We haven’t had any appreciable rain where I live in quite a few months, and it’s been very hot as well. Last night, things finally changed—we got a downpour along with a noticeable drop in the temperature. This morning when I went on my walk, the first thing I noticed is that everyone I met on the sidewalk was smiling—they were so happy for having gotten a cooling rain. The other thing I noticed was that everyone wanted to stop and visit rather than just saying “hi” or “good morning” and then walking on. The out of the ordinary rain that had happened the night before had really perked these people up. My wife, Marcia, observed a similar occurrence when she was at Trader Joe’s recently. The store’s sound system was playing a song from the 1950’s with a very catchy beat. Spontaneously, two of the store’s checkers started dancing to the song. According to Marcia, seeing this made her day and everyone else who saw it started smiling. Several customers even chose to dance along. The lesson here is that if you’re having one of those days where you could use a little perking up, “ordinary” will not make that happen. So, try to find a place where “out of the ordinary” is likely to happen.
One Sentence Wisdom
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” — Robert Frost
“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.” — Henry Van Dyke
As I mentioned in last week’s Reminder, I fell on my knee and ruptured the quadricep tendon in my right leg. As a result, I spent two weeks in a hospital while the tendon was reattached. This resulted in my wife Marcia and I being on the receiving end of lots and lots of kindness. Just when I thought that I had seen all the kindness I was going to see for a while, the doorbell rang. It turned out to be a small entourage from Trader Joe’s which is my favorite store. They brought us a bouquet of sunflowers (my favorite) and a card carrying the well wishes from 25 store employees!! This is a great example of how kind people never have to face adversity alone!!
One Sentence Wisdom
“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” — Albert Schweitzer
“Kindness is like snow – It beautifies everything it covers.” – Kahlil Gibram
A few weeks ago, I fell on my knee and ruptured the quadriceps tendon in my right leg. As a result, I spent two weeks in a hospital while the tendon was reattached. From the time I got there until the time I was discharged I was shown nothing but the utmost kindness from the hospital’s many healthcare professionals who took care of me—it was unbelievable! I also receive numerous phone calls, texts visits and cards from friends who wanted to make sure I was doing well. Before I came home, my wife Marcia was getting ready to mow the lawn when a neighbor came to her and said, “You have other things to think about, I’ll mow your lawn for you!” After returning home, the phone calls, texts, and visits started happening immediately. Meals began showing up as well—one person even baked a blueberry cake/pie for me!! So, if you’re one of those people who believes there are far more unkind people in the world than kind, I have to differ with you. My knee injury experience has shown me that I am surrounded by kind people who have made me so grateful for each of their actions.
One Sentence Wisdom
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” — The Dalai Lama.
“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” — Mother Teresa
If you know of someone who you think would enjoy reading my Reminder, please forward it to them. Also, feel free to use this content in your own publications—newsletters, blogs, etc.
Far too many people have bought into the myth that failure is fatal and is something that should be avoided. In reality, failure is the world’s most effective learning experience. Most of our greatest accomplishments were made possible through failure–learning to walk, ride a bike and drive. Why should the rest of our life be any different? My father used to say, “Talk with any self-made millionaire and you’ll find they’ve gone broke at least three or four times.” Why? These people took risks, failed, learned from their failures and tried again. Each failure taught them some very important lessons that ultimately paved the way to their success. The lesson here is that failure is your friend, not something to be avoided. As Thomas Edison said on numerous occasions, “If you want to increase your success, try doubling your failure rate.”
One Sentence Wisdom
“Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be” – John Wooden
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
By Ross Reck, PhD and Harry Paul Coauthors of Instant Turnaround! Getting People Excited About Coming to Work and Working Hard
Pundits, politicians and even President Obama are all saying that getting the economy back on track is going to take a long, long time. This is very depressing and it’s not what the American people want to hear. They want to hear about a quick fix for the current situation—an instant turnaround that will put the economy on a fast track toward recovery today. That’s the kind of news that will get the American people excited about their future.
Is there such a thing as a fast track out of this recession? The answer is YES and it’s FREE. Right now many of the executives running American businesses are hunkering down, tightening their belts, laying people off and looking for additional ways to conserve. The problem is that these are the very things that prolong a recession instead of shortening it. What so many of these executives fail to realize is that the key to the fast track out of this recession is right under their noses—their employees. These are the people who do the work that the company gets paid for. The better these people do their jobs, the faster the company’s revenue stream will begin to grow and that’s what the fast track out of this recession is all about.
The question then becomes: how do businesses get their employees to apply their best efforts to performing their jobs? The answer is simple, but it does require a mindset change on the part of managers and executives. We learned from the Hawthorne Studies nearly a century that the better you treat employees, the harder they’ll work. This being the case, you would think it would be the goal every team leader, supervisor, manager and executive to treat their employees as well as possible so they would work as hard as possible. As it turns out, in most cases the exact opposite is true.
In 2007, Zogby International conducted 7,740 online interviews of a panel that is representative or the adult population of the US. The survey found that not only were tens of millions of workers not being treated well, but 37% or an estimated 54 million American workers had personally experienced an extreme form of workplace abuse referred to as “bullying.” The study defined bullying as “repeated health-harming mistreatment” that takes one or more of the following forms:
Verbal abuse—shouting, swearing, name calling and malicious sarcasm.
Offensive behaviors—threatening, intimidating, humiliating and inappropriately cruel conduct.
Work interference—sabotage which prevents work from being done.
The study also found that an additional 12% of the American workforce or 17.5 million people had personally witnessed bullying behavior. This means that 49% of the workforce or 71.5 million American workers have been touched by this extreme form or workplace abuse. And, who are these bullies? Seventy-three percent of them were bosses—managers!
This is not only an outrage; it’s immoral, cruel and barbaric; and it’s keeping us in this recession. When employees feel abused, their motivation is to get even and find another job somewhere else. Researchers Gostick and Elton estimate the cost of employee turnover in America to be $1.7 trillion annually. Then, if you factor in the other things employees are motivated to do when they feel they’re being abused such as taking more sick days, missing work more often, stealing from the company, doing as little work as possible and a poorer quality of work, convincing other employees not to work as hard and refusing to share their ideas on how to improve products and services, we’re probably looking at a four to five trillion dollar price tag for this abusive behavior. This is huge especially give that the size of the entire American economy is only $14 trillion. Just think of the shot in the arm it would be to our economy if American business could recover a sizeable chunk of this amount.
The question then becomes: can this mess be turned around? The answer is yes, and it can be turned around immediately, but it’s up to the senior managers who run American businesses. They could easily reclaim the lion’s share of these four to five trillion dollars if they would do the following three things sincerely, consistently and well:
Set an example for the managers below them. Senior managers often grossly underestimate their function as role models for managers throughout the organization. This means they need to be far more visible than they normally are and they need to seen positively interacting with employees at all levels of the organization.
Adopt a zero tolerance program for abusive behavior. Abusive behavior has no place in a modern business organization—it’s immoral, it’s extremely costly and we’ve looked the other way far too long. If an abusive boss can’t be rehabilitated, he or she must be shown the door.
Train managers at all levels on the proper way to bring out the best in the employees who work for them. We’re talking about basic behaviors like being nice instead of nasty or indifferent, noticing the good things employees do and saying thank you.
These are three simple things that cost absolutely nothing. Companies that choose to implement them from the top down will immediately put themselves on the fast track to economic recovery. Those that don’t will one day wonder how they got left behind.
