Workforce Development & Team Building

• What’s your MISSION / PUSPOSE / PASSION/ DREAM / GOAL in life?

NOTE: It’s OK to say “I never want to be hungry, poor, cold or a “Nobody’!”

• What are your non-negotiable VALUES & PRINCIPLES?
• Who are your Role Models?
• Who’s on your Board of Directors?
• What are you going to do with the rest of your life?

This unit includes the virtual reality exercise of creating your own Avatar for who you are to become.

This unit separates the Challenges of Life into two major categories:  External Challenges (“Challenges of the First Kind”) and Internal Challenges (“Challenges of the Worst Kind”).  The direct connection between choices and consequences is underscored, with cautionary notes on an untenable reliance on “delayed ramification” and on attempts to “Beat the System”.  The core principle that “Everything you deserve is going to take everything you’ve got” is discussed, seeded with the question: “How much less than everything you deserve are you willing to settle?”

*Calvin and Ziggy are illustrative subjects.

This unit takes up the challenge of ferreting out why we have trouble rising above our innately programmed, Paleolithic, “savage” instincts and how we tend to cause most of our own problems.  Groundwork on how the brain develops and functions helps understand our individual behavioral inclinations and outcomes, with a goal toward getting our 21^st Century Executive Function much more completely and reliably engaged.

This diagram depicts the amount of investment required – and from what sources – to achieve successful individual human development from birth to independent survival.  The perils of seeing how much one can “get away with” and how often one can “Beat the System” are underscored, as well as the magical byproduct of “going out of one’s way” to be useful, accountable and self-motivated.

The core question addressed in this unit is this: How do people with no visible prospects for success end up eventually rising to the tops of their respective fields?

The unit includes sharing the stories of 5-10 “Unlikely Champions” (depending on available time) and analyzing their commonalities.

It underscores the impact and importance of applied personal effort creating a “Bandwagon Effect” … recruiting the aid and assistance of significant others by virtue of uncompromising personal commitments to positive outcomes.

It also touches on the liabilities of enabled dependencies.

This unit can be easily adapted for youth and adults with disabilities.

This essential core unit takes up the challenge of tapping into – and creating more useful – “Unscheduled Time”.  For youth in middle school, high school and even college, the concept of “free time” as totally discretionary time results in unfortunate lapses in development, losses of momentum and the truncation of future possibilities.  For highly-driven young professionals, time of any kind is always too short to do ALL of what they want and need to get done.

This unit centers down on VALUES, PRIORITIES, GOALS and CHOICES, and provides strategic tools … including activity sequencing, e.g., for minimizing passive perseveration and gaining faster transitioning between activities … for greater productivity with less stress.  It also underscores the admonition and licensing to say “No!” to engagements that disproportionately drain both time and energy.  And it prompts a re-evaluation of both perceived and self-inflicted commitments.

A “Time in a Bottle” illustration helps participants visualize the most utilitarian strategy for optimizing productivity.  Specialized tools to help manage crises in time management are highlighted, including: the Strategic Sacrifice, the Absolute Imperative and the Devil’s Alternative.  The Time Management (V) and Perfectly Unbalanced Life (VIII) units are mutually reinforcing, leading toward the ultimate goal of “Total Intentional Living”.

Topics for this unit include:

• The inadequacy of Webster’s definition: “Favorable termination of a venture”
• Articulation of what success is NOT!
• Considering the elements needed for success.
• How do you know if you WON?
• The importance of INCLINATION and DIRECTIONAL HEADINGS.
• DRIVING FORCES are delineated and value-weighted.
• The “Lifecourse Diagram” is illustrated and explained.

This unit contrasts the lives of wild “Unbridled Spirit” horses, e.g., those given free range on Assateague Island, with the lives of horses “broken of spirit”, tightly disciplined and rigorously trained to run in the Kentucky Derby.

The “channeling” of the Colorado River into Hoover Dam is also used to illustrate the power of “bridling”.

Both the caveats and the compelling advantages of “channeling” and “bridling” the unbridled spirit are discussed.

