Building a culture of compassion

Although sometimes it may feel that work is simply about making money, most of us want more than just a paycheck. We want a place to work where we have opportunity to earn a living while working with others who genuinely appreciate our contributions to the team.

Often, when organizations are on the decline, they lose their personal touch. Instead of being places where a good work ethic is valued and respected, these organizations become places where cynicism and negativity rule. In time, such organizations will die. People will not continue investing themselves in a place where they feel devalued.

Meeting real needs

We have had many family discussions in the car when we see people on the roadside with handmade cardboard signs. Our decision has been to give to the physical need—by taking food or beverages to them or referring them to an organization that can help.

what motivates compassion?

It takes relationships to be determined

Some days I need someone to listen… and maybe to tell me my rationalizations don’t make sense. Whether you’re trying to stay on a diet, overcome a bad temper, or just exercise more often, you can probably relate.

Be a Good Neighbour

 Do you live in a neighborhood where you feel save and connected to others, or do you feel overcrowded, threatened, and otherwise unsafe in your surroundings? This, and other aspects of neighborhood life, can impact both your level of happiness and stress.

One way you can be a better neighbour and citizen of character is to practice deference.
Deference is practicing civility…especially in disagreement. You might have the right to say or do what you want, but is it helpful? Is it appropriate? Is it treating others as you’d like them to treat you?

Healthy leadership 01: Guard your character or lose your vision

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion." --Theodore Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame

Leaders have vision. They share a dream and direction that other people want to share and follow. The leadership vision goes beyond your written organizational mission statement and your vision statement. The vision of leadership permeates the workplace and is manifested in the actions, beliefs, values and goals of your organization’s leaders.

The problem is often leadership do not realise that their sight and vision have become “blurry”. As is the case with medical cataracts, the chances that they will pass unnoticed are virtually none.  The effects of cataracts are devastating: eighteen million people worldwide are blind because of cataracts.  Unfortunately such statistics are not available for managerial cataracts, and neither is the cost of a ‘blind’ manager to an organisation.

Bring back character in organisations

To find out more how to implement character in your organisation
click here

Bring character to your school

Bring Character to your school- Contact us 
marden@mweb.co.za

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Make a Long-Term Investment

Today’s corporate environment places a higher premium on results rather than relationships. Most managers demonstrate an utilitarian attitude towards their employees. Any attempts to put people above profits are interpreted as signs of weakness. Yet employers are grappling with issues of loyalty and commitment. Somehow, we need to enlarge our perspective and view our employees as full-fledged human beings who have lives beyond their corporate responsibilities—to embrace a philosophy of life that is inclusive rather than exclusive. Here are three basic reasons why we are actually wired to understand and that the self-centered life actually works against us in the long-term.

The fox now guards the chickens

SA suffers from what can be described as a moral deficit. It is a disease that seems to be afflicting all strata of society — from government, to business, to the lowliest state functionary.

The mantra seems to be, in that delightful phrase, “it’s my time to eat”.

It’s a feeding frenzy. People are neither afraid nor ashamed to be caught with their fingers in the till. Corruption is so commonplace it doesn’t shock us anymore.

Step One ... Explain the Tools

“Hire for character, train for skills”…is not just a platitude at EDG. It has been the credo that has driven our original principal partners for years.

Have we fallen short sometimes? You bet! The difference is that our leaders wanted to prepare us with tools that will shape who we are…and prepare us for success.

Building Life Around Something Bigger Than Yourself

I'll never forget the day my mother and father called a "family meeting" concerning my dad's job. Dad had been contemplating a career change that would allow him to teach high school and coach football. He knew this change would have an impact on our lives and wanted to talk it over before he gave his final answer.He told my brother and I about the job and explained why he thought it would be a good move for our family.

Change and grow by Marti Vickery

Change is one of the most valuable growing experiences of life. When I first arrived in northwest Florida, a resume did not count. Most folks wanted to know who my parents were, where I went to school, etc. I commonly heard, “You’re not from around here, are you?”For several months, I adapted to staying with family and was grateful for their generosity, but we were somewhat “space challenged” in their “mobile mansion,” and they were stretched financially and needed their privacy.

