Wisdom gained from Ward

My first sales manager as the "new kid" in sales was Ward Parsons. I'd been promoted from Sales Support were I'd been a R.I.C.  Retail Installation Coordinator to Account Manager. I was very excited. After 11 months in the first position (Well over 80,000 miles and over 32 new or renovated stores completed) I was now in the position I'd applied for initially. Bonus was I'd be having my sales training done by Trevor Hunt. That was a first rate addition to my career.

Oh, I'd had been fortunate to have several significant people up until this point help guide, direct and assist me grow my professionalism. However Ward was the first one that was there in a career position whose role was to ensure I grew my professional skills. Wards work with me has had some career long positive implications. 

The Art of Questions 

Ward was very good at asking questions. Some to relax you, and some to help you settle in. Then he used others to draw you out and learn more about your week, your hobbies, your upcoming holiday and in one case a dessert he heard I very much enjoyed.  Then as the timing fit he'd ease you into a position of asking the ones he had to get to that were work related.

He was very gifted at asking supportive questions. So, Michael how can I or the folks at head office support you on this? So, he acknowledged issues, gave me ownership over the issue and offered to be a resource to assist fixing or improving the situation. 

The biggest gift Ward always offered up was that 100% of his attention was invested in a very non threatening way so you knew his presence and concentration was there with you at the table.  Some would say he was practicing being mindful and in the moment, others would say he paid attention. Regardless of what you call it to this fellow (I was just 12 months fresh out of college) he was the right man for the job!

My career time with him was short. Only about 22 months. Yet his impact is still going forward to this day.  His inquiry style of questions, non threatening, often moderately paced made meetings with me ones to look forward to. He to use the current buzz word was first rate at engaging people and drawing them out.

So, how do you ask questions? How do you listen once you've asked? What do you do to manage or get rid of distractions with coworkers, family or neighbours?  Ward was so good at it that long before it was popular I started calling him Coach.  I hope for your sake that you have at least one person in your life like Ward and in time we have more of what he always offered.  Being in the moment and being engaged with those we spend time with.

So, until next time  Imagine Yourself with more Resiliency for Life.

Michael Ballard specializes in helping people, schools, teams

organizations and communities learn how to become more resilient.

Hiring and Contacting Michael

To book Michael for your next event or to contact him you can do that at:

Inquiry@MichaelHBallard.com

www.MichaelHBallard.com

You can purchase Michael's programming on:

Udemy.com video programs at:

https://www.udemy.com/u/michaelhballard/

 iTunes.com audio programs at:

https://itunes.apple.com/album/id997763796?ls=1&app=itunes

Michael’s Social Media includes:

https://twitter.com/ResilientMichae

https://about.me/resilientmichael

https://www.linkedin.com/company/resiliency-for-life/

http://www.resiliencyforlife.com

    

How do we deepen our Resilience?

How?

By virtue of the fact you’re reading this tells me you have resiliency. A key question is how do we deepen, and widen our capacity to thrive?
 Falsehoods and Lies – These can wear us down and hurt us, as like the half truths they are not all accurate.

• Indicating that we’re what? Very Tall? Short?

• Never mind the 79 - 197 hours your practiced,

Michael H Ballard is a SME – Subject Matter Expert on Resiliency. He consults and trains with individuals and groups, organizations and communities on how to develop and deepen their resiliency.

 Let’s start at the beginning.

A key component of being resilient is our ability to understand, manage and nurture our self-definition. What is self-definition you ask? Good question. 

Self Definition is a compilation of how we’ve knowingly and unknowingly defined ourselves based on many variables. These include our race, colour, creed, gender, physical traits, IQ, EQ, how we where parented, our health  extended family, neighbourhood, workplace, educational levels attained, the media, community and country to name just a few.

Where  should we start?

Let us start with you considering this concept about Self Definition.

If there was a picture of you in the dictionary; not just any dictionary but one that is confidential and only you can see. Your dictionary only! Now, let us take a trip inside this confidential dictionary to see what you’ll discover and uncover.

First realize that there are three key types of items and memories stored here.

The first are the truths about us. However some of the things we think are the truth in time are not always 100% accurate.

Half Truths – Half Falsehoods

~ These are beliefs about us that can confuse and misdirect us as we lack clarity because of them. I.e. You’re just like your (Place name here) and will never do well in math. When in fact perhaps you’re not going to be a Engineer, or a Physicist, yet could do very well as a business professional using business math.

What to do about these three categories?

Well, several years back I mentored a young gentleman who’d lived on the street for ten years. After several deep and meaty conversations he shared the phrase “Fearless moral inventory”. Great phrase. I’d suggest a slightly gentler approach. Consider something along the lines of a “Deep and wide honest inventory of how have I defined myself to date? Then, what should be adjusted? Added? Thrown out?

