This newsletter is intended to support the work of people who are engaged in developing the careers, vocations, livelihoods, jobs and/or work of other individuals. It is our belief that everyone's work life can and should be molded and crafted to be the expression of our finest gifts and a source of great joy. Towards this end, we hope that the content of these newsletters will support you with both practical tools and inspirational ideas.

Hello.
Welcome to our JUNE 2009 edition!
Please pass this on to interested friends and colleagues!

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Typically I use every other month to reflect on the key article written the month prior, responding to questions and comments from readers on the previous issue.    As I chose not to write a May issue given my heavy travel schedule this spring, I am using this issue to respond to queries and comments about the April issue entitled, “An Inside Out Perspective – The Starting Place for Anything that Matters”.  For those who haven’t read that issue, you might want to go back and read the archived issue from April which prompted these readers’ questions.

An Inside Out Perspective – Nature or Nurture?

Dear Denise,  While I agree with everything you had to say about an Inside Out Perspective, I am wondering how you are able to consistently put those principles into practice in your everyday life.  I try not to let external circumstances bring me down, but that is not always easy.  Do you think that some people are just more prone to having an internal or external focus, similar to the introvert/extrovert distinction discussed in the Meyers Brigg? How do those of us who are not made that way, develop that perspective? 

- Vocational Rehab Counselor, Kingston, Ontario

What an interesting question! As I am not in any way qualified to respond to that question as perhaps a psychologist could, let me simply tell you what I believe to be true. I don’t think of an Inside Out Perspective, as I wrote about in the April issue, as a quality or attribute that someone is either born with or not.  I don’t think it is simply a part of our nature as much as it is a perspective that we nurture.  For myself, I think of it as an intentional practice, as a determined stance, and as a deliberate position that I choose to take in relation to my life.  I have come to believe that, not based on some theoretical or philosophical idea, but as my direct experience as a person in the world who is constantly being met by the challenge to choose my response to circumstances, to decide where to set my focus, and to discern whether to act like a puppet or to be the puppeteer of my own experience!  I would be very surprised if this stance simply comes more naturally to some than it does to others based on one’s predisposition or some inherited attribute.  If I am wrong about that, how lucky for those who got the gene!  

If you think from my writing that I might be one of those people for whom this perspective comes easily, you would be sorely disappointed on a regular basis as you see me whine and complain as my flights are delayed, my bags are lost, or the battery dies as I am following the directions from my cell phone's GPS feature.  You would wonder where all my optimism went in those moments when I am grappling with the fatigue of jet lag and I enter a training room in which there is inadequate space or inappropriate equipment for the task at hand.  Oh, don’t you doubt for a second, dear reader, that I can bitch and moan with the best of them – pointing happily and unabashedly at the inept, incompetent, hopeless, bungling masses of the world!   Do I maintain a calm and collected composure due to an unwavering ability to keep my focus in the area of my own control, realizing that nothing is really happening to me, only through me?  Do I look reflexively see the silver lining in every dark cloud?  Yeah, right!   I wish!

Fortunately, what I do have is the knowing that even when I have reacted in the most embarrassingly pitiful way, I still have the ability to respond differently in the moment in which I have recovered my composure.  That’s where the power lies – not just in the first response to a situation or circumstance, but in the choice to gather oneself, to go to the balcony and gain perspective, and then to respond from a healthier, more powerful place.   To me, this is an ongoing decision to be made and a habit to be honed.  It takes vigilance, maturity, patience, and lots of humility!  I suppose it is also helpful to have a partner or a friend, as I do in my husband, who knows how to subtly nudge, cajole or jolly me from the depths of my own private hell back to a reality in which I am reminded that even in the worst of circumstances, I still have choices.  (Now there’s an interesting dance!)     

To this reader, and to all of those who like me, desire to live a more intentional existence driven by an internal sense of purpose, power and passion rather than a harried existence driven by external forces, all I can say is, let’s be less critical and more compassionate with ourselves in those times that we fail to hold our own, and more confident and hopeful in our ever-growing ability to regain and recover our sense of power when we need it.  
 

Leadership and Education – An Inside Job?

