Monthly Archives: August 2006

In a previous article, I vividly described “The Hummingbird Effect” in a metaphor to illustrate that sometimes when trying harder and harder and more frantically and urgently doing more of what doesn’t work to solve a problem—actually encourages the dreaded problem to continue AND get larger and enlarge into a megalo-fear. In the story of the Hummingbird that I told, you learned how the harder “Birdee” flew UP knocking her head against the white ceiling of my garage, the more disoriented and “lost” she became.

GETTING OUT OF THE BOX YOU FIND YOURSELF IN

The solution, of course, was to fly DOWN and circle BACK to get out of the box. Just goes to show, the solutions to your problem in your organization, company or family may not be to go UP and FORWARD…but to go fly down and circle back, sometimes. So, think of the “The Hummingbird Effect” and other animal parables the next time you feel panicked and trapped in a box that you haven’t designed but a box you need to exit, nonetheless.

SO HOW TO SCORE A NEW START TO SOLVE OLD PROBLEMS?

Here are NINE WAYS TO SCORE A NEW START TO OLD PROBLEMS AT WORK AND HOME:

1. BE FULL OF INTEGRITY…NOT FULL OF ‘IT’

2. BLAME THE BOONDOGGLE, NOT THE BIRD

3. DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE OTHER FEATHER DROPPING…BECAUSE IT WILL

4. ANXIETY IS BORROWING TROUBLE…SO DON’T TAKE OUT A LOAN

5. YOU CAN FIX STUPID BY DOING LESS OF WHAT ISN’T WORKING…AND DOING MORE OF WHAT IS WORKING

6. BE A SMART COMMUNICATOR: KNOW THE HARDER YOU TRY, THE BEHINDER YOU GET, SOMETIMES

7. WHEN YOU TIRE YOURSELF OUT…REST AND RE-FUEL

8. IF WHAT ISN’T WORKING STILL ISN’T WORKING…TRY DOING THE OPPOSITE FOR A CHANGE

9. DO LESS WHEN DOING MORE ISN’T WORKING OUT SO WELL FOR YOU

So when at first you don’t succeed…try, try doing something different! In fact, good leaders know how “IT’s NOT FAIR!” IS supremely fair.

While at Cedar Point (voted the world’s best) Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio, I met Aaron from Marion, Ohio. We were standing in line to be enraptured by the Raptor ride, and he was wearing a dark green T-shirt that caught my eye while I people watched to make the hour-long wait fly by. Emblazoned on Aaron’s forest-green T-shirt was stark white lettering that screamed out to the world like the screeching wheels on an old wooden roller coaster: “Stop looking at my shirt!” Hey…I just couldn’t stop looking at that T-shirt and that husky, friendly-looking guy with a buzz cut! So I just had to say SOME-THING (even though in wait lines you are supposed to act like everyone’s invisible and there’s nobody else in line with you).

DO YOU TALK TO PEOPLE AROUND YOU THAT YOU DON’T KNOW TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW?

An effective leader is someone who is able to talk to anybody, at any time, especially when times are tense. Are you the leader of your own life, someone who reaches out to talk to “strangers” every day? Or do you politely ignore the “invisible others” who are standing all around you and respect their “invisible psychological silent space” too much? That’s too bad! Why not strike up a conversation with the “stranger” near you just to get to know them a little better? Geez…why treat strangers, well, like they’re strange? Oh, I know that old stupid rule: “Don’t talk to strangers!” Well, who is the leader of your life?

STOP LOOKING AT MY SHIRT AND TALK TO ME

As a management consultant, I recommend thinking of yourself as a leader who is in charge of your own life. And being an executive coach and leadership training expert, I simply had to ignore the rule to ask Aaron about his shirt, and he told me that he had just got it that day and everyone seemed to be looking at him. I wonder why! He seemed a little skeptical when I entered his talk space…but he was a nice guy. What Aaron didn’t know about me but wasn’t too afraid to ask was:

• I hate being bored…and standing in long, snaking lines to risk my life for a two minute teeth-rattling rocket ride is boring.
  
• Since I am the leader of my life, I like to use the act of communication to entertain and educate myself.
  
• One of my personal goals for the past decade is to feel less afraid…and to feel more confident.
  