 It is a process so it will not just happen over night. However if we have the courage to understand that we took years to get this way than real change can often happen in hours, days and weeks. If we keep practicing. The road to mastery is one built on excellence not perfection.

No where to be seen between Positive and Negative thoughts, half truths are the neutral way of thinking that is also negative.

So, how do these three key types of files in our private and confidential internal dictionary show up?

Generally people have them there as positive, negative and half-truths.

Words

I.e.

-          Stupid – Oh don’t be so stupid!

-          Amazing – It is amazing how you do that so well.

Phrases

I.e. -          You’re just like your …

Under weight? Over weight? Smart? Stupid?

Incredibly good looking?

-          You’re so lucky

the lessons you took and the mentor you had. You lucky? Not a chance. Luck favours the prepared. You prepared. You gained some mastery!

Pictures I.e. Images burnt into our brain of a very upbeat or very negative time.

Use caution of reviewing our failures and mistakes. Over time we run the risk of programming ourselves for more failures and mistakes.

Mini movies and sound tracks

I.e. They play over and over and over again if we give them permission. They become burnt into our brain of a very upbeat or very negative time. They can influence our mood, our relationships our happiness and our success.

Replaced the negative ones with new ones. Write a new script! Act it out in the privacy of your bedroom or Living room.

 We need to stay vigilant against a society that works on a negative asset basis. We’re consistently feed messages that if we just “wore the right clothes, drove a certain car, lived in a certain area, attended a certain school, we’d be smarter, more successful and more likeable. All not true of course. Yet the cosmetics, fashion industry and many others do quite well with that pitch. Not that a new piece of clothing is not a good thing. Just not a replacement of the homework we all should be doing.

Well with over 80% of what we think and are told framed in the negative it is no wonder we have “issues” around resiliency. Feeling comfortable in our own skin and managing our Self Definition is a very powerful first step. Foundational work some of us would say.

So nothing like the present to start to walk the talk about resiliency.

What area of your Self Definition will you work on today? The time is now to take this on and start to build and rid of what blocks you as you house clean.

So, until next time, Imagine Yourself with more Resiliency forLife.

Michael

Hiring and Contacting Michael

To interview Michael, book him for your 

next event or to contact him you can do that at:

Inquiry@MichaelHBallard.com

www.MichaelHBallard.com

You can purchase Michael's programming on:

Udemy.com video programs at:

https://www.udemy.com/u/michaelhballard/

 iTunes.com audio programs at:

https://itunes.apple.com/album/id997763796?ls=1&app=itunes

Michael’s Social Media includes:

https://twitter.com/ResilientMichae

https://about.me/resilientmichael

https://www.linkedin.com/company/resiliency-for-life/

https://soundcloud.com/michael-h-ballard

http://www.resiliencyforlife.com

Lessons from Miss Patton for a Life Time

Lessons That Have Served Me A Lifetime
Dedicated to Miss Doris M. Patton my Grade One Teacher


The intensity of our conversation was and is still a very positive experience as I reflect on it. I can remember talking with my Mom (she was working at the kitchen table doing food prep) about starting to attend public school like it happened yesterday.

Me in business mode

My Mom, Dawn, was very pleased that her first-born was heading off for his first day in Grade One. I too was very excited and pleased. Being the extroverted one that I was and remain, first day represented friends to be made, lessons to learn, teachers to meet, and things to experience.


Little did I know, however, that within the first three weeks of school my Grade One teacher, Miss Doris Patton, would quickly find several key factors about me. Some that have positively defined me and help me with career choices, others that would define a couple of attributes that in her words, “These will challenge Michael and will hinder him. Perhaps be hard on him during his time in school. However, he has skills and gifts both in the classroom and in the playground that will serve him well, once he leaves school.”


At the time, I know did not know how those words would later ring true. Seems yours truly has some interesting combinations of talents and “issues.” I do not like, fact is I have strong disdain for, the common phrase or description of strengths and weaknesses. I am more of a “strengths and challenges” kinda person.


What Miss Patton so quickly identified, dedicated educator and very intuitive professional that she was, was my eye-hand coordination issue. Printing and writing to me was then and today remains a challenge.


“Slow down, practice more, not so fast, try another pen/pencil, try again… .” How many hundreds of times did I hear those instructions during the first 10 years of school. Later in life, in a state of serious frustration, I bought a typewriter with Pica font 10 point and extended carriage! I am so sure that many of my teachers who could now read what I put to paper breathed a huge sigh of relief.


