I Think I Can, I Think I Can

by Don Harkey

If you haven't read "The Little Engine That Could" by Watty Piper, please proceed immediately back to your childhood long enough to read the book and then come back. Go ahead...

This classic children's story outlines the tale of a helpful little engine who overcomes a great challenge to get the toys home safely. While struggling to climb over the hill he utters to himself over and over again, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can!" (SPOILER ALERT) When he finally makes it over the hill, he says to himself, "I knew I could, I knew I could, I knew I could!" The story, published in 1954, has become a classic "standard" for American youth.

The tale does a great job of illustrating an important point. Motivation to act is derived from having 3 basic needs filled: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. If a person feels competent, autonomous, and related to a task, they will likely be highly motivated to do the task.

Competence is a person's ability to do something effectively. This could be broken down into 3 components: strengths, knowledge, and confidence. A strength is a lot like a talent. Everyone has God given strengths or aptitudes in specific areas. Knowledge can be thought of as a person's ability to predict the future. For example, an outfielder's knowledge of baseball allows him to stand in the best position possible to catch a fly ball and his experience allows him to run to the location where the ball would land before the ball gets there. The last component is confidence. This is the trickiest component.

A person may have the right aptitude to perform a task and they may even have all of the knowledge they need to perform the task, but they lack a level of certainty about the task. I have known people who refuse to use a paging system or vote at a polling place. These people have the ability and knowledge to perform the task, but they may have never done it before and doubt their own ability.

As you may have guessed, the best cure for a lack of confidence is experience. Experience takes away that lack of certainty because it has already been done before. However, to quote Ben Franklin, "Experience is the best teacher, but only fools learn from experience." Some of the most important decisions we make in life are only made once. Very few people go into their first marriage thinking of it as a confidence builder for their next marriage.

How do we overcome this?

The best thing to do is to get experience doing things that you are uncomfortable doing. In other words, get experience doing things that you are inexperienced at. Confused? Let me explain.

Some people I know seem absolutely fearless. A question arises and they will call someone they don't know and demand answers or they will enter into new business agreements without blinking an eye. These people who do this are experienced at being inexperienced. If you paint yourself into a corner in life, you can become extremely confident within your world. You can eat the same things, know the same people, go to the same job, go out to the same places with the same friends. You will be extremely competent and motivated within this world. Yet when a new world presents itself, you will feel uncomfortable.

The message is simple. Press yourself from time to time. Try new things. Go for new experiences. Practice being uncomfortable. As is often quoted, whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you are probably right!

Spice of Life

by Don Harkey

It was my senior year and I was in my senior chemical engineering class. I was to give a 15 minute non-technical educational presentation on a topic of my choosing. I wasn't the first in my class to go. For a few days, students in the class had presented on various topics, although today, I cannot remember any of them. Obviously, the presentations were less than memorable.

I watched and thought simply that I can make this special. I can make this unusual. I can make this worthwhile. I can make this spicy.

The topic I chose was "Jazz". I stood up before the class and stammered, looking uncomfortable. "I came here to tell you about jazz. How do I describe jazz? How do I tell you about jazz?" I looked thoughtful and puzzled. The class shuffled in their seats, nervous at watching as I searched for an explanation.

Yet it was a ruse. Just like some spices that start out mild and then heat up after a few bites, I had a plan. I looked out of the door of the classroom as if I was looking for help, then I said, "Look! There's the University of Nebraska Vocal Jazz Ensemble!"

I went to the door, opened it, and in walked the other 7 members of the Vocal Jazz group I sang with. I proceeded with the presentation showing examples of rhythm and harmony. We quickly performed several different pieces highlighting each concept for the class. The students were certainly paying close attention. They were hooked.

I received a good grade, but probably not any better than if I had just prepared a regular presentation. The remaining students gave their presentations and I don't remember any of them.

I tell this story to challenge you. We are given countless opportunities in our lives and in our careers to add a little more spice to what we do and how we do it. We let many of those opportunities pass by every day because we just don't see the opportunity or because we are too self-conscious. Every once in awhile though, make sure to take one or two of those moments and spice it up a little.

Life isn't meant to be bland!

Shoot

by Don Harkey

Shoot! Today's entry is short. I would like you watch the video from the link below. The next time you think about giving up on something, think about this video.

SHOOT

Keep shooting!

Death by Meeting

by Don Harkey

I was about to lead a church council retreat and I had arrived early to get everything set up. It was about 5:30PM on a Friday. We were to hold the meeting at the local Council of Churches office and I noticed one of the staff members was still at work. I stuck my head and we had a casual conversation. I mentioned that I wrote articles for the Springfield Business Journal and we discussed a few of the topics I have written about. He then handed me a book from his shelf for me to borrow. It was called "Death by Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni.

I still had time before the meeting was to start, so I began to read. The book is written as a fiction story, and is an extremely easy read. The plot centers on a management team trying to get over the hump. Many of you know what I mean when I say "the hump", but I will explain.

Have you ever worked within an organization or with a team that seemed to have all of the right people to succeed, but just wasn't quite performing as well as you hoped? You go to meeting after meeting, starting with high expectations and ending with doodles on a scratch piece of paper. This is particularly brutal when it happens in a regular meeting. The team pulls together regularly, but no one is really sure what the purpose of the meeting is and no one is sure if anything ever really gets done. The team might even touch on some important topics or even come up with brilliant ideas. Yet, it always seems to end there.