• I define confidence as being willing to TALK TO people instead of TALK AT people.
  
• All people are interesting, VERY interesting, if you give them an opportunity to ride alongside you in the vehicle of talk.
  
• I’ve found people I don’t know are pretty friendly once they know that although I may be a stranger…I’m not strange
  
• There are no strangers, just people waiting to become friends with you and me.
  
• Do you feel confident to….TO TALK TO PEOPLE you don’t know very well…or don’t know at all?
  
• I don’t feel so alone when I learn something new about a “stranger” or “fellow traveler” on the road of life.
  
• I talk to strangers to keep the saw of my communication edge sharpened with Stephen Covey in mind.
  
• I attempt to talk to myself in positive ways when I’m inpatient, irritated, tired, bored, etc.
  
• I want to be a role model of good communication for my kids…and too often I fail to live up to being an open, flexible and positive person…but I’m not giving up.

ARE YOU PRACTICING FEARLESSNESS AT AMUSEMENT PARKS?

Psychologically, the point of amusement parks is to practice fearlessness…to stay in the present and avoid worrying about future catastrophes that rarely happen. That’s also why we prefer fearless leaders who can keep their cool and muster bravery during stress-filled and indecisive times. On the other hand, most people love being scared out of their wits in a safe and controlled way. Otherwise, why wait in long lines for two hours to take a two minute ride? Well, look at the faces of the riders just finishing the rides—people are laughing, bowing and wowing and clapping and looking glad to still be alive.

HOW TO PRACTICE FEARLESSNESS IN HUMAN RELATIONS

Do you push forward on your positive goals, and make new friends and alliances, especially when you feel like quitting? Amusement parks teach you and me HOW TO BE FEARLESS and TO…

1. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF AS ‘DIFFERENT’: Most people want to fit into a group that accepts them in this zany life AND stand out simultaneously. Take a look at how members of small groups dress alike, talk in code and act alike.

2. STOP DISHING ‘IT’ OUT: Developing fearlessness is what riding on these rides is all about. Eyes dance and tell stories of longing, laughter, pain and boredom.

3. STOP WORRYING: Worrying about how bad a ride is…is worse than the actual ride.

4. STOP HOLDING YOURSELF BACK: Fearing doing something new, such as going upside down on a ride, restricts you and holds you back from improving your confidence.

5. STOP WORSHIPPING WHAT IS “NORMAL”: Doing what is “safe” or riding the same ride over and over again is “seductively suffocating.”

6. STOP TRYING SO HARD TO FIT IN: Humans are more alike than different…and thirst for meaning and experiencing…so talk to people who are living in their own “safe little groups.”

7. STOP UPSETTING YOURSELF: When you imagine a negative future…such as getting stuck at the top of the ride or falling out of your harness…your fear level escalates uncontrollably.

8. STOP NEEDING GUARANTEES: Uncertainty scares us so we avoid it unless we can control it…paying for controlled fear at amusement parks amuses us, arouses us, and comforts us that bad things don’t happen to good people like you and me.

9. STOP DEFENDING YOUR FEELINGS: Everyone deals with fear differently…some act cool, some funny, some freeze, some distract…check it out while you’re watching the riders ahead of you buckle up. I wish I hadn’t been sharp with one attendant when I was SO tired.

10. STOP SHYING AWAY: People will talk to you, perhaps skeptically at first, if you first talk to them and smile BIG.

GIVE UP ON GIVING UP

Another favorite T-shirt sported by a terrific teen: “I’m not blaming you…I’m just saying it wasn’t my fault!” Does anyone in his or her right mind stand in line for close to two hours for a two-minute ride? Yet, there I stood in the twisting lines to ride Top Thrill Dragster, Raptor and Millenium Force with one male and one female teen, one female “tweener” and one kid. Why go out of my way to scare myself…and pay big bucks for it? After all, going to work everyday and trying to survive and thrive is enough fear for me to stomach!

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME AND MY SHIRT AND MY VULNERABILITY?

Before I went on the night ride called NightHawk with my eight-year-old daughter Kasey…who expressed a worry that she would fall out of this huge “swinging boat” and fall to the cement slab below and die. Kasey told me, “Daddy, if I die on this ride I just want you to know how much I love you…and I hope you feel the same way about me. Are we going to die?” I chose to muster a fearless reply: “Today isn’t the day we’ll die! It’s the day we ride on!” And the starry night proved me right, thank goodness.

