Joyful Jubilant Learning

Please Welcome Kevin Eikenberry to Joyful Jubilant Learning!

Kevin's name may sound familiar to you:

Most recently, remarkable business leader Kevin Eikenberry was Benjamin Bach's guest here at Joyful Jubilant Learning, featured in our JJL interview series we call Jubilant Learners Speak Up!

You may remember this snippet:

Benjamin: What would the world look like if we were all Remarkable Leaders?

Kevin: The world would be a better place.  People would be using the skills they have been given, they would be continually learning and the results we would actualize would be, well, remarkable.  Remarkable leaders make a difference in the world, when everyone is doing that… the world will be an even more amazing place than it is today.

Today, I am thrilled to announce that Kevin has decided to join us here at Joyful Jubilant Learning as a monthly contributor, honoring us as one of the choices he has made, with how he personally will make that difference in the world he so passionately speaks about.

Kevin is an author, speaker, trainer, and consultant dedicated to revealing our learning potential. He is a savvy businessman in his own right, and founder of the Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company, where he walks his talk of remarkable leadership as Chief Potential Officer - how's that for a title to both live up to and challenge lifelong learners with!

Kevin has joined us as we travel along Jubilation Way during 2008, exploring monthly themes as we do so. His first article for us is called "Packing Right" for January: Click in, read about what Kevin will be packing in his bag for the year to come as he joins us, and share your aloha in a comment there for him.

By the way: Our timing is perfect with learning more about Kevin, and how a true "learning consultancy" works. Earlier this week Kevin announced a "Remarkable Opportunity" for everyone who has his new book, Remarkable Leadership, or is thinking about picking it up. He is offering some fantastic resources you will want to take a look at.

And of course, keep reading Kevin's articles right here on Joyful Jubilant Learning!

Please Welcome Angela Maiers to Joyful Jubilant Learning!

“Teachers need to be great learners to lead great learners. I believe that learning is a lifelong journey, an ongoing exploration and way of life. I challenge myself and others to always be striving to find and share big ideas in every million dollar conversation.”

Sounds like someone who should be writing for Joyful Jubilant Learning...

We thought so too!

Today we have the great pleasure and good fortune of welcoming Angela Maiers as our newest Contributing Author to Joyful Jubilant  Learning. A new blogger, and the author of several books, articles, and curriculum support materials, Angela strives to connect research and scientific theory to real world practices in her work as an independent consultant dedicated and committed to helping DOE’s, schools, districts and teachers reach their goals in literacy and literacy education --- take a look at the resources and innovative workshops she offers on her site.

For the past six years, Angela has created, developed, and organized multiple literacy institutes reaching thousands of educators across the United States. These summer institutes provide an innovative and unique venue for educators, administrators, and curriculum developers ready to take on leadership roles. As you can imagine, we are eager to be among Angela’s newest, very eager students, and we are sure you will too!

The first article Angela has written for us is called Teaching With Learning in Mind. Thoughtful to be sure... yet do visit her blog as well for a full intro to Angela and her more playful side. You will find she was game for bloggy tag, bravely offering 7 random/weird facts about Angela Maiers.
(I couldn’t resist Angela! Jack Bauer, huh?)

Aloha and welcome Angela, we are thrilled you will be sharing your many talents with our joyful and jubilant Ho‘ohana Community of learners.

~ Rosa Say for Joyful Jubilant Learning

Coaching: permanent learning at its best

Today we are happy to offer you a guest posting from JJLer Sandra Heinzelmann. Sandra is a writer and business coach in Germany, and she writes at Creating a lifetime movie (Feed). Please welcome her with your joyful comments!
~ Rosa Say for Joyful Jubilant Learning

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Coaching for me is a wonderful synonym for the process of permanent, common and mutual learning. Coach and coachee always are both: teacher and student. The effects arising from that base are precious and various.

