Category Archives: students

High Performance, Leaders, Planning, Professionals, students

Three Steps For Creating a Plan – for anything!

Are you one of those people who prefers to keep your plans in your head? Or maybe you prefer to “just do it” and not worry about planning at all?

Research by David Ingvar indicates that there is a significant and positive effect from writing down your plans. What is interesting is that your plans do not have to include detail to the ‘nth’ degree to be effective.

What you do have to do, however, is to write them!

A simple, yet effective process for creating effective plans for anything is outlined below. The process can work for achieving a certain grade for an assignment at university, for drafting a high level plan for a complex business project (that would then be used to create a more detailed plan using tools such as Microsoft Project) or a training session for the local U12s basketball team that you coach. Heck, I use this process all the time for planning my workshops and seminars!

In addition, this process can be used for creating a plan for an individual or a team.

Step One
Describe using dot points, what a successful outcome looks like. Provide as much detail as possible to enable you to clearly see the success that you desire.

Step Two
Identify your current experience and skills as they relate to achieving your goals. Be honest. Include both your good and not-so-good experiences.

Step Three Part A
Brainstorm everything that you will need to do to take you from your description in Step Two through to achieving the outcomes you have described in Step One. Include any research or training & development that you may need to acquire along the journey.

Step Three Part B
Having brainstormed your possible tasks, consider their relationship to each other and their level of importance. What tasks stand out as critical steps for success? These need to be treated as priorities (keeping in mind, of course, that even the ‘little things’ matter for true success).

Step Three Part C
If more than one person will be involved in actioning this plan, assign appropriate tasks to everyone on your team.

Plans for individuals and teams can be completed in under ten minutes and under 30 minutes respectively following this three-step process.

The challenge for most people isn’t following the process, it’s deciding to do it in the first place!

Give it a go, you will be pleasantly surprised at how simple and effective it is!

Please feel free to share your experiences of following this process.

Gen Y, Generation Y, Leaders, Professionals, students, What Really Matters For Young Professionals

Gen Y – we are in safe hands!

Over the past few weeks I have been conducting programs for university students. Amongst other themes, these programs have included the identification and launching of community based projects. No less than 75 students have been involved in these workshops, and this week will see another 40 students involved in a similar program.

All these students are in their low 20s and gave up their holiday time to participate in the programs. For all of them, their academic performance will not be affected by not attending the programs. Yet they have not only turned up but have enthusiastically committed themselves to creating projects that will benefit their university and/or the broader community.

Sometimes I hear people of my generation (Generation X) or from the Baby Boomers complain about Generation Y. “They aren’t like us”, they bemoan. “They simply aren’t committed to anything other than themselves!” they complain.

Well, Gen Y aren’t like us. That is okay because they shouldn’t be. Otherwise we’d be stuck in some sort of time vortex. However, Gen Y are committed, very committed to helping to create a better world. Just like the older generations, there are sufficient numbers of committed Gen Ys who are there ‘having a crack’ at creating a better world. And they are doing it right now. I have the evidence of this because I am lucky enough to be able to work with them and the student projects that I have described above are practical examples of Gen Y hard at work.

So, Gen X and Baby Boomers, don’t worry, our future is in safe hands!

Please feel free to share your experiences of the positive work that Gen Y are doing to create a better world.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
career, Professional Development, Professionals, students, What Matters, What Really Matters

What Really Matters! Volume 1, No 3, 2009 Free ebook


Our first ebook for 2010! Please enjoy this ebook which has been created specifically for the members of The Organisations That Matter Learning Network and readers of my blog. This issue includes selected articles from October 1st through to December 31st 2009.

Enjoy!

Please feel free to provide us with comments and/or feeback about the ebook.

Download the ebook here

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Desired-future, Personal-Plan, Professionals, Purpose, students, Vision, What Matters, What Really Matters

Plan for personal success

Do you plan for personal success, or do you make half serious New Year resolutions, only to forget them three weeks into the New Year? This time of the year is always very interesting when speaking with people who have made New Year resolutions. Many have either not taken any action regarding their resolution, or have already started to ‘drop off’ their activity. Does this sound familiar to you?

