The intention of my writings is to equip those who follow me with the tools they will need to have a fulfilling life. Now, I know that it is, at least from my perspective, a great powerful company, since I am a humble person by nature and I work hard not to appear arrogant or pompous about my achievements, since God knows I have my flaws. However, my mission in life is to be a servant to and help others succeed in their desired aspirations and to help people help them achieve their vision and help others achieve their mission from their stated vision. I am ultra-motivated to observe the success of others, particularly young people and our young people are our future leaders and they are always full of desire to learn and learn a little more and more.
Recently, while working with one of my clients at one of America’s leading private universities, I noticed that the staff was demoralized; in essence, the program lacked leadership. The program was an early childhood educational school and even though I knew many of the staff loved working with children, they were still afraid to go to work and were there because they needed a job and even though they cared deeply for the children; no one made them feel appreciated and valued. Also, they never realized they had a high-intensity job; probably on the same level as working on the upper deck of an aircraft carrier. You see that carrying, working, and teaching three-year-olds is high-intensity work. The reason is that a teacher can never stop looking at the children and when a teacher and two assistants are working with twenty or twenty five little ones things can get quite hectic to say the least and so at the end of the day the teachers Worse yet, the organization’s leaders have never worked with staff on issues of internal relationship protocols and/or the sense of purpose driven as an organizational team, and while they know how to do their jobs, they still don’t know what is expected of them. as Senior management and central staff (teachers) were disrespected by the elites of the organizations.
The friction between management and staff was pretty ugly, nasty, and self-defeating, jeopardizing the program and putting the Kids in a compromising position. The first task at hand was to introduce the staff to the importance of respect and recognition of their valued service. I started asking questions about what was the most important aspect of their job to them in relation to how they want to be treated. I wanted to find out what would make them feel most productive and valued; so at the end of the day, although perhaps tired but satisfied. The focus of my assignment was to get them to identify what specific core values were needed to strengthen the program and the organization. My goal was to get them to commit to the core values of how they can agree on how they will work with each other. In other words, what can they expect from each other and; what the highest levels of the organization expect of them as well. Management, administrative staff and teachers needed to work together as a team and with a true sense of commitment to each other with an understanding of each other’s roles and limits. They needed to work towards a level of passion and compassion with an unwavering drive to continually improve by providing quality education to children and families in a healthy and safe environment. And they needed to start putting aside their personal differences and start communicating with each other in a professional and courteous collegial manner.
From my perspective, the critical aspect in personal and leadership development and reaching that higher level of success so many of us so often seek is having an understanding of the virtues of the values we will live by. What core values are important to you that will elevate you to be a worthy representative of your community?
