Free 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Audio Book

Eldon sent me this link to a free audio book for 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Check it out.

Emotional Intelligence Session 3

The questions we asked at the meeting seemed to be:

Am I self-aware? Am I able to manage how I respond to my emotions? Am I able to feel how other people are feeling?

How do I not go overboard and turn self-awareness (which is being aware that my feelings and thoughts could impact my own actions and other people's well-being) into self-consciousness (which is overly introverted, shy, timid and withdrawn).

There is a fine line? Is there not?

Is awareness management same as always thinking ahead and think before you leap? Am I becoming a Thinking Machine? What happens to spontaneity? to authenticity?

These are questions that I myself constantly try to balance.

Of course there are two things that I believe in:

First, I have a free will. It's up to be to learn to control it, to strengthen it, to use it. I decide. And that means I can decide when to be deliberative and when to be intuitive. Second, finding the balance of when to do which is a trial and error act, a dance between this and that.

The more deliberate and conscious I am that I have a choice in the process, the better I get at it. Though I might not have been favored by nature to have high EQ, through nurturing and my own deliberate practicing I can become someone who adjusts intuitively to what is required--whether the occasion requires spontaneous gaiety or solemn respectfulness.

And doing the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People may just be one of the ways to improve EQ.

Also, welcome first time LPG attendees John and Yang to LPG.

More info and materials on the session can be found => LPG event notice.

Future LPG events can be found here ==> LPG info hosted on Middle Way Group site.

Happy New Year

Before I retired from IBM, I seemed to blog more regularly. Now that I am supposedly in the green pasture, I ought to have more time. It has not worked out so far.

But this being the last day of the year, it's really a good time to finish off the year with a reflective entry about LPG.

We had a great LPG year in 2008. We completed another round of discussions and practicing of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people. On the 7 habits, our discussions were led by various members at different times including Roger, Taylor and Jin-Dong and me. Donna did a vision alignment session for us. And Abbey led an insightful couple of sessions on Emotional Intelligence for us.

Our LPG distribution list has expanded to include non-IBM members and we do have the potential to link to a larger community.

So, it has been a remarkable year. I would like to thank everyone for making it a success.

As to next year, there are interests to go deeper into Emotional Intelligence started already by Abbey. Hoa had volunteered to lead the discussions at least for the first two sessions.

Sandra has suggested to have our meeting go for an hour and a half. Here is our suggestion, we will block off the calendar for 1.5 hour. The first one hour is formal meeting and those who can and would like to can stay for the additional 1/2 hour to continual the discussions informally.

Happy New Year!

Encouragement

Last week's IBM Toastmaster meeting theme was "Encouragement".

Someone once said that worthwhile causes fail only when participants begin to give up. In other worlds, team members became so discouraged to the point they no longer contribute to the cause.

Nothing else has changed--the need for the project is still there--whether it is raising awareness for global warming, helping children in needs, etc.

There are many reasons for people to get discouraged. I won't get into that.

Here I would like to share the lessons I learned to handle discouragement. It's straight out of Covey's Habit 1-Be Proactive. I call it the Rule of Five. For every discouragement I encounter, I treat it as an opportunity to offer encouragement to myself and too others. If I received one negative feedback or encountered one difficult obstacle, I would make a point to do 5 things to encourage others or to myself.

I have found that helps me not to give up and restore my energy and commitment to go on.

For example, last week, I went to a meeting and no one else showed up. I was the only one there. Out of that discouragement, I have started to do five things to encourage myself and others.

Perhaps, a thank you note to friends that I have made, or for new and interesting things that I have learned.

And you guess it. writing this blog and reminding people of the next LPG meeting on Emotional Intelligence is also one of those 5 things.

PS: For more information about Friday's LPG meeting: here is the link http://middlewaygroup.com/partners/leadership-practice-group-lpg/copy_of_emotional-intelligence-session-1


--
My website: http://sites.google.com/site/allnodeavatar/

7 Habits of High Effective IT Projects

I am doing quite a bit of looking around at Plone and web companies that build things with Plone.

Found this company and its blog on Agile:

http://agileblog.3months.com/2007/12/10/the-7-habits-of-highly-effective-it-projects/#comments

Synchronicity --There are no accidents

It was one September Saturday late afternoon I found myself at Sam's Club. I really didn't really want to be there. After exercising at the RAC, I was tired and really wanted to go home. But knowing that we ran out of orange juice, I forced myself to be there for a quick trip. As I got close to the grocery aisle, I ran into a friend. She looked a bit harried and was pushing a shopping cart with her two young boys riding in it.

Running into someone you know shopping is not that amazing, but this is different. This was a close friend who happened to have accepted my invitation to my retirement open house party the previous Saturday but did not come.

"Why didn't you come to my party?" I asked her accusingly. Being a close friend, I knew I could kid her. And it was an open house, a no show was really not a big deal.

Her response surprised me, "Why aren't you at your party now?

As we looked at each other, we immediately understood what happened. She got the date wrong by one week. In fact, she and her kids, after shopping at Sam's, were on their way to my house.

We both realized too that if we had not run into each other at Sam's, she and her family would have shown up at my house. And her kids, all excited with the visit, would have been totally disappointed that after all the anticipation there really was no party.

But we were spared of that disappointment. So was it just luck? Or, is there a larger scheme at work that synchronizes human affairs? What do you think?

11/14 LPG Meeting Emotional Intelligence

I have previously blogged about synchronicity, which I truely believe is related to Covey's Habit 7: Synergize. Magic happens if you network, if you look for ways to help others and have the intention to create value.

As a result of my association with China Cultural Class in Rochester, I got to know Abbey at RCTC. Not only does she manage business eduction programs at RCTC, she also gives training of Emotional Intelligence.

Since LPG members have expressed an interest in discussing EQ, I invited her, and she graciously accepted, to lead us in the discussions of that topic.

You won't want to miss this learning opportunity. Here is a link to the meeting.