TO AARON FROM MARION

To Aaron from Marion…and to Max who was up to 1,800 rides (ugh!) riding Magnum XL to try and break the “season ride record”…and to the pretty lady in the fuchsia John Deere T-shirt who loves going to tractor pulls…and to the teenager who was wearing a footlong hotdog velvet hat replete with mustard on the dog that made me chuckle…and to all the kissing couples who are a reminder to us married folk to keep the flame alive–RIDE ON!

Fearlessness is what riding on these rides, and the ride of life, is all about.

ABOUT DR. DENNIS O’GRADY

Dr. Dennis O’Grady is an executive coach and leadership training communications consultant and psychologist who used peak communication skills when he and his family were at Cedar Point Amusement Park recently–voted the world’s best amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. To manage negative emotions, and to talk positively to himself, Dr. O’Grady read T-shirts and did personality analyses and did some seriously funny “people watching” while standing in long, snaking lines for hours to go on the killer-thriller rides of Top Thrill Dragster, Raptor, Millenium Force, Wicked Twister, Mantis, Magnum XL, Power Tower and SkyHawk. Please note that Cedar Point boasts having the most roller coasters in the U.S.A. Also note that Dr. Dennis O’Grady is the author of a positive communication handbook to help you and yours talk to anyone called “TALK TO ME.” If you aren’t using the E-type and I-type talk code and the four communicator modes to talk positively to yourself and others…then you are missing out on the best ride of them all called, “Effective Communication Strategies that Work with Anyone at Anytime If Anything Will.”

How do positive attitude and leadership principles really work? Being a positive leader who builds TRUST is pretty straightforward and simple, really. You don’t let “things fall through the cracks” or change what you’ve agreed to do by when because you don’t have the spare time. The rule of good leadership: Do what you say you’re going to do.

CHARACTER SPEAKS LOUDEST OF ALL

The rule of good leadership: Do what you say you’re going to do. The fundamental “ACTIONS COMMUNICATING RULE” a positive leader lives freely by:

1. Do what you say you’re going to do

2. Do what you say you’re going to do WHEN you say you’re
going to do it

3. Do what you say you’re going to do WHEN you say you’re
going to do it on a DAILY BASIS

4. Do the above because it works to build TRUST on your team
and in your romantic and parenting relationships at home

5. Enjoy the tangible and intangible profits that sprout
from this garden of trust

WHY 75% OF ALL LEADERS FAIL

In executive coaching, I teach that true leadership effectiveness is keeping one’s word. It builds team esteem and trust. Laconically, in consulting with many different types of organizations and companies, I frequently hear how pep talks and team building retreats and exercises don’t translate into changed behavior back in the work environment. In fact, often awful leaders aren’t “de-selected” but tolerated or worse yet, promoted.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT TRAINING—DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU’RE GOING TO DO WHEN YOU SAY YOU’RE GOING TO DO IT ON A DAILY BUSINESS BASIS…AND SMILE

Yes, you have to manage your level of insecurity and frustration to get results. And yes, you have to do what you’ve agreed to do even when you do feel like it or you’re in a really BAD mood. And being so mindfully mature means you must think about how your actions impact others…and walk in others’ shoes every day to build trusting leadership and follower-ship.

Here are 14 DISCUSSION AND TALKING POINTS for your next leadership development training or executive coaching session where truth talks at power. How would others who work and live with you say you stack up?

1. Positive leaders simply and only focus on delivering and measuring RESULTS.

2. Effective leaders have both PEOPLE SKILLS and have highly developed PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS.

3. Positive leaders are HUMBLE. Effective leaders ask more questions and are able to elicit sincere responses because they listen to tough answers while managing their anxiety-failure feelings.

4. Effective leaders BACK UP WORDS WITH ACTIONS. Negative leaders only talk a good game.

5. Positive leaders INFLUENCE OTHERS WITH TRUTH. Negative leaders only “manage impressions” and influence you to think well when team wise things are sickly.

6. Effective leaders SOLVE PROBLEMS. Ineffective leaders are hard to pin down about why what needs to happen never quite seems to happen.

