Look, up in the sky. It's "Influencer!"

“If you could have any superpower, what would it be?”

This is a fun question we often ask team building participants to discuss in pairs as we hike them to our outdoor “team challenge course”. The answers (and the motive behind them) vary widely. Popular answers include the ability to fly, invisibility and x-ray vision.

Perhaps my favorite superpower is one from my good friend, John Schirle, who would understand and speak every language in the world.

Think of the power that holds - to understand and speak every language on earth. Consider the problems you could solve. Consider the conflicts you might prevent! Since a “common language” is one of the most powerful contributors to optimizing team performance, you would be the next best thing to a common language as a translator for the entire world.

My superpower? I want to be the super hero known as “Influencer!” I want the power to change anything.

Of course, that’s what the authors of the 2007 book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything had in mind. They teach us how to create the change we would like to see in the world using a powerfully simple framework of three principles and six basic strategies.

The key to successful influence lies in three powerful principles:

• Identify a handful of high-leverage behaviors that lead to rapid and profound change.
• Use personal and vicarious experience to change thoughts and actions.
• Marshall multiple sources of influence to make change inevitable. 

The six sources of influence are:

1. Personal Motivation - take satisfaction from the right behaviors rather than the wrong behaviors
2. Personal Ability - have the skills and knowledge to perform what is required
3. Social Motivation - active encouragement by others of the right behaviors and discouragement of the wrong behaviors
4. Social Ability - others provide help and resources at critical times
5. Structural Motivation - clear and meaningful rewards for right behaviors
6. Structural Ability - aspects of the environment make the vital behavior convenient, easy and safe

By following this model, I gain powerful strategies to create rapid, dramatic, and permanent change in my business, my personal life, and my world.  I can change anything.

Back on the path to team building, we also ask participants, “If you could go anywhere, where would you go?” and “If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be?”

The first question provides the opportunity to walk people through a goal achievement process that helps them as individuals make possible what at first seems impossible. Where would I go? Lechuguilla Cave. But that’s another story...

The latter question typically brings up suggestions of problems that contemporary thought considers to be impossible; thinks like ending war, poverty, hate crimes and cancer. What problem would I solve? All of them! At least all of them that stem from human behavior; I guess I might have to leave cancer to others.

That’s the superpower I would have as the super hero named Influencer! Of course, if we follow the model outlined in the book we all have access to this superpower.  We all can be Influencers! at The Intersection of Purpose and Now.

Priorities: Why Don't I Do What I Say I Want to Do?

Just because you WANT something to be a priority in your life doesn't make it so.

That's how we end up "making excuses" for not acting on what we THINK are our priorities each day.  Following is an example.

My client says he wants his number one priority to be Physical Health. This goal category includes a specific goal weight, which involves losing 100 pounds, and exercising for one hour daily.  Yet, when asked to travel and give a business presentation in Minneapolis, does this desire for health show up in his decision-making or actions?  Let's see...

• When he is at first asked to make the trip, he eagerly agrees (a chance to share his expertise with an audience - now that's a priority he'll act on).
• When planning the itinerary with his sponsors, he never mentions or thinks about the promise he has made to himself - when and what he'll eat or when and where he'll exercise each day.
• When planning his first day, he thinks "I have to get a good night's sleep and still make my flight on time, so I'll just grab something to eat on the way" (instead of healthy food choices). 
• When asked to stick around a while after his scheduled seminar to further help participants, he graciously accepts; after all, his public awaits.
• When asked to join his sponsor for dinner, of course he accepts without condition; to do anything else would be rude!
• After dinner and drinks and several hours of engaging conversation, he's so tired he cannot wait to get to bed...

Nowhere in the course of accepting the invitation, planning his itinerary, traveling or fulfilling professional and social obligations with his sponsor and host does he mention his Physical Health goals or even privately consider them. In fact, other than periodic moments of guilt and regret, he barely thinks about this priority - this grand intent for his life.

And all it might have taken to make Physical Health his priority with these very same circumstances is to have, from the initial request, made it known that he must allow time for an hour of exercise in his itinerary and for making healthy eating choices.

Don't let the mood of the moment interfere with the intent of your life. 

Don't just make a list or "decide" on your priorities:

1. Establish specific goals to achieve that help you live out your priorities and keep them in the forefront of your thoughts, decisions, plans and actions.
2. Make known to others that your priorities MUST take precedent for you.
3. Schedule your priorities (instead of prioritizing your schedule) and work everything else around them.
4. Your priorities are MUST DO; everything else is a "should do" or a "can do".
5. Review your priorities regularly, as well as the manner and degree to which you are acting on those priorities each day, week or month - On Purpose.

