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Letter From The Editor

Dear Friends,

Generally speaking, it seems as though our pursuit of perfection grows more intense each and every day. There are television programs such as Dr. 90210 that follow pursuits of those wanting to perfect their looks. There are parents pushing their children so hard in athletics that the parents actually physically attack coaches that are perceived as doing a poor job! And then… there are those children who seek to attain a perceived notion of perfection based upon retouched magazine covers and stylized celebrities. It is frustrating to see, because in my years of experience, what I’ve learned about being perfect is that being perfect is boring! Think about it. What would it be like to have it all; to look right, to have the right physical shape, to weigh the right amount, to wear the right clothes, and to have everything? You’d be bored! You would have nothing to do except sustain what you already have, and if you spend your life sustaining what you already have, what are you learning that is new? NOTHING!

In addition, perfection does not leave much room for relationships to build. Relationship is all about the imperfections in people and how we get over them. No matter how much our significant other and the loved ones in our lives drive us crazy, if they did everything the right way all of the time, we’d actually get bored because our lives would not only be perfect, but predictable as well!

In the end, being perfect is a very alone and internally centered place that cannot be attained. You are on a treadmill in a vicious circle where you can’t win, and what I’ve learned over the years is to not even go there. Why not be with “I’m not perfect”. After all, what do you learn the most from, what you do wrong or what you do right?

And for those caught in the pursuit of perfection, I’d encourage you to take a look at what your pursuit of this illusive notion is costing you. What are you missing in relationships and what are you not learning about the world around you by sheltering yourself in a neat, tidy, and perfect little box? Only you can answer that question. But I can say that you are most likely missing out seeing the world from a whole different and even more interesting and beautiful perspective!

Best regards,

Clay S. Nelson

Recognizing Your Workaholic Ways (and doing something about them)

Workaholics basically have no life. We all know that! So which comes first: having no life, or being a workaholic? It actually goes both ways. Either way, the keys to recognizing it and tips for breaking the cycle remain the same.

Recognizing that you are a workaholic usually doesn’t come until you reach rock bottom when either an important relationship fails, you actually screw up something at work because you aren’t taking care of yourself, or you begin to notice that “something” is missing. The list goes on and on. Recognizing it sooner than later isn’t always easy to do. We are so programmed to work-work-work that anything short of working, feels like failure, and it generally takes a hard knock to send us running the other direction.

The good news is that once the workaholic realizes what they are doing to themselves and their family, the cycle can be broken with personal planning, team, accountability and delegation.

• Personal Planning is a tool that helps the user take care of them self first. It puts the user squarely in the driver seat with a written plan that says what they are committed to do to recharge their own batteries and by-when they are going to do it. It is simple, and when combined with a team that holds you accountable for doing it, it is very powerful.
• Workaholics aren’t always the best team builders. However, if the workaholic can get to a place where they 1) are willing to surrender control and not come from a place of believing they need to be in control of everything and 2) understand that by building a team around them, they can meet their business/professional goals and have a life, they have won half the battle of living life as a Workaholic!
• Accountability and delegation are the keys to overcoming a life of work-work-work. First of all the workaholic has to be willing to be held accountable for living their written personal plan to actually have a life. Second, they must surrender control and delegate as much as possible to their team members. It is the only way they will get to where they want to be, with sanity, to have a life that they love!
• Finally, Workaholics tend to be the people with all the answers; not like a know-it-all, but more as the keeper of all the stuff, the decision-maker, the person in control. The only problem is that in order to have a company or team of people continually moving forward, the answer person always has to be available to tell their team what to do! So, the person who is committed to giving up their workaholic ways also has to learn how to teach those around them how to think on their own. This is best accomplished by being the question instead of the answer; asking your team what they would do if you weren’t there when circumstances and/or questions arise.

There you have it, the keys to overcoming your workaholic ways. So what are you waiting for? Work-work-work isn’t going anywhere, but your kids are growing up, your grandchildren want more time with grandpa, your parents are aging, your spouse is ready for a date night, and YOU deserve some time for YOU. I know what I would choose. What about you?

Organizing an Effective Mutiny

When a group of employees has a manager whose skills are, shall we say, lacking, they have to be really careful about how they approach the boss. A group of unhappy employees can’t just walk into the boss’s office and provide a litany of stories about the poorly performing manager, without having gathered hard facts of the recurring issues. So when you make the decision to stage a coup of sorts, it is important to approach the powers that be with information and a light foot.

You should approach your boss from a perspective of communicating the needs and input of the team, not like a lynching of the poorly performing manager, but more from a “We want to help our manager get trained.” This will go much further than ranting and raving, nit-picking, and getting personal, which is so often what happens in these types of situations! After all, emotions can run high when job satisfaction and security are on the line for everyone, and no one communicates effectively when emotions are running the show.

The mutineers purpose should be about giving their boss the data they need so that THEY can communicate to the manger what needs to change. Let your boss give your manager the opportunity to be trained and change, and then it is the manager’s choice to make changes or not. And if the boss deems their firing necessary, let that be their call. But your immediate call for such action can be construed as your being the trouble maker.

Finally, you want to make sure that your boss understands that the team is coming to him because they care about what they as a team have built. It isn’t a “Gee, he doesn’t fit in the club” kind of thing; it’s concern for what is best for the direction of the company and the team as a whole.

When you approach concerns about a poorly performing manager in a positive manner the benefits are obvious: The reception to what you are saying will be much more open if guns aren’t blazing! No one is made to feel “wrong” and you get the opportunity to open the doors of communication on a whole new level.

It is at this level of communication that a real sense of family has a chance to form inside of the workplace, and once that sense of family starts to build, the work you do gets easier, you have more fun, and the more fun you have at work, the better your productivity and effectiveness will be!

In the end, confronting and resolving the problem of a poorly performing superior is all about being with people in the way you want people to be with you. No one is meant to be an island, and when you put people there they digress. So why not work at developing relationships with people that are not about their title, but about their humanity and the opportunity to contribute to one another equally.

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