How to Become the Person You Want to Be

by Tom Hinton

Last week, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about our favorite seasons. As we stood on her patio watching the last remaining leaves fall from the naked trees, I commented that my favorite season was autumn. She countered by saying her favorite season was spring. “In springtime,” she told me, “everything comes alive. The sun is warm, the flowers bloom with reckless delight, the grass smells freshly mowed, and all of nature is alive and vibrant.”

“That’s true,” I noted, “but there can be no springtime until the autumn seeds fall to the ground and nature gives way to winter’s brutal cold.” As Stanley Horowitz said so beautifully, “winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting, and autumn a mosaic of them all.”

Like the changing seasons, life is a reflection of nature’s twisted contradictions. At a recent workshop I conducted on The Course of 10,000 Days, I reminded participants that -- like the changing seasons -- we, too, must go through a process of change and rejuvenation in order to transform our lives.

While nature does this naturally with the change of seasons, most people have a difficult time dealing with change and transforming themselves into the person they want to become.

But, in order to achieve our higher purpose and fulfill our dreams, we must experience the same transformation as the flowers that go dormant in winter only to return to their vibrant, colorful self in springtime. During winter, there appears to be no signs of life. But, deep within the plant’s roots, a new bloom is preparing to emerge. It is only through this process of change and rejuvenation that nature’s beauty reveals itself to us. As Gerald De Nerval said so poignantly, “Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.”

So, how can you transform yourself into the person you want to become? Here are five steps from The Course of 10,000 Days that I recommend you follow.

1. Dream Big. You cannot achieve anything you are not willing to become. So, dream big. Consider the impossible. What is it that you really want in life? Ironically, most people only pursue those things they think they can accomplish. They never dream big. Allow the vibrations of nature to change your thought process. See the universe as offering you opportunities for success instead of limiting you and holding you back. You’ll be amazed at how many things come your way when you dream big. And, remember, if you shoot for the stars, but only hit the moon, that’s still a pretty good shot!

2. Don’t Worry, Be Happy. There’s an old axiom that goes “worry is like paying interest on money you haven’t yet borrowed!” It’s true. Don’t be a worry wart. There’s a better way to approach life. Be happy. Stop worrying. You can’t control the universe, so why worry about it. Instead, be a possibility thinker and create solutions. You will attract good things into your life when you are happy.

3. Use Your Talents. So many people keep wishing and praying for things -- never realizing they already have most of what they need in some form. They just aren’t using their talents or accessing people in their lives who can help them achieve their dreams. Let me give you an example. My friend, Allen, is a talented writer who had a great idea for a novel. But, Allen procrastinated writing his novel for nearly two years. He told me he didn’t have enough time to write his book. But, I knew that wasn’t true because we all have the same amount of time. It’s merely a question of how we spend it. The real reason Allen postponed writing his novel was a fear of rejection by publishers. I told Allen he was rejecting his work before a publisher ever had a chance to review his brilliant writing. I coached Allen to write 250 words every day at a specific time and email me whatever he had written before he went to bed. It worked. Allen finished his novel in seven months and received several publishing offers. So, use your talents… or lose them!

4. Create Your Own Happiness. I constantly hear people tell me they are unhappy because of things they lack in life. For example, they complain about their job. They don’t get along with their partner or spouse. Their boss is a jerk. The list of excuses goes on and on. But, the reality is that we create our own happiness in life. Unfortunately, there is only one thing in this world that can bring you happiness -- you! The only way you can create happiness in your life is to look yourself in the mirror every morning and say, “This may be all I’ve got to work with, but today I’m going to use it to create happiness and success for myself.” And then, get out there and activate your potential. Don’t rely on anyone else to create your happiness in life. Remember, your happiness is up to you.

5. Believe in Yourself. I’ve often wondered how Thomas Edison remained positive in his efforts to invent the right carbon filament for his light bulb invention in 1879. Despite ten thousand failed experiments, Edison pushed on and eventually discovered the right formula. Edison dreamed big. He believed in himself and never gave up. Have you made the same commitment to yourself? No one else will believe in you until you believe in yourself. A good question to ask is this: What one thing must I do today to grow myself to the next level? Then, make the commitment to do that one thing. Believe in yourself and radiate that belief so that others will be attracted to you and support you.

