Do employers hire you for who are you or for what you know?

Obviously, most employers are looking for both traits.

So when you go into that interview, be prepared to show how you can serve and benefit the company and how you can be someone people will want to have around the office.

Two ears, one mouth:  I can still today forget to listen while the other person is speaking and to stay on the subject exactly along the lines of discussion.  Everyone makes the mistake of changing the subject after hearing something in a conversation and another subject comes to mind from the flow of the conversation.  The concept of a discussion is to stay on the subject of the line of the discussion until the discussion is completed.  If another idea has come to mind along the way, bring that other idea forward after the discussion is completed.  For me this means to be twice as diligent about using my ears as I am about using my mouth!

So, if I want to fit into the organization, listen well.
When given a chance to speak, do not talk about yourself!

Of course, they want to hire me.  I am so cute!  I am so much fun!  I am so smart!  I am so popular!

Perhaps, a company does want to hire you for all those reasons.  However, when given the chance to speak, talk about what you have done and how what you have done can help the employer build a business.  For purposes of illustration, if you are trying to get a job building fences for a commercial fence company, bring pictures of the fences you have built.  Discuss the fences you have seen that the employer has built.  Commend that employer for that work, and discuss how you would enjoy having the opportunity to be a part of a team that builds quality products.  By showing what you can do and also showing that you know what the employer has done, and then discussing your interest in working for their company, you better position yourself as someone to hire for who you are and for what you know.

It is about this time of year that I have forgotten about New Year’s resolutions or given up on them and feel guilty that I was not able to fulfill those resolutions I made just four short weeks ago.

Why have always found that these resolutions were not going to work long-term and were just going to leave me feeling guilty for failing myself over my own commitments to myself?

The answer to my failures in behavior modification is that I fail to recognize that behavior modification requires much more than a statement of wishful thinking.  I truly typically underestimate what I am up against in a resolution to lose weight or read more books or watch less television or initiate an exercise program or manage my day to become more productive.

I once read that to change the way I looked physically was to put a picture on my desk of a person who looked the way I wanted to look.   I picked a picture of a soccer player.   The person was lean, muscular, tanned, and had a trim body type that I envied.

I imagined or perhaps hoped that somehow the image of the person in the picture would give me the motivation to eat and exercise in ways that would produce the body that I sought.  What I failed to recognize is that the person I picked as the model of excellence was a professional athlete whose career not only allowed but required hours of exercise and his diet was perhaps even professionally tailored to suit his career.  Reaching the goal of looking like that professional athlete was perhaps in my reach but not without major lifestyle changes.

I worked in an office, so my career required burning very few calories and did not allow for me to spend much time out doors.   My diet was often tied to family meals that were not necessary planned for my fitness.  I suppose that it was good to have an image of my goal but that image really had no value without the lifestyle changes that result in my reaching my goal.

So how was I to go about making a lifestyle change that would enable me to reach my goal of looking like a professional soccer player?  The answer that I came to was to accept that I probably never would look that a professional soccer player, at least not that soccer player.  I could perhaps become leaner, more muscular, and more trim than I was at the time, but to illustrate how reality plays a part in understanding goal setting, I have fair skin.  The soccer player in the picture, as I said, appeared to be tanned.  My skin will not tan to that color.

The other fact is that becoming trim for me does not come easily.  Adding muscle and fat comes easily.  Nutrition experts have begun to recognize that not only does the human body come in different types; different human bodies burn calories differently.

So I am now beginning a series of articles on the process of being extraordinary by “Moving beyond Resolutions to Lifestyles Changes.”

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter!”

It seems as though all my life I have held to the idea that I was right.  It is not so much that I had to know everything.  Often when I do not know something, I can just say that I do not know.  When I do know something, I have trouble seeing that what I believe to be true is not true.

Always being right is a lot of work.  It is a load to carry.   It is weighty and tiring.

Always being right leads to ignorance.   It requires a closed mind.  It reduces my opportunity to learn.

Opening up to the possibility that another person may be right takes less effort than defending my position on what I believe to be true.   I can relax and listen.   I can have a discussion instead of a debate.

