Off pace. Regular readers of this site know there has not been a one ball post for quite some time. I lost my pace with a flurry of work in late winter, moving through spring, and right into early summer. I am now striving to create a rejuvinated pace.

Previous One Ball Posts. If you would like to read some of the previous posts based on the one ball theme, click here.

Pay attention to pace. How much attention do you pay to your pace at work. To sustain heightened levels of engagement with work we need to be mindful of pace. Work requires sustained effort over a long period of time and in this atmosphere pace become more important than raw speed.

The meaning of pace. Here are some common definitions of pace:

• the rate of moving
• footstep: the distance covered by a step
• the relative speed of progress or change
• measure (distances) by pacing; “step off ten yards”
• tempo: the rate of some repeating event
• regulate or set the pace of; “Pace your efforts”

Keep moving. We need to find an efficient and effective rate of moving at work while also going the distance as things, including us, continue to change and transform. How much work do you determine to pace off in any given day, week, month, or year?

Pacing questions. What role does pace play in your employee engagement efforts?

• Do you manage to stay on pace?
• Who paces you?
• Do you contribute to the pace of others?
• Do you know your ideal pace?
• Do you know how to maintain this ideal pace?

Stop trying and stop giving 110%. As Yoda said, “do or not do, there is not try.” I think the idea of giving 110% except for the briefest of moments is damaging while working at 80% while balancing challenges and strengths may be closer to the idea state that will allow us to sustain effort, efficiency, and effectiveness over the long haul. I always loved the line attributed to Lily Tomlin: Try softer not harder!

The marathon. As a long distance runner I have run into most of my problems when I have failed to either find or maintain my ideal pace. At the start of a race it was so easy to get caught up in race mentality that pace mentality would go out the window and running would be difficult or even injurious. I am still recovering from injuries sustained a few years ago and I seem to get re-injured when I fail to adjust to the pace that is ideal for where I am and who I am now.

Join the human pace. Hopefully you will join me as a member of the Human Pace as opposed to the Human Race and we will efficiently and effectively achieve and sustain high levels of engagement with whatever task (ball) that is before us.

The extra mile. While doing research for this article I came across an excellent book about work pace. Read the quote below to get an idea about the intention of this book.

Does setting a sane pace at work seem impossible? Experienced managers know ways to control their pace and progress even when the environment races on around you. Being aware of the need to pace yourself constitutes the first step. Building an awareness of when you are going dangerously fast or drowning in change is important.

The above quotation is from Gregory Shea and Robert Gunther’s, Working the Eddies: Pace Yourself to Preserve Your Sanity. If you would like to read a longer excerpt from the book, click here. If you are striving to find you ideal pace I encourage you to read, study, and practice this excellent book.

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David Zinger is a leading expert on employee engagement. He is committed to creating authentic and sustained employee engagement for the benefit of all. Contact David at (204) 254-2130 or Email dzinger@shaw.ca.

I believe personal branding is a pathway to increased employee engagement. We need to work in our work and on our work. Thinking about our personal brand, talking to others at work about how they see us, and working on our visibility strengthens our work, our brand, and our engagement.

I have written before about the connections between personal branding and employee engagement. Click here to read my first post on personal branding.

I just finished reading Jerry S. Wilson and Ira Blumenthal’s book, Managing Brand You. The book offered some personal branding nuggets and valuable resources. I liked the cover with the fingerprint being the center of you. Click here to read an excellent summary and overview of the book.

Here are 6 key elements that stood out to me from the book:

Brand Promise. Your brand is your promise to a specific group woven with their actual experience with your brand. What is your employee engagement promise? How are you keeping it? I liked their equation: Relationship = Promise + Experience. The key promise question is: What is your brand promise and how do you deliver on it.

Brand Uniqueness. What makes you a unique employee? Do you have a sustainable and discernible uniqueness that makes you stand out and creates value for your organization?

Brand identity and brand image. Your brand identity is how you want to be perceived and your brand image is how you are perceived. It is so important to focus on brand image or we end up with artificial branding — resembling a herd of branded cattle flocking on Twitter. For those of you familiar with Seth Godin, I believe there can even be too many purple cows. I love the idea of a brand not being what you say about yourself or your pithy 20 second elevator speech…your brand is what others say about you. You learn more about your brand by listening by than crafting clever sounding brand slogans or drawing cute logos for yourself.

