. He had to sell his farm, lost all his savings, and now is a teacher instead of an accountant. He did the right thing under the law. He spoke up when he suspected wrong doing, but nobody is willing to enforce this law. The courts have ordered the bank 4 times so far to pay Mr. Welch his back pay and rehire him, at least temporary, or give him a severance package.

Each time the bank refused and appealed the decisions. This case is probably dragging on for years to come.

Does that mean I advocate to keep your mouths shut and overlook blatant mistakes or fraudulent behaviors? No, not at all. What I think anybody in this kind of a situation needs to be aware is this: Don’t expect any help because the laws passed in the last 8 years are predominantly in favor of business. Even in cases where they appear to protect the employee, they get interpreted by government administrators in ways that avoid consequences.

If we are lucky, we might get better government after the next presidential elections. Even if that happens, it will take years to correct the many problems that have come from an overly pro-business atmosphere.

I am a business and leadership coach and consultant. I depend on clients form this niche. Still, I believe we need to recognize our core values and apply the rules and laws equally for all. A bank can increase it’s legal budge from $100.000 per year to $400.000 per year to fight a little guy like Mr. Welch. Good leadership and working with a good coach and consultant would mean to find a way to solve the issue, review the data, admit wrong ding, if that is warranted, and safe the legal fees. With the legal fees the bank spend the last 5 years they could have helped a lot of their customers and create new larger profits.

I believe there is a great lesson to be learned from this story: When you know you are right and you are patient enough to look, you will find others who agree and will take a chance on you. Here is how the story ends:

Mr. Welch applied for a job as a teacher at Franklin University in Ohio. The article reads: “At the end of the interview Mr. Welch was shown into the office of Paul Otto, the schools president at the time.

Mr. Otto is a blunt-spoken long-ago Marine who sits on two corporate boards. He’d heard about Mr. Welch. The case, Mr. Otto said, reminded him of an article he‘d written a few months before the interview, on the need to challenge corporate authority.

He invited Mr. Welch to take a seat across a coffee table in a desk-less office. “Let me ask you,” Mr. Otto said, “did you refuse to certify the banks financial statements or did you sign them and then blow the whistle?”

“I refused to sign,” Mr. Welch said, unsure which was the right answer. It was good enough for Mr. Otto, whose article preaches this message:

“The greatest failures resulting from unchallenged authority have occurred when people reporting directly to the CEO lacked the courage to challenge their boss.”

Mr. Welch got the job.”

As mentioned at the beginning, he could have gotten frustrated and bitter with the justice system, the labor department, the community that expelled him, although he didn’t do anything wrong.

Good thing he didn’t. He is still patiently hoping that the intent of the law will ultimately give him the back-pay the courts have ordered the bank to pay several times by now. More importantly, he is using his story to encourage other future accountants to be vigilant and stand up for what is right.

Having strong confidence, the willingness to stand up for what is right, and be firm in your convictions isn’t just a lesson for a little guy, an employee or a lower level manager, but for executives and leaders among all of us. And just because things might not go our way immediately doesn’t mean we should give up. I hope very few people have to give up their farm, their job, their community, and their friends, to fight for what is right.

Mr. Welch’s story inspires me to keep going and not turning bitter. I hope anybody being involved in similar situations will see that being strong, full of positive energy and patience is the source of the power it takes to persevere.

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC

If you see your boss as such a creature, keep reading and learn what you can do about it. If you are the boss and suspect that people see you like this, or you are in charge but still have a boss above you (at work or at home), take a look why people might see you in this role and what you can do about it. If youa re neither, just come along for the ride – it’s FREE

When we are looking into the modern work place we find a lot of dissatisfaction. Some of it is probably caused by an economy in recession, rising cost of resources, like fuel, the collapse of the housing market, and other factors.

When taking a closer look we find that many individuals are actually unhappy for much longer than any of these recent phenomena have been around.

Are you one of the people who see their boss to some extent like the Boogie Man? If you are not sure, ask yourself if you would leave work whenever you feel you are not 100% productive or have better things to do. If that thought makes you feel uncomfortable, you are probably a member of the growing league of people practicing “presenteeism. Jim Loehr of the Human Performance Institute describes it like this:

“Many people who show up for work are present rather than absent, but they do so in a fog. In fact, “presenteeism” – putting in an appearance no matter how counterproductive – may be a much costlier problem than its productivity reducing counterpart, absenteeism, and potentially more lethal because it’s not as obvious”.

