Tag Archives: love

First Things First – But TOGETHER.

Featured

Posted by in Character and Competence, Time Management

≈ Comments Off on First Things First – But TOGETHER.

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

There is a lot of material in the personal development sector that promotes the setting of goals. It’s a standard theme, which makes perfect sense because you can’t develop yourself in a particular direction unless you know what your destination actually is.

Numerically, there are a LOT of those books. Also numerically, there are fewer books that promote the idea that your goals should be, as far as is possible (given the reality of work impositions which your employer would really like you to consider as important outcomes), aligned with your personal value system.

There are millions of books on relationships. Some ethical, some manipulative. There are those which instruct you how to improve a loving, compassionate and giving relationship with someone important to you, and at the other end of the ethical scale there are books that tell you how to make people do what you want them to do for you, regardless of their own interests. We don’t like those, do we?

But in my (admittedly limited) experience I can think of only one that truly combines advice on how to set goals that align with your personal values AND which take into account the fact that what you want to do involves and affects other people. In other words, one book that asks the values-directed goal-setting reader to consider their relationships as part of the planning equation.

The book is Stephen Covey et al’s 1994 classic “First Things First”, and it dedicates a lot of its pages to ensuring that the reader properly considers their important relationships, and compassion for others, as part of their planning and executing of their lives. There are 43 pages alone under the heading ‘First Things First Together’, but the tone of the entire book is one that says, “Everything we do, we do with, for or because of others.” It’s all very well having the drive to get what it is you desire – but this is the only book I have read (on time management/event control) that reminds us that relationships are more important than achievement.

Which is not to say that I have ever mastered that idea. Far from it. I have spent many a day frustrated that ‘someone’ is getting in the way of my plan by being late, letting me down, not performing well, or being the other half of a misunderstanding. Like you, I get the hump with other people.

First Things First was the first Covey book I read, because I was exploring the concept of time management for work at the time I found it. But despite my generic impatience with other people getting in ‘my’ way, it spoke to me. It spoke to me so much that I have subsequently explored everything Covey ever wrote (to an embarrassing degree, to be frank). Me! Mister Miserable, Mister Impatient, Mr Self-Absorbed was impressed by a book, the tone of which was about recognising and respecting other people in personal and professional planning.

So impressed that I taught it, gifted it and promoted it. Some will listen, some will not. C’est la vie.

But if you have an inkling to learn time management AND you love, respect, and wish to take into account the needs of, other people, this is the book you want.

Make it your next personal development purchase.

(And while it might not have a big section on e-mails, be mindful that this is about the mind-set, attitude towards, and execution of life and work, not how to use a hammer that has its uses but isn’t applied to everything. There are lots of books about emails, too.)

You can get it through THIS LINK. (I suggest you don’t buy the audio book as it is too heavily abridged.)

Are you a Lifelong Learner?

Featured

Posted by in Character and Competence

≈ Comments Off on Are you a Lifelong Learner?

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interesting question. You may reply that your employer keeps you up to date with industry developments, legal and practice changes that influence or dictate how you work. That is, indeed, training. But I am not writing about training to which you are directed on pain of death. I am writing about self-directed, self-financed (if necessary) and possibly self-interested education. I am referring to off-the-job training.

There are countless options for most of us to learn something that isn’t job-related – for example, we might decide to learn to play a musical instrument, to scrapbook (now a verb as well as a noun), to reorganise flowers or to cook. Community Education is a big area. And I recommend you do some research about that.

But available through the same route, but more competence-focused, are courses provided outside your work but which would enhance your ability to do that work.

No, I have no odea what that might be – I’m not in your industry.

But let me provide my example. I was a serving police detective, but outside of that I trained as a legal executive (lawyer) for 4 years, obtained a qualification that allowed me to teach adults in further education, and di other courses related to both of those. They weren’t provided by, nor funded by my employer – I funded part of it, grants funded the rest. Ker-ching!

On the face of it you may ask what legal training in probate law, land law and contract law had to do with policing, but I assure you the benefits to me as a Fraud Detective were amazing – the number of cases I could deal with because of that knowledge rose, as did the number of cases we passed back to complainants. Cases passed back because we knew they were trying it on – for example, solicitors, rather than dealing with a probate dispute, would point their clients at the police and scream ‘FRAUD!’ so that we would get all the evidence and they could use it having had it gathered gratis. I, on the other and, could show why it wasn’t a fraud (at least at that point) and make a perfectly good legally-sound argument for that decision. And we had one man alleging a commercial fraud that I sent back pretty much annually for 10 years because I knew about contracts while not one of my colleagues had the foggiest.

The Second Resolution states:  “To overcome the restraining forces of pride and pretension, I resolve to work on character and competence.”

Competence in the workplace is obviously covered by that statement, but I argue that such competence can extend, indeed should extend outside one’s professional obligations. In fact, I suggest it should include your societal and familial obligations, too.

Be a better citizen, be a batter parent, be a better child. It’s all there in that simple sentence. Be (character) a better (competence).

There are many facilities available for training, and in areas you might thing weren’t catered for. For example, parenting training is available from many charitable foundations, including Care for the Family. You might think parenting comes naturally.  Lucky you if it did.

Identify and seek out training in respect of the competencies you lack – and identifying and admitting that lack is an example of good character, by the way.

As they say, admitting the existence of a gap in your education is the first step to closing it and reaping the rewards that follow – both financial and personal.

What will you seek to learn after today?