Brand essence. This is the heart and soul of your brand. What do you love to do and what are you really good at? Ensure you work with your essence and you work from your essence to sustain high levels of employee engagement.

Brand Insistence. Do you create such a strong brand that others insist on working with you? Do you become invaluable because of the loyalty you create based on the service you deliver? Insist on being the best you can be and other will insist on having you work with them or for them.

Branding Glossary. I encourage you to read Managing Brand You and don’t skip the wonderful glossary of branding terms at the back of the book from pages 219 to 224. Learning a strong brand vocabulary can be a pathway to creating a brand new you and contributing to a deeper level of employee engagement.

Myopia. Do you have your eye on the ball? The one ball? Or is one eye on the screen as you try and talk with someone else with your other eye, as you notice out of the corner of your eye something else going on in the periphery of your vision. We can see so much but often see so little.

Seamless. In sports, athletes are taught, trained, and encouraged to keep their eye on the ball. When baseball batters are really focused they talk about seeing the seams of the fastball as it leaves the pitcher’s hand and zooms towards the plate. This is not time to be thinking about what Joe is doing?

Our other I. Full employee engagement means that our “I” is in the ball. We have invested ourselves fully in what we are doing. Nothing else matters but the matter right at hand. We do not force ourselves to focus rather we allow focus to consume us as extraneous thoughts disappear.

Get an eyeful. Here are some invitations to have your I in the ball and your eye on the ball:

1. Let your mind relax into concentration by slowly paying increasing attention to whatever you are doing?
2. Practice some form of mindfulness or meditation that will increase your overall capacity for greater attention.
3. When your mind wanders, and it certainly will, don’t panic just gently bring it back to the matter at hand.
4. If you are having sustained and prolonged periods without your I in the ball and your eye on the ball determine if “this ball” is worthy of your attention and consider shifting focus. Perhaps you are a bowler or golfer not a basketball player or a mechanic not a customer service representative.
5. Don’t forget, it is easy to keep your eye on the ball when your are “having a ball.” Ensure that enjoyment and learning are integrated into your performance and work.

Contribution not debt. Don’t pay attention. It is not a debt. Give attention. It is your contribution.

Leo Babuata wrote about nothing on Zen Habits:

Sure, we all know how to do nothing. We all know how to lay around and waste time. But many of us are too busy to do it much, and when we do it, our minds are often on other things. We cannot relax and enjoy the nothingness. Doing nothing can be a waste of time, or it can be an art form.

How well do you do nothing? Can you see the value of it? Can complete disengagement be the stimulus of rest and rejuvenation for the response of full and robust employee engagement?

I encourage you to click here to read Leo’s suggestions on nothing.

He concluded the post: Finally, the Art of Doing Nothing cannot be mastered overnight. It will take hours and hours of practice, of hard work (doing nothing isn’t easy!). But you will enjoy every minute of it! Try it today.

Click on any of the balls above to see how one small click can expand Kaizen!

Kazien. Kaizen is is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. Robet Maurer wrote a wonderful book called The Kaizen Way: One Small Step Can Change Your Life. Maurer does a superb job of helping us focus on the small. He encourages and guides us to take small comfortable steps towards improvement.

Small steps. His six suggested small strategies:

1. Ask small question to inspire creativity and dispel fear.
2. Think small thoughts to develop new habits and skills.
3. Take small actions to guarantee success
4. Solve small problems embedded in bigger problems
5. Give and receive small rewards to produce better results
6. Recognize and dwell in the small, often ignored, crucial moments.

Moon shot. As Neil Armstrong stated when he stepped on the moon. “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”  Our small steps, actions, and thoughts can take one giant step through fear while also moving us much closer to our desired outcomes.

A small energy boost. We seem to believe that small = insignificant. I believe that small is the new significant. We are so overloaded that we often neglect to see the power in small acts, questions, or interactions. For example, Jane Dutton demonstrated the power of small interactions (HQI: High Quality Interactions) to be the single greatest contributor to organizational energy. One of these interactions can occur in two seconds and many of them woven through the day energize other people, ourselves, and our organizations.

