While chasing coffee drops and chocolate rushes; take a mental picture of the ever growing number of coworkers, family and friends that are spinning their wheels and getting nowhere.
I’m not unveiling the lazy! The goal is to bring awareness to the hardest working force since your Great Grandparents on a beat up rugged farm somewhere in Middle America; and nothing is coming from holding down three part time jobs or full time positions that demand 10 to 15 hours a day with no extra pay.
The American dream still might be the happy home but only if you can afford the unbearable taxes cities and states demand.
Peel back a truer face and you'll see a different set of eyes; a one day wish of being recognized for your hard work and dedication. Unlike the NBA and NFL free agency on the average eight to five front is what you’re willing to give your company free. But whose fault is that? Not the employer but the employee.
The weakness isn’t your loyalty but the quality of your leadership.
Author Seth Godin brings up a very important point, “People are becoming better followers. They follow instructions, follow the pack while honing their skills but find no reason to hide their fear of leading.”
How can there be a crack in the path of success if the same people keep stepping up to lead?
Why doesn’t the backbone of this one time great nation want to lead? Susan Mazza wrote in 2009, “The majority of us don’t give ourselves the proper credit. We are taught to work as a team.”
Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner reported that 80% of the countries unemployed elect not to work by choice; choosing full time education instead.
Godin thinks leadership slips when we set ourselves inside tribes and or groups of people that have nothing in common with our goals and aspirations.
We take jobs that have the best salary available then spend weeks hating rather than relating. How can you sell a cow to a city slicker? But the pay is! What have you got to lose right? How many times have you been in this position and the more you switch jobs the deeper you cut into your credit report because having so many job changes doesn’t paint a great picture to banks and other lenders. So…the mission becomes a lip biting pay the price moment that does more damage to your heart, lungs and body than you can visibly see.
Social Networking is more than an hourly update of the Golden Globe Awards. To millions Face Book is still in a toy and Twitter doesn’t give you enough space to speak your peace. You can’t get ahead in the game of success if the only thing you offer people on the web is a line reading, “Headed to the grocery store.” Tell me which one! Show me a picture of the apples. Make it interesting because through the efforts of making your life better you are leading banana lovers to better prices or flavor.
Wait! Wait! Isn’t that what the highly touted book The Secret is all about…taking what has been presented and allowing it to move through you to another person, place or thing. I don’t play music on the radio to play music. Looking at the entire picture, songwriters and promoters visit studios to share their art…through radio it can become the song that makes your day better. John Lennon was quoted to say, “I didn’t find recording to be pleasant; but once it was completed something unforgettable had taken place.” The Beatles are my weakness more in their reasons for doing things and how they did it than the lyrics they pasted on round black objects. If I elect to set their lesson aside and never share it...I deserve to be unhappy.
When I dine at a restaurant, stop to check out a movie, concert or take in an author or artist at the mall and it shows up on Face Book I do it out of support for the place of business. We aren’t walking advertisements but rather tools in the art of relationship.
Such connections create tribes or circles of people; leadership grows from the things you know.
Godin teaches, “When you lead a tribe the benefits increase, the work gets easier and the results are more obvious. That’s the best way to overcome fear.”
Stop thinking of your job as being the prime source of your happiness or lack of; where you work should be looked upon as being what I call your biggest and best client. You’re in the business of you and how you take care of your clients will determine the outcome of the business you lead.
But these are only words and all too often such fingerprints hit the lining of your eyes then quickly fall back onto the screen for the next passerby. Master Harris lives by one rule, “Winning is a choice…so is losing.”
If working all the time and not getting recognized is your current place on the map; are you sacrificing more by electing to stay or deciding to move forward which might include a different town, new friends and quite possibly no job security?
What spawned this crazy talk? A stunt on Saturday Night Live performed by actor/comedian Kenan Thompson where he looked dead into the camera and said, “Put your right hand right here. Now put your left hand here and pull yourself up. It’s time to make America strong again.”
Minutes later I hit the DVR to catch Donald Trump on Late Night television talking about why he wants to run for President of the United States, “Because nobody respects America anymore. We aren’t rebuilding our economy we’re making China extremely rich.”
The Super Bowl is in two weeks; advertising agencies are busting tail to create the perfect most talked about 30 seconds of the year. It can’t and won’t happen without leadership. You don’t need envelopes to deposit checks at Bank of America and Wachovia; deciding to go green took leadership. A man walks into a local movie theater, his wife is in a wheelchair, the man calmly returns to management saying, “Thank you for creating an area for my wife to sit but to reach it I have to lift the chair or have my wife lift herself up from the chair and walk to a different area.” Today, that area of the theater is 100% wheelchair capable. Leadership…
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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