The best way to predict your future is to create it. It has been proven over and over again that we move in the direction of our most dominate thoughts. If those thoughts are of pessimism and failure, we will behave in pessimistic ways and drift in the direction of failure. Our mental voice compels our actions.
Conversely, if our thoughts are of optimism and success, we will behave in optimistic ways and be compelled in the direction of success.
Think about the inner voice that is driving your thoughts… and actions. Like it or not, you have become exactly what you tell yourself you are. I doubt many successful people see themselves as failures. Likewise, there probably aren’t very many failures who see themselves as successful. If you don’t like where you are in life you can change it. Start with your mental programming.
An excellent first step is to develop a personal mission statement – a testimonial of who you are. Or perhaps better stated, the ideal self you want to be. State it in the presence tense and focus entirely on the positive aspects of who you are. Here’s an example:
I am a highly respected and successful ___________ (fill in the blank). I am well-respected by my peers and professional associates. I am a loving partner and parent who respects the individuality of my family members and support them wholeheartedly.
You get the idea. There’s no limit to the size of the statement. The number of elements should relate to the most important aspects of your life: Spirituality, family, vocation, health, interests, etc. It’s not necessary to put the items in priority order so long as you capture all of them. Some aspects of your personal mission statement may not represent who you are today. It’s more likely going to represent who you want to become. Some parts of it may represent who you are today, so long as that is who you want to be.
As you do this, write it down, print it out and post it in prominent places – on your refrigerator, on your bathroom mirror, on the dashboard of your car, on your computer terminal. While you should memorize your personal mission statement, you should also write it and read it out loud over and over again. This stimulates multiple senses. Writing it is tactile stimulation. Reading it is visual stimulation. Reading out loud is auditory stimulation. The more senses you stimulate the deeper the message will be seated into your subconscious memory.
Your positive self-talk will lead you in the direction of doing things that achieve your personal mission statement and, best of all, toward becoming the person you really want to become. The best way to predict your future is to create it and that starts with a personal mission statement that drives your actions.
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Seek first to understand...
Seek first to understand…
Here’s an exercise you can do at an officer’s meeting to help your supervisors improve their coaching skills. Give them the following scenario:
“You have a subordinate who is misbehaving. In one sentence, write how you would handle it.”
Then have each of the officers report out on what they would do. As each tells how they would handle it, keep score by putting a hash mark beside one of the following three categories (though don’t share the categories with them until all the answers have been given).
Tell-Inform-Instruct-Advise
Ask-Understand-Discuss-Learn
Unsure
All of the responses will fall into one of the three categories above and if your session is like most I facilitate in my leadership develop programs, you’ll see that most of the responses fall into the first category.
If that happens, you will have a teachable moment. The best officers/supervisors are those who seek first to understand, then to be understood (from Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).
All too often an officer wants to jump right into the solution to the problem… telling… informing… instructing… and advising… usually with a healthy dose of threatened disciplinary action for non-compliance to the officer’s demands. Talk about the set-up for a bad coaching session.
The best officers seek to understand why the behavior is happening and then try to work with the subordinate to develop an action plan to improve the performance to meet the acceptable standards of the organization. That, my friends, is the set-up for success!
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com
Here’s an exercise you can do at an officer’s meeting to help your supervisors improve their coaching skills. Give them the following scenario:
“You have a subordinate who is misbehaving. In one sentence, write how you would handle it.”
Then have each of the officers report out on what they would do. As each tells how they would handle it, keep score by putting a hash mark beside one of the following three categories (though don’t share the categories with them until all the answers have been given).
Tell-Inform-Instruct-Advise
Ask-Understand-Discuss-Learn
Unsure
All of the responses will fall into one of the three categories above and if your session is like most I facilitate in my leadership develop programs, you’ll see that most of the responses fall into the first category.
If that happens, you will have a teachable moment. The best officers/supervisors are those who seek first to understand, then to be understood (from Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).
All too often an officer wants to jump right into the solution to the problem… telling… informing… instructing… and advising… usually with a healthy dose of threatened disciplinary action for non-compliance to the officer’s demands. Talk about the set-up for a bad coaching session.
The best officers seek to understand why the behavior is happening and then try to work with the subordinate to develop an action plan to improve the performance to meet the acceptable standards of the organization. That, my friends, is the set-up for success!
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Situational leadership: Using the right tool
How to handle a particular personnel situation is often the topic of interview questions for promotion. These can be difficult to answer because the question rarely contains all of the information needed to make a good decision. This can work to your advantage or to you disadvantage depending on how you choose to resolve the use.
In most cases, the short answer to how you’d respond to a personnel issue should be “It depends.” However, if you stop there you’re probably not going to score well on the interview. Take the response to the next step and share with the panel what it depends on. What are the critical criteria that are essential to evaluate to make a good decision.
Say “It depends on additional information that provides the critical criteria that would help me make a quality decision. In this scenario, that criteria would include…” and then list the things you would consider when evaluating the situation and how you would respond. There are many ways to handle problems and each scenario is dependent on the situation.
The best leaders have many tools in their toolbox to help them build and maintain successful organizations. If their only tool were a hammer, then every problem would look like a nail. If a hammer is your only tool, you’ll end up using the hammer on a board that needed a saw. This will cause you expend unneeded energy because you used the wrong tool. You may eventually shorten the board by beating it until it breaks. Obviously, there’s a better way to get the task complete. Use the right tool, at the right time, in the right way, under the right conditions. That’s situational leadership!
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com
In most cases, the short answer to how you’d respond to a personnel issue should be “It depends.” However, if you stop there you’re probably not going to score well on the interview. Take the response to the next step and share with the panel what it depends on. What are the critical criteria that are essential to evaluate to make a good decision.