Small Toss. Have you ever thrown a ball to a young child. You often get them to cup their hands, you stand very close, and you make a very small toss of the ball into their waiting hands and watch the glee spread over their face when they catch the ball. Start thinking of the glee you can create for yourself by thinking small thoughts, asking small questions, or taking samll actions. Here are 3 suggestions:

1. Read Maurer’s book, The Kaizen Way – transfrom his small suggestions into small and significant actions.
2. Practice small acts such as taking a few second to really look at a co-worker or to voice something you noticed or appreciated about them.
3. Chop stress into managable chunks by continually thinking about the smallest and most significant actions you can take to handle various strssful situations.

Confront the difficult when it is still easy;

Accomplish he great task by a series of small acts.

~ Tao Te Ching.

This moment. Maurer concludes his book with this small question: What more important task does this life hold than to draw out the possiblity in each moment?

There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart…pursue those. ~ Michael Nolan

A question of catching. The One Ball lends itself so well to catch. Do you focus more on catching or throwing? Stop and think about catching for a moment? Do you relax into catching or do you stiffen up? Are you concerned you might miss “the ball” or that you might drop it? Do you feel you are catching on or always trying to catch up?

Definitions. Let’s start with a few definitions of catch. Here are some common definitions for catch:

• perceive with the senses quickly, suddenly, or momentarily
• take hold of so as to seize or restrain or stop the motion of
• get: succeed in catching or seizing, especially after a chase
• overtake: catch up with and possibly overtake
• be struck or affected by
• check oneself during an action
• watch: see or watch

When you think of catch which definitions are most at top of mind for you? Do you give enough attention and energy to catching?

How? Catching is difficult to explain, here is a short explanation from How to catch a ball by Karl S. Kruszelnicki

Practically everybody has thrown and caught some kind of a ball. Balls are essential to so many sports – but the weird thing is, we still don’t understand exactly how we catch a ball. Once a ball has been launched, any physicist can solve the equations that will predict exactly where the ball will land. But in a game of baseball, once we hear the crack of the ball on the bat, we don’t sit down and start solving a few differential equations – no, we immediately start moving on a path that takes us to where the ball will land. How do we do it? Well, according to one of the scientists who has tried to solve this deceptively-simple problem, catching a ball involves “physics, engineering control theory, physiology, kinaesthesiology, ethology, perception, and the study of expertise”

Catch of the week. How about making catch your catch of the week. You’ll catch on to catching by becoming more mindful of the act and attitude of catching. Who do you like to play catch with?

Catching employee engagement. In conclusion here are some connections to catching and employee engagement:

• Ensure that employees are not always feeling that they have to catch up.
• Make it easy for employees to catch the keys of engagement.
• Ensure in conversations that you catch employees’ key experiences and ideas.
• Find alternative methods to catching the state of employee engagement instead of an over reliance on surveys.
• Don’t throw so many ball (tasks) at employees that they don’t know which ones they should catch.
• Equip employees with the proper tools to catch.
• Catch employees who are fully engaged and voice your acknowledgment and gratitude.
• Start a positive engagement virus, instead of catching the common cold make employee engagement common — something easy to catch and hard to get rid of.

Never try to catch two frogs with one hand ~ Chinese Proverb

Way beyond cereal boxes. Personal branding is so much more than being a box of tide or writing a clever slogan about who you are and what you do. Your personal brand is your identity and your reputation — it is less what you say about yourself and more what others say about you. You also may learn more about your brand by listening to others who know you than you would by simply listing your strengths and value.

Personal Brand = ( Strengths + Value + Visibility ) x Engagement. This is not intended to be an exact mathematical equation rather an indicator of the keys to creating bounce in your work and strengths. To me, your personal brand is a combination of your strengths, plus the value you offer, plus your visibility. This is multiplied by how engaged you are with these 3 key ingredients of personal branding.

