Ignite Passion and Performance with User Friendly Brain Tools
Feedforward is usually far easier to give than feedback. Most of the time it is more helpful: specific, clear, actionable, and positive. Learn what it is, and how to do it well. Improve relationships at work and home. Achieve success more easily.
This video is Bob Faw teaching how to use feedforward, in performance management, and elsewhere in life.
Energizing learning, and future generations of motivated citizens. Wonderful.
When you have the whole A.C.T. team (Artist, Caveman and Thinker) working together, you are at your best. You can tell you are in this space when you have the following characteristics:
When you have your “A.C.T.” together, you can make your best decisions. You will be flexible, “change-ready,” have less stress, and be a more positive influence on other people. You’ll also be increasingly likable the more you are in this mode. The faster you can get your A.C.T. team to work together, the more you’ll enjoy your circumstances. You’ll increase passion and performance for a fulfilling and successful life.
Read more excerpts or buy the book.
This Kid is my motivational speaker idol now! Move over Tony Robbins! I’m moving over. Let Kid President take the stage.
I can’t wait to see what he does next.
This is my favorite thing to teach. Being able to positively influence oneself is a critical skill for anyone increasing success, happiness, and even health.
There will be more videos teaching how to apply these concepts and tools in your life.
Stay tuned!
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Shawn Achor is a dynamic speaker and writer on this topic.
His take, through the Harvard Business Review on positive intelligence is a fantastic example of putting the science of happiness ahead of outdated conventional wisdom.
Even though he is a “competitor” of sorts I can only speak highly of everything I’ve seen him put out there.
Rock on, Shawn! You are a major player in what I call the Positive Change Revolution!
Charlie has clearly articulated a powerful approach to creating a career you can love. It’s an approach that we have used successfully as well.
Our Story at Matchbox Group:
In mid-2009, when work slowed down dramatically, I did the same thing. We had all this free time on our hand so we decided to go out and do what we loved for free until people could pay us. We realized that the best thing for creating paying work, is when people have experienced good work of ours.
The ways that have worked for us:
Their mission is one we are passionate about
We like them as people and working with them was enjoyable
We have the time to do it
The benefits
My challenge for you
What can you do to create even more passion in your career?
Last year I blogged about this amazing nonprofit in “Deep full-life transformation“.
This video is a compilation of client interviews we made over about 6 months. Very inspiring!
This video shows Benjamin Zander in full glory presenting at TED.com. Being a world-class conductor, he speaks to influence and leadership using marvelous musical analogies. He has wonderful stories that are worth the video themselves as well. And his shoe salesmen joke is a classic example of looking for solutions.
Positive Change Questions
These three questions create positive direction, momentum and creativity–fast. I’d guess that in most situations 95% of the problems that might have been brought up in tension-causing ways are dealt with simply by answering these questions. That saves a lot of potential waste of time and emotional energy from blaming, defensiveness, avoidance, obfuscation of the goals, etc. If there are still problems to be dealt with after answering these questions, I find that people address them more positively and optimistically having already created significant momentum towards their goal(s).
Our Positive Change Questions tend to increase momentum, goal-focus and unity in a team. Each question has specific effects on the people answering them:
Goals? It is part of being human to be regularly distracted from our goals by the demands of the day, the stressors of the moment, and the frustrations caused by problems. It can be easy to become focused on fixing problems that may have little impact on our actual goals, particularly in interpersonal dynamics. Answering this question helps to refocus ourselves on the point of why we’re doing what we’re doing.
What works? This helps us build upon momentum that already exists by first asking about our past successes. This question has many powerful benefits. This builds confidence by focusing upon the capabilities, attitudes, tools and resources we already have. It helps us to remember to do what has been successful when we might otherwise have left it behind unnoticed and unappreciated. A third benefit is that we learn during these dialogues about many best practices that others have used and how they were used successfully. Then we focus on what is currently working for others. This broadens our focus by learning from others’ best practices as well. These conversations also help motivate people to strive to create best practices that will be mentioned in such discussions in the future. There is a very healthy pride that is cultivated in these discussions as well.
I’ve noticed with many clients that “What works?” is rarely used during most teams’ problem solving. This habit often lowers morale, creates meetings most people loathe, and the too common Blame Game.
What else? I find it very helpful to do this after the “What’s working” discussion so that we are building upon the momentum and thus it is far easier to keep focused on solutions and away from blame.
It is helpful to “think out of the box” regularly, too. Allowing a free flow of ideas on other alternatives is the fundamental step in innovation. I’ve found it also builds a sense of vitality and creativity in teams. Done well, it cultivates a culture in which ideation is rewarded and innovation is fostered. It is very helpful to have commonly agreed upon brainstorming guidelines during this stage.