In an interview, comedian Joan Rivers was asked how she stayed so thin and trim and the interviewer said, “Do you do a lot of exercising?” “Oh, my Lord no,” said Rivers. “If God had intended me to bend over, He would have put diamonds on the ground.”

When actress and screen writer, Mae West, was asked about dieting she said, “I never worry about diets. The only carrots I’m interested in are the carats in a diamond.”

Hungarian born American film and stage actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor said that she never hated a man enough to give him back his diamonds. And she received diamonds from 9 husbands.

Diamonds have been considered precious for centuries. Geologists say diamonds were formed billions of years ago deep inside the earth by tremendous heat and pressure. They have literally been around since the beginning of time and they will last through eternity. As the title to a popular James Bond movie states, Diamonds Are Forever, literally.

Even though they have been around forever, diamonds are rare and they are hard to find. They come to the surface of the earth during volcanic eruptions in a bluish substance called kimberlite.

To find these rough diamonds, you can search in the marshes, ponds, streams and lakes near volcanos that have erupted, or you can dig deep mines to find rough diamonds still inside the earth. However, you have to process about 22 to 100 tons of kimberlite to find one diamond. This makes a diamond very precious.

Each stone is unique and it takes a skilled technician to cut and polish the rough stone into the beautiful diamond that sells for thousands, even millions of dollars.

Application for the Charismatic Leader 

Charismatic and savvy business leaders are rare. They are hard to find. Charismatic leaders are unique, each having their own facets of strength. They are precious because of the value they add to organizations. They become skilled technicians as they form, develop, and polish people into productive teams.

The four qualities of diamond you can put into your life to become a more charismatic leader are: 

1) Diamond Hardness:  Diamond is the hardest natural substance in nature. It is four times harder than the next hardest substance. It can cut through any other natural substance so it is used extensively in industry for drilling and polishing.

As a charismatic leader: When I ask you to emulate the hardness of diamonds, I DO NOT want you to be hard to get along with, I DO NOT want you to be hard on people; I DO NOT want you to be hard on yourself.

I do want you to equate the hardness of a diamond with being HARDY – self-determining and self-reliant. And TOUGH – tough enough not to fracture and break from the economic pressures faced in organizations today; tough enough to tell the truth; tough enough to cut through problems to solutions.

2) Diamond Clarity: Diamond has greater clarity or transparency than any other solid or liquid substance. The greater clarity in a diamond, the greater the value.

As a charismatic leader: We are going to translate this into clarity of purpose. The clearer you are on the goals of your organization, your own department or team, the greater impact you’ll have on daily productivity because work will be tied directly to results. Daily efforts bring you and your employees closer to successfully executing your organizational stewardship. 

Clarity for your organization, department, unit or team comes from goals setting and time management processes. Do not feel this work is insignificant but give it the time it deserves.

3) Diamond Melting Point: Diamond has the highest melting point of any natural substance: 6422 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a charismatic leader: When it comes to relationships, have a high melting point and give others the benefit of a doubt. Work to raise the melting point of discussions and disagreements. Model for your employees the ability to Pause, Think, and then ACT. Not the reverse order: Act (often inappropriately), then pause and think. Your goal is to replace meltdowns with dialog.

4) Diamond Conductivity:  Diamond conducts heat better than anything – five times better than the second best element that conducts heat, silver.

As a charismatic leader: The “heat” you need to conduct is positive energy and a belief in the future. On a daily basis I encourage you to be the conductor of optimism and hope. If you can be a positive leader, you will be as a beacon of light in the darkness.

These four qualities of the element diamond are fundamental for you to emulate in your leadership career. Master them, and your employees will WANT to follow you as they give you discretionary effort, a prize to be cherished by any leader.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. The Workplace Power Institute helps organizations be more competitive in the global marketplace by removing blocks to organizational productivity and improving collaboration.  For more program information visit the web site: www.WorkplacePowerInstitute.com

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Because of thunder storms in Atlanta, the flight from Dallas to Atlanta had been delayed twice. On the third attempt, we were boarding and I felt hopeful of actually getting off the ground. My hopes faded fast when the tired-looking flight attendant came down the aisle quietly announcing that if we were not permitted to take off in the next 15 minutes, the crew would have exceeded their 16-hour work day and we would have to taxi back to the terminal and await another flight.

We were not given permission to take off, the crew's time expired and as we taxied back to the terminal I felt mixed emotions. I kept thinking, "But we were right there ready to take off. How could 1-1/2 more hours matter?"

