It is a time to design our next reinvention. On the inside is the hard work of reinventing the very essence of who you are. It takes longer and it is something that many don’t do. You get to choose which end of the continuum you want to be nearest. Do you choose to be in motion or in complacency? Why?

Remember that you are writing your own story with your thoughts, actions and inaction. You are the only thing standing in your way. What will it take for you to move and sustain your motion? What is your personal action plan? What are you waiting for? There is a plot waiting for you in the graveyard of complacency should you choose to occupy it. Think about it!

The more successful we become the more our story reinforces the behavior that created the success. Why would you question your practices if they produced the results you sought? The real questions become “Are you as effective as you could be? What is possible?” The answer is likely that you don’t know. This provides a reason to revel in our success while also thinking about what could bring even greater success. This does not mean that you have to actively pursue greater success. It means that you should understand what will be necessary to maintain your current level of success.

The world around us is in a constant state of motion. This motion inadvertently is making old practices obsolete. The challenge we face is anticipating what will continue to make us viable assets in a changing market. This is where we have to make reflection work for us and not against us. Looking inward without a context of what is going on around us is self-defeating. We should go inward in order to be more effective in mapping our journey in a world that is ever-changing. In a global environment this is essential. Otherwise we will find ourselves with jobs in dying industries that have been dying before our eyes for years but we react as though it started only yesterday. We find ourselves ill prepared to adapt.

We claim victim when we should have claimed action.

The way we deal with situations that challenge who we are provides a window into the essences of our beings. We choose what end of the continuum we want our reaction to align with. We respond near the defensive end of the spectrum or near the open end of the continuum. What is important to note is that we choose our reaction and our methods consciously or unconsciously. We increase our effectiveness, our level of connectedness, the quality of our relationships, and the quality of our communications. The benefits are better results through increased understanding, teamwork, and collaboration.

In each relationship that makes up the landscapes of our lives our personal brand is present. My position is that our personal brand influences how others perceive us through our communication acts. Consequently, if we are brand negative with others, they are likely to perceive our communications in line with their negative connotation of who we are. The same applies with those with whom we are brand positive.

How we communicate impacts how we are perceived.

That perception and our brand are somewhat synonymous. It starts with you. What about your communications help and hinder you from connecting with others? What opportunities are lost when the connection is not made? What about your communications cause you to get in your own way? What are you willing to change about your thinking in the next 30 to 60 days that will increase your ability to connect with others? How will you know the change has occurred? I have found what has helped me connect with others.

I like learning and I like understanding why other people think what they think and do what they do. I like asking questions rather than making statements. I do make statements of my perspective and what has worked for me but only after asking several questions to gain the other person’s perspective and context. I have found learning far more interesting when it involves discovering why, what and how.

Communicating in a way that increases the level of connectedness between individuals and within teams fosters opportunities for knowledge creation, learning and personal growth.

Modeling behavior that is consistent with what we preach is one aspect of alignment. However, alignment that connects us with our passion creates the path for us to operate at the level of our potential.

Negative vs. Positive Brand

Imagine a time when you were in a meeting or at a dinner party and you said or did something that created a negative impression. Sometimes we don’t get to recover from these types of errors, and that first impression influences how people will interact with us and interpret our behavior and words. More importantly, it may limit our opportunities. This could be considered as creating a negative brand —being brand negative.

In other situations we may be on our best game. We create an impression that is positive. This, too, influences how others will interact with us and interpret our behavior and words. This could be considered creating a positive brand. Being brand positive. Each of us currently has a personal brand. You might consider it as being the five things that are synonymous with hearing your name or seeing your face. Of course it could be greater or fewer than five things, but they represent the way you want to be perceived by others. In every interaction we have, verbal or nonverbal, our brands are being communicated.
More importantly, they may be helping us or hindering us. Consequently, if you don’t know your current brand you can’t manage it. It manages you! This becomes a critical factor when you are leading change and/or attempting to engage employees. One important aspect of reinvention is determining who are your blockers, enablers, and neutrals. Blockers are people with whom you are brand negative. They operate against you. Enablers are people with whom you are brand positive. They work on your behalf. Neutrals are those people that don’t have an opinion one way or the other. They represent an opportunity for you when you are building your coalition of personal and professional supporters.

