If life throws you a lemon, hurl a melon back!

If life hands you a lemon, hurl a melon back!


“You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation”. Homer Rice

Coaching has become a term that is used by almost anyone to distinguish between one whom has insight and another who requires it. It somehow adds credibility to the process, however coaching is a specific ability to empower not counsel or teach, for to assume someone needs teaching is to create a divide between pupil and teacher. My experience as counselor, teacher/ lecturer and coach, has allowed me to become aware of specific skills and abilities essential to each of the a-fore mentioned roles.

“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment”. John Wooden

Some people tend to use the terms coaching, mentoring, and training interchangeably. However, there are differences. Mentoring is often thought of as the transfer of wisdom from a wise and trusted teacher. He or she helps to guide a person’s career, normally in the upper reaches of the organization. However, this perception is starting to change as organizations are now implementing mentoring at all levels of the company's structure.

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.” – Albert Schweitzer

Mentor - comes from the age of Homer, in whose Odyssey; Mentor is the trusted friend of Odysseus left in charge of the household during Odysseus's absence. Athena, disguised as Mentor, guides Odysseus's son Telemachus in his search for his father. Fénelon in his romance Télémaque (1699) emphasized Mentor as a character, and so it was that in French (1749) and English (1750) mentor, going back through Latin to a Greek name, became a common noun meaning "wise counselor." Mentor is an appropriate name for such a person because it probably meant "adviser" in Greek.

”Coaching is a profession of love. You can't coach people unless you love them”. Eddie Robinson
Training is about teaching or instructing a particular skill or knowledge and is normally given in a formal environment. Coaching, on the other hand, is about increasing an individual's knowledge and thought processes with a particular task or process. It creates a supportive environment that develops critical thinking skills, ideas, and behaviors about a subject. Although it is closely tied to training, it is more personal and intimate in nature.

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” – Galileo Galilei

The main difference between a coaching and training is that the former is normally done in real time. That is, it is performed on the job. The coach uses real tasks and problems to help the learner increase his or her performance. While with training, learning is performed within the classroom and often from a teacher –learner perspective. Changing ones job title and job description will not change the inner language that imparts outward change. Coaching is primarily about an inner passion to influence others by revealing how great one can become. Without first imparting an inner hunger to change, any external change will be provisional or temporal at best.

“A good coach will make his players see what they can become rather than what they are.” – Ara Parseghian

Mentoring is more career developing in nature, while training and coaching are more task or process orientated. Also, mentoring relies on the mentor's specific knowledge and wisdom, while coaching and training relies on facilitation and developmental skills. Although there are these differences, you could say that the three are synergistic and complementary, rather than mutually exclusive as most people would agree that a good coach trains and mentors, a good trainer coaches and mentors, and a good mentor trains and coaches.

“Make something of yourself. Try your best to get to the top, if that’s where you want to go, but know that the more people you try to take with you, the faster you’ll get there and the longer you’ll stay there.” – James A. Autry

Coaching has been defined as:

1) The processes of encouraging the individual to improve both job skills and knowledge (Hahne & Schultze, 1996),


2) To assist in problem solving or mastering new skills (Bittel & Newstrom, 1996),


3) and the process of providing others with valuable information so that the organization learns (Schon, 1983).

Life is not defined by the cards your dealt, but by how you use them. We can fold, bluff or use them. I have had a few bum cards dealt me over the years, but I am still in the game of my life!

Over the years I have learned one critical factor that is paramount to address prior to embarking on any training process and it is this. "One will never change the individual or organisation without first changing the culture by which it does business." If the culture is mediocre, its outcome will never be excellent. If an individual is content with life as it is, ones spirit will never strive for anything great.

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning".- Benjamin Franklin

Anyone for a melon?

Trails End

One of my all time favourite films is “City Slickers.” A story of four friends working through their mid-life crisis, whilst learning to drove cattle through a perilous range. Fraught with mishaps and personal crisis, the journey is all about discovering ones personal values in life and in particular "the one thing" that shapes and directs who we are and yes, what inspired me to write the book and produce the D.V.D. series of the same name.

