Joyful Jubilant Learning

Ready; Set; GO!

I've been a fan of Marcus Buckingham since reading First, Break All the Rules, in which he and co-author Curt Coffman explore what the world's greatest managers do differently. FIRST provides managers with solid lessons for bringing out the best from their direct reports.

In Go Put Your Strengths to Work, which was released earlier this month, Buckingham shifts the focus to what individuals can do for themselves to capitalize on their strengths in the workplace.

Buckingham begins by reviewing the essence of the strengths movement.

"The radical idea at the core of the strengths movement is that excellence is not the opposite of failure, and that, as such, you will learn little about excellence from studying failure." [p5]

"... a person or an organization will excel only by amplifying strengths, never by simply fixing weaknesses." [p9]

With this premise as the backdrop, the book lays out a 6-step process for bringing strengths to the forefront of one's professional life, and minimizing attention and time spent on areas of weakness.

"This book is about how to exercise. It's about how to get unstuck and step confidently into the second stage. It's about how to identify what is best and most effective in you and then apply it in the real world. It's not a book of theory. It's a practical book, one that teaches you a powerful new discipline. Learn this discipline, practice it each week, and you will soon find yourself able to take control and unleash fully the force of your strengths." [p11]

The core of the 6 steps involves identifying both strengths and weaknesses, then implementing strategies aimed at spending more time on the strength activities, and less time on "weakness" activities (i.e., those activities that drain you.) The book is chock full of rating scales, worksheets and templates to assist the reader with each step. The jacket of the book contains a special code to access a website with online support tools and information (which I have not yet had time to explore.)

Buckingham is at his best in describing strengths activities. He explains that you are successful at strengths activities. You are instinctively drawn to them. Strength activities "feel" natural and a part of your growth; they "fill" innate needs for you. You experience a natural high when engaged in strength activities; you lose track of time.

Although he didn't devote too much text to it, Buckingham drew upon his management consultant credentials to provide a number of valuable tips for strength-based managers. A key is that managers understand the value of having employees focused on their strengths.

If you're a manager, this sounds radical, but, in fact, this is exactly what you want your employees to be doing. You want them to be pushing you to load them up on their strengths. Why? Because you want them to be both productive today and resilient tomorrow. You want them to be creative, come up with new ideas, and seize the initiative. In corporate speak, you want them to take responsibility for their own performance and development.

I definitely recommend GO (in case you couldn't tell.)

The exercises are already providing me with a better understanding of my strengths activities. For example, I identified that I get a charge out of placing (non-sales) phone calls to strangers to obtain information about their areas of responsibility. I am almost always successful at achieving the purpose of such calls and look forward to the next round.

Prior to reading the book, I would not have thought about purposefully volunteering for that task. Now I see that spending more time doing a strengths activity not only accomplishes the task, it also invigorates the person playing to their strengths!

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Related Posts:

• Playing to your strengths on teams
• How team members identify their strengths activities

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Blaine Collins is the author of the Stronger Teams Blog, a place to explore useful ideas and strategies for improving teamwork, collaboration and team leadership in professional organizations.

Sticky Ideas - Richter's Scale

I wanted to share a recent book review published in the Washington Post that I believe ties-in well with Tim Milburn's article Made To Stick Is Better Than Duct Tape! As Tim explains, the authors of  Made To Stick identify six traits that allow the best ideas to rise above the rest.

The Post review examines the book, RICHTER'S SCALE Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man By Susan Elizabeth Hough.  Richter is known for the concept of using magnitude as a measure of earthquake size. According to the article, one of Richter's colleagues, seismologist Beno Gutenberg, deserves just as much credit for developing the scale. However, it was Richter who communicated the core idea in such a way that connected with the audience.

Some of the most gifted scientists "are not necessarily the ones who make the most profound, or the most enduring, contributions. Nor are they necessarily the ones whose contributions capture the public imagination, or the ones whose contributions have the largest societal impact." Richter's ability to communicate his findings with a general audience through the press, Hough demonstrates, gave him the kind of public profile that cemented his position in the popular lexicon.
 

Rapid Fire Learning | February 2007

February is a short month, but it's been chock full of learning for me.  How about you?