Strengths. Know you strengths. Live your strengths. Leverage your strengths in the service of others. A good brand is a strong brand. Read authors ranging from Peter Drucker, Tom Rath, Marcus Buckingham, and Martin Seligman to get a diverse and powerful foundational knowledge of your strengths. Don’t settle on one source for your personal brand strength training.

Value. It is nice to have strengths but this must be paired with value. How do your strengths deliver value to others. This value could be economic or social value. Carefully consider how your strengths add or create value for others. Look to leverage your strengths for increased value for customers and clients.

Visibility. How do people know about you? What are they saying about you? If people are looking for your strengths and the value you add, do they know how to contact you and where to find you. In your organization do you stand out? How well do you network and make use of social media to create visibility and broaden your visibility?

Engagement. Creating and sustaining a personal brand is delivering on your promises or your strength and value. It is a process not an event. Personal branding is more than a clever slogan. Ensure that you continually engage in developing your strengths, think and act upon the value you offer others, and maintain a vibrant and authentic visibility.

Personal Leadership Brand. Watch the following 10 minute Harvard Business interview with Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood on Personal Leadership Branding. Engage in your personal leadership brand by enhancing your reputation and identity through the personal strengths you have that deliver value to someone else.

Got Brand? Create some bounce and color by creating stronger employee engagement through the strength and value of personal branding. What is your personal brand? If you can’t quickly answer that question use your vagueness or ignorance as the first step towards creating a personal brand based on your strengths, value, and visibility fused with full engagement in all 3 of these variables.

Contact David Zinger to learn more about personal branding and employee engagement.

Arrivals and departures. Many of us lack a sense of mindfulness about the power of transitions.  I often ask participants during employee engagement workshops the following two questions:

1. How do you get to work?
2. How do you get home?

Physical answers. After they stop looking at me like I am shallow and asking the obvious they comply and they begin to talk with a partner about their drive, route, or the bus/subway that gets them to work and whisks them home at the end of the day.

Lights on but nobody there. After this I suggest the real arrival is psychological. How do we show up at work and for work? Not just in body but also in mind, emotions, and spirit. How do we leave work behind at the end of the day to rest, rejuvenate, and get ready for the next day?

Begin with the end. William Bridges let us know that transitions begin with an end, have a neutral zone in between and end with a beginning. To really get to work we must end a mental, emotional, and spiritual focus on home. A good transition can help us move into full engagement.  Perhaps it is a change of clothing, a cup of coffee, talking with a certain person, going for a jog, reading some inspirational reading or escapist fiction.

Body, mind, emotion, and spirit. I encourage you to find your unique way in and out of work. To be able to fully bounce into what you are doing and to bounce away from it once it is over. To be fully where we are in mind, body, emotion, and spirit makes for rich and enriching levels of engagement.

Team transitions. If you are a leader I encourage you to set up a department or team transition routine. Perhaps a quick huddle to check in with each person or a 10 minute tour through the work site to stop and talk with people around the office or to go online and use one of the many social media tools to make emotional and task connections.

Transitions create life/work engagement. Transitions offer great opportunities for engagement and when we leverage strong and powerful transitions rituals or routines we create a very healthy movement between work and home. Transitions are the small, subtle, and very significant acts that create powerful and potent life/work engagement.

Transition Primers. Here are some easy transitional rituals or routines to prime your thinking on this approach to engagement but I believe the best transition is the one that you develop that  works best for you. You know it is working if you are fully (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritually) at work when you are there and you are able to leave work at work so when you return home you are fully playing with your child or engaging in your hobby and not ruminating about the day. Sample primers include:

• Having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper to wake up.
• Going online and making a few relationship connections.
• Jumping into the shower to wake up for work or having a bath after work to soak away the day.
• Walking the dog before or after work.
• Walking, jogging, or cycling to work.
• Listening to music or audiotapes.
• Talking with someone before work or after work.
• Meditating or using brief yet mindful breathing to inspire yourself for work and to let go of work.
• Going to the gym or jogging to move through the neutral zone between work and home.
• Changing your clothing to signify a transition.
• Kissing your children goodbye before going to work and taking time to really play with them when you get home.
• Turning on your computer and turning yourself on to work and then turning off your computer at the end of work to also turn off your thoughts of work.
• Etc.