7. Positive leaders are LIKED AND RESPECTED. Negative leaders are feared, disliked, disrespected due to their intimidation and manipulation political games played.

8. Effective leaders are CONSTANTLY SELF-IMPROVING. Ineffective leaders think they’re great as they are and get mad or huff and puff when you give them negative or corrective feedback.

9. Positive leaders WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU MAY NOT WANT TO HEAR.

10. Negative leaders are pros at telling managers at a higher level what they want they want to hear and using psychological excuses, while critiquing leaders and managers at lower levels using psychological critiquing.

11. Effective leaders can LOOK THROUGH THE EYES OF THE TEAM. Ineffective leaders only see things from a uni-dimensional perspective—their own narrow-minded viewpoint.

12. Positive leaders LISTEN TO FEELINGS. Negative leaders scold and shame feelings or don’t really care how anyone else feels.

13. Effective leaders DON’T USE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXCUSES. Ineffective leaders always have a logical sounding reason why results have failed to materialize, namely, “It’s not my fault…it fell through the cracks!”

14. A positive leader is a GOOD ROLE MODEL. The acid test of a good leader is: “DO what I do instead of doing what I say you should do but I don’t do!”

CREATING TRUST: SO HOW DO YOU STACK UP AS A LEADER TODAY?

Are you a role model of the behaviors you wish to see exhibited in your team members, family circle and friends or kids? Do you hang around people who deliver positive results…or do you hang with the “wanted poster” outlaws who talk positively but behave negatively and rip off others’ energy? Ultimately, negative leaders say one thing and do another… “I do what I want to do and don’t do what I don’t want to do!”…BECAUSE THEY CAN get away with it. I challenge you to build trust on your team by doing what you say you’re going to do…and doing what you say when you say you’re going to do it…and doing these two ways of doing business on a daily basis.

POSITIVE, ETHICAL AND EFFECTIVE LEADERS IMPROVE THEMSELVES A LITTLE EVERY DAY

The results will happen pretty darn fast…and trust will grow quickly on your team and the mood will pick up pace. Leaders improve themselves a little bit every day. After all, we want to work for positive people we trust to be humble and effective and keep their word when they may not feel like it. Positive leaders hang around other leaders who DELIVER POSITIVE RESULTS.

DAILY…negative leaders just deliver empty promises of future actions rarely taken.

ABOUT DR. DENNIS O’GRADY

Dennis has been using this new approach to effective communication in his private executive coaching and professional relationship counseling practice and with corporate management teams, sales teams, community groups and professional associations. As such, he’s helping them integrate these new communication tools into their companies, personal relationships, family dynamics and business/work-related communication exchanges.

In fact, the Empathizer-Instigator thinking and approaches can be applied to everyday life, and his goal is to give people a new understanding as they drive down the two-way communicator highway. For a synopsis of Dr. O’Grady’s leadership development book, please visit http://www.drogrady.com/web_Mailer.html.

Every human resources manager worth his or her hay completely understands what a communications “zoo” today’s workplace can be. Quote in point: “Nobody’s speaking about the elephant in the room!” It’s a euphemism that highlights how sometimes the most important, pressing important topics for business discussion are all but glossed over, denied or outright ignored. Smart leaders and managers can smell and tell when there’s a dusty, big, fat, hairy, smelly, messin’-n-stinkin’ pachyderm in the workplace or house.

ZOO CREW:  WHAT ELEPHANT? I DON’T FEEL LIKE TALKING ABOUT IT!

Denial is not a wonderful thing, because if your team or “zoo crew” can’t talk openly and honestly, chances are problems won’t get solved and crises will build until they bust out of the zoo. Denial may not be a very big a problem when profits soar, but when profits shrink these “perception impressions” cause big costly errors. You and your “esteem team” just can’t throw a blanket over a big elephant and pretend it isn’t around, can you?

TUSK…TUSK…TUSK

So how do you know when an elephant is occupying the room…and that the big beast stinks…real bad? Here’s how to raise your E.Q. (or Elephant Quotient) by 10 points, easy:

1. SPLITTING HAIRS. Holding meetings and weighing and measuring and discussing and splitting hairs about what really IS an elephant or what makes an elephant tick. Who doesn’t know what an elephant looks and smells like?

