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THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

~ Your Personal Mission Controller – Self-Leadership That Works

THE THREE RESOLUTIONS

Tag Archives: David Bowie

Ethics. Qualify your actions and you may not have any.

14 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence

≈ Comments Off on Ethics. Qualify your actions and you may not have any.

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Clinton, David Bowie, ethics, Hogan-Howe, police ethics, policing, Sanders, Scalia, Trump

“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do, and what is right to do.” Potter Stewart.

Something that really irked me towards the end of my career was the sense that the game had changed. When I started in the police force we were instilled with an ethic I could best describe as hard but fair. We weren’t there to go around forcing our will on people, except to the degree that a situation warranted the use of our statutorily-sourced powers. Those powers, provided to us by Parliament, were designed to allow us to maintain order and the free movement of traffic – and to investigate crime in a fashion that enabled objective assessment of evidence. One way of doing the latter, amongst others, was to seek and execute search warrants where we had reasonable grounds to believe evidence was at a specified location, if we believed that asking nicely to come in, or giving notice of a visit, would likely result in that evidence going ‘walkies’. It was a power designed to do two things – if it was there, we found it and used. If it didn’t exist, we couldn’t. In essence, the power and its execution allowed an objective assessment of the suspect’s guilt. But if we told them we were coming and the stuff wasn’t there, we didn’t really know either way.

But towards the end, I was starting to notice that line managers were starting to get soft. Instead of arresting and searching, we would ‘invite the suspect in’ and then search. Giving them time (at least twice in my own experience) to try and hide the evidence. If a decision made by one manager was shown to be wrong, a new manager would be reluctant to change it as it reflected badly on the predecessor and/or the organisation. If I wanted to force a door to execute a warrant, they’d try to stop me.

People who had earlier proved stalwarts of the profession started looking not at what we could do – legally – and started doing something else. They started looking out for themselves, preferring the non-complaint status quo. Suddenly, their work ethic was ‘avoid conflict.’

(Not to mention the senior officers sitting in judgment on colleagues who hadn’t done anything their judges hadn’t done years before. But that’s another issue.)

When you are truly a person of character and competence, as proposed and achieved through execution on the Second Resolution, you know what you can and cannot do, both legally and morally. You adhere to the influence of your conscience on the morality of what you are doing, and the legalities, technicalities, systems and processes are so well known to you that you comply almost without thinking. Particularly when those competencies are tried, tested, proved and effective.

You don’t have to worry about the effect on the organisation, or what people will think of you and of what you did. You know because of your ethics and skills that what you are doing is right, that it will likely bring the desired, objective result, and that no ethical individual or organisation can in any way take you to task. They may try, but they will fail.

That, to me, summarises what is sadly wrong with some senior managers in many organisations. They’ve lost the ability to stand up for what is right in preference for what they think they have a right to do.

A good manager does what is right, in the right way for the right reasons. All three apply. A poor manager, an unethical manager, only has to fail on one of those – wrong thing, wrong way or wrong reason – for the results to be tainted, or to fail.

Interestingly, while simultaneously demanding that all those below them do the former.

Is a puzzlement.

 

For more on The Second Resolution, go to The Books and find out how to buy Kindle and paperback books on the subject of The Three Resolutions.

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Serve others – because in doing so you will serve yourself.

06 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Purpose and Service

≈ Comments Off on Serve others – because in doing so you will serve yourself.

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"stephen Covey", 7 Habits, David Bowie, Donald Trump, leadership, Marco Rubio, Terry Wogan, Third resolution

“A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.” Patricia Neal and Richard DeNeut

I had the pleasure, honour and challenge of presenting a principle-centred leadership programme to a class of young people this week, which makes the above quote a little more appropriate and timely. Years ago I approached the UK arm of the 7 Habits ‘people’ about providing Seven Habits training to schools, and as they’d already thought of it themselves (DUH!) they were piqued by my interest and invited me along to a consultation on the subject. Much later I was able to fund and provide a full 7 Habits for Teens programme at a local school, and after a lot of other opportunities came my way I am now able to provide such training on a more formal basis.

