Christmas Texts

Merry Christmas everyone. I just happened to be in the office today being Christmas day and decided to do this post.
I just want to publish some of the text messages I received or sent to friends during this season.

"May you and your family be well this Xmas season. May your house be filled with cheer. May your dreams come through. May life treat you well & May all the love you send come back to you".

"May the joy of Xmas put more smiles on your face as you celebrate this season and may the coming year bring you even greater joy than ever. Wishing you a wonderful celebration".

"These warm greetings are sent to wish you a wonderful Christmas and happiness in the coming year".

"I get people wen make sense. Come rain come shine, you make sense give me. Make the joy of this season and God's plenty blessing full like ocean for your side. abeg Merry the Xmas jare".

"May your heart be filled with boundless love, joy and affection this season. And may prosperity take root in your life. Have a lovely season".

Effective Listening Habits

Listening is more than merely hearing words. Listening is an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to spoken and or nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994). As such, it forms an integral part of the communication process and should not be separated from the other language arts. Listening comprehension complements reading comprehension. Verbally clarifying the spoken message before, during, and after a presentation enhances listening comprehension. Writing, in turn, clarifies and documents the spoken message.

Teachers can help students become effective listeners by making them aware of the different kinds of listening, the different purposes for listening, and the qualities of good listeners. Wolvin and Coakley (1992) identify four different kinds of listening.

• Comprehensive (Informational) Listening---Students listen for the content of the message.
• Critical (Evaluative) Listening ---Students judge the message
• Appreciative (Aesthetic) Listening---Students listen for enjoyment.
• Therapeutic (Empathetic) Listening---Students listen to support others but not judge them.
  

Traditionally, secondary schools have concentrated on the comprehensive and critical kinds of listening. Teachers need to provide experiences in all four kinds. For example, listening to literature read, listening to radio plays, and watching films develop appreciative in addition to comprehensive and critical listening. When students provide supportive communication in collaborative groups, they are promoting therapeutic listening. For example, the listening behaviour can show understanding, acceptance, and trust, all of which facilitate communication.

Students benefit from exposure to all four types of listening. Listening is a general purpose in most learning situations. To be effective listeners, however, students need a more specific focus than just attending to what is said.
In my next post we will see a chart that contrasts effective and ineffective listening habits.

By the way hope when you hear the word Christmas, your listening is Aesthetic (Appreciative) and not Evaluative (Critical).

I need Someone To Talk To.

I received a call from a friend (I promised her, I wont disclose her name) at about 9pm yesterday. I was surprised that she called me because she's only communicated to me via e-mail before now. By the way she is my friend even though we have never met physically only virtually (Online) through a friend that knows us both but I do call her occasionally. On taking her call, the first thing she told me from a sad voice was 'I Need Someone To Talk To'. I paused and asked what the issue was, she really did want to tell me but did not know if she should.

I asked her to drop so I can call her back. I did and that was when she told me, that her fiance cheated on her and mistreated her some months back but the thoughts keep hurting her even though they claim to have settled the issue.

I am not a counsellor and even if I want to be, certainly not for ladies. I tried talking to her though and whatever I told her would have been good because after talking with her for about 14 minutes, she, amidst her laughter thanked me for the relieve she's got from talking with me.
(I have her permission to write only this but Iwill seek her permission to post our conversation someday, hopefully soon.)

When I lay on my bed later to sleep that night, these thoughts came to my mind.

When do we need someone to talk to?

How often do we need someone to talk to?

When your friends need someone to talk to, do they call you?

Who do you call when you need someone to talk to?

When people need you to talk to, are you always there for them?

What do you expect from people you need to talk to?

After talking with those who need to talk to you, are they better or worse?

How prepared are you to answer those who need to talk to you?

Believe me, in life one day or the other, someone will need you to talk to, as much as you will need someone also to talk to. How you feel after the talk and how you make the person feel matters a lot. Do not turn people down, get prepared to help that friend bottling up things and help yourself by letting that thing you are bottling go. You can only do this by letting it out - Talk To That Person You Need To Talk To.

Caution: Know who you Talk to. (I'll blog this topic soon).

Wonderful Experience

It's a wonderful time to be alive, don't you think so? With all the hullabaloo going on in the political terrain of this great nation, we should not just be comfortable analysing why we deserve a great leader who will make significant changes but we should begin to demand one.

