A Healthy Self-Esteem, the 1st Attribute of Positive Leaders

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The first distinguishing characteristic of positive leaders – the first attribute – is a strong and positive self-concept. Positive leaders have a clear sense of who they are and where they are going. They have confidence in themselves and in their talents and abilities. They believe in themselves; they believe themselves to be somehow special. It is this core belief – this strong sense of self – from which the power of positive leadership emanates.
Leadership, as we have already discovered, implies taking risks, forging new concepts, charting new courses, breaking new trails. Leadership means going first – often where no man or woman has gone before. This takes great courage, confidence, and character and these traits, so common to the great leaders of history, are nothing more than manifestations of a strong self-esteem.

Leaders must be outwardly directed. They are concerned about the world and about other people. It is not that their own needs are left unattended – quite the contrary, positive leaders are secure in themselves. They know in the deepest part of their souls that they are okay – that nothing that can happen in the external world can diminish their worth as a living, breathing human being; as a child of Creation. From this foundation of a secure ego they are able to give freely of themselves. They have, in fact, discovered one of the greatest secrets of life: that the best way to serve one’s self, to feed a healthy ego, is to serve others. The more we give the greater the gifts we receive.

For men and women with an underdeveloped ego who find themselves in a leadership role, this is an alien concept. They have not reached the crest of the mountain from which they can see the panorama. They spend the greater part of their time and energy advancing their individual interests rather than attending to the needs of their organization and its people. As a result, as leaders they are ineffectual. Just as importantly, this self-serving behavior is apparent to the people with whom these individuals work and interact.

There are very few individuals for whom a healthy self-concept comes easily and most of us must work relentlessly at maintaining our self-esteem. Much like we must do with purpose, we must periodically step back and assess the health of our self-esteem. Unless we have perfected the process of retaining a healthy ego, the natural ebbs and flows of life can lead to disequilibrium. We are often unaware that our focus has shifted from the external world to the internal.

Effective positive leaders work relentlessly to maintain a healthy self-esteem much in the way individuals exercise their bodies to maintain physical health and well-being. Exposing ourselves to positive and inspirational thoughts and ideas is an important component of this ego-development process. It is also important to take time for introspection. Examine your strengths and weakness as objectively as you are able and then develop action plans to work on your imperfections. It is also suggested that you ask your closest friends or significant others to help you with this process as we are not always able to view ourselves the way others perceive us.

Remember always that we will never be perfect. Humans are, by definition, imperfect beings and there are no exceptions. It is not necessary that we are always right, what is important is that we strive to do what is right. Look around you at positive leaders. Often they are the strong, silent types who are so confident in themselves that it becomes unnecessary to boast of their prowess or accomplishments. The deeds of these men and women speak far more eloquently than anything they might say. You can possess this same confidence, this same sense of self if only you will reach out for it.

Customer Satisfaction: the Fourth Cornerstone of the Theory of Positive Leadership

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Business organizations exist to satisfy customers and embracing this credo serves as the fourth and final cornerstone of the philosophical foundation or our Theory of Positive Leadership.

If you are thinking:

“Duh! Aren’t we stating the obvious?”

you would be correct. Sometimes, however, it is critical that we state the obvious. Very often, things go wrong in organizations because we take our assumptions for granted. Over time, our assumptions tend to become blurred. One of our most fundamental assumptions is the order in which our customers can be found on our list of priorities.

Try this experiment. The next time you are in a room full of business men and women, ask them this simple question:

Do businesses exist to make money or do they exist to satisfy customers?

I have yet to ask this question without it sparking a very interesting and sometimes heated debate.

Many will insist that business organizations exist to make money. While there is no doubt that all business investments are made for the purpose of earning a return on one’s investment, once we choose our marketplace, everything changes. Once we have chosen a customer base (identified a population of customers with unmet needs or wants) and have identified the products and/or services we intend to produce (in order to satisfy those wants and needs) our ongoing purpose has irrevocably changed.