Here are five things I learned this month:

1. You can get free online access to SAGE journals until the end of the month! I have used SAGE products for years and the journal articles include a wide range of topics. Hurry; only 5 days left.

 

2. Everyone looks for a little something different in a book review. However, one universal truth is that you have to act fast if you want to be a featured reviewer during A JJL Love Affair with Books coming throughout March.

 

3. Relationship Bloggers will soon have their own conference and networking event, SOBCon07. Chicago is the place - May  11-12 are the dates - for interactive presentations on publishing, design and branding, tools, analytics, social networking, marketing, coaching and all forms of relationship geekery.

 

4. bubbl.us offers a useful, free mind-mapping tool that can quickly become addictive. I have only used it for personal brainstorming so far, and I look forward to using it for collaboration. [Shout out to Steve for the tip.]

 

5. A single person, a small group, even an online learning community, can initiate actions that ripple through their environment. I've learned this before, but reminders of the big impact of small actions were everywhere this month. The gift of a single red rose; scraping ice from a stranger's windshield; reaching out to a friend who was traveling during the year-end holidays; leaving a comment for the first time on a favorite blog.

Rosa started Rapid Fire Learning last month and you can expect it continue at JJL into the future.

Please share your own RFL in comments below, or post about 5 things you learned this February on your blog (and remember to trackback to this post!).

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Blaine Collins is the author of the Stronger Teams Blog, a place to explore useful ideas and strategies for improving teamwork, collaboration and team leadership in professional organizations. Blaine will contribute to JJL Love Affair with Books by reviewing Marcus Buckingham's newest book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance on March 31.

If you build a strong network, its effects will ripple

Penelope Trunk offers 4 New Ideas for Becoming More Effective at Work.

The second idea is particularly relevant for JJ Learners, who exemplify the opposite of "sloppy networking":

Sloppy networking leads to sloppy results. The founders of the professional networking site LinkedIn tell people in no uncertain terms that building a network has to be about people you know well. Yet every day thousands of LinkedIn users invite near-strangers into their network.

Newsflash: People you don’t know cannot vouch for you. People you have not connected with in an authentic way will not be move to help you when you need it. It doesn’t matter how full your LinkedIn account is, or how heavy your Rolodex is, if you haven’t really connected with these people, it’s not a network.

The opposite is true as well. If you build a strong network, its effects will ripple. Josh Boltuch, Elliott Breece and Elias Roman spent their last semester at Brown University launching Amie Street, a new model for selling music online. They had no marketing budget to get the word out, but they did have their network.

“We sent a few hundred emails to friends and family.” The crux of the marketing pitch? “We told everyone that a requirement for being our friend is to sign up for our site.” A few weeks later, without saying anything to the founders, someone told Mike Arrington about Amie Street.

Arrington has one of the strongest networks in startup America. Getting your startup on his blog TechCrunch is like getting your book on Oprah. And there was Amie Street, right there on Mike’s blog one day.

The next day, Amie Street had thousands of registered users.
What can we learn from this? That solid networks make solid results.
The Amie Street founders had a network that cared deeply for them – their friends and family. Mike Arrington’s network is truly dedicated to helping him find the best new startups. Amie Street is a success today because it started with a truly meaningful network.

JJ Learners practice the art of authentic networking through several activities, including:

• posting and commenting on JJL,
• reading and supporting each other's blogs,
• participating in learning forums such as A Love Affair with Books, and
• attending  face-to-face events such SOBCon07.

 

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Blaine Collins is the author of the Stronger Teams Blog, a place to explore useful ideas and strategies for improving teamwork, collaboration and team leadership in professional organizations. Blaine will contribute to JJL Love Affair with Books by reviewing Marcus Buckingham's newest book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance on March 31.

Sharing a common language/vocabulary is essential for learning

Recent reading has me thinking about how important a common language is for collaborative learning. By "common language" I mean a shared vocabulary and consistency of terminology (not English, Spanish, etc.) As I see it, much collaborative learning derives from individuals absorbing and building upon the thoughts, ideas, arguments and lessons of others. Common language is essential to this endeavor, lest we find ourselves talking past one another.

