Living in a Red Light area

No this has nothing to do with living in one of the seedier areas of a city. This post is what we can do about having to continually work in in your red light area. Where every day you are doing things that aren’t your strengths and where you have to deal with the insecurity of not looking your best.

In my previous post I mentioned that one of the effects of working in a red light area was that negativity could become a part of your input into the rest of the team. I would like to look at ways that you can still be positive when having to work in a red light zone.

1. Take one day at a time. Yep a week can seem like an eternity but try to find good things in each day as they come. Try to find enjoyment in certain areas of what you are doing that day.
2. Enjoy the people that you are with. There is always an opportunity to be encouraging, to laugh or to enjoy the satisfaction of doing something with someone else. Try to focus in the goodness that you find in those around you.
3. Dream. Yep if you are stuck in something that is quite mundane use it as an opportunity to dream of something bigger. Use the red light time constructively to think of new ideas and opportunities that may be just around the corner.
4. Plan.  A good idea needs a plan. So use this time to plan for how you can make your big idea happen.
5. Do it. Don’t get stuck in the rut for too long. Sooner or later you will have to do something about it. Take the plunge and be adventurous. In the Australian vernacular we would say, “have a go.” There are lots of people out there who have been dissatisfied enough with their current situation who have had a go at something new and become enormous successes. The next one could be you or me.

We will all have times when we have to work in a red light area. Use these times as a motivation to push forward. They can help to clarify what your green light areas really are. They can motivate you to do something that may be the next really big opportunity for your life.

Don’t  fall into the trap of negativity. You will end up just feeling sorry for yourself and the only one who can do that properly is yourself so it can be a very lonely place to be.

Are you a team player?

In answering this question I would like to firstly define exactly what a team player does.

“A team player is one who responsibly carries out their share of the work load to expectations while contributing to the team’s goals. They have a positive, constructive attitude, and function co-operatively with team associates.” Richard Hagstrom

So I would think that you would expect to see some of the following things coming from a team player.

1. Lots of positive comments about other people with whom they work
2. A positive outlook on the future
3. A realistic understanding of what each person is contributing
4. A desire to share glory for any successes
5. A willingness to be open about mistakes
6. A good estimation of one’s own abilities and the contribution they make to the rest of the group

This is a short summary of some of the things that I would be looking for in a team player.

How do I understand this in terms of someone who has completed a Green Light Profile. Just in case you have forgotten here is a brief summary of the GLP.

Green Light Profile

The Green Light Profile (GLP) will help you form realistic expectations of your performance and facilitate the realization of your life purpose, career values and goals. It highlights areas in life and a work in which you will tend to be most effective and less effective. It helps assess present situations and sort through decision alternatives to maximize life satisfaction.

Work is a major contributor to our sense of identity and can allow us to feel like we are making a positive contribution to our families and community. Life satisfaction is influenced by the content of your work and how much it contributes to the achievement of your life purpose.

A traffic light is used to illustrate performance standards. Your Greens include responsibilities that give you the greatest job satisfaction and allow you to perform to the best of your ability. Yellows include responsibilities that you may perform effectively for short amounts of time. Reds cannot be avoided but awareness of them can remove the guilt for not being able to perform perfectly in this area. Reds are more palatable if they contribute directly to your life purpose.

Each of us has a set of core values that guides our perception of the ideal job. The GLP will help you find yours and apply your conclusions to your current or future roles.

Successful career choices are difficult to make if you don’t have a clear idea of where you want to go. Without a vision of a desired future state even a good career choice can end in confusion, weariness, burnout and powerlessness. The GLP will help you identify your strengths and view new possibilities for your future.

What is the Green Light Profile

The Green Light Profile (GLP) involves viewing activities and responsibilities through traffic light lenses.

Greens are your strengths, things you will tend to do well, these are the areas that you will excel in and find the most satisfaction in performing.

Reds are your limitations or things you will tend not to do well, a job that requires that you mostly work in your red area will not be as satisfying and can result in poorer performance.

You may perform Yellows somewhat effectively but should only do so in small amounts. Long stretches of Yellow work usually becomes distasteful resulting in a less effective performance.

