When there are people who share a common goal, things happen. Progress happens. Leadership happens. Results happen. Awesome happens.
Each one of us has something different to offer the world. We have the ability to connect with people that share a common goal or dream. When we embrace what is important to us, ideas are shared and stories begin to surface.
The other night, I attended a collaboration event of local writers to the Phoenix area. Inspired by The Domino Project, both Tyler Hurst and Jeff Moriarty organized its focus on writers and storytellers who are looking to do more with their current projects. Continue Reading…
As a manager, it’s easy to pigeonhole your employees. You’ve seen them all in action–the leaders, the workers, the slackers, the confused, the wannabes, and the nobodies. People will eventually play into stereotypes that you’ve created. Constantly reminding people of their bad habits and crowing about how you might as well do it yourself isn’t very effective either.
“Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.” – Benjamin Franklin
One of the main reasons people change jobs hasn’t changed since the time of old Benjamin Franklin. People often leave good employment opportunities simply because they don’t like their immediate supervisor. Since turnover is costly and unproductive, rethinking your expectations as well as how you interact with your employees might benefit everybody.
Take a moment and step outside of your spotlight. How does your team see you and how does it help your organization?
Start by considering each of your employees as a unique person with the potential to become great at his or her job. If you let them know know that you are expecting greatness, it might actually happen. Another way in getting the most out of your team is to assure them that you are on their side. If you empathize with your team, you’ll develop a relationship of trust and understanding with them. When weakness rears its ugly head, your team will seek your counsel and try to work with you in order to get better, because they are seeking your approval. Who knows? They just might do it!
How are you currently building trust within your organization?
Nobody is perfect. Every person whether they are a manger or leader puts a foot in his mouth once in a while. When it happens more than once, at least once in the memory of the team, respect is quickly lost, and the leader begins paving his own road to ruin.
I’ve found this to be able to happen quickly when a manager gets to comfortable. maybe you want to talk about a movie you just saw or regale a colleague with a funny vacation story–everyday conversation shows your human side. That’s all well and good, until you slip inti discussing a risky topic like the attractiveness of a particular celebrity or his/her shenanigans at the city’s latest hot spot. Now the conversation includes potentially offensive material, the kind sure to be repeated by those listening or others within earshot. Soon you develop a reputation you don’t want.
Don’t use tact solely when you deal with people directly affiliated with your business. Show discretion during all professional conversations. Give the choice to berate an employee for a big mistake or build him back up now that the mistake is old news, you may well feel it’s within his job description to punish as a means toward correction. By taking frustrations out on team members you will undoubtedly reduce or eliminate any confidence that you’ve already worked hard at establishing.
Okay…so this is going to be a little bit different than what I normally post but there some relevance to it.
The other day a friend of mine, SEO Dave Rohrer, posted a video that caught my attention (as most of them do). Most of us that work online all day seem to stumble across some of the coolest content, content that is usually passed along to co-workers and shared with our family and friends. This particular video is of an up and coming drummer named Cory Bordson. After watching the video of Cory playing, I became more interested in finding out if he had more material for me to review. Because of my music industry (management, booking, public relations, and recording) background, I decided to dig a little bit further and see what else I could find out about Cory Bordson.
I was able to get in touch with Cory via Facebook and he, like all good musicians, was very friendly and open to a few questions I had. I told him that I was thinking about blogging about him. I asked Cory if he could tell me a brief history of his passion for playing the drums and what his current project and goals were.
He responded with a very nice summery of how he started percussion in the 6th grade just like every kid who had to take a music class. Once he did, he found out right from the start that he loved the drums, and luckily for him all his other friends started playing different instruments. One of the started by picking up the guitar, another grabbed a bass and they started their first band in 7th grade. The practiced in his parents garage, so that of course helped him stay with it. All through high school he was in band. Everything from his freshman band, to the symphonic band, the wind ensemble and orchestra. He was a drum major in the marching band but expressed that his overall favorite was the jazz band. He just loves anything to do with drums and music!