There are a number of important reasons why New Year resolutions tend not to work.

1. Clarity of purpose for the resolution is missing
2. The timeframe for the resolution is too short
3. There is a disconnection between how a person’s resolution is to be achieved and its impact upon the rest of their life.

Let’s consider a typical New Year resolution. “This year I will get fit!” Gym owners love this resolution because it drives a lot of people through their doors. They sign up, pay their money, come along for the first couple of weeks and then…disappear! Yet they keep paying for their membership!

1. The clarity of purpose of the resolution is missing
My first career involved managing fitness centres so i used to see this example all the time. Getting fit is a terrific goal and I highly recommend and encourage people to become fitter. However, what happens when you ‘get fit’? What then? In other words, what is the purpose of getting fit in the first place? Many people respond to this question by saying, “To lose a few kilos”.

Losing a few kilos is a goal, not a purpose. A purpose is supported by goals. So instead of having a purpose to lose a few kilos, a different purpose may be to increase your health and capacity to be active so that you can physically do whatever you want, both now and into the future. For example, maybe you would really love to be able to go hiking, maybe even on an adventurous hike like the Kokoda Trail one day. Deep down you may really like to be able to achieve such a goal, but then you look in the mirror and say to yourself, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m too unfit and old. It’s beyond me.” How sad! I mean it, statements like this are sad, they really are. Why live a life where there are things that you know that you really would like to achieve, but then not achieve them because of your current situation. So many people do this! They let their current situation stop them from doing what they really want to be doing. Clarify what you want, be honest about your current situation, but then create plans and take action to take you toward what you want. Personal planning for success helps to solve this problem.

Hiking the Kokoda Trail is a Big Goal. Big Goals, when supporting our purpose are fantastic because they usually involve long time frames. It took me two years of training before I ran my first marathon and, at the point in time when I made the decision to run my first one I had never run further than 10 kilometres. For 18 months, each time I went out to run a little voice in my head said, “What are you doing Gary? This is crazy. Your body hurts. Your muscles keep tearing. Your back hurts. You don’t even like running!”

Fortunately I had a greater purpose that kept driving me to go out each time. I wanted to be fit and healthy so that I could be a good example to my children and be able to play games with them. As you can see, having a purpose does not have to be rocket science! But having a purpose is powerful. It is so powerful that before I ran my first marathon, I had already booked in my next marathon. I didn’t want to stop what I was doing just because I had achieved my goal. Goals must support a purpose which therefore means that you must always have a goal that you are trying to achieve, but that goal will always be about ‘serving’ your higher purpose. Personally I have created a structure where I have to identify and book my next marathon no later than the day before the marathon that I am about to run. This ensures that I continue to have a goal to work towards that will enable me to live my purpose.

2. The timeframe for the resolution is too short
Often people don’t realise the real time frame for the achievement of their resolutions. If you haven’t been fit for a long time, getting fit is going to take three to six months. Immediate results will be noticed in the first few weeks of training but depending on your starting point, significant results can take quite a lot of time. When I used to manage fitness centre I used to encourage people not to train every day. Yes that’s right. I used to encourage people not to train! I had noticed people coming in wanting to get fit early in the New Year. They would be on holidays from work and would come every day. It was great. As soon as they went back to work, what do you think happened? They stopped coming in to the gym. All of a sudden they were too tired to come in before or after work everyday. This gym stuff simply had become too hard. But a lot of that had to do with their thinking. They hadn’t realised that they had been setting themselves up to fail by not structuring their training in the context of how they would be able to sustain it when they went back to work. Usually they weren’t clear about their purpose for training either which also made it easier to stop once a ‘roadblock’ got in their way. In this case the ‘roadblock’ was work..