When I first started following the 7 Habits, which was as a result of reading First Things First and being enthralled and inspired by the approach to principle centred living, one of the most impactive thoughts I had was, “Why wasn’t I taught this in schools?” As a (then) 35-year-old having a bit of a crisis, and coming through it because of what I had read and applied, I was almost embittered by the fact that I had learned this ‘stuff’ 17 years too late. In fairness, as it had only just become well-known since the publication of the book when I was 28 this was not entirely society’s fault.

But now this kind of training CAN be taught to schools throughout the world, and specifically in the UK, I would ask any of you involved in education to look at the site through which more details can be found, namely, http://www.learninganddevelopmentacademy.com .

Engaging young people and telling them that what society, their environment and their past tells them may not be true and that they are able to control, plan, prepare for and execute on their own destiny is immensely noble. Yes, my Third Resolution is being executed on by my providing this service to teenagers and their teachers, and at the same time this provision allows me to reinforce my own (usually poor) performance in this area.

We learn most what we teach. The more I teach this material the better I get, not only as an individual but as a teacher.

What do you do that teaches you as you serve? What sort of person have you become – or could you become – as a result of discovering your own noble purpose and serving others in a way that simultaneously serves you?

Find out. Then do it. It’d amazingly developmental.

 

For more on the Third Resolution, invest in The Three Resolutions at Amazon. Or get the Kindle version HERE.

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“It’s all too much!” Often, only if you LET that happen.

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by threeresolutionsguy in Character and Competence

≈ Comments Off on “It’s all too much!” Often, only if you LET that happen.

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Dad's Army' Eddie Redmayne, David Bowie, Donald Trump, Oscars, Racism, stress, YB12

Everything develops – even stress.

I have undergone input on overcoming stress from the best, but all too often the writers and trainers focus on stress being caused by AN event – a family argument, potential redundancy at work, a split with a spouse, and so on. But I have always been aware of the ‘true’ story, which is that stress is rarely the consequence of any singular event.

It is all too frequently the result of a whole series of events, occasionally but not always contemporaneous (at once), the combined effect of which is the sudden or even gently insidious onset of some kind of breakdown. And the worst part of this is that the lack of a significant event, or the inability to recognise the drip-drip-drip build-up of smaller stresses, had two effects.

First, the sufferer cannot deal effectively with the stress because s/he cannot clearly see the cause. As we are ‘stimulus-response’ creatures we expect to look at our symptoms and see a clear cause for our emotions, and when it isn’t clear we get all confused, and arguably even more stressed. Unlike a pain we can localise and treat, built-up stress has no scar, wound or ache we can point at and go ‘Aha!’ with.

The second effect is that those around us are also unable to see the ‘significant effect’ and therefore question why it is we are demonstrating the symptoms of stress-related physical or mental distress. I remember a colleague ‘going sick’ with ‘stress’ and those around me could not understand why he was so stressed as (in their eyes) he didn’t do any work and had nothing to be stressed about. I politely pointed out that just because someone is on sick leave from work it doesn’t necessarily follow that work was the cause. In the case in point it was probably more related to domestic issues related to civil legal challenges he was encountering with a questionably motivated local authority.

What is the cure to such stress? I am no psychologist or psychiatrist but one thing leaps out at me from cases like these, based wholly on my own experience of ‘built-up’ stress.

Take control. Recognise what you can do about your circumstances, and take charge of starting the things that need to be started, and stopping those that should be stopped. Let go of the things about which you can do nothing – accept them and move forward. Part of doing this is to identify what the problem is, but not necessarily the cause. Sometimes knowing what the problem is, is enough – the cause gets taken care of ‘by default’ when the problem is addressed. Not always, but more often than you realise.

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The YB12 – Best Year Ever Program includes input on overcoming stress. Go to the Have Your Best Year Ever page for more information, or go to www.yb12coach.com

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