Examples of successful “bridling” and “channeling” – leading to higher-order “Unbridled Spirit” – include: Jazz musicians, Cirque Soleil, Olympic Athletes, and, of course, “Unlikely Champions” (see IV)

Well-meaning but unrealistically impractical motivators often exhort their clientele to make “personal time” at least equal to “work time”, for, otherwise, they will face almost certain burnout and lack of personal fulfillment.  Unfortunately, this exhortation only serves to make clients feel guilty and shamed for something that is not only impractical and impossible under most circumstances, but can also be harmful.  When one’s children are young and a personal career is under active development and both discretionary time and income are extremely limited, something’s got to give!

This unit redefines “Balance” – [rebalances the formulation] – with helpful suggestions on how to make it all work, including visualizing a life journey over the course of more than 24 hours at a time.  Value-weighted / Goal-aligned time and activity assessments become drivers of a Vectoring paradigm that can keep the train from running off the tracks.  Maintaining momentum, if not “perfect balance always”, is a recommended strategy.

This unit debunks the common perception that “willpower” is of any use at all in bridging the gap between what we WANT to do and what we NEED to do.  As long as we give ourselves infinite choices, we will choose poorly, no matter how much “willpower” we have.  Examples of willpower failure include the children’s story “Frog & Toad and the Cookies” and the Nutrisystem business plan.

The tools included in Unit V, “Time Management” are also engaged here, including the Strategic Sacrifice, the Absolute Imperative and the Devil’s Alternative.  Selective uses of “Bridling” and “Channeling” (See Unit VII) are applied here, as well.

This unit draws core material from a 35-page compendium of “things you may have missed getting from your parents, teachers and coaches”.  The elements discussed deal with mistaken assumptions, unrealistic expectations and unwarranted entitlements.

The purpose of the “Hard Truths” unit is to forestay and forestall Defining Moments and Moments of Truth, which will, otherwise, regularly be encountered in the course of whimsical, catch-as-catch-can living.  It draws material liberally from the “School of Life” (general attribution) and the “University of Hard Knocks” (Ralph Parlette).

Examples include:

• “There are winners and there are losers”
• “Subsidies eventually run out”
• “Fantasy doesn’t work”
• “Not everybody deserves a ‘Second Chance’”
• “All other things are not equal”
• “The cost of living well is high”

The main point of this unit is to take unworkable hypotheses off the table, which substantially lightens the load and clears a much more tenable path to a brighter and more productive future.

“Man is a strange animal:
He cannot read the handwriting on the wall
 until his back is up against it.”
– Adlai Stevenson

Numerous myths circulating in the marketplace / workplace have the potential to wreak havoc on emerging workforce participants.  Presumptively pithy maxims, like:

• “Don’t worry, be happy!” or
• “Don’t sweat the small stuff …and it’s all small stuff!” or
• “End the struggle and dance with life!”

These are not only fundamentally misleading, but can be intrinsically detrimental.  A total of 20 myths are challenged in this unit, which represents a selective subset of elements contained in the “Hard Truths” compendium.

A total of roughly 40 “Life is Like … “ parables provides a rich and diverse assortment of illustrations for envisioning what life is really like and how life really works.  From a variety of favorites, such as “Life is Like a Bowl of Dirt” and “Life is Like a Great Waterway”, participants can begin to develop a much more meaningful framework for VISIONING (See Unit I) and VECTORING that fosters a much more intentional path of personal and professional growth and development.

This offering is perhaps best considered a primary reference resource, but it can readily be adapted for a workshop or seminar setting.  It includes things as simple as the admonition to SHOW UP WHEN EXPECTED and PASS THE DRUG TEST, as well as more complex accountability issues of self-governance, self-motivation and leadership.  Core elements of CHARACTER are highlighted.  [NOTE: Contrary to popular opinion, the Boy Scout Oath, Law and Motto never operationally went out-of-date or “out of style”!]

Approximately 240 entries – and counting – comprised in the “Life Mastery Musings Blog” provide a rich assortment of reflections on how to get the most out of life and how to make the most of one’s Mission in life.  This compendium uses everyday experiences to highlight fundamental principles that can be applied to both personal and professional advancement.  Selected entries can be extracted relating to topics of most interest to target audiences for seminar and workshop purposes.

A large compilation of comics has been archived to illustrate “Man’s inhumanity to himself”.  These are used as light-hearted, but pointedly instructional tools to help goad us into more intentional journeying.  Nobody says we can’t laugh at ourselves as we work at the process of “straightening up and flying right!”

 “O wad some Power the giftie gie us,
to see oursels as ithers see us!”
Robert Burns
From “To a Louse”