3. There is a disconnection between how a person’s resolution is to be achieved and the rest of their life
The gym example above highlights this issue. Training five days a week when you are on holidays is great and achievable. Doing it when you have a very busy job plus family commitments suddenly becomes a lot more difficult. When creating New Year resolutions, many people forget to consider a range of strategies that could enable them to achieve their goal and support their purpose. There are many ways to get fit, to increase your health and to lose a few kilos. Another issue to consider is the goal in the first place. Maybe losing weight is an incorrect goal to have. Maybe establishing a healthy weight (as advised by a doctor) in the context of appropriate lean (muscle) body weight is more appropriate. Many people don’t realise that muscle weighs more (per kilogram) than fat. If you haven’t trained for some time it is possible that your lean body weight is lower than it should be. Exercise may increase your lean body weight, decrease your fat body weight, your measurements (where they matter!) might have significantly improved but you may have gained weight, or not lost very much.

When trying to achieve a healthy weight many people forget to consider how their health and fitness will affect the rest of their life. What are they going to stop doing to make time available to start doing what they should be doing? It could be as simple as “I’m going to stop watching television as much as I do, and I’m going to go to bed one hour earlier so that I can wake up one hour earlier to allow me to go for a walk/run/swim/ride/gym session”, or whatever it is that works for you.

The positive effects of increasing your health can be enormous. Sleep can be improved which then provides more energy for work, family, study etc. Being healthier results in people people having more energy that enhances clarity of thought and performance at work. Who wouldn’t want that? In Australia, increasing your health and fitness will also decrease your risk of heart disease, a condition that kills 128 Australian everyday! Very quickly living the purpose for becoming more healthy and fit can have a positive effect on all other aspects of your life!

Planning for personal success
So how do you ensure that your New Year resolutions are achieved? Planning for personal success is the solution. In its most simple form, planning for personal success requires the following seven elements.

1. Identifying what you want to achieve
What do you want to achieve? Don’t limit yourself to just this year, think of the things that you’d like to achieve at any stage in your life.

2. Understanding vision, strategy, goals and action
As I have outlined above, clarity of purpose is critical for personal success. Purpose is a part of vision which is not only about achieving what you want, but also includes how you behave while you are achieving what you want. Strategies are your high level plans about how you will move from your current reality toward your desired future, and your actions are the things that you actually have to do now in order to successfully achieve your strategies.

3. Identify your vision
This is more than just identifying what you want to achieve. It is about identifying how you want to live while you are travelling your journey toward your vision. It also involves understanding why you want what you want. Often the process of clarifying their vision results in people becoming clearer about what they really want, so much so that they change the achievements they identified in element 1 above. This is a positive aspect of personal planning for success.

4. Assess your current reality
Whenever we wish to go somewhere, we must always clarify our starting position. Being honest about our current reality in the context of our vision is critical if we are to have any chance of establishing effective strategies that will take us from where we are to where we want to be.

5. Develop strategies
Once the structure of your vision and current reality is established, it is amazing how you can begin to see what needs to be done to enable your current reality to move toward your desired future or vision.

6. Clarify your actions
Ultimately taking action is what brings your vision into reality. Strategies have to be broken down into clear time chunks so that your immediate and short term actions are clear. Once identified, place your actions into your calendar and commence doing them!

7. Review
The world is constantly changing. In addition, most people find that once they commence the personal planning journey, their clarity about their vision becomes more and more clear. Don’t be surprised if this happens to you. Reviewing your plan is critical to ensure that you really do create the future that you desire.

A new Planning for Personal Success email program to get you started
In the next few weeks Organisations That Matter will be launching a new seven week program for those of you who would like to complete an Introductory Personal Plan for Success. Each week you will receive an email which explains a key Personal Planning for Success Concept and then sets out a number of activities for you to complete. At the end of the program you will have developed your first Personal Plan for Success. If you are interested in this program and would like to learn more about the details and costs of the program, please express your interest to me via email at Gary.Ryan@orgsthatmatter.com .

