تفسیر درس

Do Something Right – Commentary

Welcome to the commentary for this month’s lesson. Let’s begin.

This is a leadership lesson. Now, when we do these leadership lessons you need to decide how to use these in your own life. If you’re working then you probably have an opportunity for leadership. Leadership doesn’t always mean you are the official boss it just means you’re working with other people. If you’re working with other people than you always have an opportunity to lead. Maybe it means you use leadership in your family, if you have children or other family members you can use these leadership ideas in your family. Having a family requires great leadership. You can even use this in your friendships or in a non-profit group that your part of or some hobby that you enjoy with other people. So, we all have opportunities in our life to be leader to have influence in a positive way with other people. So, you choose the area or areas in which to use this.

Let’s talk about the specific method that were working on this month. As a first step I’d like to talk about an idea that business guru, Tom Peters, calls Management by Walking Around. This is a common idea that he made popular. Management by Walking Around and it seems very simple. His idea was this he said instead of a boss, a leader sitting in their office giving orders at meetings. Instead the best leaders, the best managers that he saw in different companies were the ones who would just walk around constantly they were walking around the office chatting with their team members not to spy on them, but rather to just connect with them. Sometimes in a very short relaxed casual friendly way.

So, instead of hiding away in the office they would be constantly in contact with their team members. This might just mean walking around and visiting each team members desk and saying hi, how are you doing? How are you doing today? Any problems today? How are things going? Very simple things like that but, the fact is building those relationships by constantly walking around staying in contact in close contact with their team members all the time. Management by Walking Around we can use this idea in our own lives in many ways, because the main idea is not so much that your walking around you don’t have to physically be walking around, but the idea the key point is that you constant connection constant contact with your team members. So, if you’re in a job that means you’re constantly being in contact with them, constantly communicating.

Sometimes in just a friendly way just as a friend doesn’t have to always be about the work, but it’s also about the work too. With your family let’s say if you have children it means that you just you constantly just talk to them your there for them. Just that time is important even if your just chatting it’s nothing exciting it’s nothing too deep just the frequent connection with them it’s very, very important. And it’s the same with friends if you want to have that leadership with your friends well then you need to be in frequent contact with them.

So, that’s are first thing that’s the technique of it so, there’s not an official thing where you have to sit down with everybody and I’m now the leader and I’m telling you what to do and all so serious and heavy it can be Management by Walking Around just constant little short contacts, but that happen constantly through the day, through the week, through the month, through the year. So, these things can happen in little small pieces.

As you do this kind of management by walking around this frequent contact friendly relaxed contact your gonna do two things to main things Number one your gonna prioritize, prioritize means to figure out what is most important what’s second most important, what’s third most

important and what’s not important at all. As you do this for your team and for each team member choose one to three things that are most important fewer is usually better. The more priorities you add the less focus that person can be less focus the whole team can be.

So, you really need to become clear about what is the main thing I want this team member to do? Or to improve or to work on. Maybe you might need to identify two things they really need to focus on maybe three at the maximum tho no more than three. So, be clear on your priorities you can make a little sheet of paper for each team member and decide this is your number one priority this is your number two. This is number one this is number two for you.

Again you can do this with children if you have your own children. You know kids have priorities too I don’t know if it’s their school work for you or them being nice I don’t know what it is you know your own kids so, but you could just identify one or two things. One problem I think parents have a lot of times is they just have just too many things you’re always complaining to their kids and they’re always telling to do too many things. Do this, do that, do that so the kid just feels like they’re constantly being nagged, constantly being criticized, constantly being told what to do. With a long, long list of all these things clean up your room you know be nice to your sister, study, get good grades, don’t be so lazy, stop watching t.v. just this long list they can’t focus on all those things and it just makes them feel terrible.

So, figure out what is the one or two really, really, really, really, really important things. What are the one or two important things? And just focus on those and be clear to them about them. These are the two that are most important and it’s the same in a work situation for a team member focus on these two, focus on these three, and focus on this one.