Our responsibility to ourselves is to be conscious of our behavior and our brand, become aligned, and understand the reinvention we need to accomplish and with whom. Focus on the people who accept your new brand, and they will influence others on your behalf.

Negative vs. Positive Characteristics

The negative characteristics I have actively worked to overcome over the years are:

• Selfish
• Unconscious
• Incongruent
• Arrogant
• Dogmatic

The brand I want to be synonymous with hearing my name or seeing my face includes (not in order of priority):

• Committed to helping others
• A great friend
• A great coach
• Making a difference
• Fun

I work towards modeling my desired brand in all of my interactions. However, I continue to work consciously to improve in each of these areas of my personal brand. It is a focus. It is a journey. However, it is not perfection.

As we grow and learn, we will inevitably discover the need to reinvent ourselves and recover from that which we did not know or would not acknowledge about ourselves. In order to be effective in demonstrating accountability for our behavior we must be accountable for the story reflecting the thinking that leads to our behavior.

As Your Journey Begins Hope is in Your Heart

You have no idea of what you will have to face on this journey. As the starting point begins to fade in the distance, you began to feel a sense of loss for that which was familiar to you. You did not realize how comfortable you had become with your circumstances. It would have been easier to accept your circumstances and settle for a life of complacency. For a moment, you are tempted to return home. Maybe you didn’t really need to leave. And what sane person would leave home, that familiar and comfortable place, to figure out what was possible instead of accepting what was? Then again, what sane person would choose to struggle so? Maybe you should just turn around and see what tomorrow would offer. But that just seems much too close to the thinking that kept you from leaving sooner. That routine wasn’t changing anything and only increase you complacency. You filter these thoughts as you walk. You realize how tempting is was to take the easy path.

We need to be very determined to practice processing our experiences so that we can conclude that our existence was about our journey more than about arriving at any destination. We need to begin to believe that each stop along our journey is like an interim destination, a place to pause, reflect and refocus before continuing the journey. While you may find yourself somewhat taken aback by this possibility, you also
will find yourself encouraged by it. Each time you move on you will be better for the experience and more equipped to continue your journey. You will be gaining new tools and new perspectives.

This was the most exciting challenge you will ever face. With each stop along the way, you found himself ready to pick up new tools that would help you on the next leg of your journey. Hopefully you will begin to focus more on the next stop of his journey and much less on the destination you had once set for yourself, for you need to realize that each stop provided new truths and enlightenment. You will now feel a sense of freedom and found peace in knowing that your perspective will change if you leave yourself open
to experience your journey as a seeker of growth opportunities — an explorer of new thinking. Modeling behavior that is consistent with what we preach is one aspect of alignment. However, alignment that connects us with our passion creates the path for us to operate at the level of our potential.

For Me it Has Been a Long Journey

My journey continues. I reached back to the practices of consciousness to help me become aligned. During my journey, I now have a purpose and a focus. Life is no longer just about me, but it is also about them. Even with such a great awakening I realized that a focus and purpose alone were not enough.

As you can see, alignment is no easy task and it is inextricably linked to consciousness. Without consciousness alignment is not possible. We have to be conscious of our misalignment before we can address it. What I have learned is that I have to be open, virtually turned inside out, before I got it. Now, after many hours of reflection, I see the
simplicity of my problem. I was not ready or willing to transform; therefore, I was not capable of transforming. Founding Transformation Point was the catalyst for my journey because it immersed me in concepts that helped me to understand my own misalignment. It helped me make the connection between learning, thinking systematically, and transformation. My quality of life and the quality of my relationships have improved as a result of becoming more personally aligned. My choices are aligned with my goals and my behavior (on most days) and align with my personal brand. This has resulted in a much higher level of life satisfaction.

I am energized by who I am and what I do. I am inspired when I am able to
inspire others.

Over the past 12 years, the journey to get Transformation Point to be a sustainable entity has been the road less traveled. The genesis was when I was laid off for the first time in my carrier. I had taken increasingly risky positions in the later part of my corporate carrier until I finally found myself at a crossroads. Get a big payday working for someone else or start my own company. My employer made the decision easy. They went under and I didn’t have to make the conscious decision to walk away from a significant salary and face Lisa with three college tuitions staring us in the face.

