Connection - Potential - Rewards

for great Rewards

I have had the good fortune to learn from leaders in the world of people coaching. I have found my own ideas/styles emerging as I add my own experience and knowledge into the recipe that I have gained from these awesome influences.

Of late my perspective on how we get to a place with another person where we more easily see rewards and results has brought me to the following formula which is an adaptation of something I learned.

Essentially what I find is that where I can build a strong CONNECTION with someone it builds POTENTIAL that more easily generates REWARDS (or results). 

Connection
I need to make time to make a connection where I can better understand the person I am working with. This doesn't mean you have to become friends with them but rather know what is important to them, what drives them and where their own personality might be a factor in you both getting a good result.

Potential
I find that out of this good people connection I see potential emerge.  Potential being the good will, energy, space....whatever you want to call that knowledge that you and the other person share on how you will work together. 

Rewards. 
Of course in every connection we make with other people we always have an expectation of some sort of reward, or result. It's why we engage in relationship with people in the first place. What I find is that once we have the connection and established potential we can get to action on getting to that reward. Without the established potential, we can't get to the reward and without the connection we don't even know what is potential is possible.

Bottom Line......
Make time to build solid connections. Maintain a steady state of monitoring/tracking on the potential that exists in that connection and build stronger connections where potential is falling short. Only move to action and achieving your rewards and results when you can build on the work you have done.

Giving Feedback - Option 1

Another one of the tools that I have come across is a technique for how you give someone feedback.

Firstly, organize your feedback. In preparation to give your feedback, organize your thoughts into:

• What went well,
• What was not quite right and
• What would you do differently

 Then, when you are ready meet with the person to whom you wish to give feedack:

1. Ask them, about the situation related to the feedback, what went well? 
2. What was not quite right for them and was a little tricky? 
3. What would they do differently if they could do it again? 

That's right, you ask them to answer these questions first.

When you meet with them they already have feedback in their brains themselves on how it went. You provide the opportunity for them to say it out loud and then they are ready to receive your feedback. Not to mention the fact that you will not give them feedback that they clearly already know and creating tension around that "obvious" fact.

After they have answered the three questions you then ask them if they would like feedback.

Yes, you ask for their permission so that they further accepting that they want this and will listen and be engaged in that moment.

Then you provide your responses to those three questions, you support their own feedback in a constructive way and, you may have to think on your feet, you add anything that they missed that you thought of while they were providing their own feedback.

Think of it this way. Your capacity for feedback is limited to a cup. When you are about to get feedback, your own ideas are already filling up that cup. If you don't get the opportunity to empty that cup, the feedback from the other person is just spilling over onto the floor and being wasted.

So, when giving feedback, keep yourself organized and provide the opportunity for your recipient to empy their cup, before you attempt to fill it.

Make sense?

Missing something?

OK,  so someone is stuck. You, or someone you are assisting, has the making of a simple problem you can't seem to get unstuck from. You need a quick practice to assist yourself(s) to finding the answer that likely already lies within the deep reaches of your mind. This tool is another I have learned that helps you to figure out what is missing from your plan to achieve success in the situation.

The challenge is to break down the situation to determine if what is missing is

a) your willingness to get done what is necessary to pull through to success or
b) your skills, abilities, aptitude, understanding, knowledge of the subject matter at hand or
c) the circumstances, situation, environment, schedule that would enable you to reach for success.

If someone is not really willing to put in the effort require, sometimes called commitment, then the discussion that follows is around determining why?

Skills and abilities can be the easiest of the three because it comes down to finding a plan to get those skills through training or some other course of learning.

For the environment, it might mean redefining the rules and talking with others about the situation to layout the space to succeed.

A couple examples:
My kids participated in a athletic program which started off with success but after a few evenings there seemed to be a problem with their participation. When I applied this practice to the situation I determined that they had the skills to participate, the environment for success but they were not 100% willing to put in the effort to make it work. In this case they thought if they didn't participate they could instead play video games. Once they realized that the other option instead of participating would be less fun than the program, and not video games, suddenly their commitment was back.

Later we experienced another lull in their participation and what I found that time was that they were still willing, still skilled but in fact now the circumstances in the program had changed. The instructors had slacked off their early rigour with a solid schedule to more of a "guys hanging out" kinda program where they bragged about their accomplishments. For our kids who were hoping to do cool things sitting around listening to cool stories was boring. I spoke to the instructors, and their boss, and in a very short order the kids were excited to be participating.

So, what is missing, the will, the how or the way?

with risk comes rewards?

In trying to teach my 11 year old son how someone can become financially wealthy I had to really think about how I wanted to explain myself to him. I could have used any number of stories of how people work hard, study hard, and then it all pays off but I found myself looking for something simpler to try to convey how I see the climb to success.

I began looking at what I define as the "bottom". All of us have earning potential. If we choose to share our effort with another we can expect compensation.

$ SERVICE

I called this service. We can earn rewards from providing a service to an employer or a customer. The amount of the reward is in a range with some minimum with a theoretical limit without having greater learned capacity or risk taking.

$$ INTELLIGENCE

The next layer in the climb to wealth that I thought of was our ability to use our mind and our choices to develop it. I realize that everyone has intelligence, and I am not suggesting that some do not, but I believe that everyone makes a choice to develop their intellectual capacity differently. I think without choosing to develop your intellectual capacity puts limits on your potential for rewards and is factor in the final product of your effort.

$$$ RISK

The last layer is the tricky one because it is about how much of your money, time, reputation, etc are you willing to risk on your intelligence in making decisions with your service. The greater risks you take, the greater the potential reward but also the greater potential lost. It is this element that is the clearly defining factor for the super wealthy. In some cases the personal risk is managed by finding others who put more stake in risk than they have in their own intelligence and look to share the reward. In the end, no one gets rich on their own and thus risk is about collaboration with others to build but it can also be about loss as relationships can be jeopardized with the process of risk taking.

My question to myself then was whether the statement that

SERVICE X INTELLIGENCE X RISK = REWARD

is a) accurate, b) sufficient for an 11 year old and c) whether I am comfortable with my own plans for the future with this formula or not.

I think personally I am at a phase in my life where my risk taking is low because I do not want to risk my time with my family. I respect others who choose that or choose not to risk their personal time for their hobbies or entertainment but I struggle with those who expect rewards but neither develop themselves or take risks.

Anyhow, this is just one person's thoughts, out loud, on the internet......