Someone engaged mostly in Green work will tend to be a self-starter and great team player who is full of positive energy. Their work is meaningful and satisfying to them.

I believe that most people desire to be team players. After all we are very social creatures. The dilemma that we may discover in our work lives is that we can find that we are mostly involved in work that is in our red areas. After a while we will find that such work will suck our energy and we can begin to take from the team rather than give to it.

Someone performing mostly Red work may have a negative attitude and tend to procrastinate. They may be a reluctant team player experiencing only erratic energy spurts. They find their work meaningless, stressful and/or boring.

The effects of someone working mainly in their Red areas will be felt by those around them. It will impact on the team. A person who is a great team player when working in the Green Light area may become negative and begin impact on the overall effectiveness of the team.

So what do I do?

Sometimes you have to make a decision to look after the overall welfare of the team and disregard your personal Green Light areas for a while. This can only ever be a short term strategy. Anyone who has to work for too long in their red areas will stop being a team player.

Sometimes you cannot change your circumstances you have to change your attitude. I remember a several years ago working in a job that I didn’t enjoy very much at all. Every day while walking to work my head was saying, “I hate this job, I hate this job, I hate this job.”

Needless to say this effected my attitude and what I said to others. I had to make a decision about my attitude. First I realised that I needed a job to support my family. Secondly I needed to treat those around me with more respect and become aware of the team’s needs as well as my own. Thirdly I had to put in place the facility to eventually change my circumstances.

The solution short term was to change my attitude. The solution long term was to look for something to do where I could be more in my Green Light Areas. Interestingly at this point in my career I hadn’t come across the Green Light Profile but it all makes more sense to me now after understanding the Green Light Concept.

Finding yourself is about finding others

I think that one of the major weaknesses of society is the emphasis on me.

1. We are told to look after number one.
2. We are told that the most important person is me
3. We are told that you have to look after yourself first
4. We are told that the most important discovery that we will make is about ourselves.

Of course there are elements of truth in all of the above list. We do need to have a certain level of self care. We cannot ignore some of our basic needs. But any system of self help must include the question how do I find my place among others.

Humans are social beings. We live in societies, we work in teams, we have families, we join groups. These are all important parts of being human. We cannot find ourselves until we are able to deal with the realities of living in a community.

One of the fundamental weaknesses of democracy is its insistence on the rights of the individual. This is because to a large extent we have failed to discover a common set of values that can bind us together as a community. We see the effects of the breakdown in community all around us. Broken families, depression, anxiety, stress, physical distress are all evidence of a breakdown in our wellbeing.
But the real outcome of this is that people become lost. When we no longer are able to function in community or find a community that we can function in and so we lose our way.

I have worked with people for a long time and over and over the story I hear is one of people trying to discover their place in the world. They ask the question, from where do I get meaning? And as much as self help can be an aid in that journey its not the destination.

Any journey of self discovery must take you to a place where you are able to meet with others. A place where people know your name, where you are valued because of who you are and not what you produce, where you begin to see yourself clearly through the eyes of others. It is only when we begin to realise the impact that we have on others that we can begin to change. If we only ever look at ourselves we will lack the impetus to make life altering changes in our own lives.

Success – attitude that will make it

I think a lot of this is really common sense but sometimes we need to be reminded about the sorts of attitudes that lead to a successful life. At any point on this diagram we can short circuit success.

“No one ever finds life worth living—he has to make it worth living.”
— Unknown

“Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.”
— Eugene H. Peterson
Author of Earth and Altar

“The winner’s edge is not in a gifted birth, a high IQ, or in talent. The winner’s edge is all in the attitude, not aptitude. Attitude is the criterion for success.”
— Dennis Waitley

source

General Colin Powell’s Rules:

1. It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
2. Get mad, then get over it.
3. Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your
position falls, your ego goes with it.
4. It can be done!
5. Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
7. You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone
else make yours.
8. Check small things.
9. Share credit.
10. Remain calm. Be kind.
11. Have a vision. Be demanding.
12. Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
13. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