Put these five steps to practice in the next 24 hours and you’ll begin to see amazing results in your life. Start living your next 10,000 days and create a life worth remembering.

About the Author: Tom Hinton is president of the 10,000 Days Foundation and the author of 10,000 Days: Finding Purpose, Peace, and Passion for the Rest of Your Life. Tom is a popular speaker at corporate and association meetings on the subjects of Leadership and Life Change. He can be reached at www.tomhinton.com or by email at tom@tomhinton.com

How to Keep Your Company’s Reputation Afloat When You Spill Oil in the San Francisco Bay

by Tom Hinton

What happens when a company’s reputation is challenged and discredited on the front pages of newspapers? How does a global company withstand the barrage of negative press when its environmental accidents are the lead story on the national network news and magazine covers?

This is exactly the crisis facing South Korea's Hanjin Group which chartered the ship, Cosco Busan, from the Greek firm Synergy Maritime. As the tanker ship left the Port of Oakland amid dense fog on the morning of November 7, it struck a fender support on the Oakland Bay Bridge. The collision caused a gash in the ship spilling 58,000 gallons (220,000 liters) of fuel into the San Francisco Bay. Now, a week later, the spill has forced closure of some of the region's most famous beaches, such as Crissy Field overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and Baker Beach on the Pacific Ocean.

In addition to the environmental damage this spill has caused, the Hanjin Group’s reputation has suffered at the hands of the American media as well as government officials from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. The Hanjin Group, which was established in 1945, is a Korean conglomerate that includes a shipping company, Hanjin Shipping (including Hanjin Logistics), and Korean Air (KAL), which was acquired in 1969. With its majority interest in the Senator Lines Hanjin, Senator is the seventh largest container transportation and shipping company in the world. At this moment, I suspect that W.Y. Lee, the president of Hanjin Transportation Company, Ltd., is struggling to find a way to minimize the damage to his company’s otherwise sterling reputation. What should he do?

It has been said that “you can take away all my money and even my customers, but so long as I can keep my experience, relationships, and reputation, I'll come back stronger than before.” Certainly, the San Francisco oil spill disaster will cost the Hanjin Group a pretty penny and tarnish its proud name, but I doubt it will sink the company provided its leadership acts quickly to shore-up its reputation. As one public relations expert said, “Having knowledge, social capital and trust is the ultimate security blanket in good times and bad.” Now is the time for the Hanjin Group to spend some of its social capital and good will to ensure its reputation doesn’t go down with the ship.

Public relations firm Hill & Knowlton conducted a study entitled, "Return on Reputation" that reveals how important reputation is perceived by customers and the public. Hill & Knowlton’s study indicated that a company’s reputation has a direct correlation on its financial performance and how consumers measure the company’s trustworthiness. According to the 282 global companies surveyed for the study, brand and marketing message (76 percent), corporate culture and working environment (51 percent), employee compensation and career opportunities (49 percent), and social responsibility/community investment (22 percent) all play an active role in reputation assessment.

In reviewing the Hanjin Group’s minimal media response to their oil spill crisis, they would be wise to abandon their bunker mentality and begin to counter the daily barrage of negative media stories by emphasizing their track record on social responsibility.

Certainly, the Hanjin Group is doing good things in Korea and the other countries it serves. Unfortunately, no one is hearing those inspiring stories because the company’s leadership is still in a “damage control” mindset and has yet to put a corporate face in front of the cameras. Every day they delay to put a positive, friendly corporate face on camera is another day they will be battered by the media. I am not suggesting that the Hanjin deny fault for this accident. At this point, that would be pointless and only infuriate the public. Instead, the Hanjin Group should step forward, accept some degree of responsibility for the accident, and vow to commit whatever resources are necessary to clean-up their mess. In doing so, the Hanjin Group can save its tarnished reputation in the United States and avoid being linked to a handful of discredited corporations that made the major mistake of trying to sidestep their social responsibility during similar disasters. This is a unique opportunity for the Hanjin Group to demonstrate Reputation Leadership™ and, at least, neutralize the damage to its good name.