To this day, he never took a real lesson. In his early years, all he would do was watch and study drummers at local shows and review drummers playing on video websites like YouTube. He expressed that one of his biggest influences early in life was Travis Barker, but his favorite drummer would have to be Tommy Lee (my favorite) and the legendary Buddy Rich. Throughout the years he’s played in several bands from styles reaching from punk, to ska, to pop punk, to alternative. Currently, he is in a band that really feels is going to be going places. The band’s name is Lake Avenue and the all of the members will be moving to Minneapolis this March to pursue their dreams and further develop as a band. He made it very clear that he couldn’t be happier with everyone who is in the band.
His remixes started out just for fun so he could watch and learn from his mistakes. Just as he did when he started (and still does today) but more recently he has realized that he make them to earn a living. He has already played a show by himself doing his remixes and the crowd loves it! He said that it’s something very different and so fun for him. So he is really glad that he showed himself that he can even make it on my own if he needed to.
Most importantly, he made sure to tell me that his family has always been supportive of his music and everything he does. He expressed that he couldn’t have been given a better family than the one he has right now. He also went on to tell me that his friends and their families have been very supportive too. When he started high school, the guitar player he played with always had an open room or separate garage they could play in. They were blessed that the guitarists parents were cool an just loved listening to them play. They would play 5 times a week. Recently, the band now has an open recording studio to practice and play in.
Lastly, Cory made sure to sum it all up… “practice really pulls when you really get down and work hard and really put your heart and soul into it. I am recently realizing I am a musician if I like it or not, it’s what I’m here for, so do what you love.”
Here is one of Cory’s most recent remixes. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I first saw it! Please be sure to check out Cory Bordson’s YouTube page and comment on this article to let him know how you feel about his God given talent. Thanks all.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a relatively new discipline dating back to the mid-70s. Behind NLP stands a well thought-of body of knowledge. NLP originated from several different analytical disciplines as organized by two co-founders: Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
It happened when Dr. Grinder served as a professor of linguistics at the University of California in Santa Cruz, CA. Bandler came there as a student to study mathematics and computers. Dr. Grinder, in fact, had already released several publications in the area of linguistics, which were known as Transformational Grammar.
Bandler then discovered that he had a “natural” gift for modeling and hearing patterns. He revealed that he was able to detect and replicate patterns in experimental psychotherapy from minimum exposure. He became an editor for several of Fritz Perls‘ books in what is referred to as Gestalt Therapy. Being familiar with Perls’ work, Bandler began to study Perls’ techniques. As he continued to discover that he could use Perls’ models as therapeutic procedures, he began experimenting with clients using the techniques.
After enjoying immediate and influential results from that modeling, Richard then discovered that he could model others. With the encouragement of Grinder, Bandler was given the opportunity to model the world’s leading family therapist, Virginia Satir. Richard quickly identified the “seven patterns” that Virginia used. As both he and John began to apply those patterns, they discovered they could replicate her proven therapies and obtain similar results.
As a computer programmer, Richard knew that to program the simplest “mind” in the world (a computer with off-and-on switches) you break down the behavior into component pieces and provide clear and precise signals to the system. To this basic metaphor, John added his extensive knowledge of transformational grammar. From transformational grammar we borrow the concepts of both deep and surface structure declaration that transform meaning/knowledge in the human brain. From this they began to put together their model of how humans get “programmed,” so to speak.
From their research into the unifying factors and principles, Bandler and Grinder devised their first model. It basically functioned as a model of communication that provided a theoretic understanding of how we get “programmed” by languages (sensory-based and linguistic-based) so that we develop regular and systematic behaviors, responses, psychosomatic effects, etc. This model went further. It also specified ways for using the components of subjectivity for creating psychological (mental-emotional) improvement and change.
From that point, NLP expanded. The model expanded by incorporating materials from other disciplines: cybernetics (communication within complex systems both mechanical and living), philosophy, cognitive psychology, studies of the “unconscious” mind, and neurology. Today, NLP is to medicine and health, therapy and psychological well-being, business, education, athletics, law, Christian ministry, etc.
#taptaptap Is this thing on? Ahem, okay…first I would like to thank God for giving me the ability to write this because without him none of this would be possible. Next, I would like to thank my parents for all of the unconditional love and support. My friends and family for always being there for me and their encouragement along the way. Last but not least, I would like to thank YOU for your interest.
I will be building and updating this daily so please check back when your interest sparks.
God Bless
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Quote of The Day
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. -
When there are people who share a common goal, things happen. Progress happens. Leadership happens. Results happen. Awesome happens. 