However that's not what I want to talk about today. Today I want to tell you about my wonderful experience on Saturday December 16, 2006. I had a meeting (Mentorship session) with Adeolu Akinyemi and Gbenga Sesan. By the way, Adeolu Akinyemi is an HR Manager, with specialist skills in Talent Management, Learning and Development and Gbenga Sesan was Nigeria's first Information Technology Youth Ambassador. Presently they are both Managing Partners of Generis Solutions, a budding consulting firm with a vision to become the leading global company that helps people and businesses succeed.

We were about six mentees present at the Mentorship Session. I discovered there is a lot to learn from these great young guys. Gbenga started the session by giving us a 'wake up' call.

Deolu challenged us by letting us know that "a day will come in ones life when you will meet someone with equal potentials & opportunities, the differentiating factor is how much you have developed that potential in you".

There was a lot of questions from the mentees and answers were flowing from these two great guys like a water fountain. I will tell you that it was an inspiring session and when we were through in the evening, I felt like Peter when he saw Jesus at the mountain of transfiguration and asked for tents to be built for Jesus, Moses and Elijah 'cos' he did not want to come down from the mountain.

I will just briefly share with you few of the things I took away from this Mentorship Session.

Take Home:

Your network is a determinant of your networth. The essence of power is not for control but for opening doors and granting access.

Your strength cannot stand between you and your greatness but your weaknesses can.

That change is not occurring the way we want it is probably because we are asleep.

Three questions you must ask yourself:

1. Why am I here? (Purpose).

2. Where do I want to be ten years from now? (Planning).

3. What are the things I must do to get there and what are the skills required? (Preparation).

No matter how much talent you have, if you don't spend time developing it, it will remain dormant.

What you have that you don't use is not yours.

The most important part of you will always be what is inside of you.

NOTE:

I hope this is enough to stir you, if not, then you have to climb this mountain yourself.

Your comments are welcomed. Just click on comment below any of the post and follow the instructions.

HAVE YOU HAD DAYS LIKE THIS?

I haven't recovered fully from the retreat we had in my company last Friday when something wonderful happened again the next day (Saturday).

However I'll tell you what happened on Saturday in my next post just read on if you want to know how the retreat went.

The retreat was nothing short of Waohhhh!!!!. It was the first time my company was organizing a retreat for all employees from top management to senior and junior staff.

The retreat was targetted at launching a new project "Project Restore". The aim of launching this new project is to define a new way of life for everyone in the company. The slogan for the launch is "The Oando Way, A future of Change, Commitment and Caring....".

What made the occassion 'thick' was the invitation of Fela Durotoye, a leading motivational speaker and the Managing Director and Chief Executive of VIP Consulting in Nigeria to speak. He practically blew the mind of everyone present. Attesting to that was the standing ovation he received when he was through speaking to us.

Below are some of the take home from his talk;

You can only create according to your own kind.

A company can only be as great as its people. Therefore I am the limit of the greatness of my company.

Don't just be unique, be special.

Move from the level of Survival to Success and then Significance.

Position doesn't guarantee Prominence.

Have a vision greater than yourself and believe you can make a significant change.

Be passionate about the impact of your vision and inspire the love for what you do............

Need I say more.....you should have been there. I think if more employees hear talks like this, they will be fired up to enjoy their job knowing that what they do is significant to the growth of the organization.

I promise to tell you what hapened on saturday in my next post.

Company's Retreat

Hello, today seem like a very busy day for me. We are having a retreat in my company from 9am - 5pm. After that we will be having our long service award nite and end of year party by 6pm. So in case you do not hear from me again today, please bear with me. I will see you when I recover from this "grangrancious" celebration, hopefully soon. But always remember this "When you settle for less than you deserve, you actually get less than you settled for".

DRUCKER'S THOUGHTS ON LEADERSHIP

Listed and explained below are few of the thoughts on leadership by Management and Leadership Guru Peter F. Drucker (1909 - 2005).

What Needs to Be Done
Successful leaders don't start out asking, "What do I want to do?" They ask, "What needs to be done?" Then they ask, "Of those things that would make a difference, which are right for me?" They don't tackle things they aren't good at. They make sure other necessities get done, but not by them. Successful leaders make sure that they succeed! They are not afraid of strength in others. Andrew Carnegie wanted to put on his gravestone, "Here lies a man who knew how to put into his service more able men than he was himself."

Check Your Performance
Effective leaders check their performance. They write down, "What do I hope to achieve if I take on this assignment?" They put away their goals for six months and then come back and check their performance against goals. This way, they find out what they do well and what they do poorly. They also find out whether they picked the truly important things to do. I've seen a great many people who are exceedingly good at execution, but exceedingly poor at picking the important things. They are magnificent at getting the unimportant things done. They have an impressive record of achievement on trivial matters.