In Now Discover Your Strengths,  Marcus Buckingham devotes an early chapter to describing "themes," which he then builds upon through the rest of the book. Buckingham explains that establishing a common language around the relatively new concept of the strengths movement is an essential first step.

The third revolutionary tool is a common language to describe your talents. We need a new language to help explain the strengths we see in ourselves and others. This language must be precise; it must be able to describe the subtle ways in which one person differs from another. It must be positive; it must help us explain strength, not frailty. And it must be common; it must be a language in which we are all fluent so that not matter who we are or where we are from, we all know exactly what is meant...

By precisely defining his terminology, Buckingham ensures the reader has a reasonable chance of understanding the nuance of the message that follows. Beyond the book, the author provides a starting point for future communication with readers who may submit questions or comments, audiences at speaking engagements and the media.

The flatter the world becomes, the wider the potential circle becomes of those with whom we may communicate and collaborate, which in turn, increases the need for common vocabulary.

Unfortunately, there are many examples of language used so imprecisely that it obscures rather than enlightens the subject. We often recognized murky language as soon as we use it, as Peter Rip does here: 

I was stretched with my partners.  We were thrashing.  We knew we had something Big, but somehow it was the Business We Dare Not Name. Technology, Platform, Application, Solution -- these are all gobblegook businesspeak that don't define anything concrete.

Peter was quick to point out that his efforts were lacking definition, yet such businesspeak is fairly common in daily conversation. I believe that people react to vague language in a couple of ways, neither of which spurs understanding or learning. First, we may think that we (the listener) are ignorant, either not knowing anything about the subject or too dense to comprehend it. Second, often more accurately, we may think the speaker either cannot communicate well or does not have anything meaningful to say.

In either case, a better solution is to strive to use concrete language that is commonly understood by the audience, whether employees, teammates, clients or the general public.  When collaboration is essential, take the time to define terms - establish a common language.

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Blaine Collins is the author of the Stronger Teams Blog, a place to explore useful ideas and strategies for improving teamwork, collaboration and team leadership in professional organizations. Blaine will contribute to JJL Love Affair with Books by reviewing Marcus Buckingham's newest book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance on March 31.

Twelve Days of Christmas, the Joyful Jubilant Learning way

With all the warmth and spirit that this holiday can bring, the group would like to share this version of the Twelve Days of Christmas with you. May you sing with us now, and join us for a future collaborative effort.

On the first day of Christmas,
my teacher sent to me
A joyful network for learning.

On the second day of Christmas,
my teacher sent to me
Two thoughts inspiring,
And a joyful network for learning.

On the third day of Christmas,
my teacher sent to me
Three blogging tools,
Two thoughts inspiring,
And a joyful network for learning.

On the fourth day of Christmas,
my teacher sent to me
Four annual forums,
Three blogging tools,
Two thoughts inspiring,
And a joyful network for learning.

Year End Assessment and New Year Planning

Since early adulthood, the greatest significance of the holiday season for me has revolved around the New Year.  Each of the major Autumn holidays celebrated in the U.S. - Halloween , Thanksgiving , Ramadan , Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa - serve as markers along a calendar path toward the end of the year and the beginning of the new.

The significance of the new year is embedded in its calling for self-reflection and renewal. The changing of the calendar beckons for an assessment of what has occurred during the preceding 12 months and planning for the next.

To carry out this assessment and planning, some patterns have evolved over time, through which I undertake various activities - rituals, if you will - which allow for examination of the various parts of my life.  For each item, I try to ask three questions:

1. What is the current status of this aspect of my life?  
2. To what extent am I satisfied with this aspect of life?  
3. What changes am I willing to commit to making in the coming year?

Current Status
Answering the current status question is perhaps the most time consuming. I typically carry out a sort of inventory to consider all relevant information. The items I generally consider are:

• Relationships (with family, colleagues, friends and neighbors, others)  
• Career  
• Physical Health  
• Mental Stimulation (i.e., learning)  
• Finances  
• Hobbies/Activities  
• Residence  
• Personal Items (wardrobe, grooming, etc.)
• Transportation  
• Services (ISP, lawn care, etc.)  