About the Author: Tom Hinton is America’s expert in Business Excellence. He is a popular international speaker and consultant to companies and organizations seeking to create a culture of excellence in the workplace. Mr. Hinton can be reached at tom@tomhinton.com

Training the Pig to Sing

An old saying has guided me through the years—“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.” A recent article in the Wall Street Journal in the Cubicle Corner section was written by a good friend of mine, Jared Sandberg. In “Bad At Complying? You Might Just Be a Very Bad Listener,” Jared describes a two-day course in the power of listening that he attended. These soft-skill courses—I call them behavioral interventions—have plagued my career for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been trained beyond my intelligence. One of the advantages of my retirement is being removed from those mind-bending courses.

In the above article, Jared describes a situation where the boss is trying to fix someone with training. “There’s fluorescent lighting, stain-resistant carpet, and motivational posters with puppies, elephants, or monkeys.” Is it coming back to you now? Are you having the same heart palpitations I had when I recalled a similar setting?

These behavior-altering courses cover leadership, team building, conflict resolution, how to deal with incorrigible employees, and charting your management style, to name just a few of the sessions designed to improve your thinking.

I don’t want to seem cynical, but, by and large, people’s behavior cannot be altered. And, just for the record, I’m an annoyed pig.

Victims of these courses quickly learn what’s unacceptable behavior and then camouflage their own behavior from then on. Deep-down, nothing has changed. It’s the old “getting along to get along.” Corporate survival dictates that we wholeheartedly absorb all these recommendations, but how many of us have sleep-walked ourselves through these sessions? Let’s see a show of hands. My hand is up.

I’m not talking about training that provides instruction on new products, a new computer system, diversity training, or a whole myriad of areas that one needs to keep pace with technology. I know people who are involved in such training, and I value their contribution to this line of work. Nonetheless, let me provide some examples of fluff training that I think should be relegated to the “cemetery of bad ideas.”

In a previous career I was a trainer and provided some of this fluff. Nothing seems to account for some of the foolishness I dispensed in the name of training.

One of the ridiculous techniques I taught in a course on quality improvement was to have the attendees take off their shoes and then place them on the opposite feet. I’d ask, “Now how do you feel?” They’d say, “It’s awkward,” “It hurts,” “Let’s go back to the old way.” Then I would counter with, “Change is always difficult, and we just want to return to what was more comfortable.” It’s a wonder someone didn’t throw a shoe at me.

A friend of mine who’s nearing retirement recently attended an internal course entitled “Left Brain, Right Brain.” Many people in his department upon seeing the curriculum tried to opt out, but the corporate all–knowing hierarchy indicated otherwise. My friend said that it was a complete waste of time and at the end of the day he didn’t know if he was left-brained logical and objective or right-brained random and intuitive. He just knew that he was brain dead.

How about the team-building exercise where people are asked to fall backwards into the hands of their cohorts to illustrate trust? Here’s one I saw at a major automaker: People were passed through a labyrinth of rope squares by their associates. This was also done to engender trust but other than a couple of rope burns and some unintentional groping it seemed like another candidate for the cemetery of convoluted ideas.

Many years ago, a financial institution I worked for introduced “Grid Training” for management. For a torturous week we were barricaded in a hotel where we had to determine if we were 9-1s, 9-9s, 1-9s or some other number that would indicate our management style. The sessions were brutal and lasted until well after midnight; many people left in disgust. Senior management never indicated how this would improve the company, and it never did. We were all supposed to emerge equally focused on work and the feelings of others. The senior management team comprised the usual number of ogres, and improvement never happened.

In researching this article, I solicited examples of training sessions that left people discombobulated or flummoxed, but not wiser. One corporate elixir that came back repeatedly was training for 360-degree reviews. Most felt that feedback from superiors, peers, and underlings had turned into “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” As one respondent commented, “If people had been honest with their reviews, it would have been the end of several amicable working relationships”.

