This is an orignal Tammy post; posted on my work blog July 2011.

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I bet you thought I would start right away with me and my leadership journey.  Originally, I was going to do that, but I have learned some new things about life and myself that I think will help you on your career path.   So here are three special stories, to help trigger conversation and thought.

 

Which one do you fit into?

More importantly, which one do you want to fit to?

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Have you ever heard the story about the Monkeys??  This story was passed on to me from a direct supervisor at one point during my career in the public service.  The source has been lost throughout the years, but the message still rings loud and clear.

 Start with a cage containing five (5) monkeys.  Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it.  Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.  As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.  After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result – all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.  Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

 Now, put away the cold water.  Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one.  The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs.  To his surprise and horror, all the other monkeys attack him.  After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

 Next remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one.  The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked.  The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!  Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the last original monkey.  Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.  Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

 After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water.  Nevertheless, no monkey every again approaches the stairs to try for a banana.

 Why not??  Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here…

 Is this how you view your job?  Is this how you want to go through your career?  What if there was another attitude you could mimic??

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 One of my favourite blogs to follow is Gail VazOxlade (gailvazoxlade.com).  She is a wonderful woman who teaches people how to appropriately manage their finances and get out of debt.  She currently has 3 TV shows (Till Debt Do Us Part, Till Debt Do Us Part: Home Edition, and Princess).  And her blog is both insightful and encouraging.  Recently, she did a blog post that brought my thoughts back to the story of the monkeys.  In this post she discussed the story of a VERY famous turtle.  The following is directly from her blog:

 So many people think they are powerless.  Life just happens to them and they are pushed along in the current of a river that’s too strong to escape…. They are peons in someone else’s major drama.

 Too bad.  And NOT TRUE.

 We each have the ability to create a life that works for us.  When we feel helpless and incapable of changing our circumstances, we’re letting YERTLE have the last say.

 Yertle the Turtle likes his pond and he rules it well, at first.  But power corrupts and Yertle’s desire to rise higher and higher makes him build up his throne… on the backs of his fellow turtles.

 People see this as a story about tyranny and social justice.  I like to look at it as the store about how one guy – the turtle on the bottom, a fellow named MACK – decides to take control and change his life.  Tired of being squashed in the mud by Yertle’s obsessions, the little Atlas shrugs.  Actually, Mack BURPS.

 …

 Like the turtle on the bottom of the stack, you have the option of staying in the game and just being a stepping stone to someone else’s dream-come-true, or shaking off the yoke of complacency and creating a new reality for yourself.

 ….

 Not everyone is cut out to be a king.  Not everyone wants to be a king. But not being a king doesn’t mean you have to be someone else’s pawn.  You can be king of your own world, master of your own future….

 If you want to have a different life, you must do something different.  Go ahead, BURP!!!

The last piece of the puzzle is the bumblebee.  Ok, originally, this post had nothing in it about bumblebees, but funny thing is my kids have a huge impact on me and this is their small contribution.

At the beginning of the movie THE BEE is the following quote:

 According to all known laws of aviation, there’s no way a bee should be able to fly.

Its wings are too small to lift its fat little body off the ground.

 The bee, of course, flies anyway – because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.

So a week has passed.  And my growth has been limited.  I finally got my hands on THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE by Kouzes Posner (http://ca.leadershipchallenge.com/WileyCDA/Section/index.html).  I haven’t been able to read more than the first chapter or two.  But while waiting for this book to be received, I also grabbed the book WHAT GOT YOU HERE WON’T GET YOU THERE by Marshall Goldsmith (http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/) and of course managed to read a chapter or two from this book.  The results of my reading have led me to re-examine my Initial Goal Statement.  If you recall I wrote:

I am interested in learning more about leadership, not because I want to be in a management position one day, but because I want to be a person that helps lead others to attaining their goals.  I believe my primary motivation is to be of service to others.

This goal statement is interesting because most of the leadership books I have been able to find are written on the premise that you (the reader) want to succeed, advance, manage people, earn lots of money and be big in the world.  I think my vision of being big in the world would more closely resemble MOTHER THERESA than DONALD TRUMP, but I know I will still gain some insight from reading the materials.  Therefore, I plan on continuing on in this process because I know even if I am never Regional Director the advice given and information gained from these materials will make me a better person. So as a result, I have edited my Goal Statement Slightly.

My goals for this leadership development program is to improve myself, not because I want to be in a management position one day, but because I want to be a person that helps lead others to attaining their goals.  I believe my primary motivation is to be of service to others. With this in mind, I need to learn to LISTEN more effectively, ACCEPT FEEDBACK and grow from it, LEARN TO MORE APPROPRIATELY COMMUNICATE by analyzing the impact of my actions and words on others, and SET AN EXAMPLE.

More than likely this Goal Statement will shift slightly as I continue on with this process, but I think this one more clearly defines where I am headed from here.  During this past week I have also been able to identify that I currently can relate more closely to MACK the Turtle than a monkey.  I would rather make a BURP that causes great change for many, than go along with the crowd, blindly without understanding the reasoning behind the culture.  I know I am not quite yet ready to be a bumblebee, and fly in the face of what the culture of the public service has told me to be truth.  I am not ready to walk away from concerning myself with what others think about me, but my steps in this journey have definitely taken me off the beaten path.

For the next week I will continue reading the two leadership books that I have and jot down my notes and thoughts.  I look forward to see where you have headed over the past week, and your goal statements and direction you have set for yourself for the week ahead.