Mission Driven
Leaders communicate in the sense that people around them know what they are trying to do. They are purpose driven--yes, mission driven. They know how to establish a mission. And another thing, they know how to say no. The pressure on leaders to do 984 different things is unbearable, so the effective ones learn how to say no and stick with it. They don't suffocate themselves as a result. Too many leaders try to do a little bit of 25 things and get nothing done. They are very popular because they always say yes. But they get nothing done.

Creative Abandonment
A critical question for leaders is, "When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?" The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, "Don't tell me what you're doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing."

The Rise of the Modern Multinational
The modern multinational corporation was invented in 1859. Siemens invented it because the English Siemens company had grown faster than the German parent. Before the Second World War, IBM was a small maker, not of computers, but of adding machines. They had one branch in England, which was very typical for the era. In the 1920s, General Motors bought a German and English and then Australian automobile manufacturer. The first time somebody from Detroit actually visited the European subsidiaries was in 1950. A trip to Europe was a big trip. You were gone three months. I still remember the excitement when the then head of GM went to Europe in the 1920s to buy the European properties. He never went back.

21st Century Organizations
Let me give you one example. This happens to be a consulting firm headquartered in Boston. Each morning, between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M. Boston time, which is 5 A.M. in the morning here in California and 11 P.M. in Tokyo, the firm conducts a one-hour management meeting on the Internet. That would have been inconceivable a few years back when you couldn't have done it physically. And for a few years, I worked with this firm closely and I had rented a room in a nearby motel and put in a videoconferencing screen. Once a week, I participated in this Internet meeting and we could do it quite easily, successfully. As a result of which, that consulting firm is not organized around localities but around clients.

How To Lead a 21st Century Organization
Don't travel so much. Organize your travel. It is important that you see people see people and that you maybe once or twice a year. Otherwise, don't travel. Make them come to see you. Use technology--it is cheaper than traveling. I don't know anybody who can work while traveling. Do you? The second thing to say is make sure that your subsidiaries and foreign offices take up the responsibility to keep you informed. So, ask them twice a year, "What activities do you need to report to me?" Also ask them, "What about my activity and my plans do you need to know from me?" The second question is just as important.

Prisoner of Your Own Organization
When you are the chief executive, you're the prisoner of your organization. The moment you're in the office, everybody comes to you and wants something, and it is useless to lock the door. They'll break in. So, you have to get outside the office. But still, that isn't traveling. That's being at home or having a secret office elsewhere. When you're alone, in your secret office, ask the question, "What needs to be done?" Develop your priorities and don't have more than two. I don't know anybody who can do three things at the same time and do them well. Do one task at a time or two tasks at a time. That's it. OK, two works better for most. Most people need the change of pace. But, when you are finished with two jobs or reach the point where it's futile, make the list again. Don't go back to priority three. At that point, it's obsolete.

How Organizations Fall Down
Make sure the people with whom you work understand your priorities. Where organizations fall down is when they have to guess at what the boss is working at, and they invariably guess wrong. So the CEO needs to say, "This is what I am focusing on." Then the CEO needs to ask of his associates, "What are you focusing on?" Ask your associates, "You put this on top of your priority list--why?" The reason may be the right one, but it may also be that this associate of yours is a salesman who persuades you that his priorities are correct when they are not. So, make sure that you understand your associates' priorities and make sure that after you have that conversation, you sit down and drop them a two-page note--"This is what I think we discussed. This is what I think we decided. This is what I think you committed yourself to within what time frame." Finally, ask them, "What do you expect from me as you seek to achieve your goals?"

The Transition from Entrepreneur to Large Company CEO
Again, let's start out discussing what not to do. Don't try to be somebody else. By now you have your style. This is how you get things done. Don't take on things you don't believe in and that you yourself are not good at. Learn to say no. Effective leaders match the objective needs of their company with the subjective competencies. As a result, they get an enormous amount of things done fast.

How Capable Leaders Blow It
One of the ablest men I've worked with, and this is a long time back, was Germany's last pre-World War II democratic chancellor, Dr. Heinrich Bruning. He had an incredible ability to see the heart of a problem. But he was very weak on financial matters. He should have delegated but he wasted endless hours on budgets and performed poorly. This was a terrible failing during a Depression and it led to Hitler. Never try to be an expert if you are not. Build on your strengths and find strong people to do the other necessary tasks.