People will not be "put off" by your priorities. People of good character will see you as a person of conviction, a person who lives according to your Values, a person with the Courage to live life on Purpose in every moment, not just when when your purpose is convenient.

Bring Meaning to Chaos - The Importance of Review

"Chaos makes understanding what you know and not know more important... Eliminate chaos through identifying what you do and don’t know."

So writes Scot Herrick, author of I've Landed My Dream Job - Now What?.

The way you nail down what you know and what you still need to find out is done through reviewing your work. I recommend my clients complete a review of their work and life each week (and give it the catchy title of "Week in Review").

Why do a Week in Review?  Here are a few reasons:

1. Bring structure to chaos.
2. Celebrate wins; acknowledge your lessons from setbacks.
3. Create focus and uncover Purpose.
4. Identify patterns and priorities.
5. Become more goal-directed and track your progress.
6. Categorize and address ongoing issues.
7. Everything cannot be important; decide what is.
8. Monitor projects, promises and assignments.
9. Share it with your coach to provide perspective and breadth to coaching sessions.

What goes into a Week in Review? Of course, this is up to you and anyone with whom you might share your review.  The template that I give my clients for starters include these elements:

• What has happened since we last spoke?
• Things I accomplished, learned or am proud of this week?
• Where I am stuck (challenges or concerns)?
• Opportunities available to me
• Obstacles I face
• Where I need support
• Best way to coach me this week
• Field work for next week
• List of the goals I am working toward achieving

One of my clients, a highly successful career salesperson, uses this Week in Review to better suit his needs:

• My most important goal right now is…
• What did I do this week that moves me toward my most important goal?
• What is getting in the way of achieving my goal?
• Companies I have contacted this week.
• What specific obstacles am I facing?
• I need support to help me not fall back to old habits like…
• During this (coaching) call I would like to talk about…
• My Top Goals in each of eight categories.
• My Purpose Statement.

Herrick reminds us that all of us have mostly common components to our lives. The rest is focus, timing and review.  But we all have unique dreams, goals and purpose. Record your dreams, develop focus and purpose, then remain attentive through courageous action, review and planning.

You'll start to clarify what you are pretty sure you know so you can put that into its proper place in your priorities and move on.

Focus, timing and review - that's what puts us at The Intersection of Purpose and Now.

The Weight of Glory

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners - no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden."

From The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis

I absolutely love this brief passage that concludes one of C.S. Lewis' classic shorter works, "The Weight of Glory". Lewis describes glory as not in being noticed by others and seeking their approval, but being noticed by God. We can recognize the glory in others only when we see them through the eyes of God. 

I also love the Na'vi greeting in James Cameron's blockbuster motion picture Avatar: "I see you." This is meant as more than just a greeting or acknowledgement; it is a statement of recognition. I recognize the spirit in you; I appreciate how you and I are alike and different.  There are no ordinary people, no mere mortals, but divine spirits that are at once unique and common because of all we have in common. 

"There are no ordinary people... We never talk to mere mortals... We must play... And our charity must be real and costly love...no more tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment... Your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses." Quite a standard of living and working together, isn't it?  Maybe these are the standards of a remarkable life.

• How do you greet people on a daily basis? Do you really "see" them?
• How do you "see" the people on your team, in your workplace, in your neighborhood...or the neighborhood on the other side of town?
• How might you begin to look for the divine - the immortal - in the people you see daily?
• How might you be more playful in your relationships by taking people seriously?
• How might you experience the real meaning of tolerance through "real and costly love"?
• What if your co-worker, your boss, or your most troublesome employee was really the "holiest object presented to your senses" today? How might you treat them differently?
• What if you were to "see" each person in your path as Christ vere latitat - truly hidden?

Miss "seeing" any one person today and you may miss your experience of Glory.  Greet people well at The Intersection of Purpose and Now.

What PDN Coaching is all about

This is a rough video shot on the spot with no script (you can tell) at the 2010 Small Business Expo in Decatur, IL, courtesy of Falcon Multimedia, a division of Wood Printing in Decatur, IL. It's rough, but gives you an idea what PDN coaching is all about and what it can do for you, your team and your organization or business.

Contact me directly (either by email or phone) and mention seeing this video to receive a COMPLIMENTARY Attribute Index* Assessment and debrief.




* Unique to Attribute Index is its ability to assess the way an individual makes decisions and interacts with the world around him/her as well as how the individual perceives himself/herself. Unlike any other instrument, this process has a direct relationship with deductive science allowing it to accurately measure the core dimensions of how individuals think and make decisions. The result is an accurate ranking of personal attributes describing individual potential for performance.