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How to Empower yourself and others for more successes, fewer failures
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Benefits to you
In this article, I summarize key concepts and practical applications to improve results, communications, trust, and time management with volunteers, family members, and professional colleagues. You should also learn 'to focus better on what is most important to you in life, Civitan, and where you should develop yourself for greater impact. I present highlights of a simple, yet powerful, model and supporting ideas developed during the last decade working with numerous individuals, teams, and organizatiion.
------ Dr. David Dyson
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Common Sense for
Common Mistakes
As a professor of management and an executive coach, I have learned a few of the most common managerial mistakes -- in business, volunteerism, and family life:
1. Treat everyone the same rather than according to each person's needs and wants. Many leaders choose one main
leadership level -- with good intentions -- and follow it proudly without realizing that some of the people need something else.
Some affirm,"I recruit good people and then empower them" Some people like this, and others interpret this as,"I don't get any leadership"
To the other extreme, some leaders claim something like,"I give my people hands-on attention and am there to support them all
the way" Some people respond well while others misinterpret the good intentions as "he must not trust me because he constantly checks up on what I do"
2. Assume that everyone is motivated by the same values and goals as you are. It is easy to assume that a volunteer feels similar to you, and then fmd out later she pursued a different path.
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3. Start an important role or project without a design or shared under-
standing with other key people. When leaders and volunteers do not discuss their assumptions and wants, the chances are greater that they might get disappointed in each other, themselves, and in Civitan. When they do start with a shared vision, they experience more successes, fewer failures, and enjoy the journey much more.
I see these three mistakes virtually everywhere-- in most cases the people
have good intentions, though somewhere beween our intentions and
our impact we sometinges disagree or disappoint each other. The concepts seem so simple to some that they
overlook them or put off acting on them. On important matters, it is very helpful to create and clarify our
understandings because ...we tend to judge ourselves based on our intentions while others tend to
respond to us based on how we affect them
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Simple Solutions
Invest at least five min-
utes to:
1. Orient the individual or
group on how you plan to
work with them based on
their attitude and ability for
an activity, and receive their
agreement or suggestions
for in~provement.
2. Ask and listen to under-
stand what the person
wants to accomplish (goals)
and why (motivation).
3. Create an agreement for
the key results, methods, fol-
low-up, and rewards ....
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Just as design before construction saves money, time, and heartache, this investment in advance can pay huge dividends through increased results and decreased problems. This proves particularly important in volun-
teerism because we usually do not see the other people as often as in the
workplace or the home.
I consider most of my ideas as merely"common sense organized" into models and applications we can use more effectively. At the risk of appearing to overstate the value of these ideas, I boldly claim that no
one applying these concepts has reported that they hindered them. In
most cases the results have been positive, even transformational.
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