Please feel free to ask questions and to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
career, Employability, Employability Skills, Interviews, students

How to leverage part time and volunteer work

Holiday seasons are terrific for many reasons. None the least is the opportunity to catch up with friends and family as well as the opportunity to relax. For many people, especially students, holiday season means that you have the chance to earn some money. If you aren’t taking extra classes over your break, then the opportunity to work and earn some extra dollars is huge. Many students relish in the opportunity to work not only because of the money but because of the social side of work life too, depending of course on the industry that you are working in.

Unfortunately, many students don’t take full advantage of their holiday work. Oh, by the way, when I say work, I also mean volunteer work. Of course this means that no extra money will be earnt, but something far more valuable than money (unless you are starving!) can be learnt! Yes, that’s right, learnt!

Too often I hear students say that they are ‘just a check-out chick’, or “I just work at a cafe”, or “I just provide meals to homeless people.”. There is no such thing as “Just a part time job”! Not if you are prepared to consider the employability skills that you are developing while doing your work. Below is a short list of ten skills that part time / volunteer work develops:

1. Communication skills
2. Problem solving skills
3. Initiative
4. Teamwork
5. Using various forms of technology
6. Planning and organising skills
7. Service excellence skills
8. Leadership skills
9. Learning skills
10. Self management skills

Let’s look briefly at some examples of how you might develop these skills in practice:

1. Communication skills
If you have to communicate with your boss, other team members and/or the general public, then you have the opportunity to develop communication skills. It doesn’t matter whether the predominant form of communication is via a telephone (as in a contact centre) or face to face (as in a cafe). You still have the opportunity to test whether you are communicating effectively. Here’s a tip – good communicators are good listeners, which also means that you are good at asking questions. So, develop your questioning skills and your communication skills will skyrocket!

2. Problem solving skills
Problems occur all the time. In every job. A computer won’t work. The electric doors are stuck shut. Another staff member didn’t turn up for their shift. The delivery that was meant to come in hasn’t arrived yet and customers are waiting for their orders. The list goes on. Each of these examples is a wonderful opportunity for you to consciously practice your problem solving skills. Not only that, you have a wonderful opportunity to create a bank of stories about how you solve problems. Can you imagine any of your future employers not wanting a problem solver? Neither can I!

3. Initiative skills
Showing initiative is when you do something that is helpful without having been asked to do it. Every time a problem arises at work you have an opportunity to show initiative. Every time you see that something could go wrong (like someone slipping on a banana peel) and you take action to stop that from happening (like picking up the banana peel) you are showing initiative. Opportunities to demonstrate initiative are everywhere. Keep your eye out for them and grasp them with both hands when they pop up. They also create great stories that can be used in interviews.

4. Teamwork
There is hardly a job that exists that does not involve teamwork. Even if you work alone, you are probably still part of a team. A night shift worker at a convenience store is part of a team with their manager and other staff, even if they rarely see each other. How? What is your response when another team member rings you and asks you to cover their shift? One of the reasons why you might say yes is because you are in a team and when you are in a team sometimes you have to cover for each other. Imagine the interview when you are asked about your experience of working in teams. It may be your stories that relate to covering for teammates (notice the deliberate use of language!) that you use to answer such a question. The beauty is that your answer would be both true and genuine. Perfect!

5. Using technology
Technology is everywhere, but it isn’t just using electronic devices such as computers, scanners, point-of-sale and other devices. It can be writing on whiteboards, driving forklifts (providing you have a license) and whatever else you have to use to do your job. You may be a volunteer who plants trees along freeways or in parks. The shovels, picks and other tools that you use are all forms of technology. The purpose of having a range of stories about your capacity to use different types of technology is to demonstrate that you are a fast learner and can quickly adapt to a range of technologies. Most students don’t even think about these things as being relevant to their future. But, they are!

6. Planning and organising skills
In whatever work you are doing be on time. Full stop. Employers like it and they expect it. Full stop. Practice it and practice it now. Full stop. Get it?

