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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Final Post

HR Water Cooler is signing off. I hope that some of my postings were helpful to my readers. I have enjoyed my "blogging experience".

I wish each one of you Godspeed!

Monday, March 1, 2010

Life Lessons

Why not write down all (9) "Life Lessons" on a sheet of paper and leave it near your computer. Re-read it once every week-then the lessons will help you because you will have saved them in "the computer between your ears!"

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Life Lessons

10) YOU WILL FORGET ALL OF THIS.....or will you?!

Monday, February 22, 2010

8) What you make of your life is your choice-you have access to all of the tools and resources that you need.

9) The answers to your challenges are available-all you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Life Lessons

7) Other people are only mirrors of you. You simply cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.....

Monday, February 15, 2010

Life Lessons

5) Learning does not end. There is no part of your life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6) "There" is no better than "here". When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain a "there" that will look better to you than your present "here".....

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Life Lessons

3) There are no mistakes, only lessons. Your growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

4) A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have finally learned them, you can go on to the next lesson.

More to come.....

Monday, February 8, 2010

Life Lessons

1) You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your
life on Planet Earth.

2) You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "life."
Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn several lessons. You may like the
lessons or hate them.

To be continued.....

(Source: "If Life Is a game, These Are the Rules"-author Cherie Carter-Scott)

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Encouraging Others

They all turned around and went to help him. All nine of the contestants, including the little boy who had fallen, linked arms and crossed the finish line together. This same belief holds true in the workplace-what really matters is helping the other members of your work team win, even if it means slowing down and changing your own course.

Thanks for reading.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Encouraging Others

Whether we are dealing with other people inside or outside of the workplace, we can all learn a lot from this true story:

At a Special Olympics track and field event, nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, gathered at the starting line for the 100 yard dash. At the gun, they all started out, except one little boy. He stumbled on the asphalt, fell a couple of times, then stopped trying and began to cry.

The other runners heard the boy crying, slowed down, and looked back at the boy.....

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Leadership

For the next (5) days, make a deliberate effort to pay more attention to this "under-performing" employee. Go out of your way to find the good in this person. Compliment him/her on his/her work, make helpful suggestions, include this employee in a project that you would normally exclude him/her from participation-you get the idea.

Make sure your actions are sincere, and watch for positive results.....too bad most of you won't take on this assignment. Oh well.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Leadership

Why not test the "Pygmalion Theory" for yourself? Pick a fellow employee that you "assume" does not have much unused potential. In other words, in your opinion, this person is doing about as much as he/she is capable of doing for your organization.

Now, in my next post I am going to give my readers an additional assignment-and most of you either won't even begin the assignment, much less complete it.....

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Leadership

Back to Rosenthal and Jacobson-does the self-fulfilling prophecy exist in the workplace? You know the answer-of course it does! As managers, we have all been guilty of the same thing-assuming a fellow employee does not have some terrific ideas that would help our company because of the following incorrect assumptions on our part- examples: 1) "She is just the receptionist; therefore, she is not very creative." 2) "He is a young guy and is new to the company; therefore, he won't have any bright ideas to make us more money." 3) "He is just a mechanic out in the plant-why ask him for his ideas about how to produce our product more efficiently?"

Give me a break-how "blind" are we?.....

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Haiti

I have been blogging about how leaders (teachers) can influence students behavior and performance in the classroom-this of course also applies in the workplace. And there is another type of leadership-Divine Leadership.

My wife and I are members of The United Methodist Church. Our local District is made up of 92 Churches. We gathered at a local high school yesterday to pack meals for the Haitian people. The goal was to pack 100,000 meals.

In about 5 hours, 3,000 people packed 210,000 meals!!! When Christians are inspired by Jesus Christ, our personal Lord and Savior, our accomplishments are awesome. They glorify Him. Talk about leadership!

Please consider giving money through a reputable charity to help the Haitian people. Thanks.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Leadership

Rosenthal and Jacobson discovered that a self-fulfilling prophesy was at work at this school. The teachers had subtly and unconsciously encouraged the performance that they expected to see from these "special" students. The teachers spent more time with them. In addition, they were more enthusiastic about teaching these students. They also unintentionally exhibited more warmth toward them. As a result , these "special" students felt smarter and more capable than their fellow students.

Does the self-fulfilling prophecy exist in the workplace?.....

Monday, January 11, 2010

Leadership

The students that Rosenthal and Jacobson randomly picked at the beginning of the school year turned out to be the same students that scored the highest on the tests that were actually scored at the end of the school year!

How could that be? What happened?

In your opinion, which of the following is the most effective way to recognize an employee for a significant accomplishment at work?