If your life was perfect tomorrow, what would be different? That is the opening question someone will have to answer when coming to me for counsel. So, I am asking you that question. People have all kinds of visions on what life should be like, and ideas how they want life to be different. So do you. Everyone alive has one goal: to live the highest quality of life possible; to be fully alive. So answer the question: "If I could wake up tomorrow and be living the perfect life, what would it look like?"
Each of us personally, professionally, and organizationally, asks that very question. Asking and answering that question is certainly a goal, but unless there is a continual action plan for change, nothing happens.
Everyone becomes what they want to. This simply means that each of us posses a "mental model" for living life. Each time we experience a situation, our mental models simply processes the data and delivers a suggested response to you and if you don't examine the level of effectiveness of that response, then you simply, impulsively, do it. We do what we feel like doing; we do what we want to do. Everyone does. We do this day-after-day, week-after-week, year-after-year.
Everyone becomes what they want to, only some people think about it.
Our brains are incredibly powerful. There has been substantial research in recent years about the concept of neuroplasticity, which simply means that from birth, our brains form superhighways of processing and thought. As you look back at your life, you realize that some of those superhighways need to be torn down and new ones need to be built. The process of becoming more is exactly that.
Whether you are sitting down and reflecting on your personal life, your professional life, or the organizations you are involved with, this same process becomes evident. Every person, group, or organization becomes what he/she, they, or it wants to, unless they think about becoming more and are relentless in the pursuit of changing those superhighways.
My passion is to help leaders become more than what they are. I believe Emotional Intelligence (EI), strengths development, and personality development is the key to this being accomplished. Someone who trains themselves to exercise high emotional intelligence will have a much higher degree of success with self-management, social relationships, career success, and finally in the realm of leadership. The resonant leader is "one who can inspire, motivate, arouse commitment and sustain it, will constantly strengthen and fine tune his/her EI competencies and move fluidly between different leadership styles, flexing to meet the needs of the situation" - Katie Dearborn, Organizational Development Specialist.
Employees have higher degrees of job satisfaction and organizational commitment if they have both a personal commitment to work goals and also felt that the organizational environment lent itself to the achievement of these goals. Organizations are beginning to understand that a win-win situation can develop between the organization achieving its goals while at the same time helping the individual achieve his or her personal goals. This level of job control produces higher levels of intrinsic job satisfaction among employees. It's all about systems and people.
