Paradigm for Greatness: The Culture for Human Potential
Posted by Psychologist on Jul 25, 2012 in Blog | 1 commentIt doesn’t take much to impress me; I think I live among pretty impressive people – or people with pretty impressive skills, whichever way you’d like to look at it. Someone who can make a soufflé that stands – impressive. A person who can hang pictures straight – impressive. A teacher who can remember all her students’ names on the first day of school – very impressive.
However, impressive does not go far enough to describe this week’s essayist, Peter Davison. It’s not often you find a speaker, author, etc. whose premises you can see shining through in his or her life. But that’s exactly what you find with Peter.
After – and maybe even before – you read his essay, I encourage you to go to his website, http://peterdavison.ca/index.html, and soak up all you can. Going even further, take advantage of the teaching tools he offers.
Then, I dare you to say you’re not impressed.
Ciao,
Sheryl Cooper
Editor
"Everyone has the power for greatness, not for fame but for greatness, because greatness is determined by service."
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Paradigm for Greatness: The Culture for Human Potential
What’s it like to hang out at your home, or your work place? Are people filled with energy, seeking ways they can help each other? Here’s what it’s like at a friend’s work place where the staff is moving ahead faster than management can keep up:
Employees are always changing and evolving as to how they see themselves in relation to their work and their expectations for finding connection, fulfillment and success. Professional development programs, HR practices, leadership styles and even meeting processes must reflect this change and educate staff and management who are hungry for new ways to gain satisfaction from the work-a-day world. Leaders who ignore this hunger and unknowingly starve their staff of the potential that will help them feel excited and be more fully alive at work risk making the culture of entitlement the default environment.
Feeding the culture of entitlement works like a bad apple in a barrel. Unchecked, it spreads its increasing influence until all is rotten to the core. In this “me first” environment you will find staff on their tiptoes reaching for their performance expectations only when the supervisor (or mommy) is watching. People take more mental health days and TGIF is the most effective incentive program. Precious management time is consumed by mitigating lost productivity, replacing the smart ones who jump ship and refereeing covert power struggles and suppressed conflicts.
On the other hand, successful leaders in the culture of human potential recognize that the life force of corporate performance is personal performance. In order for fast companies to grow and thrive they must find new ways to help staff feed their desire to self-manage. The same can be said for families, neighborhoods or any group of people who are striving for development.
People who are driven from within to create harmony, find greater purpose with daily tasks and leave on Friday with more energy than when they started the week. Leaders are increasingly called to generate better working environments, both personally and culturally where people are serving in a climate that encourages enjoyment and a sense of ownership. This culture of human potential must support its people who are willing to change in order to live productively.
This is the new ROI. A Return On Imagination where the individuals are encouraged to contribute to something greater than themselves. It is a work culture, or home atmosphere, where real answers are sought to the question, “How can leaders inspire people to self-manage and motivate themselves from within?” The awakened culture of human potential is more than fresh faces, light hearts and bright ideas. It is ultimately the result of a welcomed invitation for management and staff to unite in a joint venture and become part of a growing movement throughout the world to transform our corporations, communities, families, and individual lives into more balanced, respectful, and conscious environments.
Take away tool
- Discuss overt dissent: There are two sides to every proposal or initiative. Invite the naysayers to voice as much as the yes people. Hear them out face-to-face or risk suppressing negativity that will eventually ooze out in barbs in the lunchroom or worst still, taken home.
- Encourage and recognize virtues: Values based leadership expired when Enron execs valued lining their pockets more than serving the people. Values are too subjective, too malleable by circumstance. Virtues are the traits of character and not subjected to history or greed. They exist across all cultures as the foundations of personal integrity.
- Be the change: Role model gratitude, balanced living, passion, presence and purpose and any other lead-by-example traits you expect of others in a thriving culture of human potential.
- Flex your identity: When the giant awakes it can be very threatening to old school management styles because people want to participate, feel heard and validated for their suggestions and that could mean you just might have to think differently.
Go Forth, Do Good, Stay Blessed – Repeat as Necessary
Peter
Thanks for your nice blog. I appreciate your writing.