"If you don't have a dream and I don't have a dream, how are we going to make a dream come true?" | ||
| --Mary Martin, actress, singer, and Broadway star | ||
People do not really take the time to know themselves, or the things they want out of life. This week we are going to put a focus on strengths, weaknesses, perceptions, and dreams, while the team-atude is being implemented by the team.
In an earlier chapter, you took the time to identify your strengths and weaknesses. In this chapter, you will have to engage your team members to do the same exercise in preparation for the half-day meeting on day 18.
In addition, you will learn that dreams are the foundation to motivation. However, too many people dream but do nothing about it. Dreams have to be documented. That is the first step to crystallization.
In this chapter, you will take the time to think about your dreams, desires, and life expectations, and write them down. You must know what you want out of life in order to get it. Without knowing what you want, you will go through life aimlessly, like a ship without a rudder. Until your dreams are written down on paper, they will merely be wishes.
In this chapter, you will learn to:
- Identify your dreams, desires, and life expectations
- Review your strengths and weaknesses and decide on where you should focus
- Facilitate a team exercise where everyone gets to know each other's strengths, weaknesses, and perceptions
- Facilitate a dream team exercise, as if nothing is impossible, creating a vision and mission
- Conduct performance reviews that will inspire team members
In Chapter 1, Week 1 – Motivating Yourself Before Others, you took the time to understand yourself, your values, strengths, and weaknesses. Please go back and review what you concluded about yourself, as you will soon share that with your team. But first, are you ready to do that?
If not, you are lacking self-confidence and putting your focus on your weaknesses and not your strengths. You need to put your focus on your strengths moving forward. That is where your self-confidence will shine.
If you are ready to share, that is great. The following is what you have to do today:
- Create or copy the Values worksheet and the Strengths and Areas of Improvement form located at the end of this day's section
- Distribute them, along with a draft agenda, to each team member as an assignment to complete for the day 18 half-day meeting
- Prepare a draft agenda detailing that the first half of the meeting will be a review of the last meeting and a getting-to-know-each-other exercise, and the second half will be focused on the question "What is our vision?"
During the meeting you will refer to the assignment and have everyone take out their strength and areas of improvement form. If some did not complete it yet, ask them to do it now.
Have everyone put their name of the top of the page and pass it to their right, including yourself. Each person is to review the list in front of them and if they agree place a check mark next to each strength or area of improvement identified showing that you agree. If you disagree, place an x next to each where you disagree. Then at the bottom add on other strengths that you perceive that person to have and areas of improvement that you would like to see them work on.
Allow approximately five minutes per participant. When completed once, continue to pass it to your right until your own is back in your hands. This way everyone has had an equal opportunity to learn about their fellow teammate, and team leader, and provide them with their feedback or perceptions.
Allow the team to review the comments and then facilitate a discussion as to what they learned.
As a team leader you may want to start by sharing what you have learned and agreed with about the perceptions others have of you, and also what you disagree with, ending with what you are going to do, and asking them how they can support you in that area.
By demonstrating this, you are setting up the others to follow and that is the objective of this exercise—to get all perceptions and areas of improvement on the table for discussion while everyone gets to know each other better.
Once the distribution of the forms and draft agenda is done today, I suggest you review and start the exercise identified in day 17.
The forms to use are as follows:
|
Motivator |
Always valued |
Often valued |
Sometimes valued |
Seldom valued |
Never valued |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Advancement | |||||
|
Adventure | |||||
|
Aesthetics | |||||
|
Authority/power | |||||
|
Challenge | |||||
|
Change/variety | |||||
|
Community | |||||
|
Competence | |||||
|
Competition | |||||
|
Creativity | |||||
|
Decision making | |||||
|
Excitement | |||||
|
Family | |||||
|
Freedom | |||||
|
Friendships | |||||
|
Group affiliations | |||||
|
Helping others | |||||
|
Helping society | |||||
|
Independence | |||||
|
Influencing people | |||||
|
Intelligence | |||||
|
Job security | |||||
|
Knowledge | |||||
|
Location of home | |||||
|
Location of work | |||||
|
Money | |||||
|
Moral standards | |||||
|
New ideas/things | |||||
|
Personal contact | |||||
|
Personal security | |||||
|
Physical challenge | |||||
|
Public contact | |||||
|
Recognition | |||||
|
Religious beliefs |
|
Salary level | |||||
|
Stability | |||||
|
Status | |||||
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Supervision | |||||
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Tranquility | |||||
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Working alone | |||||
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Working under pressure | |||||
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Working with people | |||||
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Other: | |||||
Once you have completed this exercise you are ready to move on to the next day.