I agree with Jim. Jjust being around and being seen doesn’t help the organization. If you combine this being around with a bad attitude because you don’t really want to be there, it’s even worse. Now people dread to approach you, talk to you, or ask anything, because they fear you might react negatively.

The Pareto-principle comes to mind. It says that 80% of efficiency is achieved with 20% of the effort. Taking this for granted, and I assume we can all agree, we could actually get the vast majority of our work done when we use our most productive time, those 20% when we are ‘in the zone’, to complete what we need to achieve.

Besides being much more productive, these times are the few moments when work is actually fun.

Patrick Lencioni of The Table Group, says: The primary driver of job dissatisfaction is not the pay or benefits, but poor relationships with supervisors. Three out of four employees dislike their work, and such widespread dissatisfaction kills morale and productivity, and drives up the cost of recruiting, hiring, and retaining new employees.”

So what do we do if we don’t really like what we currently do every day to earn a living? Well., if you are an employee in a lower position, you first want to ask yourself what brought you to the job in the first place. If your answer is anything like: I needed to make some money. – or I needed to change and this was the first thing that came along. Or It appeared to be interesting, but it turned out to be something much different than I expected.

In any of these cases, you need to take some time, try to find out what you are really passionate about and what your goals are. If they don’t match what you are currently doing, you should try to find out what you are passionate about. You should also take a piece of paper and write down where you see yourself in 2 years, what you want to accomplish, how much it will cost and where it will be. Some people actually recommend to find pictures of the items in magazines, cut them out and put them on a “Dream Board”. That way you see what you want to achieve. A performance coach can help you with this process and guide you towards your goals.

If you are in supervisor or leadership role, you have to ask yourself if the lack of good relations with your team and employees isn’t caused by some of the following reasons:

• Slavery to communication and hiring rules – this happen especially when interviewing, but often for quiet some time after, when you don’t want to bring up any personal issues because there have been so many law suits against employers. It’s called professional communication, but it is impersonal and employees don’t like it.

• Every day is a new day syndrome – this happens as a sign that you don’t recall how it was to be working for a supervisor who is all business and doesn’t seem to care about the person within the employee.

• Appearance of weakness – this happens when you think that showing emotions and empathy make you appear touchy-feely instead of strong. It goes back to the beginnings of the industrial age and a very sad reality. We should have overcome this fear a long time ago, but in may organizations, and especially for men, it si still hard to show emotions. Even our language is twisted in that direction. We call it “Letting the guard down”, or “showing the softer side”, always with a negative connotation. I suggest you go for it and show that you are a person with feeling too.

• No time to waste – this is the assumption that every minute is precious and needs to be used for some activity – or at least the appearance of a business activity. I point back towards the Pareto principle. Yu can get your work done in a little over 20% of the time if you have maximum efficiency and effectiveness. All the rest is attendance only.

Overall we all need to first find out what we really like, why we really trade time for money, and if it helps us achieve or goals. If these questions can be answered with a resounding YES, we can refine what we do in the details. I the answer is NO, ou better start looking for an alternative to what you do right now.

The worst thing that can happen ist getting stuck in a place or job you really don’t like – and especially if you see your boss as the Boogie Man. If you are afraid or dread each time you have to interact with him or her, ask yourself why you torture and unish yourself like this? If there isn’t a compelling reason, get out.

What was that? Did you just say: “Easy for you to say or write”! Yes, it’s easy, but I understand that taking action is hard. That’s why I recommend to find a mentor, or a confidant, or a coach (like me), who will help you in the process.

When I give free sample sessions for new clients, here is what we always achieve as a foundation from which to decide if we want to work together:

1.  A clear direction we want to go into, including goals, vision, dreams
2.  A strategic plan of action to take to work our way towards the goals and vision
3.  A list of skills we want to upgrade (leadership skills, sales skills, marketing skills, etc.)
4.  A definition of an optimized environment that will allow us to achieve the goals and how to create it step by step
5.  A plan to master the psychology of the client so that fears, doubts, anxieties can be removed over time and replaced with confidence and ambition

Achieving all these things alone is almost impossible. Doing them together, refining, and achieving them is actually fun. That’s why you want to have a coach or a mentor and take the journey together. It’s more fun, but more importantly, you will actually do it!