As funny as the film is, it is a jolt to us all on keeping perspective in life and living. When I was a younger man, I would laugh at the term "mid-life" crisis. A little further down the trail and now I recognize the characters from the film as bastions of rhyme and reason. Prophetic characters from a wilderness of lost expectation and he tyranny of the urgent. These days, I am more interested in quality than quantity.

Billy Crystal who played the character Mitch Robbins is talking at his sons "show and tell" grade class about "what my dad does at work."

Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you're a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, "What happened to my twenties?" Your forties, you grow a little pot belly you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Your fifties you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery. Your sixties you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before. And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering "how come the kids don't call?" By your eighties, you've had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can't stand but who you call mama. Any questions?

What an hilarious but tragic picture of a life lived so fast that at the end of the race all is a blur. I don't suppose any of us would in our darkest hours imagine that image could represent us? No WAY!!! ahumm.

We need some more wisdom from the trail hands, lol.

1.Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.

2.Always drink upstream from the herd.

3.There's two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither one works.

4.Never miss a good chance to shut up.

5.We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

6.Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.

7.The best way out of a difficulty is through it.

8.There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence.

9.What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

10.Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.

11.An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.

12.If you're riding' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.

13.Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back.

14.Don't squat with your spurs on.

16.If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

17.It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.

Oh and number 15

Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.

Oh and 15. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.

Things I Have Learned - When Good Enough Isn't Good Enough

Human nature is fascinating!

Throughout life, we are all faced with daily issues that challenge, excite and shape us. Most of us would say that we appreciate the good things we experience and dislike those which hold us back. For the most part, we are content with the "good things" and content with our good performance.

"The game was really good"
"He did a good job"
"It's for your own good"

These are all common statements that we use and are content with. It expresses that things are fine, acceptable; we are pleased with the outcome. But is good, good enough? "Good is the enemy of best"

Consider the surgeon who operates on the philosophy of good being good enough, when performing open heart surgery!

Or the pilot who is within a degree of his anticipated course - (over the length of a long haul journey, you can actually miss a continent)

Or the Olympic 100 meters sprinter who was 1/10th of a second outside of the world’s best time and gets silver.

Maybe a straight "A" student who was one percent below the pass marks and as a result settles for a "second best" career.

A builder whose foundations are good but not perfect according to the plans, is courting disaster at some point during the storm. Or the accountant, who omits to file your tax return on time, but remembered to go on a world cruise and leave you to it!

You see, there are many times in life when being good just isn't good enough and thankfully, we rest confident in those individuals who shun being good and pursue excellence. Being good is a great place to start, but we should peruse going beyond what is acceptable or good and develop an attitude that takes us into excellence.

Here are some simple things we can all excel in and move beyond the "being good is good enough" behavior.

1. OUR WORD - Never promise that which you know you can't deliver. Being a person of your word, means there will be a cost to you to keep it. I recall a good friend of mine taking his business into receivership because his debtors defaulted on what they owed him. Rather than doing the same to his creditors, he sold his assets and paid off all his debts. When I quizzed him for his reasoning, he said "I gave them my word."

2. OUR ACTIONS- Never do a "good enough" job. What sets you above the crowd is being above average. Average people do average work. I am not saying sell yourself short, but never sell anyone else short either. As an employer and employee, be prepared to go the extra mile.

There is an old Roman custom that authorized any soldier to command a local to carry his amour and kit for one mile. Those with an attitude of excellence carried the armour not for one mile but for two. "Going the extra mile". I make it a point of selecting my team leaders based on their "extra mile" attitude. Clock watchers don’t understand this philosophy and are likely to focus their actions elsewhere.

3. OUR LIFESTYLE- Never let the pursuit of excellence burden others in the process. Being excellent is not an issue of perfection, but an issue of attitude. One can have an excellent attitude and do a less than excellent job, but one can’t have average attitude and do an excellent job.

Why?

To be above the norm of average, we need to excel in our view of average. The saying "I can’t hear what your saying, because your LIFE speaks to loud" rings so true of many an average life. "When all is said and done, it's not what's said, but what's done."

Live life to the full, enjoy life extensively but consider the surgeon, pilot, sprinter, or academic. Their excellence, safeguards our choice of being average.