7. Leadership skills
For those of you who have responsibility for a team or other staff, then you have the opportunity to develop your leadership skills. How do you treat the people who you lead? What are your mental models about leadership? How are your personal values reflected in how you treat the people you are leading? Conscious thought about these questions can create wonderful leadership experiences for you as well as the opportunity to make relatively ‘safe’ mistakes. Think about your personal theory about formal leadership. Try it out. See if it works. Most of all, learn how to lead by doing it when the opportunity arises.

8. Learning skills
Part time and volunteer work always involves learning some of the following:
• a new set of technical skills
• policies and procedures
• cash management processes
• customer service procedures
• people’s names
• how to work in a team
• how to communicate the ‘company way’ (e.g. contact centres often have their ‘formula’ that you are expected to follow)
• how to make food and drinks (e.g. cafes and fast food outlets)

This list could go on and on but I think you get the picture. The point is, notice what you have to learn to do your job. Imagine if you were ever asked (in an interview), “How do you learn outside of university?”. You’ll have a mountain of examples from which to draw your answer!

9. Service excellence skills
No job is worth its salt if you aren’t able to practice developing your service excellence skills. Quite simply service excellence is like oxygen. While we don’t exist for it, we can’t live without it. It is a basic requirement for any job. So, you must understand it and consciously practice it. The simplest and best practice to adopt is, “Everyone is my customer; my boss, my colleagues and my customers” (and if you don’t have ‘customers’ just insert whatever word works for you). If you wouldn’t choose to be a customer of yourself, then you need to improve whatever it is that you are doing. It’s a smart practice to develop this skill because while it is like oxygen it is surprising just how many people are ‘suffocating’ themselves (in a career sense!) because they haven’t developed it.

10. Self management skills
In order to consciously practice the above skills you have to practice self-management skills. For example, you will have all had a ‘first day on the job’ experience. How did you handle it? What happened? How did you overcome any ‘bad’ experiences? A ‘first day on the job’ can also mean performing a new role at work. Often these types of days require a significant amount of positive self-talk, time management, problem solving and communication skills. Self-management is, in many ways, a reflection of all the skills above. Oh, by the way, self-management skills in this context can also considered self-leadership skills. So, if you don’t have a job where you formally ‘lead’ other people, your self-management skills can provide examples of self-leadership, which is critical for building the capacity to lead others.

Part time and volunteer work are goldfields as far as developing your employability skills are concerned. However, just like walking through a goldfield and not stopping to ‘mine for gold’ will produce nothing of any great value, not consciously developing your employability skills while working part time or volunteering is crazy! Don’t be crazy. Take full advantage of your opportunities. The gold in this sense will come in the future when you get the job that you really want. So, enjoy your holiday season and enjoy developing yourself even more!

Please feel free to make a comment or to ask a question about this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
High Performance, Leaders, Leadership, Professional Development, Professionals, students, What Matters, What Really Matters

What Really Matters! Volume 1, No 2, 2009 ebook


This ebook is all about Personal and Professional Development. It has been derived from articles published on The Organisations That Matter Learning Network from July 1st to September 30th 2009.

This ebook is the second in a series of three for 2009.

Download the ebook here

Feedback and comments are welcome.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
High Performance, Leaders, Leadership, Professional Development, Professionals, students, What Matters, What Really Matters

What Really Matters! Volume 1, No 1, 2009 ebook


This ebook is all about Personal and Professional Development. It has been derived from articles published on The Organisations That Matter Learning Network up until June 30th 2009.

This ebook is the first in a series of three for 2009.

Download the ebook here

Feedback and comments are welcome.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Career-Professionals, Elite Sport, Goals, Leaders, Professionals, Purpose, students, What Matters, What Really Matters

Learn About The Relationship Between Purpose and Goals

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“We have Happy Feet starting this week.”, said my seven year old daughter as we sat down for dinner.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s a program at school where we see how many laps of the track around the school that we can complete. It goes for two weeks.”

“What part of the school day will you get to participate in this program?” I asked.

“It starts this Thursday and we’ll do it at morning playtime.”

“So you don’t have to do it?”

“No, I want to and I’m going to do it every day. I want to run like you. It’s good for my health and fitness.”