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC

Many of you might have seen the recent Oprah show with Marcus Buckingham. It is part of an effort by Oprah to help people with issues in their life and with an aim to better themselves. This also includes the workshop offered online at the website for Oprah taught by Eckhard Tolle.

As you know, people are in a critical place right now. We are facing a recession, oil prices keep climbing to new records almost daily. The food we consume is getting more and more expensive and we don’t really know if we should be angry, because the reason for the price increases are measure to produce alternatives to crude oil through the production of Ethanol. That means we have to pay more for food to have less dependence on foreign oil?

It’s not the main point of this article, but I think we could do more by allowing Ethnaol produced form sugar cane into the country. We could also produce more sugarcane ourselves and leave the corn for what it was meant in the first place. We could also think abut using the enormous coal reserves we have and convert them into fuel. I wonder how many people realize that the United States has so much coal that we wouldn’t need to import one ounce of crude oil if we converted our coal.

Prices keep rising, the US Dollar is falling, houses keep going into foreclosure, jobs keep getting cut and we may or may not officially be in a recession. That’s not a great motivator. It may have contributed to a statistic recently released which stated that 84% of people are unhappy or frustrated with their work.

That frustration doesn’t mean that they don’t do their work anymore. It manly means they don’t do it with a whole lot of enthusiasm and fun. Many of us have lost what originally attracted us to the job. What we do most of the time is maintaining the status quo. Marcus Buckingham acknowledged this frustration and suggests to instead develop our strength. I agree with that notion and we do this everyday with our coaching clients at AMC LLC.

The question that comes with this situation is: “Why are we accepting what we don’t really like?” The Answer:…

We are blinded by False Independence!

We have established a system that is well under control. All players do exactly what they have been told to do. Those with decision power always look for plenty of support form others for every decision they plan to make. All changes to the system are squelched by well developed skepticism and a mantra that says: “this is how we do things around here and how we always have done them – don’t change what isn’t broken”. In a nutshell, we keep feeding our fear of the unknown by doing what we have been doing, knowing that it doesn’t really satisfy us.

A certain part of this False Independence qualifies as insanity. You may or may not know that insanity is defined as: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

The interesting aspect of False Independence is that it appear to portrait stability. Only when we really reflect on our situation or someone shows us a mirror do we realize that we are really unhappy in all this stability. That realization and the associated awareness is the first important step towards a better future.

What we are actually looking for is Real independence, characterized by fun, energy, enthusiasm, creativity, motivation, ambition and a high level of confidence that we can do what we set out to do, even if it includes things we have never done before.

That actually allows us to bring all our strength to bare and really accelerate towards our goals and the goals of our organization. Bottom line: Playing to our strength is definitely a good idea to overcome False Independence. Overcoming fear alone is very hard to do. That’s why performance and leadership coaching as I do it at AMC LLC is such a great and gratifying thing. If you like to learn more about it or test it in a FREE session, email me at AM@Meierhoefer.net. or sign up at www.meierhoefer.net/welcome.htm and get a new Free special report for your efforts.

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC

A few days ago my assistant sent me an email message making me aware of an upcoming Oprah show. Though I am a fan of Oprah, I hardly ever have a chance to see her show when it airs. For many reasons we record it and hope to find the time to watch it at a later time. In this particular case we made time that same night. Donna said it was about a guy doing a lot of the things we are doing and suggesting in our Legendary Leadership Program.

The show featured Marcus Buckingham, one of the rising stars in business and leadership coaching/consulting. He basically made it his mission to teach people to find their strength and then act on it. Those who have a hard time taking action should get a coach to help in the process. Marcus has written a number of successful books explaining in detail how his philosophy works

Why am I telling you this? Well, it all starts with a statistic revealed recently, which showed that 84% of people in the United States hate or dislike their job. That’s a lot of frustration, unhappiness, and flat out hatred.

Are you one of the 84% who dread going to your job in the morning or attending another meeting you know won’t solve anything?

Are you one of the people who entered a profession full of hope, enthusiasm, high flying plans, etc. and wonder what happened to them?