Dear Denise,  As an instructor in Adult Education for the past thirty years, your April issue really struck a chord for me.  What could possibly be more important in education than to help people not only learn about the world around them, but to actually learn and about and know themselves, what makes them tick, what makes them shy away from their dreams, and what makes them willing to stand up and be counted.  Do you realize that a lot of what you write about has deep applications not only for vocational and career professions, but for educators as well?  My district just spent a small fortune sending a group of us through a Leadership Development Program, and although it was great to get away, the program left me feeling less than inspired with its long list of “core competencies” that are supposed to make leaders out of us.  Personally, I think leadership, like education, is more of “an inside job”.   I continue to share your newsletters with my students and colleagues – please keep it coming! 

- Adult Education Instructor, Missoula, Montana

Leadership and education - “an inside job”?  What a concept! Ordinarily when we think of education, we expect to learn more about the world around us than the world within us.  We approach training with the expectation of enhancing our abilities to learn how to change those around us, never suspecting that we might need to change ourselves! We were brought up to think of learning as studying facts and data, gathering tips and techniques, acquiring core competencies, etc. Little wonder that our thoughts about crucial subjects like education, leadership, diversity, communication, - you name it- tend to be externalized.  Most training and development programs, along with our educational systems, focus more on what to think, not on how to think.  We learn what to do, not how to be.  We learn more about what to achieve, than how and why to achieve it. We learn more about things than we do about the nature of things. 

It follows that we would approach “leadership development” as the mastery of external skills such as public speaking, strategic planning, achieving certain results, rather than as an ongoing, internal growth process.  Seldom does it occur to us that what we want to achieve and master – the manifestations of leadership or education such as vision, innovation, results, drive, etc. are inseparable from who we are, how we think, and what we bring to our interactions with people and to the world. 

I posit that any real learning that has taken place is due to a change that has taken place within that individual!   Leadership development is self-development!  Successful diversity training isn’t about learning about differences in the world, but about learning how to relate to those differences in a new way.  Again, it is self-development!  I often tell people at the beginning of a seminar that of all the aspirations I hold for the workshop, the greatest is that, at the end of it, when they look in the mirror, they see someone different!   As was so aptly put by the reader above, all learning and education is “an inside job”!
 

Impact of External/Internal Focus on Employee Engagement

Dear Denise, For a long time I have tried to put my finger on the difference in attitude between my staff who are happy in their work and those who seem hell bent on being miserable.   They share the same working conditions and face similar challenges – why is it that some thrive and others are barely able to maintain?  In reading your article on the Inside Out Perspective, I recognized that the differences you outlined distinguishing an external focus from an internal one lined up perfectly in the pattern I see happening in my own staff.  Have you ever written about the implications of this perspective on job satisfaction?  For me, this issue is a critical one because, for better or for worse, the attitudes of my staff have a huge impact on the attitudes of the people we are trying to empower and serve!  Thanks for your ongoing contribution to our field!

- Manager of Vocational Programs, Austin, Texas

I was grateful for this reader’s response because I have no doubt that her observations, questions, and concerns are shared by many.  I do believe that an Inside Out Perspective has deep implications in each and every aspect of our lives, including job satisfaction, thus the subtitle: The Starting Point for Anything that Matters!  As I state in the article, “There isn’t a single aspect of our lives in which this perspective does not have profound repercussions because it influences where we put our focus and invest our energy, how we perceive the events in our lives, and the extent to which we feel empowered and in control of our own emotional state.  It is the difference between being reactive or responsive, victimized or empowered, vulnerable or grounded.”

With regard to the impact this perspective might have on job satisfaction, let’s consider some of the aspects of employee engagement that can be impacted by the differences between experiencing work from an External - Outside-In Perspective and perceiving work from an Internal – Inside-Out Perspective.  Here are distinctions in a dozen categories in which I offer a response on the extreme end of each perspective in order to better illustrate my point.
 

1. Sense of purpose and meaning

External: Engages on a surface level to meet basic obligations as outlined in a job description;

Internal: Engages on a deeper level to bring intention, vision, and commitment to everyday functions and tasks.

2. Identity on the team or in the organization

External: Feels like a cog in someone else’s wheel or a player on the game board of Life;

Internal: Perceives choices about the kind of membership one will establish on the team, in the community, on the project, etc.