“What is the very best effect coaching can have?” This question was on my mind when I was professionally trained as a business coach in 2004. A thrilling process was going on then while I was seeking an answer that really satisfied me. Sometimes elder experiences suddenly unfold on a new level. That happened to me. In the early 90ies I worked as a freelance TV journalist and director for Germany’s public broadcast station called ARD. More than ten years later I received a truly inspirational gift. Guess, how? Well, it was very unspectacular: I sat on my stairs and fastened my sneakers when all of a sudden this idea popped up in my head: Dialogue Scripting! A coaching tool was born. More than that, it even was the headstone of a coaching concept. I learned that later.

Many coaches use fairy questions and their magic impacts on their clients. Dialogue Scripting is the “fairy of communication settings”. I derived it from screenplay writing. The idea behind it is that a coachee can influence every single word his counterpart says. Just imagine, millions of people dream of making others say something that they’d like to hear. They keep trying to control others. Dialogue scripting makes this dream come true. Designing his or her desired dialogue word by word provides insights in own needs and responsibilities for a successful communication. This tool works for both coachees and coaches. Therefore it is an appropriate technique for coaching and self-coaching processes. To write down the desired dialogue helps you to find out what you like to hear and how you would like to be treated yourself. As soon as you know that you can change your own communication in order to change the situation and provide what you long for yourself.

This idea of consciously designing the own communication gave birth to the concept of an inner dialogue director. And then the analogy unfolded in all its facets: (Business) life can be seen as a movie that is directed by us. Finally I found my answer to the question: “What is the very best effect coaching can have?” Coaching is successful when the client’s “inner coach” takes over responsibility for his or her issues. In my eyes this inner coach is less abstract in a role you can identify with: the (business) life director.

In detail this means:

1. You choose the plot, the genre and the title of your movie.
2. You write the script and dialogues day by day.
3. You cast the characters.
4. You set the light.
5. You are responsible for the tone.
6. You balance all this at your life movie’s set.
7. Director’s cut is the very essence of all.

Creating a lifetime movie clarifies that this is a real process, one that is going on as long as we live. Becoming the best life director in our own life is a challenge and purpose. For me this is permanent learning and teaching at the same time. The best effect coaching can have is learning and to make its effects last. This is what I call sustainability of coaching and that was what I had looked for while I was trained.

Sandra Heinzelmann
Author of "The 7 Secrets of happy and successful Life Directors - How to benefit from your Powerful Self-Coaching Gifts"

Learn to Build Your Personal Brand

“Most of all, I don’t want to be defined by anything not of my choosing.”
~ Phil Gerbyshak

I consider myself a newbie as far as being an entrepreneur. For the first three decades of my working life, I was Mz. Corporate America, and for most of those thirty years I didn’t think like Phil did, mostly because I didn’t really think about it at all.

For most of those thirty years there was also no such thing as the internet, and building my own brand meant the hard road of building my own business, something I wasn’t ready to take on. During my time in retail in particular, my customers and suppliers regularly asked me, “Rosa, you’re good at this; why don’t you open your own shops?” and my reply would be, “I have a great employer who I like working for, and who willingly takes all the financial risks for what I do; this is perfect for me just as it is.”

Today, that is a sentence I would never say. I have no regrets about my corporate time, it was pretty great, but knowing what I know now, I’m not going back. Reading back on it, I could say that sentence again, but the ‘employer’ I’d be talking about would be me myself, and I.
[See From Corporate Life to Self-Employment at Talking Story.]

As I got older, and better at what I did, financial risk became a minimal concern for me. Not because I had a lot to cushion any deficits, but because I had learned how to make money and spend it wisely to curb those deficits; cash flow is important, but it became just another “tool of the trade.” I had developed that entrepreneurial mindset needed to succeed on my own because my financial literacy had grown with me.

A bigger concern reared its head and became more and more intrusive every day, and that was this: I paid a high price for the comfort of staying with my employer –––as great as that employer was. The price was the loss of substantial intellectual property; while I was on their dime they considered my brain something they owned, especially because I’d become an executive. Once you get that corner office, there is no such thing as personal time off the clock; that bigger paycheck you get means your ‘boss’ is now also your owner. Whatever you might create doesn’t belong to you, even at midnight sitting at your own kitchen table.