I participated in a staff meeting a few years ago where various staff members were updating the other staff members on what they were up to. In the middle of the meeting, it was the administrative assistant's turn. She broke into an emotional plea to the group saying how she just can't seem to keep up with her job and that didn't know how much longer she could take it. The staff dutifully offered several suggestions like "we might purchase some new software to make the job easier" or "maybe we could get someone to help". After each suggestion was made, it was dropped. Once all of the suggestions were made, the meeting went on. The assistant was completely deflated. There was no help on the horizon, only a set of vague suggestions. She quit within a couple of months.

This is truly "Death by Meeting". What is the problem? The issue is often times "conflict". However, the problem is not the presence of conflict, but the lack of conflict in the meetings.

Many people and company cultures abhor conflict. They avoid it at all costs. One engineer I know was sitting in a meeting discussing a pump that had recently failed. He was debating with another engineer over the mechanism for the failure. The two mechanisms were very different and would require completely different resolutions. The discussion was pointed, but technical in nature (not personal). The manager became increasingly uncomfortable and finally offered, "maybe your both right!". This was not only impossible, it also ended the discussion and the opportunity to prevent the pump from failing again.

The point is that conflict, when handled productively, is actually very healthy within an organization. It actually exists in every organization, but it is how conflict is managed that makes a difference. The administrative assistant in my example above had a conflict that the rest of the staff was unwilling to acknowledge or address. As a leader, how do you correct this problem?

When facilitating a team, it is often your job to mine conflict. As the old saying goes, if there is an elephant in the room, introduce the elephant. Don't let it get personal. Allow participants to "save face" on arguments they "lose". Keep the purpose of the meeting in front of everyone and show that the difficult discussions are necessary to not waste everyone's time.

If your organization's culture is very anti-conflict, it will take time to change. It is well worth the effort, however. Can you imagine? PRODUCTIVE meetings?!?!

To read more by Patrick Lencioni, you can check out his blog at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/A38429OVSLI05I/ref=cm_blog_dp_artist_blog

Its Always Going to be Something

by Don Harkey

One of my favorite movies is Joe Versus the Volcano with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. When I tell friends this, I get really odd looks. The movie probably doesn't land on many people's list of favorite movies and it is not at risk at being placed on any American Film Institute list. Most people I know who saw the movie thought it was mildly funny, but not very memorable. Yet it ranks among my favorites.

The movie is about a hypochondriac named Joe Banks. Joe works in a despicable job and has a despicable life. The movie does a great job of showing his pain as he goes through the motions surrounded by tragically lost people. One day, on one of his regular doctor visits, his doctor tells him that he is going to die from a rare condition called a "brain cloud". He only has a few months to live.

This new view on life gives Joe the courage to finally tell his horrible boss how he feels about him and ask out the girl in his office whom he has always liked (who is also very lost and is one of 3 characters in the movie played by Meg Ryan). Joe goes home, unsure what to do next, when he gets visited by an eccentric old millionaire. The man has heard about Joe's condition and wants to offer him a chance to be a hero. He is to travel to an island of Waponi Wu and serve as a sacrifice to the island natives by jumping into the islands volcano. If he does this, the islanders will grant the millionaire mining rights to the island. Joe agrees and sets out on an adventure traveling to the island.

On the way, he finds himself and he finds his true love, Patricia (another character played by Meg Ryan). As he climbs to the edge of the volcano (spoiler alert!), he decides to marry Patricia and she decides to jump into the volcano with him. "We'll just see. We'll just jump and we'll see.", says Patricia. The jump symbolizes both characters leaving their past lives behind and starting anew.

Both of them jump just as the volcano explodes, shooting them out of the volcano into the water as the island is destroyed behind them. Having miraculously survived their leap, the two are left swimming the ocean at the end of the movie. In a quick discussion, Joe finds out that the doctor who diagnosed his "brain cloud" actually works for Patricia's dad, who was the millionaire. Joe is not dying. At first, Joe is actually upset by this news, then he realizes that he is going to live.

As the two float in the ocean on top of Joe's huge luggage cases (which miraculously appear), Joe begins to lament their situation floating out in the ocean with no land in sight. They had just survived situation after situation, yet Joe still doubted his future. Patricia just looks at him with a smile and says, "It's always going to be something with you, isn't Joe?". The End.

We sometimes exchange the illusion of control over our lives for really bad situations. We stick with jobs we hate, we put up with despicable people, and we start to limit our world to a small little corner, just because we seem to have control over that small corner. The truth is that God is in control. As a mentor of mine one said, "God is in control and its a good thing, because we would really mess things up!".

That is what the movie is about. In the movie, Patricia tells Joe that her father once said that "Most people spend their entire lives asleep, but their are a few who are awake, and they spend their lives in constant amazement.". This is true. How many times do we drive home under a brilliant sunset or ignore a great idea from a employee? Life is a bunch of leaps. The exciting ones require Faith.

God is in control, and that is a good thing!

(WARNING: Do NOT jump into a Volcano!)