So, I found myself with no income for the first time in my career shortly after buying our then dream house (not home) and my then dream car within 6 months of acquiring them. Lisa yelled at me about buying the car but that was the extent of the conflict. She has not once asked me what was going to do or lost faith in my commitment to keep up my end of our financial relationship. She has never questioned my personal accountability or my drive to live up to my responsibilities. We have trust in our commitment to work together and support each other over the long-term. We recognize and anticipate that there will be changes that we may not expect as we each continue to discover ourselves. She also stepped up and lead financially and otherwise during difficult periods in the business. Just as I did during the years we were building our foundation. Together, here we are and together we will get to where we will be.

I immediately dove into creating our T-Leadership Program which was then called the Introspection Course. You can imagine how many of those I sold. As I worked on this, I also starting doing some part-time subcontractor work, reengaged in my Ph.D. coursework, and renewed my adjunct teaching relationships. I had started teaching graduate and undergraduate courses back in 1991.

Before I knew it, I was working 7 days a week either consulting, delivering college courses, or grading papers. I was surviving but I was not living my passion in they way I imagined. I was doing what I was good at to make a living but not what I was designed to do.

Over the next few years I realized I liked delivering content, but I hated grading papers. I also found time to write my first book. I was very proud of at the time, but later decided to rewrite it as a business book upon advice of a few professional editors (a few years too late). You will see some of the excerpts as blog posts, but we are no longer producing the original book. The new book is in process.

Now, I no longer teach. We deliver T-Leadership on a worldwide basis, and I have very successful and sustainable relationships with our clients delivering our leadership and management programs, doing team and organizational turnaround consulting, and advising and coaching managers and leaders. Most of the growth started when I incorporated the Birkman Method Assessment into the business and integrated it into the T-Leadership Program.

This brings me back to teamwork. As Lisa and I sit here reflecting on our journey to date together, we realize the important role our support for each other has played in our relationship, our career success, and our happiness.

Lisa and I both took the Birkman Assesssment back in the late 90′s. Our reports are in our nightstand drawer. Often, when we are having our coffee talks together, we pull them out to explain how we are similar and different and why we drive each other crazy at times. We leverage these similarities and differences to help us in supporting each other and our attempts to give each other what we need. This insight helps us to depersonalize conflict and to negotiate with each other. This continues to be an important part of our journey together, but we are far better for it.

All this said, the journey of growing together and creating the life we want with each other is a work in progress. It is filled with collaboration, compromise, and accomodation. It requires a sustained focus on the big picture and the greater good of our relationship. No amount of money or material wealth can overshadow the importance of being connected, sharing time with each other, an being each other’s greatest champions.

I gave up being motivated by material things years ago. It was a great motivator to get started but not a sustainable motivator. Feeding that beast just reduced the time and energy available to do what I love versus do what I have to do to feed the beast.

I am just not wired that way. Instead I am driven to build relationships and to help people get out of their own way. To be the best they can be leveraging their natural strengths and motivators not attempting to be something they are not. To connect with each other and embrace differences. Helping them to work effectively with others while still being true to their own needs.

This is the nature of the teamwork that Lisa and I have created with each other. For example, she likes the sun and I like the shade. We find a spot with both sun and shade. As much as we would naturally like to create the other in our own image, we know that it would just not be natural or effective.

Today, I have a different perspective of those experiences and a much clearer perspective of how I have spent most of my adult life overcoming the scripts that were blocking my personal growth. I had to overcome my PA mentality. I had to overcome my interpretation of my experience. My baggage was heavy and I just kept making it heavier. I still find myself stuffing a few bricks in every now and then. That’s what happens when you are unaware of the power that your circumstances and the burden of your baggage play in life. I may be unusual, but it took several direct encounters with brick walls before I actually gained became semi-conscious. It is amazing what you learn when you finally decide to think about what you are doing and attempt to understand your patterns of behavior and their sources. It took me a while to understand that I was the only thing I could change. That was difficult because I did not realize what my needs were. I did not realize the drivers behind my emotions and my worldview.

Several scholars and practitioners have directly or indirectly addressed in their research the concept of consciousness. My interpretation of their works leads me to conclude that, as human beings, we are challenged by our ability to achieve and maintain awareness of our thinking and how that thinking impacts our experience with the world. If we are not conscious of the fears, values, and biases that drive our behavior and actively strive to close the gap between who we say we are and who we actually are, we risk never becoming our most effective selves.