Before you conclude that I’ve fallen out of my hammock and hit my head, I’ll admit there are several training sessions that still resonate positively with me, some of a behavioral nature. The three days of training in the Baldrige process is a valuable session that explores in detail the inner workings of companies, starting with leadership and working your way through workforce resources, strategic planning, and concluding with organizational performance results. If you’re accepted as a Baldrige examiner, it’s free.

A course proven to be valuable in interacting with people, particularly for conflict resolution, is “DISC Training,” which provides guidance in the communication style and preferences of others and how to best “flex” to meet the communication needs of those important to you. It’s understanding people as they are and how to work effectively with them.

Through their Leadership Center The Ritz-Carlton offers a variety of courses that provide insights into its culture and philosophy of hiring people with positive attitudes who don’t require any fixing. The center is a resource for organizations interested in benchmarking many of the business practices that led to The Ritz-Carlton becoming a two-time recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. These are courses that are appropriate for any company interested in raising their customer service to a higher level. The courses also review the elements of developing a strong management team.

Another stellar training organization is the Disney Institute. Removing barriers that inhibit performance excellence is an integral part of the module.

A behavioral training course that still influences me is “The Executive Technique.” This is a two-day course on developing communication skills, such as organizing and delivering a real-life communication from your listener’s perspective, creating visual aids, how to maintain control of difficult question-and-objection situations, and even a session on proper business dress and etiquette.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention a resource in my backyard, namely Eastern Michigan University which offers a potpourri of multiple-day courses in quality and continuous improvement in their Center for Quality.

Anther friend of mine, Tom Hinton, who is with CRI Global (out of California) summed up the behavioral-training mystery this way:

“Years ago, when we trained clients in the areas of leadership, customer service, and business excellence, they would thank us, pay us, and then go back to business as usual. Today, our clients are engaged in the training process. Today, clients want to know what results they can reasonably expect from their training investment. Leaders also want to know what they need to do on Monday morning to keep the training lessons fresh in the minds of the employees. I think the reason for the change among leaders is two-fold. First, leaders are now more accountable than every before for organizational success. Second, I think most leaders generally want to move their organizations from good to great by creating a culture of excellence.”

Well said!

Tom Peters once said, “You should not train anyone in a topic that he or she cannot implement within the workplace within 72 hours.”

Finally, this comment from a former colleague: “Most management behavioral-training classes are worthless in that they are either inane or the brass does nothing to reinforce the taught behavior.”

There are people like me, who have been trained beyond their intelligence, and there are others like the pigs, who are annoyed even when asked to be in a training session. Rather than spend money and time trying to make attitudinal changes, perhaps the answer is to jettison these recalcitrant, irascible employees from the company. A recent incident chronicled by USA Today brings this into focus and clearly illustrates my point:

“Owning up to its bad management, the City Council in Ashland, Oregon, has decided to throw itself on the civic version of a therapist’s couch. The six-member council, plagued by bickering, sniping, and profanity at its public meetings, agreed to spend $37,000 of taxpayer money for professional help to learn how to get along.”

I can imagine the chaos that will ensue when members are passed though a labyrinth of ropes or asked to fall backwards into the trusting arms of their colleagues. After reading about this organizational meltdown, I’ll take my chances training pigs.

In the meantime, I’ve made the transition into retirement not knowing or caring if I’m left-brain or right-brain, or if I’m a 9-1 or a 9-9. The best part? No more role-playing! Now, if I could just figure out a way to correct the aberration in my feet from wearing my shoes on the opposite foot during the training session...

About the Author:
William J. Kalmar has extensive business experience, including service with a Fortune 500 bank and the Michigan Quality Council, of which he served as director. He has been a member of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Board of Overseers and a Baldrige examiner. He’s also been named quality professional of the year by the Detroit Chapter of ASQP. Now semiretired, he’s a freelance writer for the Detroit News; writes a monthly column for Mature Advisor newspaper; is a mystery shopper for several companies; is a frequent presenter and lecturer; does radio voice-overs; and competes in duathlons. He can be reached at Billmarykalmar@aol.com