We now exist to satisfy our customers thus insuring their willingness to pay a fair price for that which we offer to sell. How much we make is nothing more than the way we keep score; the way we measure our success in satisfying our customers. Let’s restate this: the money our customer pays us is, now, nothing more than a function of the level of satisfaction they have with, first, our products and services and, secondly, with our performance as a valued and reliable supplier.

The day our customers begin to suspect that their satisfaction is secondary to our desire to make money, is the day we are at risk of losing that customer. Don’t misunderstand. Our customers understand that we have to make a profit just like we understand that our suppliers must make a profit. Neither we nor they want to think, however, that our suppliers would be willing to sacrifice the quality for which we have agreed to pay for a higher profit margin.

When a business leader chooses to sacrifice quality in order to make an extra buck, he or she has taken the first step down the precipitous path of inevitable failure. Think about your favorite restaurant, for example. You’ve become a regular customer because you have enjoyed the high quality of their menu, ambiance, and service over a period of many years. No doubt, you recommend the restaurant to your friends, family, and business associates, and also to people who might be new residents of your community or maybe are just visiting. You do not make such recommendations lightly; you do so only because you have a high level of confidence in the quality of experience your friends and colleagues can expect to enjoy.

Imagine a scenario when, on your next visit, you walk away disappointed in your dining experience. You certainly will not give up on your favorite place on the basis of one bad experience but it will start you thinking. How many bad experiences will you be willing to tolerate before you begin to downgrade that restaurant on your list of favorites. How many bad experiences before you stop recommending the establishment to other people? How many bad experiences before you stop eating at a place of which you have such fond memories? Very often when such a stream of events occur, it is because the ownership opted to cut back on the cost of producing your favorite selections from their menu; or when they lower their expectations of the staff who service their patrons and it does not just happen to restaurants. It can happen to manufacturers, healthcare providers, providers of any professional service, or retailers of any product or services. This is what happens when a business in any venue switches its focus to profits in lieu of customer satisfaction.

Successful businesses, on the other hand, as evidenced by the powerful positive leaders who guide them, possess a relentlessly passionate commitment to the satisfaction of their customers and this commitment drives every single thing they do and say. This commitment is a major component of the values of the organization and serves as the focal point for both vision and mission.

Plain and simple, businesses exist to satisfy customers. It is also a lesson that government and not-for-profit agencies would do well to remember. If you have any doubts, just think about what is happening with United States Postal Service.

People Are Our Most Important Resource, The Third Cornerstone of Positive Leadership

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The third philosophical cornerstone of our Theory of Positive Leadership is a commitment to the belief that people are the most important resource/asset of any organization. Organizations exist to serve people, whether individually or corporately. Business organizations exist to serve customers and other organizations such as not-for-profit agencies and departments or agencies of government exist to serve a constituency.

Organizations employ many different kinds of assets in the production of their products and services. Those assets include land, buildings, equipment, information, and technology in addition to people but it is people that are paramount. Nothing illustrates this more definitively that the knowledge that the very value of each of the other assets is measured in terms of their utility to people. It takes human energy to put all other assets to work for a meaningful purpose.

Interestingly, accounting practices allow us to treat non-human resources as depreciable assets but requires us to treat wages and salaries of a cost. This contributes, I believe, to the tendency of executives to think of people and their wages and salaries as a cost of doing business rather than as an investment in a valuable asset without which it would be impossible to do business.

One of the things that distinguish powerful positive leaders from their less successful counterparts is that everything these men and women do conveys clearly and unequivocally that the people of their organization are the most important asset – an invaluable resource.

Peter Drucker writes, “organizations that fail to develop their people, fail in the long run.”
Positive organizations relentlessly invest in the development of their people by insuring that their people:

• Receive ongoing training of a meaningful kind,
• Receive clear expectations
• Are supported by performance management systems that give ongoing positive feedback
• Work in an environment that is safe both physically and emotionally
• Enjoy compensation and benefit packages are not only competitive in the marketplace but that also reward excellence.
• Have the tools and resources necessary for the successful performance of their work
• Feel that they have some control over their own success, and
• Are full participants in the process of delivering exemplary quality.