Another way of looking at consciousness is as a pattern developed over time. In other words, if I live my life as a learner I gain more knowledge and insight about others and myself. Conversely, if I live my life deflecting new information I don’t learn, and I don’t grow. Over the years I have achieved varying results from engaging in the practices I believed would get me the results I wanted. Sometimes I got the outcome I was looking for, but most often I did not. When I did not get what I expected, I blamed others and acted as if I was a victim of the world. Of course, nothing was ever wrong with me, and everything was wrong with the people, process, organization, technology, etc.

My ability to partner with others and increase the level of connection with my friends, family, clients, and business associates have all increased as a result of increased consciousness. But remember, it is a journey. I believe it is a destination that is never reached and a practice that is never perfected. The reason why I believe this is because the more successful I am at being conscious the more complacent I become about the practice of being conscious. It is a constant struggle to anticipate complacency before it sets in.

My experiences have helped me spend more time on the positive end of the consciousness continuum than the unconscious end. Beware! Being conscious without being personally aligned, can lead to internal conflict and will negatively impact your ability to be your most effective self.

People are a Competitive Edge

It is important to know and understand that the only advantage an organization has over a competitor is its people. The people bring to organizations creativity, passion, leadership, productivity, energy, talent and more. If the people are inspired, accountable, connected, communicative, etc. organizational performance is elevated. Consciousness is where it begins. If the people are conscious the organization will be conscious, for the people make the decisions. The most conscious group within any enterprise must be leadership and management. If they are unconscious they will not be able to engage employees. If employees are not engaged, performance declines.

Perception is Powerful

Personal brand or the perception of leadership and management within the organization introduces additional barriers to employee engagement. If leadership and management are not perceived as approachable, open, competent, caring, trustworthy, etc. they will not bare fruit. The fruit effective managers and leaders should bear are engagement, retention, profitability, growth, productivity, efficiency, innovation and all of the other performance indicators one could list. Simply stated, if the leader is conflicted, not personally aligned, the people will see through this and it poses a barrier to engagement. I have yet to meet an inspiring conflicted leader. If they hold others accountable but fail to hold themselves to the same standard, they are doomed to ridicule and their leadership will be resisted. No fruit.

Employee Engagement is Everything

Part of employee engagement is developing and sustaining a relationship founded on mutual trust and respect. If the relationship between leadership, management, and employees does not embody mutual trust and respect, the end result is internal conflict between these constituencies, and the price is engagement.

Lastly, an organization that is not engaged in reflection related to its relationship with its employees is likely to become misaligned. Leadership and management may take the position that the employee is a cost center and not an asset and enact policies that erode engagement. Environments characterized by fear and insecurity often fail to bare the fruit of engagement. Employees generally want to be viewed as assets, developed like assets, and treated like assets.

There is a direct link between the concepts presented here and employee engagement. Investment in enhancing the ability of leaders and managers to engage employees produces fruit and fruit produces success.

Use the following link for the course overview and registration link.

http://www.transformationpoint.com/resource/upcoming-events/

The case of the technical and operational leader. Some leaders have great competence in re-engineering the enterprise but very little when it comes to inspiring employees and connecting them to organizational objectives. They don’t wake up each day with the goal of nurturing a disconnected culture. They just don’t realize how important it is to maximizing the investment they are making in operational and technological improvements. They don’t understand the human dynamic.

The case of the misguided consulting firm. Coopetition is when competitors come together to create value neither could deliver alone. Picking the right partner is essential. The fundamental selection criterion includes shared values. When values are not aligned, connection suffers and so does impact. What should be a synergistic relationship becomes one of conflict and disconnect. Somewhere in that equation, delivering value to the customer becomes an at-risk commodity.

So what does this all mean? You may have the best players on the team and the best technology and processes. However, if you don’t have the highest level of connection you will not have the greatest collaboration, engagement, velocity, or impact.

1. Attaining shared understanding of business and human dynamics
2. Building and sustaining an environment of trust
3. Gaining commitment
4. Instituting accountability
5. Exercising oversight and providing timely feedback

Unless these challenges are overcome, alignment is not possible and expected results will be sub-optimized.