The day came that I no longer felt comfortable with “having it good” as Mz. veteran executive. I wanted my creative discomfort to pay off for me and my family personally.

When I walked away from the corporate world in 2003, I had a terrific reputation, but I did not yet have a personal brand. Big difference. Your personal brand is about your own message, your own mission, and your own vision, and your reputation. Entrepreneurship is about keeping control of all those things in your own good hands.

“My message is consistently spread because I took the time to build my brand. If you don’t take the time to build your brand, you run the risk that someone else will. And I don’t want someone else to say who I am, I want to be part of that story!”
~ Phil Gerbyshak

When you have crafted a personal brand, you have crafted a significant driver in your reputation; for remember, a reputation is something you are awarded by others. Think of brand as cause (will it be yours, or your employer’s?) and reputation as effect.

The good news is that today, you can do what I couldn’t do in my yesterday: You still need to steer clear of the executive suite to pull it off, however you can reap the benefits of working in the corporate world and create your personal brand at the same time.

Phil Gerbyshak is one of the best examples I know of, and we can all learn from him. The quotes I’ve shared here come from an interview he’s given to Ron “Buzzoodle” McDaniel of Buzz Marketing Personal Brand as lead up to a presentation Phil is doing in Las Vegas in January. I encourage you to read through Phil’s interview with Ron, for you too can begin to build your personal brand today.

~ Rosa Say, JJL Contributor, and author of Managing with Aloha Coaching. A related posting made back in June on Talking Story, is the Not-so-Secret Weapon of the Self-Employed.

~ Read more about Phil in his index here at Joyful Jubilant Learning, and at his blog, Make It Great!

~ As JJL Contributor Greg Balanko-Dickson would say, “Live Large!” Grab more inspiration for building your personal brand from these JJL categories:

• BHAGs and Bigger Dreams
• Connecting and Relationships
• JJL Forum 2007: Make A Difference

Christmas Olympics! Let the games begin!

Preface: We had asked you to Teach us your Wild and Wacky Traditions! and reader Monique Howat of www.confidentgirlsguys.com rose to the challenge with this wonderful story. Thank you Monique!

Our daughter Shanna believed in Santa until she was 9.  He seemed to represent all things Christmas yet Shanna felt sorry for him. She was sure that a jolly old fella like himself would feel sad that mail only arrived in December so until she turned 9, she began corresponding with Santa starting in January for 11 months, purposely excluding December and asking only for his friendship.

I was inspired by her.  After years of trying to figure out a way to change our superficial model of Christmas to one with more meaning, surely I could follow the lead of my young daughter to create a Christmas tradition that would take the main focus off gifts.

My criterion was uncomplicated but needed to cover the things that were important to our family:

1. Make it more about family and togetherness than gifts.

2. Include every one of all ages.

3. Fun

4. Memorable!

Our family has come to know this unpretentious event as Christmas Olympics.

It begins right after lunch on December 25 with the gong of a bell which prompts last years Olympian to run though the house proudly wearing the cheap plastic olive leaf wreath on their head while carrying the makeshift torch (a wooden stick with a hand drawn flame)….happily donated when our three kids were still toting crayons.

Christmas Olympics is a great way to make sure that the very young and elderly stay as involved in the occasion as everyone else because they also choose a game they’re good at.

While many people spend the 5 days before Christmas on shopping, my family are extra  busy gathering “things” for their game or researching “party games” on the internet and that’s half the fun!

The game each person chooses remains top secret right up until the moment they are designated to start their game. Each person’s game time is indicated simply by where their name happens to be on the paper that tracks the game points. Christmas Olympics after all is meant to be fun with few rules!

If you have 5 family members, each game earns a player a point score from 1-5, depending on the position they ranked in a game.