The Danger Of Charisma
You know, I was the first one to talk about leadership 50 years ago, but there is too much talk, too much emphasis on it today and not enough on effectiveness. The only thing you can say about a leader is that a leader is somebody who has followers. The most charismatic leaders of the last century were called Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mussolini. They were mis-leaders! Charismatic leadership by itself certainly is greatly overstated. Look, one of the most effective American presidents of the last 100 years was Harry Truman. He didn't have an ounce of charisma. Truman was as bland as a dead mackerel. Everybody who worked for him worshiped him because he was absolutely trustworthy. If Truman said no, it was no, and if he said yes, it was yes. And he didn't say no to one person and yes to the next one on the same issue. The other effective president of the last 100 years was Ronald Reagan. His great strength was not charisma, as is commonly thought, but that he knew exactly what he could do and what he could not do.

How To Reinvigorate People
Within organizations there are people who, typically in their 40s, hit a midlife crisis when they realize that they won't make it to the top or discover that they are not yet first-rate. This happens to engineers and accountants and technicians. The worst midlife crisis is that of physicians, as you know. They all have a severe midlife crisis. Basically, their work becomes awfully boring. Just imagine seeing nothing for 30 years but people with a skin rash. They have a midlife crisis, and that's when they take to the bottle. How do you save these people? Give them a parallel challenge. Without that, they'll soon take to drinking or to sleeping around. In a coeducational college, they sleep around and drink. The two things are not incompatible, alas! Encourage people facing a midlife crisis to apply their skills in the non-profit sector.

Character Development
We have talked a lot about executive development. We have been mostly talking about developing people's strength and giving them experiences. Character is not developed that way. That is developed inside and not outside. I think churches and synagogues and the 12-step recovery programs are the main development agents of character today.

http://www.pfdf.org/leaderbooks/drucker/bio.html

Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005) Biography

I woke up this morning feeling happy, probably because I have some thoughts to post today. Got to the office earlier than usual so I can post this before office hours. Started typing and discovered the difficulty in putting thoughts on paper (Computer). I encouraged myself and overcame inertia so at least I shouldn't fail before I start (since this is my 'first post after the last'). It was in my plenty search of what to post that I thought of blogging a 'Significant' personality that is known worldwide.

This is an excerpt from the biography of Peter F. Drucker.

Peter F. Drucker (1909-2005) was a writer, teacher, and consultant specializing in strategy and policy for businesses and social sector organizations. He consulted with many of the world's largest corporations as well as with nonprofit organizations, small and entrepreneurial companies, and with agencies of the U.S. government. He also worked with free-world governments such as those of Canada, Japan, and Mexico.

He is the author of thirty-one books which have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thirteen books deal with society, economics, and politics; fifteen deal with management. Two of his books are novels, one is autobiographical, and he is a co-author of a book on Japanese painting. He has made four series of educational films based on his management books. He has been an editorial columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review and other periodicals.

Drucker was born in 1909 in Vienna and was educated there and in England. He took his doctorate in public and international law while working as a newspaper reporter in Frankfurt, Germany. He then worked as an economist for an international bank in London. Drucker came to the United States in 1937. He began his teaching career as professor of politics and philosophy at Bennington College; for more than twenty years he was professor of management at the Graduate Business School of New York University. The recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, Peter Drucker had, since 1971, been Clarke Professor of Social Sciences at Claremont Graduate University. Its Graduate Management School was named after him in 1984.

Peter Drucker has been hailed in the United States and abroad as the seminal thinker, writer, and lecturer on the contemporary organization. In 1997, he was featured on the cover of Forbes magazine under the headline, "Still the Youngest Mind," and BusinessWeek has called him "the most enduring management thinker of our time."

On June 21 2002, Dr. Peter Drucker, author of The Effective Executive and Management Challenges for the 21st Century, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush.

Mr. Drucker has received honorary doctorates from universities around the world. He was honorary Chairman of the Leader to Leader Institute.

He passed away on November 11, 2005, at age 95. He is survived by his wife, four children, and six grandchildren.

http://www.pfdf.org/leaderbooks/drucker/bio.html

Welcome 'Baby' Blogger

Need I say today is my first day at blogging haven just created this blog site. Many thanks to Deolu who inspired me to create a blog for myself after seeing series of comments I always leave on his site. I don't know much of what I'll be letting you know or telling you on this site but I sure do know that whenever you come around, you can do either of these two things;

1. Stay a while and learn something from my life experiences. OR,
2. Run away as quickly as you came.

But I'll advice you choose the former. All the same join in welcoming this 'baby' blogger into the world of blogging and I know this is not the last you'll hear of me.