Say “It depends on additional information that provides the critical criteria that would help me make a quality decision. In this scenario, that criteria would include…” and then list the things you would consider when evaluating the situation and how you would respond. There are many ways to handle problems and each scenario is dependent on the situation.
The best leaders have many tools in their toolbox to help them build and maintain successful organizations. If their only tool were a hammer, then every problem would look like a nail. If a hammer is your only tool, you’ll end up using the hammer on a board that needed a saw. This will cause you expend unneeded energy because you used the wrong tool. You may eventually shorten the board by beating it until it breaks. Obviously, there’s a better way to get the task complete. Use the right tool, at the right time, in the right way, under the right conditions. That’s situational leadership!
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director
Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Control your reactions
Many times throughout my career I have been in a position to promote (or not promote) firefighters into positions of leadership. Sometimes the decision was hard because I was blessed with a number of highly qualified candidates. Other times the decision was easy because I had one candidate who stood out among their peers.
In communicating the decision to the candidates who were not selected, I have noticed the bad news presents an opportunity for a reaction on their part. How they react to the bad news is what I want to address.
Some of the candidates reacted in a way that was so positive and professional that it actually made me regret that I did not promote them. I saw a level of maturity that was absolutely impressive. When I have witnessed this, I have gone out of my way to give this candidate personal time and attention to help ensure the next time I have an officer position open up, they will be the leading candidate. In the bad news I saw their potential shine.
Some candidates, on the other hand, reacted in a way that was so negative and so unprofessional that it confirmed to me that I had made the right decision. I saw a level of maturity that was very unimpressive. When I have witnessed this, I have assured myself that the right decision was made not to promote this person and affirmed this person will likely never be promoted to a position of leadership. A little bit of bad news caused them to self-destruct. That’s not the kind of leader I want on my team.
If things don’t go your way, maintain your professionalism and fashion a positive, supportive response, even if you have to fake it. Being a loser hurts but you should invest great effort in ensuring you use your pain to compel you to address your shortcomings and to become a better qualified leader. If you take that pain and decide someone needs to pay a price for the injustice you faced, your behavior will only affirm to the boss the right decision was made. You may not control what happens to you, but you are in complete control of how you react to what happens to you.
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com
In communicating the decision to the candidates who were not selected, I have noticed the bad news presents an opportunity for a reaction on their part. How they react to the bad news is what I want to address.
Some of the candidates reacted in a way that was so positive and professional that it actually made me regret that I did not promote them. I saw a level of maturity that was absolutely impressive. When I have witnessed this, I have gone out of my way to give this candidate personal time and attention to help ensure the next time I have an officer position open up, they will be the leading candidate. In the bad news I saw their potential shine.
Some candidates, on the other hand, reacted in a way that was so negative and so unprofessional that it confirmed to me that I had made the right decision. I saw a level of maturity that was very unimpressive. When I have witnessed this, I have assured myself that the right decision was made not to promote this person and affirmed this person will likely never be promoted to a position of leadership. A little bit of bad news caused them to self-destruct. That’s not the kind of leader I want on my team.
If things don’t go your way, maintain your professionalism and fashion a positive, supportive response, even if you have to fake it. Being a loser hurts but you should invest great effort in ensuring you use your pain to compel you to address your shortcomings and to become a better qualified leader. If you take that pain and decide someone needs to pay a price for the injustice you faced, your behavior will only affirm to the boss the right decision was made. You may not control what happens to you, but you are in complete control of how you react to what happens to you.
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Situational Awareness & Decision Making
www.RichGasaway.com
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Managing up the chain of command
Anyone, in any capacity in any organization can display the qualities of leadership. To be a leader is to influence others to see things in a different way or to use influence to compel change.
One of the best ways to influence change in an organization is to bump the ideas up the chain of command. How you do this will have a significant correlation to your success. Many bosses don't like their underlings telling them what they should be doing or what direction they should be leading the organization. So, best to avoid being so blunt with the boss.
A better approach is the soft sell. Wait for the time to be right and then float the idea past the boss. If you're really coy about it you can actually do this in such a way that the boss thinks the idea was his or hers. If you can do that, it's far more likely to get traction. If the idea doesn't take hold. Don't become too pushy. Rather, be patient and wait for another opportunity for the idea to be floated. This time you might say "The solution to this problem is very similar to the ideas we were talking about a few weeks ago." Notice... you don't say "MY idea..."
You'll be amazed how much you can get accomplished through your boss when you don't care who takes the credit. If you want a better organization, let go of the credit and let all your good ideas become your boss's ideas. With some finesse, it is possible to manage up the chain of command.
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Gasaway Consulting Group
www.RichGasaway.com
One of the best ways to influence change in an organization is to bump the ideas up the chain of command. How you do this will have a significant correlation to your success. Many bosses don't like their underlings telling them what they should be doing or what direction they should be leading the organization. So, best to avoid being so blunt with the boss.
A better approach is the soft sell. Wait for the time to be right and then float the idea past the boss. If you're really coy about it you can actually do this in such a way that the boss thinks the idea was his or hers. If you can do that, it's far more likely to get traction. If the idea doesn't take hold. Don't become too pushy. Rather, be patient and wait for another opportunity for the idea to be floated. This time you might say "The solution to this problem is very similar to the ideas we were talking about a few weeks ago." Notice... you don't say "MY idea..."
You'll be amazed how much you can get accomplished through your boss when you don't care who takes the credit. If you want a better organization, let go of the credit and let all your good ideas become your boss's ideas. With some finesse, it is possible to manage up the chain of command.
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD, EFO, CFO, MICP
Gasaway Consulting Group
www.RichGasaway.com
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