The following is a small sampler of some of our Christmas Olympic games;

• Poop the Potatoe which really means hop around a table with a potato between your legs and while facing everyone, plop it into a bowl on the floor.
• Orange peeling contests. The longest unbroken rind wins and everyone gets treated to a fibre break from candy and chocolate.
• Snow golf…one or two holes on a short course (use food colouring around the hole)
• Staring contests
• Memory games. Read a meaningful or funny short story and ask questions later. It’s really astounding how well adults DON’T listen!
• Guess how many jelly beans, loonies or quarters. Winner gets points and the jar!
• Spin the coin. The longest spin wins.
• Card or dice games of chance.
• Find the Apple Pot. Blind folded, crawl along the floor smacking a wooden spoon to find a pot filled with water and an apple. Retrieve the apple with your mouth. This is timed. You can get creative by using a soft tomato or marshmallows (if someone has bad knees or back, place it somewhere on the counter)
• Guess what’s in the sock? Each sock holds an item of a family member. Contestants get a single 10 second feel, 1 hint and only 2 guesses.

At the end of the day we’ve laughed, created memories and crowned the Olympian with the coveted but tacky plastic head wreath and surprisingly, everyone is always proud to wear it.

We all thank Shanna for seeing things differently from the rest of us and having the courage to act on it.

Our kids, though now young adults are just as excited about the afternoon of December 25.

Let the games begin…

October 19 is A “Most Excellent” Birthday

Hau‘oli la hanau means Happy Birthday!

Just as April says, birthdays are our favorite holidays.  “Yours, mine, theirs - all of them.  There is something grand about a party that is had simply because you were born.”

And there is something grand about the words which pour out of that life now born. There is something grand about the learning which tumbles out thoughtfully, and yes, joyfully.

Can you guess whose birthday it is today when you read their words?

Clue number one;

Do you remember what the dormouse said?  If ever there was an anthem to inspire learning...

Not sure about you, but I have an insatiable desire to learn, to learn selective stuff.  For me it's stuff that pertains to the connected generation, Purple Cow marketing, business change, design as it applies to Dan Pink's Conceptual Age, innovation and, in general, what inspires people to be passionate about their work.

And surely you remember Jimmy;

Once, one of Jimmy's daughters won a bag full of goldfish at the carnival.   Not wanting to keep the fish, Jimmy suggested that they flush the fish down the toilet.  He reasoned to his daughter that the fish would eventually make it out of the sewer system to the Lake.  She didn't buy it and was more than concerned for their safety.  Jimmy then asked if it'd be okay to release them into the Creek.  She agreed.  By this point the fish had taken up a few hours of his time, but he invested just a bit more and drove the fish to the Creek.  He spent a few more minutes looking for just the right release point.  He then set the fish free...only to have everyone of them eaten by bigger fish within thirty seconds.

Need another?

Jimmy was helping Annie write an e-mail.  Looking over her shoulder, he instructed her to open up a new screen.  Annie clicked her mouse four times.  Jimmy was incredulous.  He gently asked her to close that screen and allow him to take over the mouse.  He directed the mouse to the new mail icon and clicked once, bringing up a new e-mail screen.

...the Spark lit up Annie's eyes and the residual heat radiated warmth throughout her body.  Her smile leapt from her body and buried itself into Jimmy's soul.

The Spark is the ever so slightest exchange of information that can awaken one's universe and bring gamma rays of delight to the other.

Okay, I bet this one is the give-away!

As a guide of learning, it's my job to uncover the layers of dirt by means of clear articulation and discourse driven to provoke thought. 

Once learning-potentiality surfaces it blossoms into ability.  And I believe that everyone has the ability to do wonderful things.  We can all be guides of learning.  Think about someone who needs a few layers of dirt unearthed from their fossil.  What would it take to turn them onto a book, send them an article, send them a link or drop them an e-mail? 

Close your eyes and imagine a network of people tuned into digging up fossils.  Imagine the vibrancy of knowledge exchange.  Imagine the glowing vista of growth and development.  Imagine this network evolving.  Now, slowly open your eyes and look out towards the horizon.  Can you see the vast mounds of dirt?  Can you feel the pulsating beat of learning?  Sure you can.  And you know why?  Because there is here right now!