And then the next thing you do is management by walking around once you’ve identified the key priorities then you just walk around other words you have lots and lots of contacts with them and you just notice when they’re doing those things. You try to find out, you try to see, you try to notice any sign of effort or improvement or progress. In the beginning if they’re not very good at it you can just praise their effort, because that’s important, because it shows that they’re focused on what’s important. They’re focused on the priority that’s a key thing so, you want to compliment that, you want to praise it, you want to reinforce it.

What this is about is just reinforcing the priorities showing again and again through repetition that yes these are the important things and you have to be around them a lot to notice this cause if your just hiding away then you’re not gonna notice them doing these things so, you really got to be around a lot so you can see them making an effort or making an improvement or making progress or having a success in one of those one to two to three things and when they do it then you praise them this is so, simple you praise them you just say good job you did a great job and your specific not just general don’t just say good job, good job, good job that’s kind of an empty phrase. Instead you say let’s say it’s a child and your number one thing is school work instead you say hey great job I like that you got your homework done immediately when you came home, you showed a lot of concentration, you didn’t get distracted, you didn’t turn off the t.v. fantastic that’s great.

See how much better that is when it’s really specific you’re really pointing out the specific things were good? So, you’ve got to make it specific, specific phrase and again noticing it constantly, noticing it daily really. So, you really got to be around a lot so you really notice these little small things doesn’t have to be big don’t wait till until they make a big effort or a big change or a big improvement cause then you might wait forever. Praise even the tiniest thing. When I first started teaching English my very first job was teaching small children. Small kind of like five years old four years old in Korea. I had never taught before I walked into this room with about ten little Korean kids now first they were kind of scared of me cause I was new and strange.

But, quit quickly after several days they weren’t scared of me anymore and they started to get wild and go crazy they would run around, they would yell, they wouldn’t listen to me plus they didn’t understand me very well. They didn’t understand English so it was even worse. And it made me crazy I had them for four hours every day and they’re wilder and wilder and crazier and they couldn’t learn anything if they were running around screaming all the time, so fighting each it was horrible. Now I was stressed out I didn’t know what to do so, the first thing I tried was punishment I just yelled at them sit down, stop that constantly running around yelling at them for doing things wrong.

And you know I scared them and so, they would stop for a minute, but then a few minutes later they would start misbehaving again and just became very stressful this whole thing became very stressful for me to be yelling at them all the time constantly catching them dong stuff wrong and it became very stressful for the kids too.

You know they would cry sometimes cause I yelled at them “I know it’s sad” well eventually I figured out this isn’t working so, I need to try something different I start reading books about teachers and managing kids and management in general so, I decided I need to change my approach instead of yelling at them all the time I’m gonna focus on just a few things and I’m going to focus on rewarding them. Praising them rewarding them for doing the right thing. And I realized the number one priority the number one thing I needed was quiet and discipline I needed them to be calm, because I knew if they weren’t calm if they couldn’t just sit down in their seats and listen, if they couldn’t line up in a line and go to the bathroom and go to different classes and I knew if they could not do that they couldn’t learn, because they would be distracted and crazy all the time.

So, I realized before English I needed to teach them some discipline just some self-control so, that was my number one thing I’m just gonna focus on that only. And then I made a little point system it was a reward system so that whenever one of them was doing a good job for example sitting in their chair quietly I would say good job to the kid good job Jimmy and then on my board my white board I would give them a point. One point for Jimmy yeah. Now, this seems crazy right, because the points didn’t mean anything they didn’t get anything special there were no prizes.