This conversation took place the night after I had completed the Melbourne Marathon. I can’t explain how happy I felt to hear my daughter spontaneously start this conversation. In all honesty, a spontaneous conversation like this one makes me feel even happier than when I complete a marathon (and believe me, I usually feel pretty happy when I get to the finish line!).

My life is so busy and hectic that if I didn’t have goals like completing a minimum of two marathons per year, it is quite likely that I might not do any exercise at all. One of my life’s purposes, however, is to set a good example to my four children about health and fitness. Completing two marathons per year is a concrete goal that I set myself that enable me to live that purpose. A conversation like the one described above provides clear evidence to me that my purpose is working. Over time, examples like this provide more and more motivation for me to continue to ‘live my purpose’.

In the Integrated Personal Planning programs that we provide many participants are very good at identifying goals for themselves. However many people are not clear about the higher purpose to which their goals relate. For example, many people may have a health and fitness goal to lose a certain number of kilograms. For this example, let’s say five kilograms. Unless they relate this goal to a higher purpose these people are at considerable risk of achieving their goal, but then slipping back into the bad habits that caused them to be overweight in the first place. The result; within a very short timeframe they put the five kilograms (and often more) back on. This is a familiar story for many, many people.

Clarity about your purpose may mean that more than one goal is created to help you to ‘live’ your purpose. If your goal is to lose five kilograms, maybe your purpose might be to live a healthy and more balanced lifestyle so that you can physically do want you want to do. For example, you may have one goal to lose five kilograms, and another goal to maintain your weight for five years after you have achieved your first goal, and another again to complete one holiday per year that involves some hiking. All these goals would work together to assist you to ‘live’ your purpose.

Linking goals to your purpose reduces the risk of oscillating between success and failure as it relates to your goals. Another function of having a clear purpose is that it enables you to continue to set new goals as you near the achievement of your current ones. For example, I always ensure that I know the next marathon that I will be doing after I complete the current one that I am booked in to run. This ensures that when I finish my current marathon (and achieve a goal) that I don’t fall into the trap of saying to myself, “Oh, I’ll get back into training when I work out what marathon I’ll do next.” Six, twelve, 24 months etc. could easily ‘fly by’ and before I knew it I would have stopped living my purpose and become unhealthy. Maintaining tension with ongoing goals as they relate to your purpose can be very, very powerful!

It is important that I note that I am not advocating that you all go out and start running marathons. That’s just what works for me. In fact health and fitness goals are relative to your current situation, so it may in fact be a bigger achievement for many of you to run/walk five kilometres than it is for me to run 42kms. Maybe swimming is your thing, or maybe it is averaging a certain number of exercise to music classes per week over a 6 month period. Having goals is what is important, and relating them to a higher level reason for doing them (i.e. your purpose) is even more powerful.

Many people also get stuck with regard to working out their purpose as it relates to their goals. Purpose is not unique. Is my purpose to set a good example of being healthy and fit to my four children (as well as being healthy and fit to be able to do whatever it is I physically want to be able to do in my life) particularly unique? No, it isn’t. Is my goal to run a minimum of two marathons per year also unique? No it isn’t. What IS unique is how I bring those goals into reality. The way I train and the marathons in which I choose to compete are unique to me. What is also unique is how living my purpose and achieving my goals contributes to me creating the future that I desire (see The Power of Personal Vision by Andrew O’Brien for more information).

My challenge to you is to identify the goals that you are currently striving to achieve and then articulating to yourself what higher purpose those goals are serving. The following three questions can be helpful in helping you to work out your purpose:

1) Why is this goal important to me?
2) What are the benefits of achieving this goal?
3) How does achieving this goal relate to the future that I want to create for myself?

Please feel free to share your thoughts with our learning community because the more examples that we have that highlight the relationship between purpose and goals, the more other members of our community will be able to work out the relationship between their goals and their purpose for themselves.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Career-Professionals, Elite Sport, Inspiration, Leadership, students, What Matters, What Really Matters

The Synchronicity of Inspiration

Gary explains the importance of taking action even when you may think that no-one is being positively influenced by what you are doing. The catalyst for this episode was born in the middle of a marathon in which Gary was participating. While struggling with discomfort, Gary found inspiration from a person who was taking action; nothing more and nothing less.