Hau‘oli la hanau Uncle Davie! We celebrate this day with you.
~ Rosa Say for Joyful Jubilant Learning

How involved are you in your child’s learning?

I so admire Tim Milburn for this: An Open Letter To Teachers

How can you be taking a more active role in your child’s life at school? Please share what you do, for the benefit of all who are parents in our Ho‘ohana Community, just as Tim did.

Tim also asks,

• Do you create opportunities for people or put obstacles in the way of people?
• What would you use to judge whether or not a student is capable of running for a student leadership position?

I look forward to your comments,
~ Rosa Say

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Tim Milburn is also one of our contributing authors here on Joyful Jubilant Learning. This was the posting he had written for our JJL Make A Difference 2007 forum: Help! I Can't Learn Anything Because I'm Disinterested. 

Generous Coaching for us in eBooks, and Learning By Example

Two of our JJL authors are offering new eBooks on their own sites, absolutely free!

Karen Wallace has launched a new online magazine called The Calm Space, “a virtual magazine that’s like a day-spa for your senses!” and she writes...

In celebration of our first issue of The Calm Space, I am thrilled to be able to offer you a once-only chance to get a copy of my book, How to find the Pause Button for your life… with my compliments!

This book offers you six lessons on reducing the stress, and reconnecting with what makes you happy.

Visit The Calm Space and look for the Pause Button link to download your complimentary copy today.

[Or you can click on the image to the right for the direct route to the download page.]

At Confident Writing, Joanna Young has been presenting a monthly theme in her work shared with us as a writing coach. She turned her September discussion on authentic writing into a 14-page e-book: It's called The Courage to Hear Yourself Sing: 5 takes on authentic writing.

Joanna writes,

This is my first attempt at writing in this medium so I'd be grateful - as ever - for any comments and feedback.  If it's a format that works - who knows?  You might just see me doing some more in the future :-)

We hope so Joanna!

Like you, our contributing authors are lifelong learners, and while we are grateful to both Karen and Joanna for sharing these e-books with us, we are most proud of the example they set as learners who take risks, trying new things in immediate application of their learning. They have taken that additional, very crucial step, where learnING becomes learnED. They have taken a Leap!

Thank you Karen and Joanna, and Ho‘omaika‘i ana ~ congratulations on your work, both beautifully done expressions of your Ho‘ohana.
~ Rosa Say for Joyful Jubilant Learning

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Read more about the learning journeys Karen and Joanna take, by clicking to their author indexes here on JJL:

• Karen Wallace
• Joanna Young

A Lesson in Learning Leadership at JJL University

In this weekend’s USA Weekend (in many Sunday papers as a weekend magazine type supplement) there was a Back-To-School feature which asked, What if George Washington were your teacher? Or Teddy Roosevelt? Or John F. Kennedy? It was called A Lesson in Leadership (thus my title.)

Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith explained why Washington would’ve made a great geography teacher, why Roosevelt would have been his pick for gym class, and why Kennedy (or Lyndon Johnson) would have been a fine debate coach.

I thought this would also be a fun exercise for us here at JJL in creating a modern-day dream team from the ranks of our JJL contributing authors.

Tell me if you agree: I started by using the same “faculty positions” but then added a few for our illustrious group … in parenthesis are Smith’s presidential mentors for us.

~School administrator: Dean Boyer, for he has the most experience with this, and is that rare educator brave enough to suggest unlearning too.

~World history teacher (James Madison): Dwayne Melancon, because he seems to put in the most miles, and can most likely navigate a global map better than the rest of us. I’m also guessing his bookshelf is the most globally biographical and surprising one: He learns something wherever he goes.

~Gym teacher (Theodore Roosevelt): Terry Starbucker. Another one of our road warriors, Terry has to be in great shape with all the moving around he does, and have you seen the man dance?

~English teacher (James Garfield): No contest here. Joanna Young, our confident writing coach! Creative writing, grammar-busting bravery … the woman can teach us all of it!

~School newspaper advisor (Warren Harding): Benjamin Bach, our very own interview editor for our Jubilant Learners Speak Up! series. I betcha Benjamin would be a terrific editor/advisor for the financial section too.

