Top Ten Things Kids Teach Us About Our CareersWritten by Carwin Dover
Inciteful Insight: * Children may be better teachers about our career than graduate degree professors. From infancy thru teenagerism, our children give us great tidbits which can be useful in our own career development. The method to discover their teachings used to be written on railroad crossings. Stop, Look and Listen. The following are some samples of what you may learn when you stop, look and listen to your kids.* Inciteful is spelled intentionally to mean to urge one into action. 10. Work will go on without us. If you have ever missed work in order to care for a sick child, attend a school event, or just go fishing or shopping, you know work you missed was somehow done. I know I now wish I had tested this teaching more frequently. 9. Pace yourself. Go for 8 or 10 or 12 hours at a hundred and ten per cent, arrive home and then just try to give five minutes at seventy five per cent to an excited child. For some reason, that little person who considers you a hero, God and desirable wants all of you until bedtime! Kids will attempt to teach you to save energy so you can make a sprint to finish at end of day or week. 8. You are most important person who works there. My Dad was a Methodist minister for 50 years. I came along towards end of that career. He knew God was most important person, closely followed by janitor, chairman of board and all of other members of church. He was last in line. When I first began to remember at about 5 thru about age 49 when he died, I always thought he was most important person who worked there. Not even Bishop could come close! 7. Success is often in direct proportion to attention given. Children try to teach us that lots of attention creates success. I was one who figured out that lots of attention given to a career made it possible to climb ladder of success quickly. Eventually, my kids and wife taught me value of balancing career and family, or should I say I finally learned what they tried to teach me all along!
| | Lessons In Leadership: What Not To Do... From A Canoe!Written by Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE
When it comes to fishing, my husband takes lead. But his lack of leadership ability in a recent canoe trip on Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota offered wonderful lessons on how leaders can unknowingly screw up. (1) Assign responsibility without authority. Bill insisted that in order to cast his fishing line, he needed to be in back of canoe. I was to paddle as he cast and trolled his lure. The only challenge is that ability to steer a two-person canoe is handled by person in back. He'd shout directions to me but I had little authority over craft. Frustrated, I wanted to turn around and whack him with paddle. LESSON: If you assign someone a task, put them where they have full control to do what is required rather than hamstring them with your positional authority. (2) Hire a skill set but don't let employee use it. The Boundary Waters are comprised of many lakes connected with islands and it is frequently necessary to portage canoe to next lake. I have a good eye for reading navigational maps. I would identify portage spot as we approached. On more than one occasion, Bill would insist I was wrong and we'd spend time "looking", only to return to site I had identified. I felt like throwing backpacks up trail. LESSON: If you hire someone with a skill you don't have let them take lead. (3) Never believe someone closest to problem. We were fishing along a rock ledge jutting out from one of islands. Bill was a distance from me when I suddenly yelled for help. "I have a fish and I can't tighten reel." "No," replied Bill, "You don't have a fish." "Yes, I do. Please help me." He slowly made his way over and took rod from my hand. A deft fisherman, he fixed problem and to his amazement, pulled out a fish. I wanted to hit him with it. LESSON: Pay attention to people down line. A removed view might very well be wrong.
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