MP3 File

I’d woken feeling bloated and not quite myself. “This isn’t good” I thought to myself as I ate my pancakes and banana for breakfast and sipped my bottle of water. Tiptoeing quietly around my house so as to not wake my family I showered and dressed in my running gear. My plan was to take our people mover into the carpark at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (known as ‘The G’) and my wife, four children and mother would come in by train to see me finish the race. Another good friend was to meet me at the 30km mark to provide me with some ‘supplies’ for the final leg of the 42.195kms. Outside was very cool and a perfect morning for running was predicted. I was prepared for a cool start to the Melbourne Marathon and had applied lavish amounts of anti-inflammatory cream to my right knee that hadn’t yet fully recovered from my last marathon in Alice Springs less than two months earlier. As this was my 8th marathon I was no longer fearful of not completing the course, just fearful of how I would tackle my mind this time around. Every marathon that I have run has included a mental barrier or two and each time I have been able to overcome them and reach the finish line.

However I’d never woken in the morning feeling quite the way I did this time. My meal the night before which included pasta and pancakes was a fairly normal dinner prior to a marathon; I was well hydrated and looking forward to finishing the run on the hallowed turf of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Driving in to The G my mind was occupied by how I felt in my stomach. There was no denying it, I felt bloated and this wasn’t normal. As I parked my car my nerves began to rise. I had arrived 75 minutes before the start of the race, so I laid back in the seat in my car, covered my legs with a towel and rested a little more before walking over to the start position which was just over one kilometre away from where I was parked. I had hoped that the extra rest would settle my stomach. It didn’t. I was then hopeful that the walk over to the start of the race would “do the job”. It didn’t either. Once at the start line I had about 20 minutes to wait before the first steps of the run would commence. People were huddled in groups, chatting with each other. It was now light and the race announcers were doing their best to ‘pump’ everyone up. It seemed to work for me as I momentarily forgot about how I was feeling. Kerryn McCann’s sister, Jenny Gillard was being interviewed. Jenny was running in memory of her sister who had lost her fight against cancer after having won the gold medal for the marathon at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006. Kerryn’s son Benton was introduced as he was going to be the official starter. The crowd had suddenly grown and everyone was both excited and sombre and had spontaneously started clapping in Kerryn McCann’s memory. Within moments the National Anthem was sung, the countdown had begun and we were off!

As I ran through the starting line I waved at the TV cameras – you never know maybe I could get my head on the TV which would make my children happy! Within the first 200 metres my consciousness of my discomfort returned. “This is going to be interesting” I thought. It is amazing how one’s mind can become so pre-occupied with something that everything else around you literally disappears. While I knew that I was running with 4,200 people, I felt as if I was running on my own. I then became conscious of my consciousness, if that makes any sense! I thought, “C’mon! Snap out of it. Enjoy the run, the discomfort will pass, your rhythm will come. Think about how you’ll feel at the end of the run. Think about running in front of Mish and the kids around the G and how it will contribute just a little bit toward their own thinking about health and fitness.” And then, “I think that this will be a PW today – a Personal Worst!”, and then, “C’mon, focus on the moment. Left foot, right foot! Each step is one step closer. Just focus on doing what has to be done now!”. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it! But that little war of words is what was going on in my head. All the while, however, the discomfort continued.

We had travelled about five kilometres when I noticed a man limping ahead of me. Then I noticed his left leg. It was permanently bent in toward his right leg so that when he swung his leg through it actually clipped the inside of his right knee. His left heel appeared to be permanently raised so he wasn’t able to perform a heel strike with his left foot. Rather, he was running on his toes with that leg. He wore a green and white singlet that advertised cerebral palsy, and checkered shorts. We continued to run and leap frog each other for next 16 kms until his paced started to slow and I slowly moved ahead of him. I do not know if the man had suffered from cerebral palsy, but I suspect that he had. My focus on how I was feeling had been brutally challenged. As we ran I found myself thinking about the various challenges that this man may have encountered in his life.