~Speech teacher (Woodrow Wilson): EM Sky, for the dialog she has been sharing with us in her very creative writing. I can “hear” EM in each email she writes me.

~Foreign language teacher (John Quincy Adams): Guess that would be me, as the one getting us all to aloha, think ho‘ohana, and say mahalo generously and enthusiastically!

~Football coach (Gerald Ford): John Richardson. I don’t know if John has ever played football, but I think he’d be a terrific coach at it. No dips, just winning seasons.

~Science teacher (Jimmy Carter): My pick would be Chris Owen for the focus  we have on this campus with human sciences, for Chris knows all the secrets we have to learn in cultivating successful relationships.

~Mathematics teacher: Ariane Benefit. Ariane can tell us what is too much, and what is just right, and math is supposed to be neat and simple. We never seem to be dealing with any negative amounts here :)

~American history teacher (Franklin D. Roosevelt): Phil Gerbyshak, for his skillful navigation of up-to-the-moment living of relationship building as history happens before our very eyes. (Because he was in the Navy, Phil also has tenure with this one.)

~Drama and the Performing Arts: We scored with David Zinger. David would know exactly who to cast in what role from a strengths perspective, and he likes to get people up on stage.

~Band director (Bill Clinton): Definitely Steve Sherlock, remembering Steve’s book review, and his way of getting us all to sing along with him.

~Home economics teacher: April Groves, for the way she makes beautiful homes happen personally and in the real estate market.

~Debate coach (John F. Kennedy): I’d have to give this one to Greg Balanko-Dickson, for he consistently teaches us that things are “a matter of perspective.”

~Geography teacher (George Washington): Dave Rothacker, for the journeys we take with him on his Road Well Traveled. I have never enjoyed geography as much as now with Dave teaching it.

~Philosophy teacher: Karen Wallace. Thanks to Karen we have already learned about discovering the hidden power of giving in, and we all can benefit from her serenity coaching!

~Student government teacher: Tim Milburn, for there is none better when it comes to coaching student leaders! Tim can also take the complicated and get it to make so much sense with his pictures (we definitely do need him in government.)

School is now in session … and lucky us, for these are people who Make A Difference.

Make sure you make it to class for our visiting professors this month too: Pete Aldin, Adam Kayce, Robyn McMaster, and Reg Adkins are in the faculty lounge and they brought donuts! Be good boys and girls and they might apply for residency with us!

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Post author Rosa Say teaches at real universities occasionally, but on management and not foreign language. (she is the one who brings the donuts).

She coaches online within her Value your Month, Value your Life program at Managing with Aloha Coaching. Add it to your feed reader!

Please Welcome Ariane Benefit to Joyful Jubilant Learning!

Ariane is exactly the person we all need in our lives these days; a clutter-busting coach and professional organizer! Please join us in welcoming Ariane as our newest contributor to Joyful Jubilant Learning; in her very first post for us, she’s taken the gloves off and has bravely reached right in! Read, Things I Had to Unlearn Before I Could Let go of My Clutter.

Ariane is an Organizing Consultant & Lifestyle Coach, and she founded Neat & Simple™ to bring top quality organizing services and professional organizers to individuals and small businesses as well as corporations. Throughout her career Ariane has been known for finding creative, practical and efficient solutions to solve performance problems.

Anyone who has invested hours and dollars in places similar to The Container Store knows that buying cute cubbies doesn’t mean you’ve learned how to organize, and that the root of our clutter problems is usually found in the one thing we’re not buying an organizer for – us! So we’re thrilled that Ariane will be a regular contributor in our community, teaching and learning with us in our joyful and jubilant way.

In September Ariane celebrates her second year blogging at her Neat and Simple Living Blog, where you’ll find her passion to be in coaching us to clarify priorities, let go of clutter, acquire less and simplify more, organize what we keep, develop self-care habits, and live a life we love!

Ah yes, we so want those things in our learning too! Welcome to JJL Ariane.