Later if I find that I am in fact right, I can keep that information to myself.  I can allow the other person the right to continue to believe in their thinking.

I heard a woman say one time that it is so easy for her to believe her own thinking, because it has always been there.  So I am going to open the door to my thinking to allow myself at least the opportunity to replace thinking that has always been there with some new thinking.

I want to be extraordinary.  I am going to allow myself to be wrong.

Today I am going to do one thing at a time.  I will start the day by going over my plan for the day.

Then I will work with one computer program until the project is finished. When I have finished that one project, I am going to take a break and do some crunches.

Then I will return to my computer and work with one computer program. When that project is finished I am going to go outside and walk two miles.

Then I will eat some fruit.  I will not turn on the television.  I will not sit at my desk.  I will sit at my table and eat slowly.  I will taste each single bite of the fruit.

Then I will work make phone calls. I will call the people on my schedule.  I will focus on each call. I will be present for the moment of my time of conversation with that person.

Then I will take a break and step outside to look around.  I will think about what I see.  I will not judge what I see.  I will think about the colors and the lines and shapes.  I may take out a ladder and pull some things from my gutters.  I may just appreciate my surroundings.  There is no plan for this break in the day.

Then I will have lunch, a short but slow lunch.  I will think about my food and appreciate the fact that I have that food to eat.

Then I will return to my computer.  I will read and reply to my email. I will read each email once and make sure that I understand the action I am to take on that email. Then I will complete the action on that email and not return to it.

Then I will sit on the sofa.  I will take a mental break. By now I will feel tired and anxious from the fatigue. What I know is that if I close my eyes for twenty minutes, I will be refreshed and the fatigue and anxiety will have disappeared.
I will return to my desk and begin to review my progress on the list of things to do today.   I will work on those things to finish the day.  I will do them one at a time.

As the day goes on, my mind may wander.  Sometimes my mind is ready to be some place else. My mind may start watching the clock the way it did when it would focus on watching the last two minutes of the clock tick off the big clock above the blackboard at the end of the school day.

As I approach each task, I will take a deep breath the way a major league baseball player takes a deep breath before stepping into the batter’s box or before making the next pitch.  A deep breath brings focus.  I will need focus by the end of the day.

I will stop my work for time with my family.  I will sit in the room with them and listen to them about their day. I have listened to my own thoughts all day. It will be refreshing to hear some else’s thoughts.

After dinner I will return to my desk for about an hour. I will plan my day for tomorrow, making notes on my daily schedule. Then I will spend about thirty minutes on a daily tutorial for a study course I am taking.

Then I will stop. I will reflect on the day.  I will say, “Day is done.  Close the door on today.”  Then I can sleep and be grateful that I have had a day to be productive and have learned how to approach each part of the day as a part unto itself and how to take breaks to be more effective.

I want to be extraordinary. I will do one thing at a time.

Last July, I wrote an article on getting back to the home gym by following the methods used in the movie “Karate Kid.”  That is, by washing my car and doing other things that I had turned over to public commercial services.

Now with the beginning of the New Year, the most effective home gym is helping my wife retrieve storage boxes for seasonal decorations, cleaning my gutters, packing recycling over to the recycling center, getting outside to clean up after a storm passes through, or building and restoring things around my house.

After twenty-five years, the redwood deck I had built had reached a point where I needed to replace a few boards.  As I removed the boards on the surface of the deck, I realized that I was pulling out pieces of the centers of the supporting wooden girders. My thought was that I would remove the rotten areas and fill them with whatever the hardware store suggested.

However, the more boards I removed the more I realized that I could not repair the girders and feel comfortable that they were strong enough to hold a deck full of people.

Reluctantly I realized, or perhaps accepted, that I was in for something bigger than restoring my old deck. I needed to remove the old deck. Then I needed to build a new deck.

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, over the twenty-five years that the deck had aged so had I. I was perhaps 36 or 37 when I built the deck and weighted about 185 pounds. Now I was over 50 years old and weighed over 200 pounds.

As I planned the replacement deck, I remembered that there were shortcomings in the way I finished the first deck.  For example, the deck had benches on each side. No one used the benches. Everyone sat on chairs. The benches became places for potted plants, reduced the usable deck surface by approximately 90 square feet, and pinched into the sitting areas.