2. NOT FEELING LIKE TALKING. It doesn’t matter if you want to talk about the drudgery and droll of elephant droppings, because elephants are going to drop their droppings in our living room or board room, regardless.

3. DRESS IT UP. Putting a dress or tuxedo on the elephant or dousing it with expensive perfume or cologne doesn’t make it stink or poop any less.

4. IT’S NOT THAT BAD? I don’t know about you, but the reality of my experience suggests that elephant crap IS that bad, whether shallow or deep, and you should be mad. No amount of positive attitude adjustment is going to make the room stink less.

5. DON’T TALK ABOUT IT. Not talking about the elephant poop and goop means you and your team will have to spend an enormous amount of wasteful time and energy walking around “poo-piles” and using clothes pins to pinch your nostrils shut.

6. EMOTIONAL BRIBERY. Emotional bribery is telling a leader or manager what they want to hear when it’s bad for the company and future profits. An example: “Well, yes…there might be an elephant in the room if that’s what you think but it’s not always in the room and besides it’s on a diet and is almost no trouble at all. Now about this other project we’ve got to discuss…”

7. SWEET RAGING RAMPAGING. Some talk sweetly when miffed, implying in tones that suggest that you are out of your skull if you think talking about elephants…or elephant excrement…or rampaging elephants makes any sense, whatsoever. “Psycho-critiquing” shuts down and shuts up healthy criticisms about: “It’s not working around here and we all know it!”

8. CRAZY AS A TARZAN OR JANE? Managers who live in denial aren’t “stupid but ignorant” because they don’t get it…or know what they’re talking about. Why do we listen in rapture to power-driven managers who make big mistakes by ignoring and refusing to deal with reality?

9. THROWN UNDER THE BUS. The ultimate fear of “anger in the workplace” is your being “accidentally” “thrown under the bus” because you don’t tell upper management what they want to hear—and no witnesses will come forward.

10. KISS THE ELEPHANT’S RUMP. Many of us react on the “work team” as we learned to survive in the “family team.” For example, kissing the rump of the stinking elephant to obtain favors…even telling a “white lie” for job security.

ZOO SURVIVAL: KISS THE ELEPHANT’S RUMP?

If you try to talk about the elephant to the zookeeper and you are ignored, patted on the head, brusquely scolded, talked over, told a bunch of head-spinning slick rationalizations or excuses, sweetly chastised or ridiculed and threatened with “you’re off the island to survive on your own”…then your managers will simply “shut up and go along to get along,” which is a cryin’ shame.

If there’s an elephant (rhinoceros, hippopotamus) in the room…be a real mouse to scare the elephant out of the house…instead of acting like an imperfect human being who pours expensive perfume all over the pachyderm and dresses it up in a fancy business suit to salute. There’s simply no more time to lose.

ABOUT DR. DENNIS O’GRADY

ABOUT “TALK TO ME” BY DR. DENNIS O’GRADY

Dr. Dennis O’Grady’s third and latest book is called, “Talk to Me: Communication Moves to Get Along with Anyone.” TALK TO ME is a self-help and personal growth psychology book about communication, and it specifically lays out O’Grady’s newest theories about two types of communicators: Empathizers and Instigators. With great success, Dr. O’Grady who is a Clinical Professor at the Wright State University School of Professional Psychology, has been using this new approach to effective communication in his private executive coaching and professional relationship counseling practice and with corporate management teams, sales teams, community groups and professional associations. As such, he’s helping them integrate these new communication tools into their companies, personal relationships, family dynamics and business/work-related communication exchanges.

In fact, the Empathizer-Instigator thinking and approaches can be applied to everyday life, and his goal is to give people a new understanding as they drive down the two-way communicator highway. For a synopsis of Dr. O’Grady’s personal growth book, please visit http://www.drogrady.com/web_Mailer.html.

In addition, Dr. O’Grady’s training programs, background and resources are featured at his website: www.drogrady.com (including a blog that provides daily, useful information, tips and advice). He hopes that visitors to his Web site will find helpful information, feel comfortable working with new ideas and be willing to share their insight into topics of importance. Please order the book, so it should arrive soon. After you’ve had a chance to look it over, please feel free to send any feedback to him – by letter, by phone call, by e-mail or by posting a comment on Dr. O’Grady’s blog!