Just as airlines are concerned about overworked pilots and flight attendants, employers should be concerned about overworked employees. Why? Errors, accidents, and low productivity for a start.

My mixed emotions as we taxied back to the terminal are similar to the signals our culture sends today about long work hours. In one breath we agree with employees having a pity party about how hard they work and with the other breath, we award employees a "red badge of courage" for having the guts to go the extra mile.

A study by the Families and Work Institute concludes that overworked employees should be taken seriously. Employees who are overworked are more likely to exhibit anxiety, make mistakes at work, harbor angry feelings about their employer for expecting them to be on the job for long hours and resent coworkers who don't pull their share of the load. The study documents that nearly half of employees who feel overworked report that their health is poor and 8 percent of employees who are not overworked experience symptoms of clinical depression compared with 21 percent of those who are highly overworked.

Helping Employees Feel Less Overwhelmed

What can the organization do to help employees feel less overworked while still finishing their tasks in a given day? Using time efficiently at work is an individual and an organizational issue. On the organizational side, managers can help employees reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed by:

• Training employees in time management principles
• Discouraging the practice of eating at the desk and working through lunch
• Insisting employees taking vacation time
• Permitting flexible work hours when appropriate
• Encouraging non-interrupt zones in the day when workers can focus on their tasks
• Assigning tasks well in advance of the drop dead date
• Helping Employees Be More Effective 

A tried and true principle states that to be efficient, you must first be effective. For instance, the maker of buggy whips might be highly efficient in manufacturing techniques, but if no one buys the buggy whips, the process is not effective.

To encourage efficiency and effectiveness, managers can:

• Have clearly stated goals with built in deadlines
• Insist employees make a daily "to do" list
• Make certain equipment works properly
• Supply the necessary materials for job completion
• Train employees on software packages that enable more efficient work

Ensuring the above items are taken care of is essential to help employees leverage their time while in the office and be more productive. 

Realizing a Productivity Culture Change

Managers should make a concerted effort to grease the wheels of productivity, and not be the stick that gets caught in the tire spokes, catapulting the rider from the trail. By attending to these issues, managers can help workers feel less overwhelmed and enable them do more in less time. You'll like the results.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. She offers keynotes, workshops, and retreats to move your organization forward in the chaotic environment of the 21^st Century. You can contact Karla at karla@workplacepowerinstitute.com visit her blog at www.FromTheDeskofKarlaBrandau.com

 This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

If the organization provides safety and security for employees, then employees will provide the organization with their brawn. But what about the brain? That is a different issue.

Money buys employees’ brawn: at least you can see them at their desk by 8:00 a.m. and see them leave at 5:00 p.m. You observe them walking the halls with papers in hand, working at their computers, talking on the telephone, and in other ways physically doing their jobs. They appear to be working hard and the employer pays for the fundamental tasks the employee was hired to do. But, is the employee’s brain engaged? Is he satisfied with his current level of production and on autopilot? Is she just going through the motions to get a paycheck?

In production jobs where people are hired for their brawn, brain engagement is not a major issue. However, it is a different story for people with information jobs. People who are paid to think need reasons to keep their brain engaged and keep it from wandering into La-La Land: thinking about the weekend, plotting how to get even with the person in the next cubicle, or surfing the Internet for wakeboards. Brain engagement of employees is a clear leadership challenge.

The brain has many levels of intellectual and emotional involvement and employees decide on an hourly basis how much of their brain they will share at work, how much creativity they will give to solving problems, and how much they will flex to get along with co-workers.  The amount of brain effort they choose to give is called discretionary effort.

Some employees only engage their brains to do their jobs just to the level so they won’t get fired. Little if any discretionary effort comes from these employees and they may never choose to change their engagement preference. However, if an organization increases the invitation to be engaged, most employees will respond in a positive way.

To better engage employees, organizations can employ a variety of methods such as offering monetary rewards, giving opportunities for personal development and education, recognizing employees for outstanding accomplishments and achievements, extending the leadership of a team assigned to a plumb project, etc. The ideas for engagement are numerous and once the organization has matched their method with the employee, the level of an employee's intellectual engagement and the amount of discretionary effort they choose to give will increase.

Discretionary effort equates with energy at work. There is a difference in the level of effort and energy one is capable of bringing to an activity or a task, and the effort required only to get by or make do, which requires little discretionary effort. It is the difference between the minimum acceptable versus the maximum level of energy and discretionary effort an individual is capable of giving and is related to the integrity and trust between an employee and the organization. 