In addition, I built the first deck with the idea that I wanted it to be strong and conform to code and took my plans from the foundation of my house. I dug holes, mixed and poured my concrete by hand, and set and leveled the concrete footings. I put 4″ X 6″ girders on those footings, and redwood boards on top of those girders and up the deck went.  The result was that when I finished the deck, I had about a 2-inch step running across the area between the deck and the patio. For a few years, that little step bothered me and I cautioned people about sliding their chair back.

I had a large project in taking out the old footings to fit the new plan.  While building removing the old deck and installing the new one, I became more fit.  By time, I finished the deck, I not only weighed fifteen pounds less, but I could probably forty pounds more material.

I keep my hammer, lawn mower, and car washing kit handy in my home gym.

“The World’s Most Noble Headhunter”

Every day at 8:00 AM, I go over my plans for the day.

I establish the status of my business with existing customers and what needs to be done to further my business with these customers.

I review developing business and set priorities for turning those prospects into customers.

I establish how I will proceed with each task for each customer and schedule an activity with the name of the customer and my objective for that activity.

Because of the nature of the layout of the plan, I can read the name of each customer and potential customer as I go over the plan. By reading each name, I mentally call them to my attention. I discuss with Jennifer each customer and schedule an activity as needed. I find that by reading the name of each customer and asking what activity needs to be planned for that customer, the plan for the day becomes the action for the day.

The days when I rush into activity without reviewing the plan are not as productive.

I love fruitcake.  Like everything else, fruitcake has people who love it and people who do not.  Nearly two million fruitcakes are sold each year.  I doubt that many people eat an entire fruitcake, since most fruitcakes have a very dense texture and are about a foot in diameter and four inches high less that plug missing in the middle.  However, I think that given a week, I could eat an entire fruitcake.  The best fruitcake I have ever had comes from the Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, TX.

I read an article online the other day that was very critical of fruitcakes.  Fruitcakes seem to have a public polarity rarely seen outside of politics.  There are folks who love fruitcakes and folks who hate fruitcakes and as in politics, there are those folks in the middle.  Also, as in politics, I’d prefer not to be in the room when the two polarized sides start discussing the subject of fruitcakes.  I feel somewhat hypocritical about mentioning the subject in an article about being positive.

The person who wrote the critical article used all the qualities of a fruitcake to draw negatives about how not to write a business letter.  I enjoyed the article and found the person’s approach a little different.  Instead of a “how-to” manual, the person had written a “how-not-to” manual and had a pretty fierce  attitude on the subject of fruitcakes and poorly written business letters.

During Procter & Gamble sales training, I studied how to emphasize the benefits of the product I was selling.  Keep my message positive.  The words I choose not only affect a person’s feelings, they affect a person’s decision.  “Sell the sizzle.”

On another website,  I came across an Internet endorsement the president of a company had written about the services his company had received.  He was thoughtful to take the time to write the endorsement.

From what I read, I would say that the services of the company he endorsed were exceedingly fair in pricing, and in my estimation, were far above industry standards in performance.  The company being endorsed deserved the endorsement.

The president writing the endorsement went on to draw a negative contrast of  competitive services.  Oops:  his endorsement that had begun with such a positive spin ended in a negative ripple that I am guessing could reach clients of his own company.

Reading this person’s endorsement reminded me just how slippery the Internet can be for all of us.

Today, people who would never bother to write a postcard are prolific web writers on Twitter© and Facebook©.  Hundreds of millions of people with no training in journalism are publishing material that has the potential to reach people all over the world.   Moreover, through emails and Internet reposting and linking, Internet material never really goes out of publication. There is an article from BusinessWeek©, 2004, which I reference on my website today.

It does me no good to dwell on the negative things that come across a social network or at times a commercial website.  We all make mistakes.  My getting angry or resentful only causes me pain.  I also recognize that I can easily misunderstand what a person is saying.

My goodness, though, this Internet publishing is a risky deal and here and there has caused embarrassment and even the loss of jobs (Mashable).