Some items require little more than a thought. For example, I have been living in the same house for several years and do not plan to move any time soon. However, the Residence category will still be assessed as I determine whether this is the year to plan for a new roof, painting, or other upkeep.

Many items, such as Finances, require checking paperwork. Therefore, I spend some time each Autumn "nesting" to make sure my systems are organized and that I can clearly assess the current status.

The Relationships category mostly involves a mental exercise of reflecting on each person who I hold dear, and each person with whom I interact regularly. Obviously, maintaining positive personal and social relationships requires more than a once-a-year assessment, but this Year End ritual helps ensure that I focus on each person that matters.

Satisfaction Level
Calling this section "Satisfaction" is a glass-half-full approach, because it could easily be viewed as a measurement of 'dissatisfaction'. Because I have never found that focusing on the negative is effective for me, I first try to understand what is good about the current status of each aspect listed above. I typically find this section easiest to complete because it is easy to determine how I feel about various aspects of life. When the level of satisfaction is high, I commit to continuing my past behaviors.  When the level of satisfaction is low, I begin examining the need for change.

Commitments for Change
This section is both the most difficult and the most rewarding. For a few decisions, the satisfaction level makes various decisions clear. For example, if my satisfaction level is, say, 90% with my current transportation but only 65% with my relationship with my brother, then I will likely want to plan to spend more time with my brother than kicking tires or reading Consumer Reports for a new vehicle.

Other decisions are more difficult, especially when values and reality conflict. For example, I value going to professional soccer games with my son more than I value gardening.  I also value blogging more than shopping for new clothes.  However, if I spend all of my free time going to soccer games and blogging, I will have a lousy garden and worn clothes.  This sort of situation is what makes doing the inventory so meaningful, because it points out that I will need a plan to improve my satisfaction level with both my garden and wardrobe.

In the end, I try to chart a course of action that will guide my activities in each aspect of life for the coming year. I tend to be a realist when it comes to goal setting, arriving at pragmatic options that avoid absolutes. Unlike New Year's resolutions, which I have found to be too sporadic and rigid for usefulness, I find that this kind of deliberate approach allows me to make good progress in the direction set forth in the Year End Assessment and New Year Planning.

K-12 Online Conference

Focused primarily on education, the K-12 Online Conference has produced a wealth of resources applicable to anyone wanting to learn more about the possibilities of Web 2.0. Educators from around the world use wikis, podcasts, screencasts and video to communicate how they are using Web 2.0 tools to engage and teach students. The conference runs October 23 - November 4, 2006, but the resources will be available online long beyond the conference dates.

Here are some of the topics covered during Week 1:

• Wiki Collaboration
• Free Web Tools
• Blogs
• Internet Audio
• Social Networking
• RSS
• Podcasting
• i-learning
• Flickr
• Internet Video
• Moodle

For example, the session on wikis discusses the k12wiki, which uses a simple wiki tool named wikispaces.

Bookmark the Website, subscribe to the feed, and make time for some valuable exploration.

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Blaine Collins is the author of the Stronger Teams Blog, a place to explore useful ideas and strategies for improving teamwork, collaboration and team leadership in professional organizations.

Things that we cannot learn alone

I felt a sense of accomplishment in connecting the final cord and "booting" the new 286 PC. The monitor crackled, the fan at the back of the box hummed, and the hard drive (although I did not know its name at the time) seemed to crank in fits and starts as if it was searching for the proper gear. So began my personal computing experience.

I was not a knowledge worker at the time and never touched a computer by day. If the truth be known, I had no "real" reason for purchasing a PC when I did - unless you consider genuine curiosity to be a real reason (which I do). Besides curiosity, I sensed that the computing age had much more in store for me than I could possibly know at the time (which it has).

Without the support of computer training at work, my choices were limited for learning how to use this entirely foreign machine. There were no Internet training sites, nor late night infomercials touting DVDs and CD-Roms for in-home computer training. I couldn't fathom taking weeks of general education classes at the community college just to learn MS-DOS.

Instead, I took out the four thick manuals that came in the box with the PC (remember those manuals?) and started my self-education.  Page after page, I read it, tried it, and customized it where possible, until I had learned how to use almost every aspect of the PC and pre-loaded software (think MS Works).