The one thing that I didn’t have to speculate about was whether he had taken on the challenge of a marathon. There he was, running beside me. Suddenly my bloated stomach seemed a little irrelevant. The experience also thrust my mind back to my first marathon in New York in 2006. The advertisement for that race said, “37,000 Stories”, which was true. The same was also true for this day. The only difference being that there were 4,200 stories and not 37,000. The way I was feeling was just another story and everyone around me suddenly took on another level of importance. As I was struggling with my story, possibly they were all facing their own stories and struggles. In this way the very thing that kept us different (i.e. our stories) also kept us united. So I accepted that today I felt uncomfortable and that was that. This would simply be my story for this race. However, I also knew that how I felt was not going to stop me from performing. I had come here to complete the race (ideally under four hours) and that was exactly what I would do.

Joseph Jaworski defines synchronicity as, “…a meaningful coincidence where something other than the probability of chance is involved.” I don’t know if it was anything other than luck that resulted in me and this gentleman crossing paths, but it certainly had meaning for me. Who knows, maybe he was looking at me and the way I looked inspired him to overcome whatever demons he was facing at the time! You never know!

The second half of a marathon is usually where the real race begins. It is both a mental and physical challenge. Yet somehow the mental challenge for me had eased and my body finally felt ‘normal’ over the last 8 kms where I ran the most freely and comfortably I had done for the whole race. Upon completion of the race (in 3 hours and 56 minutes) I stayed around the finish line for a while until I was ushered off the ground to make way for the athletes who were still coming in. I had hoped to cheer the gentleman who had inspired me when he completed his race but I was consumed by the mass of people heading into the bowels of The G.

On reflection this gentleman probably had little awareness of my existence. Yet he had served me in a most profound way by inspiring me to recognise how lucky I was to be able to do what I was doing no matter how uncomfortable I felt. His example displays the power of taking action. This man could run. His running style may be different to yours and mine but he could run. For reasons known to himself through his own story, there he was running the Melbourne Marathon. Did he get up that morning and think to himself that he would inspire and help me through the race. I don’t think so. However, through participating and taking action he created the possibility that he could inspire someone. And that someone was me. That is how synchronicity works.

When you are at work and you think that you are only one person and that what you do doesn’t matter so it doesn’t really matter if you do the right thing or not, maybe it does matter. Just because no-one walks up to you and explicitly points out that your actions have inspired them to take action doesn’t mean that your actions aren’t inspiring anyone. So it might start with the courage to create Ground Rules for your team, or to use a story or article to stimulate a Conversation That Matters, or maybe you take a stand that supports both your personal and organisational values. Leadership isn’t all about titles and power. Leadership is often about the influence that your actions have on other people and just like my friend out on the marathon course leadership is often subtle, yet no less inspiring. So take action; you never know how the synchronicity of your actions could inspire other people to do likewise.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
career, Career-Professionals, Employability, students, What Matters, What Really Matters

Employability Skills Highly Required in the Manufacturing Sector – USA Report

A report issued jointly by Deloitte, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and The Manufacturing Institute in the United States of America and released on October 5th has once again highlighted the importance of employability skill development. Despite the economic downturn manufacturing employers have indicated that a highly skilled workforce, both in the context of relevant technical skills and employability skills is critical for business success. An interesting aspect of the study was that the surveyed employers identified that their employee development practices do not currently meet their needs.

This highlights the importance of taking personal responsibility for the development of your employability skills. With talent shortages still existing despite the economic downturn, understanding your employability skills and being able to explain how you have developed them can provide a distinct and personal competitive advantage in the job market (see the blog Leveraging Employability Skills for Employment Success).

To see the full article visit http://www.reliableplant.com/article.aspx?articleid=20422&pagetitle=Top+manufacturers+place+high+importance+on+talent%2C+skills+management

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com