Have you sacrificed untold hours trying to complete projects the boss ordered, covering for your team, or just following rules and procedures you know are antiquated?

Do you feel that things should and could be so much better, but don’t know how to start the change process?

Does all of this frustration make you grumpy and irritable? Do you take your moods home after work and catch yourself transferring what happened at work onto your spouse and children?

These are all indications that you are influenced and made to do things you don’t like, aren’t really good at, and don’t believe in. Marcus Buckingham would say: “You are not playing to your strength!” – and I agree…

Question is: How did this happen? –and more importantly, What can you do about it?

I have been in a situation like this some years ago. I had a leadership role and a great team of folks working for and with me. We had big goals and the ability to reach them. I saw my main role in providing the guidance for the team towards a better, brighter future, and the individual supervisors where trying to manage the team members by using their strengths to achieve the best possible results in the quickest way.

That sounds pretty perfect, doesn’t it? In reality, the more we were beginning to accomplish our goals the more we were hampered by the leaders and owners of the company. Instead of providing support and resources, they installed more and more meetings, more and more measures to make sure we stayed in budget, and impacted our ability to be flexible and creative.

Initially I tried to intervene by myself. When that didn’t work, I asked for the other directors to help. Ultimately we held a directors summit and came up with a plan to save the organization, allow for its strength to prevail and reach the better future we were all craving. Happy ending here we come – or so we thought…

Instead of taking our suggestions, the owners and leaders of the organization decided that our initiative was undermining their standing. They decided not to take any action. As you know, leadership has a lot to do with trust, honesty and integrity. We, as the directors, wanted to take a step towards the better future, but we also knew that we would have to be able to live with the consequences, if denied. We were absolutely sure that we needed to apply our strength and no longer be forced to operate from a source of weakness.

Consequently, when our pleadings fell on deaf ears, half of the directors, myself included, resigned. Needless to say that the company only took 6 more months to file for bankruptcy – and I am glad to say that all the employees found new jobs quickly, applying their strength for new employers.

We shouldn’t have to let things come to that kind of a pinnacle.

That’s why it is so important to make the distinction between management and leadership and learn what legendary leaders do to be admired and help their people and organizations to succeed.

As I have said and written several times in the past, management is the execution of the goals and vision of the organization by identifying the strengths of the team members and putting them to good use. In this way the managers’ task is to ask the right questions to learn what people are really good and excited about, and then provide them with the resources to put these abilities to use towards the strategic goals of the organization.

In contrast, legendary leaders provide guidance, visionary ideas, ambitious strategies, and a clear picture of the future. It’s more like telling a story about how great things will be like when this future is achieved. This story is exciting for the followers, it’s energizing and motivating, and allows them to see themselves in it. The story shows the big picture, combined with a positive outlook.

I am pretty sure Marcus Buckingham would agree with my assertion that the path we still use in most organizations to reach leadership positions isn’t really sensible. For individuals showing early leadership potential, they get put into management roles, even though they may not be good at identifying people’s strength and weaknesses, and apply them as best possible.

At the same time we use the success of managers as a performance measurement and qualifier for leadership positions. Someone who was able to create and maintain successful teams who are motivated to work, achieve goals, reach targets, numbers, and deadlines, does not necessarily have the qualities required to be a great, or even legendary leader.

What we should do is identifying the strength and abilities of individuals and help them hone these skills. As they progress it will become obvious if they are management or leadership material, in rare cases maybe even both.

If you are a leader, distinctly identify your role, provide clarity to your people, show them and tell them the story of the better future you envision, and invite them to come along on the journey. Should you encounter a hard time finding the right words or take action along this path, get a coach and use him or her as a guide with an outside perspective to help you. My team and I at AMC are happy to help you.

If you are a manager, ask yourself if you know the strengths of your team members. If not, develop a process to find out by asking positive questions like: “What was the best day at work in the last few months, and what made it so great?”

There is much more to learn about applying strength and legendary leadership. I will try to explore and reveal more in future articles. For now, make sure that you don’t focus on the things that don’t work well, or mistakes someone made, but on the things that did go well, and how to strengthen the strength of those around you.

If you are interested to learn more and like to find out about the secrets of Legendary Leadership I am teaching my clients, feel free to comment or contact me at AM@Meierhoefer.net

Axel Meierhoefer, AMC LLC