Self-education worked because learning to use a computer is one of the things that we can learn alone.

Some things, however, cannot be learned alone; and for still other things, learning it is simply better when we share the learning experience with others.

Learning about interpersonal relationships, by definition, is a shared pursuit. Learning to give feedback... to coach... to tell jokes - all require that at least one other person be involved. Learning how to give and to take instructions, learning to lead, learning to love. These are face-to-face learning opportunities that teach much more than any books or manuals can possibly supply.

Things I put in the category of 'better when the learning is shared' include cooking a new recipe, trying out new plants in the garden, and learning a new musical piece to play or sing.  Although I don't personally sew, my mother tells me that quilting is all about learning new stitches and sharing the lessons with friends! 

I still get a kick out of learning a new software program or trying out the features of a new gadget, and I typically engage in such learning alone. Yet more importantly these days, I find learning with others (family, friends, colleagues, and now virtual neighbors) much more rewarding than almost anything that I can do alone.  What about you?

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Blaine Collins is the author of Stronger Teams, a blog about teams, collaboration and team leadership. Exploring useful ideas and strategies for improving teamwork in professional organizations, he draws upon three decades of managing, leading, and participating with teams in various businesses and the public sector.

The Body Ho'ohana

Have you ever played the game OPERATION?

You know, the game where you play as a surgeon trying to remove various parts of the body from a laid-out patient using a pair of tweezers. To win the game, OPERATION requires players to take very purposeful actions. However, the best part of the game is the fun and passion generated among the players when a hand slips causing the red nose to light up and emit a loud BUZZZZZ!

You get the message. The game of OPERATION requires Ho'ohana:  Action with purpose and (playful) passion.

As we approach the end our our first round of posting on JJLN, I bring up the game of OPERATION to illustrate another point about the Ho'ohana Community. The community, like other teams and groups, can be likened to the human body, with various body parts that all need purposeful, passionate attention.

Imagine ourselves as a human body; the Body Ho'ohana. The following questions can help us recognize and consider the various body parts.

Eyes - What vision(s) do we have for JJLN? Is a single vision necessary, or can we each have slightly different visions and still create something meaningful? How do we see our current strengths and weaknesses, and how do we envision improving over time?

Ears - How will JJLN listen to each member of the Community? What might block our ability to hear? What tools and strategies can help us to listen and hear better as we go?

Voice - How well do our spoken/written messages align with our vision?  How can we best speak with clarity and develop a common language so that our communication is most effective?  What methods or tools of communication could help develop even stronger relationships?

Hands - How will we let our actions demonstrate our commitments?  What actions will be needed to keep the community functioning?  How can we best help each other to achieve common and individual goals?

Feet - We have all come from different places; how and when can we best clarify where are we going together?  What actions or structures can we establish to ensure that we move forward effectively?

Brain - How will we think through decisions and actions? What are some decisions that the community should think through together and what decisions should individual members make on their own?

Heart - What is at the heart of the community? How will we demonstrate caring for one another? How will the community celebrate its achievements? 

Head - How does the community view its leadership needs?  How can a community full of leaders best support having everyone act as a leader? 

Some members may wish to consider answers privately, others may write about and discuss answers publicly, and still others may ask entirely new questions. We have already begun to explore answers to some of these questions through previous discussions, such as those about powerful partnerships, the heart/head dilemma, and what I don't know.

Some questions may not lend themselves to definitive answers, but rather to points of view and ways of thinking, speaking and writing. Yet questions about the Body Ho'ohana will undoubtedly lead to learning, and that will make all the difference.

I envision the day (perhaps it is already here) when the Body Ho'ohana sees its path and place with our eyes; hears the words of support with our ears; speaks a message of learning with many voices; takes purposeful action with our hands; moves toward its destiny with our feet; thinks through keen strategies with our brains; feels caring and joy for one another with our hearts; and leads a community of leaders with our heads.   

As others have said before, I look forward - honestly, I'm stoked - to taking this voyage together!  I look forward to JJLN being ONE OF THE THINGS WE DID DO. 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

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Blaine Collins is the author of the Stronger Teams Blog, a collection of thoughts about teams, teamwork, collaboration, and team leadership.