Positive leaders also recognize that the members of their organization are not the only people who are critical to the ongoing success of their venture. Positive leaders understand that their ultimate success depends on all members of their supply chain and they work to create a culture of interdependence, partnership, and abundance mentality that spans the entire supply chain population.

“Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream” a review by Grady Harp, a Top 50 Reviewer

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‘Our goal is to re-infuse faith and hope in the American Dream into the hearts and minds of every American parent and child.’, October 31, 2013

This review is from: Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America (Kindle Edition)

Mel Hawkins opens his impressive while staggeringly factual book REINVENTING EDUCATION, HOPE AND THE AMERICAN DREAM with the following words: ‘The world is in the midst of unprecedented economic, political, cultural, technological, sociological, and ecological changes that will forever transform human society. One of the drivers of American preeminence has been our systems of public education that gave the United States the most well-educated and productive workforce on the planet. As we enter the second decade of the Twenty-first Century, the U.S. is like a professional sports franchise that has seen the quality of its player development program languish over a period of years. That our competitors in the international arena are placing the education of their children at the top of their priority list while the American educational system remains a relic of times past has tragic consequences for Americans and our way of life.’ He quietly states facts, that millions of Americans have become disenfranchised and have lost hope in the American dream, given up on finding meaningful employment, accepted the fact that they and their children have little access to quality healthcare, and ‘they are chewed up and spit out by the American educational process’ – education becoming a ticket to nowhere.

The fortunate aspect of his observations is that Hawkins believes that since our educational system is the failing nidus of our current dismay, then addressing our educational system to correct the flaws provides a pathway for changing many of the frustrating, even terrifying aspects of our current status. A first objective is to alter our educational system to focus on success, on that prepares your youth for the unique challenges of living in the 21st century. Another pathway is to study and diagnose why our students are underperforming, and when that knowledge is available to us we must re-think our current status and use of system of education to unite Americans and re-infuse faith and hope in the American Dream. He is against compulsory education: our youths value the things they choose, not the things fostered upon them in an arbitrary and hap-hazard manner. If learning were the true goal of schools, common sense would tell us to evaluate current status and build from there. As one critic phrased it, ‘all work is honorable and all humans are uniquely designed to function in ways that benefit the entire society. The student who likes to tinker with machines and is not at all interested in literature should not be held in less esteem at school than the lit student. The larger social system will value some skills more than others and will obviously pay more for those skills, but the culture has to find a way to communicate to its young that the guy that gets your plumbing right enhances the quality of your life just as much as the mayor of your city.’ Hawkins mentions some of the ‘causes’ for our current failed educational system – poverty, bad teachers, outdated facilities and technology, curriculum, race and ethnicity, student behavior, fractured families – and lets us know that the facts that must be examined to change our current system are Compulsory education and the fact that unmotivated students are allowed to be a disruptive influence on students who want to learn and teachers who are striving to teach, Teacher accountability and the trust between teachers and parents, The way we structure our schools and group children in classrooms, together, The way we identify an educational path for our children and then direct them down that path, The way we utilize teachers and facilitate their ability to teach and interact with students and their parents, Our current educational system’s focus on failure, Protecting children from humiliation, Homework, practice, and the manner in which we deal with the mistakes our students make, The way we assess a student’s level of competency over the subject matter within the context of educational standards, The allocation of scarce resources to serve our mission to the optimal advantage, and The effectiveness with which we utilize the technology of the Twenty-first Century. ‘We must involve the entire community.’

This is one of the more important books to be released this year and certainly MUST be read by all who have fears of the current status of our educational system. This book is a brilliant achievement.