3. Perception of work

External: Perceives work as a necessary burden put on us from the outside world in order to meet financial needs, unless, of course, one is lucky enough to land a “dream job’;

Internal: Perceives that work holds the opportunity to contribute to and participate in something meaningful as well as to meet financial needs; accepts that one is apt to get about as much out of a work opportunity as one is willing to put into it.

4. Perception of the workplace

External: Views the workplace as a static, fixed environment to which one must simply adapt;

Internal: Perceives the workplace as a learning place, a laboratory, or an incubator for growing ideas, techniques and creative solutions.

5. Mode of motivation

External: Motivated by fear of failure, operates in survival mode; Looks to others for ongoing reinforcement and affirmation;

Internal: Motivated by a sense of hope, operates in thriving mode; Sense of self-worth is not tied to the opinion of others.

6. View of how work affects one’s energy

External: Sees work and all the baggage that goes with it as depleting and sapping ones energy;

Internal: Experiences work as one way of tapping into and fueling one’s energy.

7. Resourcefulness

External: Feels victimized by a system whose rules and regulations one must simply conform to and comply with;    

Internal: Exercises personal freedom and accountability to get the job done within the context of workplace responsibilities.

8. Willingness to be the change

External: When dissatisfied, is most apt to complain and look for others to blame for what is wrong;

Internal: Approaches challenges with the intent of finding solutions to make things right.   

9. Initiative-taking

External: Waits to be included by others on the team and/or to be noticed by management;

Internal: Takes the initiative to include and welcome others to the team and/or to create an opportunity to highlight how one’s strengths might be put to good use;

10. Personal Investment

External: Shows up with the hopes of skating by, doing the least amount possible;

Internal: Shows up with the desire to give one’s all for the greater good.

11. Sense of security and inclusiveness

External: Needs constant reinforcement and affirmation of one’s power and place, threatened by differences;

Internal: Believes there is a place for everyone and enough power for everyone to participate fully, celebrates differences.

.12. Sense of urgency

External: Reacts to the sense of urgency imposed by the workplace

Internal: Brings one’s own sense of urgency to work priorities.

While this list of distinctions is by no way complete, it is clear that where we put our attention and focus our energy, how we identify themselves, and how we perceive our own level of power and control within a workplace greatly impacts the likelihood and extent to which we will devote our creativity and enthusiasm, our initiative and resourcefulness, our sense of purpose and meaning to our jobs. In turn, that will further determine our investment in the program, the team, or the field in general.  I think everyone moves along the continuum of the two extremes presented above, as none of them necessarily represent a fixed state of mind.  I also think there are other factors that contribute to the differences between the two extremes, but it is worth our while to consider the impact our perspective has on our engagement as employees.   

How do we remember that our engagement carries with it a choice?  We can engage in a way that dulls the human spirit or in a way that brings it most alive.  We can enter the work day with sighs of longing, or with songs that spring from the depth of that longing.  In that spirit, I will end this issue with a simple wish taken from this month’s selected poem -  

Let us be as meadowlarks, thrilled to have a voice,
Let us use our daily work as the meadow of our choice!

Happy  Summer...

~ Denise

© Denise Bissonnette, June 2009 (If not used for commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all or in part, providing it is credited to "Denise Bissonnette, Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com." If included in a newsletter or other publication, we would appreciate receiving a copy.)

Read Denise's previous (April 2009) newsletter...

We welcome your comments and feedback on this article!

Please consider sending us your opinions, perspectives, experiences or related resources on this topic. Unless you specify otherwise, your comments and contact information may be edited/published in a future edition of the True Livelihood Newsletter.

Email your comments on this article... TLN@diversityworld.com

I am utterly thrilled to share this beautiful poem as this month’s selection from the 14th century mystic poet, Kabir, whose spiritual inheritance was both Hindu and Muslim.  His work has shown up in every compilation of spiritual poetry that I have ever laid my hands on – and for good reason! Not only does this poem cut to the heart of this month’s theme, but it is also in celebration of spring and the power each of has in its unfolding … Enjoy!

Denise has published several important works on topics of job development, career development, personal development and similar topics. She also has two video-based in-service training programs available. Please visit our online store, Diversity Shop, for more information on these and related products.

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