“I need to be totally engaged! For me this is about setting goals in the beginning of any learning program – classroom, self help CDs I listen to in my car – What do I truly want from this experience. I need to engage not just my mind, but the body. Get up moving. Try it out. Experiment. Run around – if applicable. Lastly, I need a group or cohort. Someone to bounce ideas off of, learn from and challenge my thoughts on ideas. This is key for me – both as a learner and facilitator. I believe the CONTENT of learning is created by the participants. With this belief, as a facilitator, I try to model what I need and encourage others to tell me what they need. This is where the juicy content and learning emerge. And then…it sticks!”

How do you learn?  What engages you?

During the mid-afternoon break – I called this the Make The Difference break and set the intention for the next 15 minutes.  The intention was that everyone would be able to enter the room and in some way, shape or fashion would have had their day made.  I let the group know I was going to ask them when they came back from the Make The Difference break who was able to have their day made.

This was going to take ACTION. The kind of simple action that literally can change the way you and I think about things.  It’s the kind of action – that also heightens our awareness to the very presence of noticing and being aware.  So for the next 15 minutes educators and administrators buzzed about.  This was different.  I could feel something happening.  I felt the energy shift, but I didn’t know if the intention could be realized.

When people came back in the room.  I asked them to stand up if there day had been made, if someone engaged them differently over this break than before, did someone notice and make an effort with you.  And – really, to my surprise as this was the first time I tried this exercise -  200 people rose to their feet.

200 people decided to act. When I asked, “what occurred?”  one participant stood up and said I decided I was going to make the difference for people.  And it happened. By a simple decision to CHOOSE.

And 200 people noticed a difference that was made – in just 15 minutes.  Can you imagine the impact this can have on a district of kids?  Can you imagine the impact this can have on us all? And it stemmed from a simple CHOICE.

Take your own Make The Difference break today.  See what happens. Create that intention for you and those around you.  What do you have to lose?

Better yet, what do you have to gain!

Today’s session provided for a really great opportunity to think about work and the choices one makes – or chooses not to make.  If we can talk about the difficult choices – like simply doing nothing, or choosing another job – doesn’t that empower us?  Empower us because we have choices?  

I hope that it does, because what I can’t hear, is “i have no choice, no matter what I do things won’t change.”  I don’t know about you, but this stops us in our tracks and puts us right back into that default future.   And then, yes, you get to be right – nothing will change.

Is that what you want? Not me, I choose to play a different game. One where the options – all of them, even the ones I don’t want to say out loud exist.  That’s the game I play.  How about you?

The Three Laws of Performance by Zaffron & Logan

I’ve recently finished The Three Laws of Performance and give it a huge standing O!. This is a book based on personal accountability, commitment and moreover – ACTION! Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan give us a simple framework to live towards.  A framework full of action, commitment and results.  Read this book only if you want true transformation.  

As a consultant working with groups and individuals seeking results, the concept of “not fixing anything” was a bit a challenge to get my head around.  However, as they explain, this mindset creates a some-day future that is never really attained.  We aren’t broke. Our organizations don’t need to be fixed.  What we truly need is to understand our comfort of living a “default future.”  This is the future that is going to occur if we continue doing the same things that have gotten us to this point.  We must DO something different. And it doesn’t involve fixing anything.  Puzzled?  Let’s keep going.

Here are the 3 Laws we must understand:

1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.
2. How a situation occurs arises in language.
3. Future based language transforms how situations occur to people. 

from the Appendix in The Three Laws of Performance, Zaffron & Logan

The book shares some great stories where it might occur to you, or I, that true transformation had no chance for success. A Japanese business where the founder sudden dies, a mining town in Africa, and a fledgeling shoe company that took on Nike. These stories are true examples of transformation – they are gifts of inspiration.  If an organization or a community can practice these laws then surely I too should be able to practice them. 

The next couple days posts, I want to write about a couple of my own personal examples where practicing these three laws have created a new way of being, it’s created a different way in which the world occurs. And maybe more importantly, it’s created results!

Is there something in your life that you’re willing to put at stake and create something other than the “default future”?