The Gifts of Success: The Second Cornerstone of Positive Leadership

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Another philosophical foundation of our Theory of Positive Leadership is constructed on the axiom “it is better to give than to receive.”
Man is a social animal. Human beings have advanced to our current level of achievement because we have developed a sophisticated system of groups and organizations to facilitate the safety and prosperity of increasingly larger populations. From the first time man elected to pool his resources with that of others, to the very present, the success of the group has been contingent upon the willingness of the individual members to give of themselves, even if it means foregoing the immediate gratification of their own wants and needs. Similarly, nothing so threatens the group as the existence of individuals who choose, first, to serve their own self-interests.

One of the things that distinguish powerful positive leaders is the zeal with which they give of themselves to their organization and its people. These men and women understand that their own success is measured by the success of their people and their organization. Positive leaders work not only to advance the skills and accomplishments of individuals but also to create the synergies that occur when individuals come together as part of effective teams. They understand that, in effective organizations, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Zig Ziglar said it most eloquently:
“You can get everything you want and need out of life if you help enough other people get what they want and need.”

If you are a giving person and you strive everyday to help the people around you be successful, then you will be perceived as a leader and you will have captured the essence of success.

The gift of success is something that anyone can give and once you give it, remarkably, you also possess it, in full measure. Giving does not necessarily have to be of material things. It may be giving of one’s time and energy or of one’s talent. It may be doing one’s absolute best on the job or volunteering for a community project.

The world needs givers and lots of them. Be a giver and it will make a difference in the way you feel about yourself and about your life. It will make a difference in the quality of the relationships you have with your spouse, your children, and your friends. It will make a difference in the wholesomeness of your community. It will make a difference in the success of your business or career and, finally, it will make a difference for you financially.

Yes, there is an inherent risk in giving of oneself. There will be disappointments. Some people will let us down and others will even hurt us. These things are inevitable in life and will occur whether we give or take. True success and the most cherished joys in life come, however, only to those who give freely.

If you want a better marriage, give of yourself and be a better spouse. If you want better friends, give of yourself and be a better friend. If you want a more successful career, give of yourself and do a better job. If you want to be a part of a better organization or live in a better community, give of yourself and be a positive leader.

Giving fully of one’s self – holding nothing back – is, very simply, the key to success in life! It is magical, miraculous, simple, and relatively painless. “It is better to give than receive” is not just the secret of positive leadership it is a prescription for a democratic society.

Another 5 Star Review for Reinventing Education Hope and the American Dream!

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An invaluable resource for anyone with an interest or passion in improving education., October 28, 2013
By
Jay Mittener
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America (Kindle Edition)
This book “Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America” is nothing short of brilliant. This book is exactly what everyone needs to read and understand about the state and future of our nation. Our standards of living, our income potential, our successes and ability to advance on life are all directly related to the education we received in this country.

It’s very eye opening and honestly very scary to see how little education is valued in today’s society and the reasons behind it. We are a nation who have slowly lost faith in our own systems and in our own ideals and truths. We are no longer seeing ourselves as a land of opportunity because we were not given, and we are not giving our children the educational tools needed to realize the American dream.

Hawkins is brilliant- He is saying the hard things, he is opening eyes and he is doing it in a way that is logical, easy to understand and will incite a passion in you to change the way we view education and it’s importance in this nation.

A must-read for parents, teachers and all those involved in improving the state of education

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A Review of Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, on Amazon.com by Thalia:

“Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America’, by Mel Hawkins, provides a critical look at the current state of education in America and follows through with innovative, inspired and crucial steps to reviving the standard of education in American and, thereby, reinvigorating the future of its workforce and the standard of living throughout the nation. Hawkins argues that the current state of matters must be tackled with `unprecedented urgency’, otherwise America’s very way of life will be jeopardized, with its stint as the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world likely to end.

Hawkins explains that education in America has lost its relevancy, with citizens no longer seeing it as `the ticket to the American Dream’. Therefore, education is no longer deemed as important as it once was and, because of this, many children are not infused with this knowledge by their parents, which has a roll-on effect to their levels of motivation and abilities to withstand peer pressures and, ultimately, their levels of academic success.