The best boss I ever had was a Navy captain who retired as the Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet.  As the commanding officer of a United States Ship, he had the  responsibility of handing out sentences of fines and brig confinements, and he could be hard as nails when his job called for him to write a letter of reprimand.

At the same time, he had the best attitude of any human being I have ever known.

One day while serving under this Captain, I made a comment about a woman being attractive but having a somewhat large nose.  His response was, in a very gentle tone, “When speaking of others, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.”

This advice is handy advice when speaking or writing on the Internet.

I want to be extraordinary today by keeping it positive and try to remember that when I point at another person for things they say or do there are three fingers pointing back at me.

I am going to be extraordinary today by appreciating that I have the present moment to be effective at my job, love my friends and my family, and experience life.  For those things and many other things I am grateful.

My wife went through the experience last night of buying a gift for a friend who is very ill. On my wife’s mind was whether this is the last year she will have this friend to share gifts.

There are times when my friends and my family frustrate me. I forget that my friends and family are humans and that they get tired or hungry or have trying days and may be unpleasant. I forget that I get tired or hungry or have trying days and may be less impatient.

There are times when my job seems impossible. I feel overwhelmed. I forget that I can only do one task at a time and that I can only do that task in the present moment.

I forget that life is not made up of a past and a future. Life is only the present moment. I can mentally project into the future. I can ruminate on the past. Yet I must remember that planning for the future or repairing the past can only happen in the present moment.
Only in the present moment can I have the wisdom to be excellent at my job, make any decision, taste food, smell the air, speak with my friends, hug my family, and count my blessings.

So in this present moment, my wife has bought her gift for her friend and when the moment arrives will share this gift with her friend.

Sharing gifts with friends or making decisions that determine the failure or success of corporations both take place at the same time: in the present moment.  I a going to be extraordinary today by remaining in the present moment and remembering that counting my blessings is a good way to remain in the present moment.

Today to be extraordinary, I am going to take breaks.  I know when I need a break.  There are signals.

When I dial the correct phone number and get the wrong phone, that is a signal to take a break.

When I enter the correct password and the password does not work, that is a signal to take a break.

When I begin to worry and nothing has changed, that is a signal to take a break.

When I get angry with my computer or telephone or any machinery, that is a signal to take a break.

When I am replacing a light bulb and turning the bulb the wrong direction, that is a signal to take a break.

These signals all tell me that I need to change from what I am doing physically and mentally to doing something physically and mentally different.  If my work involves sitting, I need to stand up.  I need to walk outdoors or to another place in the building.  If my work involves standing, I need to sit down.  The body benefits from these breaks, but it is the mind that needs the break.  So I give my mind a change of pace, a new setting.  I take a break.

Sometimes it is important for me to tell someone else, “I am taking a break.”  My mind seems to appreciate my making an announcement that I am taking a break.  When I tell someone else I am taking a break, I am letting my mind know that that I am creating an environment, a setting, for there to be a break.  I am making a commitment to my mind.  “Here I go, mind, I am taking a break.”

I try to remember that going from working on my business mail to interacting on Facebook is not a break.  I can tell my mind that I am taking a break, but my mind does not accept that switching from one Internet page to another Internet page is in any way taking a break.  Mentally, the subject may be more fun but the mental process is the same.

The way I know that my mind has not had a break is that, just as was the case before the break, the right password still does not work. The right phone number still gets the wrong person. The mental drifts to the future or the past still trouble me.

No, my mind holds me accountable, requires that I change my location and activity.

It is still okay to be extraordinary and extraordinary people take breaks.

William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets. At the same time he was running a theater, where he also acted.  Shakespeare, as the result of years of very hard work, became a wealthy man.  He is also the greatest English writer in history.

Thomas Edison executed 1093 successful patents.  Thomas Edison, along with Michelangelo, Margaret Thatcher, Martha Stewart, Napoleon Bonaparte, and many others are well-known for working on very little sleep.  Much is made today of the correlation between rest and success.  It seems, however, that to be extraordinary, not sleeping seems to be an important ingredient to success.

So be extraordinary.  It takes time.  It takes commitment.  But it is still okay!