This places the level of employee engagement and discretionary effort squarely on the shoulders of leadership. To engage your employees and earn discretionary effort, use this checklist:

Give your employees stimulating tasks. This gives them positive expectation and a sense of excitement to come to work. It engages their creativity, improves their brain activity and increases the pleasure of working.

Assign employees to find answers to tough problems. This honors them by showing you believe in them and their abilities. Human nature will make them knuckle-down and bring you solutions.

Make employees accountable with deadlines and midpoints. Just like a teenager secretly appreciates the enforcement of rules, deep inside people feel good when they meet deadlines with integrity.

Explain the organizational vision and mission and ask them if they can align personally with the objectives and goals. Just like in a sales process, you can uncover and overcome their objections to business strategy and in the process and discussions, make them a more loyal employee.

Take note of their completed tasks in their performance review and see if their completed responsibilities support the goals and objectives of the department. This audit will help you determine if they have inadvertently veered off target.

Provide team building activities and relationship training so employees can intelligently solve problems, resolve minor conflicts and understand how to collaborate.

Reward them and recognize them for their contributions. Rewards and recognition give employees a sense of self-esteem and individual pride increases when they are thanked for their contributions in front of their peers.  

Teach managers how to be relevant to the employees. Relevance means you matter. Because some managers underperform, they do not matter to the employee and worse yet, get in the way of employees performing at high levels.

The fundamental building block to effective work production and customer satisfaction is employees who are engaged and excited about their jobs. Their brains are fully engaged and they willingly give discretionary effort.  Their energy is directed toward task completion, solving complex problems in innovative ways, and ensuring happy customers.

They seldom visit La La Land.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. She offers keynotes, workshops, and retreats to move your organization forward in the chaotic environment of the 21^st Century. You can contact Karla at karla@workplacepowerinstitute.com visit her blog at www.FromTheDeskofKarlaBrandau.com

*image courtesy of  David Castillo Dominici/freedigitalphotos.net

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.

Do you ever feel lethargic and lost at work? Do you ever feel vulnerable and powerless, like a tiny cog in a huge machine? Do you wish that you could be truly happy at work?

“Happiness at work is elusive,” says psychiatrist Dr. Kerry J. Sulkowicz. Sulkowicz teaches that a better goal is to enjoy your work and strive for high performance. That is more realistic. Why? Happiness is complex. It is difficult to sustain for long periods of time. It often ebbs and flows with the people around you and ultimately, happiness must be generated from within.

In your quest for happiness at work, it is important to understand root causes. When identified, root causes give you clues to why you feel vulnerable and powerless. I learned this when I worked in a corporation where I was expected to be merely a puppet, doing exactly what the manager said and acting precisely when he pulled my strings.

The behavior of my manager was my root cause for unhappiness as he drained essential life force from me but I displaced my anger on my family and work associates. Seeing my relationships suffer, I had to step back and analyze why I was so unhappy. As I consciously looked at my feelings and emotions, I realized that the root cause of my anger was a manager who did not allow me to collaborate, have input, think through and solve problems related to my work.

Once I identified, admitted to myself, and accepted this root cause of my unhappiness, my annoyance and irritation subsided. I was no longer a victim, but had a sense of power coming from my ability to cope with negative feelings. By insulating myself mentally and emotionally from the behaviors of my manager, I returned to a pleasant person. I restored my good relationships with friends and family, regained my mental energy, and climbed on top of my workload.

The ups and downs of work life are inevitable. Work is work! Only in Cinderella fairy tales is work free from pressure, demands, and anxiety. Believing you are entitled to happiness at work every hour of the day makes you neurotic and causes your mental state to go up and down like a yo-yo.

Next time you feel unhappy and lethargic at work, look for the root cause which may not be your manager but an overdue project or an assignment just out of your skill set. Stabilize your identity as a valuable cog in organizational progress, believe in your inner power to manage your mental and emotional energy, and then focus on consistent and excellent results.

It is possible to find happiness at work when you understand the subtle nuances of creating a mental and emotional environment where happiness can thrive within.

About the author:

Karla Brandau is CEO of Workplace Power Institute. She offers keynotes, workshops, and retreats to move your organization forward in the chaotic environment of the 21^st Century. You can contact Karla at karla@workplacepowerinstitute.com visit her blog at www.FromTheDeskofKarlaBrandau.com

This material is copyright protected. No part of this document may be reproduced, in any form or by any means without permission from weLEAD Incorporated. Copyright waiver may be acquired from the weLEAD website.