Self Management Workout 7.1

Colman & Company

Self Management Workout 7.1

REFLECT THE BEST HANDOUT

With your partner, do your best to notice and comment on only the positive aspects of the workplace and your relationships with the others who make up your organization.

Step 1

First discuss how unusual an assignment this is and share your thoughts and feelings about undertaking this rather curious kind of communication in the workplace.

Then each person acknowledges at least three different positive things about the physical structure of your work environment that you appreciate. For example, the office is comfortable and attractive. These need to be sincere appreciations, not cleverly disguised ways of avoiding the unfamiliar and possibly uncomfortable positive orientation required by the exercise. In other words, saying, “Well, at least it doesn’t smell like sewage” would not be an acceptable appreciation—unless of course it did last week and they just recently fixed the problem.

Step 2

The next step is to acknowledge to each other at least two things you appreciate about upper management.

Step 3

Now acknowledge at least one thing you sincerely appreciate about each of the other members of your team or work group.

Then begin to acknowledge the things you genuinely appreciate about your partner in this exercise. When someone offers you an appreciation, your only response will be to say, “Thank you.”

Step 4

When we are able to consciously manage our beliefs, it is easier to improve our attitudes. When we pay attention to those attitudes and notice how we are approaching the present activity in our day, it is easier to manage our emotional states. When we are feeling safe, optimistic, respectful, and so on, then managing our behavior is a much simpler task and it is easier to be intentionally supportive and appreciative of the others around us, and our efforts begin to generate virtuous (rather than vicious) cycles in the workplace environment.

Now the whole team together discusses the following four beliefs to see if they would be generally acceptable to the team. Be sure to explore the possible costs, downsides, and changes that would be required to adopt these beliefs and list the upsides in one column and downsides in another.

1.            Simply by being alive, all people possess intrinsic value and a unique way through which they share their value.

2. There is a real bottom-line payoff in taking a little extra time to care for others.

3. Today I’m going to do my best to leave people feeling more resourceful than I find them.

4. It is good for me to give sincere praise generously. (This means looking long enough to find what is genuinely praiseworthy.)

Now fill in the list for each of the four beliefs above, noticing the pluses and minuses for the team adopting these beliefs.

Now agree to spend the rest of the day doing your best to reflect the best in everyone and see how your team blossoms!

Bonus

Some tips for managing your emotional state include making eye contact with the people you encounter and smiling before greeting them with a welcoming comment in a friendly tone. This is about changing your behavior, which you can consciously control, in order to positively affect your own emotional state (and that of others), which you may often think you cannot.

For more on this Read: Emotional Intelligence in Action. Copyright © 2006 by Marcia Hughes, L. Bonita Patterson, & James Bradford Terrell. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. Or email us today if you’d like to use the results of a Leadership EQ Assessment, email us anytime @ colmancoaching@gmail.com