The heart of the matter

The Lord said, “I myself will dream a dream within you. Good dreams come from me, you know. My dreams seem impossible, not too practical, not for the cautious man or woman. A little risky sometimes, a trifle brash perhaps. Some of my friends prefer to rest more comfortable in sounder sleep with vision less eyes. But for those who share my dreams I ask a little patience, a little humour, a little courage, and a listening heart – I will do the rest. Then they will risk and ponder at their daring, run and marvel at their speed, build and stand in awe at the beauty of their building. You will meet me often as you work – in your companions who share your risk, in your friends who believe in you enough to lend their own dreams, their own hands, their own hearts in your building: in the people who find your doorway, stay awhile and walk away knowing that they too can find a dream. There will be sun filled days and sometimes it will rain a – little variety-. Both come from me. So, come, be content. It is my dream you dream. My caring you witness. My love you share. And this will be the heart of the matter.” (Author Unknown)

Yesterday we were the part of a new venture in the spirit. Soul Whispers. No web page yet but when it comes I will let you know. We all have a dance and for each of us it will have a unique tempo and rhythm. This was handed out to all of us who were there to encourage Bruce on his journey.

[rockyou 62361806]

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always got” Tony from NCIS

My quote of the day

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
– Josh Billings-

This is very true of most of what is blogged.

Richard Rohr – Manhood principles

Finding a valid manhood today is not an easy task. We live in a time where men have been forced to reevaluate their roles and in the process of often lost their way. Rohr has developed 5 principles of initiation that men need to realise if they are to really discover their true selves. Like Jesus said, its only those who lose themselves that truly find themselves. These five principles are difficult because they remove one’s self from the centre.

YOUR LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU. – I am not the centre of the universe. This is the opposite of the self help mantra which tells us life is all about finding ourselves.

LIFE IS HARD – As we are all aware suffering is universal.
There are two main ways that we deal with this pain:
1. We will become inflexible, blaming and petty as we grow older.

2. We will need other people to hate in order to expel our inner negativity.

3. We will play the victim in some form as a means of false power.

4. We will spend much of our life seeking security and status as a cover-up for lack of a substantial sense of self.

5. We will pass on our deadness to our family, children and friends.

Human beings will do everything under the sun to avoid the problems of me, now, and here.

Only suffering and certain kinds of awe lead us into genuinely new experiences. All the rest is merely the confirmation of old experience.

YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT

Transformed people tend to transform people (hurt people hurt people).

Here’s a Copernican revolution of the mind – equivalent to that for earthbound humans when they discovered that our planet was not the centre of the universe.

Catholics have made Jesus into a scholastic philosopher, Protestants have made him into a moralist: so when we can’t get a clear moral code or dogma out of Jesus’ teaching we simply abandoned it in any meaningful sense (so the Sermon on the Mount – the essence of Jesus’ teaching – is the least quoted in official Church documents

YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL

The essence of modern self-help: ‘Take control of your life!’ (but the Twelve-Step program teaches that you must admit you are powerless before you can find your true power.

The virtues in the first half of life are about self-control; in the second half about giving up control. ‘This is how we grow:/ By being deciseively defeated by ever greater forces’ (Rilke).

‘If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter’ (Therese of Lisieux).

Attention spans

Herbert Simon – “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

Career Anchor – Summary

The concept of a career anchor is developed by Schein. He ascertains that there are several layers that form one’s career. Satisfaction is a complex relationship between skills, values, motives and needs. The forming of these perceptions is a process that can require up to a decade of work experience (Schein p.17). People will be motivated by things that they tend to do well.

 A career refers to our work life and is relevant to a wide variety of work choices that encompasses each individual’s career options. Within this career there are external components such as specific competencies, knowledge and skills required to fulfill the job requirements. Each of us will also have a deeper motivation for doing what we do. Identifying these motivations will help you to understand how to make positive career choices that will provide maximum satisfaction and allow you to live with integrity.

A career anchor is the core values, competencies and motives that guide your perception of the ideal job. There are eight identified career anchors that will remain constant through your working life.

 The career anchor questionnaire helps one to analyze the following:

• What are my talents, skills and areas of competence?
• What are my strengths and weaknesses?
• What are my main motives needs and drives?
• What are the criteria (values) that I judge what I am doing?