This is particularly concerning as, through research and data analysis, Hawkins shows us that motivation alone (or lack thereof) to learn is the predominant factor which influences the success of a child in reaching their full capabilities (not race, parental income levels, teacher skill or other such factors which are usually associated with variances in levels of academic success).

Therefore, Hawkins advises that the education system must be overhauled to create a reality where children are motivated to learn and every child ‘succeeds’ (because all success is relative). In order to do so, however, people must be challenged to change their basic assumptions about the way children are educated. They must recognize how kids learn (through encouragement) and do their utmost to both motivate and support them so that they are always working at the edge of their own capabilities. Of course, this entails changing the current class structures and increasing the teacher to student ratio, if students are to be working alongside one another at different levels, but Hawkins outlines smart and practical solutions to making this system workable.

What I like most about Hawkins approach (and what separates this from other educational reference texts) is that he recognizes that more qualified teachers, better facilities, better materials and better technology in classrooms are not the solution to what has become an entrenched and festering crisis. Educational performance can only be remarkably improved if the current widespread symptoms of hopelessness and powerlessness are counteracted with a surge in motivation for education, which can only be achieved by a joint effort between parents and teachers, administrators and principals, and government and public figures, to name a few.

The only thing missing for me were the graphs/figures which were not displayed in the kindle version (perhaps as I have an older kindle, images were replaced with an icon of a camera). However, the data I assume these figures displayed was adequately discussed and analysed in the text, therefore it did not really take away from the text, more that these may have added that something extra.” [Editor’s note: the graphs are visible on most devices.]

“This handbook is particularly useful for parents, teachers, support staff and school administrators who work with American children. From a wider perspective, it is valuable in supporting children in general to become their best selves, hence this book is an invaluable source of information to all who play a role in children’s education.”

The Positive Principle

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This is the second in a series of articles introducing the Principles of Positive Leadership!

The philosophical foundation of our Theory of Positive Leadership begins with the positive principle, which was introduced by Norman Vincent Peale in his seminal work, The Power of Positive Thinking, first published in 1952. Twenty-First Century readers are encouraged to read this work with the caveat that it was written by a Christian clergyman within a strong evangelical Christian context. Nevertheless, the message has great secular value.

The essence of the positive principle is that anything man can imagine, man can do. It is only when one has a belief in the possibility of a thing that it becomes possible. The positive principle also incorporates the belief that human beings are children of our creator and are essentially good. The message suggests that the world is full of negative forces and influences that will eat away at the esteem in which men and women view themselves, individually and as part of the world around them. The work is full of examples that demonstrate that “you do not need to be defeated by anything, that you can have peace of mind, improved health, and a never-ceasing flow of energy.”

Dr. Peale writes that we all want the same things out of life, “What every one of us wants, more than anything else, is life. Life is vitality; it is energy; it is freedom; it is growth.” Peale suggests that the differences between people, of whatever race, creed, or heritage are insignificant when compared to the similarities. Once one accepts this axiom, that we all want the same things out of life – that we are, in fact, interdependent – it becomes much easier to work toward win-win opportunities in both our personal and business relationships. Think about this in the context of supply chain management, that all members of a supply chain are interdependent and that the success of any one member is contingent upon and serves the success of the other members.

For leaders, irrespective of venue, this suggests that all the people within the organization are interdependent and that this interdependency extends beyond the boundaries of one’s organization to includes both those who serve and those whom are served by the organization and its mission.

The positive principle suggests that most of the obstacles that stand in the way of the achievement of our goals and objectives exist in our mind, not in the real world. Peale writes that “too many people are defeated by everyday problems of life,” and that this is “quite unnecessary. . . . People complain about the bad breaks they receive without any sense of how they, as individuals, can control and even determine those breaks.”