Cultivating Courage in Business

The odds were against Cynthia Cooper. Raised in a small town and having a humble demeanor, she probably never dreamed she would be featured on the cover of Time magazine. But in 2002 her courageous whistle-blowing halted an $11 billion fraud committed by her boss and co-workers at WorldCom.She was ostracized by peers and received international media scrutiny. While it is unlikely we will ever face the kind of drama that she encountered, there are valuable lessons that can be applied to daily life.First, Ms. Cooper thoughtfully considered alternatives and bravely questioned her higher-ups before reporting the wrongdoing. She did not rush to judgment, nor did she allow her superiors to undermine her confidence.

Do your job define who you are?

“If you are unhappy in your work, you are unhappy in your life.”  - Rodney Lowman, 1996 (author of The Clinical Practice of Career Assessment)

The way people live and interact with society and their material world is structured around work. In a truly globalised market-place, work opportunities are too diverse, too numerous and shifting too fast to be bundled neatly into career packages with precise focus. Labour experts predict that five to ten careers during one’s working life will become the norm. This implies adaptation to new working environments and continual skill and knowledge building for individuals. The responsibility for developing and managing his or her career to maintain employability and attain satisfaction and enjoyment will rest on the individual.

Character is vital key to success. Testimony

We truly enjoy hearing feedback and how character is making a difference in different communities and businesses. When we say we are passionate about people and their energy potential we as a team truly mean it. It is truly a humbling experience to hear messages such as the following from Reagan Kwala after presenting training.

" Hi Mario,

I am very grateful and thankful for having not only having attended your lecture on CF. But meeting you as a person, and that you portrait sincerity and boldness in your words.

I personally looked at you as a caring parent, a teacher and in some way a healer. Having attended the CF program I gained the insight of why CF is vital not only in work places but also in the society we live in.  

To do right, live truthful all the time is hard but one could see it takes no much effort to do just right and be discern in different things. I am certain that I will be able to deliver the message of CF to many of those I come into contact with.

Thank you Mario,

Warm regards,

Reagan Kwala

Human Resources Development

FNB NAMIBIA LTD

What they should teach students at Business Schools is a course on co- accountability and honest scrutiny.

A leader’s credibility is the result of two aspects: what he does (competency) and who he is (character). A discrepancy between these two aspects creates an integrity problem.

The highest principle of leadership is integrity. When integrity ceases to be a leader’s top priority, when a compromise of ethics is rationalised away as necessary for the ‘greater good’, when achieving results becomes more important than the means to their achievement – that is the moment when a leader steps onto the slippery slope of failure.

Often such leaders see their followers as pawns, a mere means to an end, thus confusing manipulation with leadership. These leaders lose empathy. They cease to be people ‘perceivers’ and become people ‘pleasers’, using popularity to ease the guilt of lapsed integrity.

It is imperative to your leadership that you constantly subject your life and work to the highest scrutiny. Are there areas of conflict between what you believe and how you behave? Has compromise crept into your operational tool-kit? One way to find out is to ask the people you depend on if they ever feel used or taken for granted.

Do you have some unfinished business or skeletons in your cupboards?

Article by Dr Mario Denton

Performance appraisals: What a joke?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is amazing to see how many organizations are doing performance appraisals the traditional way. It causes more pain and damage and can be a real disengagement factor. In short destroy it and replace it.  View video to the left for a short illustration.

There is a new generation of employees in the workplace and far more streamlined ways of doing it. For more information and to do and achievement orientated and purposeful conversation please  

contact Mario Denton at marden@mweb.co.za

Making Availability Happen by Marti Vickery

We live in a world that desires instant results. With access to news streaming and the ability to post comments immediately, it appears we have a higher level of availability than our parents did. But though information is abundantly available, often face-to-face attention is hard to come by.Streamline your days to allow you to accomplish tasks while remaining available to address client and staff priorities.Is this a short-term, long-term, or on-going priority?

How to Talk About Character in a Meeting

What a supervisor or a CEO talks about at meetings says a lot about his or her priorities. But it’s not easy to talk about personal integrity issues. So we’ll try to address some of the challenges here.At one of Kimray’s employee meetings last month, Kimray president Thomas A. Hill introduced the character quality of availability this way.

One small action can make a difference. Character in action

Character in action. Stay tuned for our own series Stories of Hope, a tool to assist in developing and engaging people with character