So why do this? Well, because what they were really getting the points didn’t matter the numbers didn’t matter what was important was they were getting attention for doing something good doing something desirable and so all the rest of the class would notice that A.J., the teacher, he’s saying nice things. He’s being very nice. He’s giving a lot of attention to this one child for doing something good. In this case, sitting quietly and listening and so the others would get excited and they all wanted my attention. So then they would sit and be quite and look at me waiting and I would say oh…good job, good job Suzy yeah and I would give her a point and then that would get everybody’s attention and soon they were all competing to get more points to get my attention by doing good things it was amazing. Was it perfect? No, of course, they’re little children so sometimes they still made noise, but overall the improvement was huge suddenly I had a more disciplined class. They could sit and listen to me and because of that they learned they started to learn English and then once that was accomplished I could focus more on teaching them English and indeed they learned quit quickly within three months they were only speaking English in my class no Korean at all it was only possible by them having more self-control and I achieve that by finding the points by reinforcing what they right not by yelling at them all the time, not by finding what they did wrong, but instead focusing on what they did right reinforcing the good things and I also did this by focusing on only a few things by prioritizing.

I had to just pick for example my first thing it was just having them sit quietly while I was teaching. That was the first thing and I just focused on that I didn’t I didn’t want to have a hundred things that I needed them to do it was too much just one thing sit quietly. Once they could do that they I would choose another one. I would choose okay line up line up quickly and quietly without fighting and pushing. Cause sometimes we had to walk as a class to another classroom to music or something. So, we practiced doing that and again I rewarded them oh…good job good job to you. I noticed whenever one of them did a really great job, gave them a lot of attention and praised them. This way step-by-step, one thing at a time they got better and better and better and that’s the essence of catching people doing something right.

You have very few priorities if you identify one thing the best is just to identify one thing at a time the most important thing then you catch them making improvement, you catch them making an effort, you catch them doing good things related to that priority and the more you do this and praise and praise and praise others will join in and then eventually you’ve got the whole team working on that and it’s kind of a magical thing that happens. Once that is accomplished then you can say okay now we’ve got this now let’s go to our next priority the thing number two and you focus on that.

So, let’s talk about you now whether it’s at work or home whatever. You need to decide a few things in order to do this in your life.

1. Number one, who do you want to lead?

This is your first question the first thing you must answer.

• Who are you going to lead?

• Are you going to focus on your children this month doing this?

• Are you gonna focus on a group of people at your job or some other group of people some other organization or group that you are a member of?

• Answer that question.

• Who do you want to lead?

2. Question number two that you must answer this month, what do you want to see them

This is your priorities identifying the priorities. The best thing is to choose just one thing. What’s the most important change you want to see in this group? In these people that you are leading? You can make a list of three, but focus on number one. Write it down and share it with them don’t make this a mystery all right you don’t want them to guess oh…what’s important be clear about it just be very direct and open about it. If it’s your child say okay I want you to study one hour per day, I want you to finish this homework before you do anything else or I want you to say nice things to your sister everyday whatever it is it doesn’t matter you decide. If it’s at work then you say okay, I want you to come to work on time or I want you to be here five minutes early every single day, for example.

You decide what it is, but what is that one specific thing that’s most important. Write it down and then face to face with that person tell them exactly what that priority is, what that most important thing is. Share it with them.

Step number three you’re gonna walk around management by walking around and you’re going to catch them doing something right. Just think of it as your main job, your main effort is to just watch, watch, watch observe, observe all the time and try to catch every time they do a good job, every time they make a good effort and when they do give them specific praise specific don’t just say yeah good. Tell them why it’s good.

And finally, once they achieve that consistently, once they are consistently doing that thing, they’re consistently achieving priority number one then you can raise your standards and then have them make even bigger improvements and then you repeat the whole process again and this is it.

I know it’s simple it’s just two things prioritize and reinforce with specific praise, but this is powerful and because it’s simple it’s really quite easy and I think anyone can do this you don’t have to be some kind of natural leader you don’t have to have a lot of charisma to do this you don’t need to be a great public speaker, you don’t need to be forceful and strong anyone can do this and this will make you an effective leader doesn’t matter what your personality is even if your kind of a shy person you can still do this in your own way and when you do it you’ll find that it’s very, very effective and you’re going to do it this month.

Get on our VIP social site tell us who your team is. Tell us what the priority is and then give us an update each week on your progress. Specifically praising, catching them doing something right and tell us the results. What happens over the long-term?

See you our social site have a great month talk to you later.

Bye for now.