Positive Leaders understand that anything we can imagine is possible and that all human beings are linked by common objectives of the most fundamental kind. Positive leaders also understand that one’s focus on the positive is powerfully energizing on the one hand and serves to bring negative influences and factors into a manageable perspective. Positive leaders also believe that their relentless pursuit of ever higher levels of excellence serves the interests of all of the partners of a supply chain. It is based on the fundamental belief that every job done well contributes an element of beauty to the world.

Our Current Educational Process Ignores the Way Children Learn

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The following is the text of my comment to a blog post by Diane Ravitch. The subject of the post was a response from one of her readers, “a Professor of Neurology, Pediatrics and Psychiatry,” who suggested that “all of the initiatives of the last nearly 15 years, not only Common Core, are failing also because they ignore the brains of developing children and all learning theories relevant to education.”

The Professor is correct that the failure of educational reforms over the last fifteen years results, in part, because the educational process does not take into consideration the way children learn. I would add that this problem has gone on for far longer than the last fifteen years in both private and public education.

The current educational process, in public schools throughout the US does a poor job of assessing where a child is when they arrive for their first day of school re: their developmental readiness for learning and understanding academic subject matter. We then compound the problem by starting students off at the same point of embarkation and expecting them all to move from lesson to lesson at the same speed and proficiency. This process sets children up for failure and humiliation because they are pushed ahead to material for which they are poorly prepared. As children experience failure, it begins to affect their self-esteem and makes learning a stress-filled process rather than something that is both natural and fun. With each new lesson that teachers are expected to present, the students find themselves further behind until their little minds begin to shut down. Learning has ceased being fun and children begin to think of themselves as failures. Children are very much like the rest of us in that, as soon as we realize we can never win the game we decide not to play. In the case of children in school, they are no longer willing to try.

It is correct that our focus on testing in much of present day public education has exacerbated the problem but we have been teaching children the same way for generations in our public schools. We seem more concerned with the pace at which children learn rather than whether or not they actually do learn.

If we stop to think about how young children learn anything, they do it at their own unique pace, applying trial and error in an environment that is totally supportive, non-threatening, and in which failure is not even contemplated. Learning to walk and riding a bike provide helpful examples. What matters is not how quickly they learn but that they do learn and, within a short time, children are able to demonstrate the comparable levels of proficiency. The fact that the process of mastering the skill was easier and happened more quickly for some students is totally inconsequential.

In my book, Reinventing Education, Hope, and the American Dream: The Challenge for Twenty-First Century America, I show the reader how our current educational process chews children up and spits them out. I suggest an alternate approach. It is an approach that allows children to commence from their unique starting point and to progress, from lesson to lesson, at their own pace. The focus is on success and what matters is that every child progresses along their unique learning continuum as far as they are able. As a child experiences success, we can begin to raise our expectations for them.

Our objective is not that all children arrive at the same place at the end of twelve years of formal education rather it is that what they learn they can actually apply as they proceed through the balance of their lifetimes; lifetimes that are nothing more than an extended learning continuum, unique to each individual.

Shutdown Subverts Democratic Principles!

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Forget, for a moment, how you feel about the Affordable Care Act. Forget about what you think about the national debt, government spending, entitlements for the disadvantaged, national defense, public education or protecting the environment. All of these issues are important, but not one is anywhere near as important as what you think about the principles of democracy in a world where powerful men and women can force a government shutdown to get what they want.

The underlying premise of the Constitution was to prevent the powerful from usurping the will of the people just because they have the power to do so. The Constitution was meant to protect the American people from despotism under any guise, even in the disguise of elected officials who strive to exert their will when they disagree with a decision that was lawfully and constitutionally determined. Make no mistake; forcing a government shutdown is an act of despotism.

Imagine a future in which the tactics displayed today by a political minority become the accepted way of conducting the business of the people. How long will our right to vote matter in a world in which powerful men and women can disregard the voice of the people and use coercion to get what they want?

Letter to the Editor, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

October 7, 2013

MEL HAWKINS Fort Wayne