Physician, Heal Thyself

Motivus LLC

Physician, Heal Thyself

Betcha didn’t know that is from the Bible!

It’s connotation today is that you should look at your own issues before you go trying to solve other people’s. Its hard to refute the contention that the biggest troublemaker you’ll face today is the one in the mirror when you brushed your teeth this morning.

Self awareness is a hallmark of successful managers.  Successful managers structure their styles around their personalities.  They are able to look in the mirror and honestly assess themselves.

One way to generalize about anyone is to look at interpersonal skills.  Do you relate well with others naturally?  Not really a yes or no question, as responses belong on a continuum.  You likely are not great or horrible, but somewhere in the middle.  Hey, not everyone can be special.  This isn’t Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.

As a manager, or really as any member of a team, or group of people working toward common goals, you should assess your own characteristics.

Are you a comfortable listener?  Do you care about others’ input?  Do you engage folks of various stripes well, whether distinguished by age or socio-economic backgrounds?  Two ears, one mouth; and used in that proportion?  Others respond with positive body language to your input?

If you have high quality engagement skills, my typical blog entries at www.motivus.org are tailored in that fashion.  Yet there are highly effective managers who are not people persons at all.  In the 60’s a player with the Packers was asked about Vince Lombardi and his treatment of the players. The response- “he treated us all like dogs”.  Yet Lombardi stands as a beacon of what a leader should be.  Incredibly high standards, excellence in performance, and seemingly never an ill word spoken of him.

Reagan as a President evidently drew people to him; FDR was aloof and not at all friendly.  Both were highly effective leaders (in my view FDR is quite overrated economically but what a war President!).

If you have those effective interpersonal skills I’ll not write much more at the moment………my last several posts land in that bucket.  But if you are on the less killed portion of the continuum, then a few tips.  Granted, they come from someone who self-assesses his interpersonal skills as AWESOME. I’ll have to resort to guesswork.  Tough to relateJ

Establishing shared goals matters most. That  reigns supreme. Whether you engage others warmly or not, the team needs shared goals. Perhaps the goals will be more quality oriented or focus on process for the less engaged.

The backslapper sounds like this:

Set High Standards.

Always Positive

Learn By Listening

We Are a Team

Those who might not engage the proletariat will be more along the lines of:

Live within Our Means

Lightning Speed

Do It Once, Do It Right

Please take notice that I am trying to reinforce the concept of capturing a culture in 5 words or less. The more concise and precise, the better.  Its all about branding, and you are always branding yourself.  It is happening. If you pay little/no attention to it, don’t be surprised if your brand looks a bit weedy.

There needs to be a level of honesty and self awareness as we develop our management skills.  Will we push or will we pull?  Do you know?

I’ll close where I opened, on the term Physician, Heal Thyself.  I’ve used it often, and each time incorrectly.  I thought it referred to the hypocrisy in all of us, where we hold ourselves to lesser standards than others.  How we justify pretty much everything we do but maybe condemn others for similar behaviors. If you’d told me it was Biblical, I’d have guessed it was the parable about taking the beam out of your own eye before pointing out the pebble in others’.  But that wasn’t it.  Apparently legend or the catechism-not sure which- says that is what the crowd yelled to Jesus on the cross.

It is so cool to be able to look anything up on the internet in seconds.