Schein’s concept of career anchor arose from a study that determined how managerial careers developed. It involved a longtitudal study of 44 graduates of the Masters at the Sloan school of management. They were interviewed after five years and then after ten years of employment. From this study and interviews with several hundred people in varying stages of careers the common themes were developed into the career anchor concept (Schein. P.19,20)

 These eight career anchors are summarized below.

Security and Continuity

This is a very common anchor and relates to job security, steady and regular income and time-related career progression. If you are result-oriented, willing to take risks and believe in achievement-related career progression, and do not want to sacrifice your personal ambitions at the altar of the organisation, then this anchor may not be yours. On the other hand, if you are willing to sacrifice freedom, initiative and go by the rule book with time-related promotions, then this is the career anchor you subscribe to.

Technical/functional competence

Here, the actual content of the job becomes important, since you intend to use your technical and functional competence on the job. It is important to understand that other than this competence, you may or may not look for other motivators and satisfiers.

Once market salary achieved they will seek bigger budgets, more areas of responsibility, and increased scope of job.

Personal growth

If you view life in the organisation as a continuous process of personal growth, increasing your knowledge, competence, capabilities and abilities, this is your career anchor. In the absence of these opportunities, you would consider your career stagnant and would not care to work for such an organisation.

General Managerial Competence Status

This is a very strong career anchor and should appeal to you if you are willing to take risks and work continuously towards going up the ladder, obtaining additional perks and benefits at each step.

 Specialisation is viewed as a trap.  They have the ability to identify, analyse, synthesise and solve problems under conditions of incomplete information and uncertainty. Financial, marketing, technological, human and other elements have to be combined into problem statements that are relevant to the success of the organization. Be able to think cross functionally and integratively. 

Autonomy

People with entrepreneurial attitudes and skills, who want to become ‘intrapreneurs’, relate very well to this career anchor. Government jobs, public sector organisations, where rules are more important than results, will create discomfort for those who subscribe to this career anchor.

They cannot stand to be bound by others rules, procedures, working hours, dress codes etc.  Regardless of where they work or on what these people have an overriding need to do it their way, in their own time and against their own standards.  Contract or project work – with defined goals but left up to them as to how to do it.

Security / Stability

Need to feel safe and secure in their job.  All people like to feel this to a certain degree but for these people it dictates all their career decisions.  They often seek tenure, have good retirement plans, avoid layoffs, and image of being strong and reliable.  Government jobs are perfect for these people.  Prefer steady predictable performance. 

Entrepreneurial Creativity

The need to create their own businesses by developing new products or services or by taking over existing businesses and reshaping them.  Tend to get bored easy.  Have need to invent or create new products and services in their enterprises or start new ones.

            Making money is a measure of success for these people.  Ownership is most important issue.  They don’t pay themselves well but retain ownership of stock.

Autonomy people want to run their own businesses for the freedom.  Entrepreneurs want to run them to prove that they can create a business.  Most start very early in life.  Have other conventional jobs whilst looking for an idea or business to take over.  Have willingness to drop job when opportunity comes along.  Also will forfeit autonomy and stability to get the idea to work.

They want to move into which ever role is key to the creativity of the company.  (head of R&D or the Board)  Can be self-centred and seeking high personal

Pure Challenge

They enjoy solving unsolvable problems or winning against impossibly tough opponents. High level strategy consultants fit this category relishing more and more difficult kind of strategic assignments.  Seek daily combat or competition.  Opportunity for self-tests are more important than any other thing about the job – not the area of work, pay system or type of recognition.

Can sometimes be very single minded.  If there is no use of their competitive skill then they get bored and irritable.

Lifestyle

Can be highly motivated to fulfilling career but it must at the same time be integrated with total lifestyle. Balancing the needs of the individual, the family and the career.

Flexibility is valued above all else. Options sought include part-time work, sabbaticals, paternity and maternity leave, day-car options, flexible working hours, working from home etc.  An organizations attitude to the needs of a person with this career anchor is important.  

Work climate and culture

You are anchored to your career by work climate and culture, seek peace of mind, limited stress, good interpersonal relationships and a conflict-free workplace. Other factors and parameters come second. People who relate to this career anchor usually retire mentally a few years after joining the organisation.

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