Miss Patton’s skills and the lessons that I learned from her that have served me well over the years are:
Pay attention to those around you. Each has gifts that often exceed ours in several categories or in different ways than we have.
Pay attention to your intuition. Miss Patton figured this out about me in less than 20 days of classroom time. Her experience, her attentiveness and intuition. First rate.
Third lesson and biggest of them all: Stay respectful. One never knows what the other person or persons we are living next door to or working with are facing. I never felt less than with Miss Patton. Her gift to me was to make me feel I could be and do more. What a gift she shared.


This was a very big gift to give a child just starting out in school. Little did she know how much I would need to hang on to her words for Grade Two. But that is a story for another time. Miss Patton offered up to me untold patience, kindness and insights into my future and myself. I’ve always held her up as a first-rate example of what a teacher should be.




I was blessed to spend a day at the track. High speed safety training. Interesting and exciting. A wonderful gift.


So until next time Imagine Yourself having more Resiliency for Life.




To interview Michael, book him for your next event or to have him consult with your group can contact him at:






To interview Michael, book him for your


next event or to consult you can contact him at:


Inquiry@MichaelHBallard.com


www.MichaelHBallard.com




You can purchase Michael's audio programming on iTunes at:

https://itunes.apple.com/album/id997763796?ls=1&app=itunes






https://twitter.com/ResilientMichae


https://about.me/resilientmichael





https://www.linkedin.com/company/resiliency-for-life/

https://soundcloud.com/michael-h-ballard

http://www.resiliencyforlife.com

Lessons Learned From Mr. L. Smith Science Teacher KCSS

Lessons Learned From Mr. Smith 

Respect Makes a Difference

Michael H Ballard of Resiliency for Life

I have had many significant teachers in my life. Some formally at the head of a classroom and others as next door neighbours, friends, coworkers, managers and some out and out strangers who I spent time with for only a short period of time.

Today though I wanted to honour one who in a very brief moment showed finesse and an emotional intelligence that both respected the student who had made a punishable offence twice, spared his feelings, made the point and showed the class his leadership skills while then at the same time ensure that the class understood the issue at hand.

I was in science class with Mr. Smith as the teacher. He was upbeat, respectful, and he made his topic of science interesting and it stuck.  The student who goofed and created this punishable offence was like the rest of us in Grade 10 just trying to fit in and being teenager’s explore life in all the ways teenagers do.

Expect he had bought porn to school and did not try to hide it. This was not dainty cute lots of airbrushed PG13 no brown paper bag required porn but instead it was very vile. Mr. Smith in catching the student grazing and lusting upon the pictures firmly asked him to bring it up to the front of the room with the magazine “Closed” so as to not offend anyone.

He then proceeded to ask the student why he felt the need to look at such a magazine in a public place. Did he not realize that some would find it offensive?

So Mr. Smith then ask the student to throw it in the wastebasket. The teacher then asked him why he didn’t invest his time in actually talking to a few of the young ladies in the school. Because if you invest your time talking with them instead of objectifying some of them, when the time is right, and you’re the right age amazing things could happen, with the right young lady with you.

Now you have to know that Mr. Smith was (and still is I certain) smart, hard working, approachable, volunteered more than most other teachers,  and his classes where ones we all enjoyed taking. However and it’s a big HOWEVER his wife was as professional and nice as him. She also volunteered at the school and was considered to be one of the best looking spouses that ever graced the halls of the school.

So, Mr. Smiths words rang very true that day in science class. The student in question had a hangdog look on his face and repeated several times, Yes Sir. Understood Sir. Okay Sir. Mr. Smith never raised his voice to make his point.  His words where well crafted, delivered with respect and he dealt with the student with dignity.

Thank you Mr. Smith for a First Class example of how to handle a behaviour issue with dignity and respect.  Plus he made certain both genders in the room knew that we should actually talk to each other. Connect with each other. Not objectify each other. I can remember it like yesterday. What a positive impact great communications makes.

So until next time, Imagine Yourself with more Resiliency for Life.

Michael

Michael Ballard specializes in helping people, schools, organizations and communities learn how to become more resilient.

Hiring and Contacting Michael

To interview Michael, book him for your 

next event or to contact him you can do that at:

Inquiry@MichaelHBallard.com

www.MichaelHBallard.com

You can purchase Michael's programming on:

Udemy.com video programs at:

https://www.udemy.com/u/michaelhballard/

 iTunes.com audio programs at:

https://itunes.apple.com/album/id997763796?ls=1&app=itunes

Michael’s Social Media includes:

https://twitter.com/ResilientMichae

https://about.me/resilientmichael

https://www.linkedin.com/company/resiliency-for-life/

https://soundcloud.com/michael-h-ballard

http://www.resiliencyforlife.com