Master transitions to master employee engagement. When we master transitions we master the entry points of engagement and the exit point of healthy disengagement from work.

If you would like to read more ONE BALL posts click here.

GEMO completion mantra. Have you found GEMO? Use GEMO to create quick action and engagement. With GEMO, you don’t need all your ducks in a row, you need to be able to create steadily improving iterations by completing a performance with the inspiration of Good Enough, Move On.

The GEMO Advantage. GEMO is an acronym for Good Enough, Move On. It helps avoid perfectionism, dithering, delays, and other productivity traps and snarls.

Practicing GEMO. Here is how you practice it. You start working at a task, you begin to run out of steam or you know more needs to be done but there are other projects and things that need to be done so you say, GEMO. You move on and you know you can come back to it and improve it later. A GEMO artist does not believe in perfection but believes in things being good enough, being willing to move on, and recognizes you can return and make it better.

Project Managment GEMO. It can also be very helpful to GEMO with partners to avoid becoming bogged down in a task or engaging in discussions that produce no results. GEMO may not occur at the end of project management but GEMO could help a project team from getting bogged down and not moving closer to the targeted results.

Good may be good enough. GEMO is not used to avoid work but to recognize there is always something more that could be done in this age of constant and never ending improvement. Yet, sometimes good, is good enough…at least for now.

Satisfice as early GEMO. I first practiced this principle in the writing process 25 years ago. Back then, the formal term was to satisfice:

To obtain an outcome that is good enough. Satisficing action can be contrasted with maximizing action, which seeks the biggest, or with optimizing action, which seeks the best. In recent decades doubts have arisen about the view that in all rational decision-making the agent seeks the best result. Instead, it is argued, it is often rational to seek to satisfice i.e. to get a good result that is good enough although not necessarily the best.

Preventing writing blocks. Satisficing was a good approach for writers to avoid perfectionism and to finish the first draft. It was very helpful for writers who experienced writing blocks or writing reluctance to get the first vision out and realize they can return for multiple re-visions.

You must be cautious with GEMO – you are not avoiding something rather you acknowledge it is good enough for now. it may be just what you need to increase your productivity.

I hope you find GEMO

This post at an example of GEMO. This post could be better but it is good enough —time to move on. My first iteration of this article appeared in September of 2007 when I was co-writing Slacker Manager. Back then, it was Good Enough, I moved on.  Now, I have returned to discuss GEMO as a an employee engagement tool.

As I move on, remember to pratice the art of the THE ONE BALL.

Finding the still point. I love the following lines from T. S. Eliot’s, Burnt Norton.

At the still point of the turning world.

Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, but neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call if fixity, where past and future are gathered.

Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

The fuel of pausing. Purposeful performance is fueled by purposeful pausing. A pause is not wasted time.

• A pause can get us set for our performance.
• A pause can rejuvenate us.
• A pause can help us really SEE what we are doing.
• A pause can help us reflect on our performance.
• A pause can re-energize us for performance.
• A pause can help us reset our course.
• A pause can help us find full engagement.

Pausing in midair. When you throw THE ONE BALL up in the air there is a moment when it pauses before falling back down to earth. Can you notice or see this pause? In your body, can you be mindful of the smallest of pauses between inhaling and exhaling?

Crouch…Touch…Pause…Engage. I love how Rugby uses the 4 words of crouch, touch, pause, engage to start the scrum. The scrum can be a tough place but there is a moment of pause before the players engage. Perhaps we all need pausing moments before full employee engagement.

Pause into the rhythm. Dr. Richard Lonetto, wrote a wonderful book in 1988 on The Rhythm: Being Your Best in Sport and Business. The book is out of print and Richard left Sports Psychology many years ago to be involved in a family business.  It was from Richard that I first learned the value of pausing.

Power is lost when we become too fast. We may feel stronger, more in control, But these feelings are an illusion. real power comes form learning to be slow. Real power comes from pacing oneself — from timing, not from speed (p. 16).

Pregnant pause. A pregnant pause  is a technique of comic timing used to accentuate a comedy element, where the comic pauses at the end of a phrase to build up suspense. Refined and perfected by Jack Benny, the pregnant pause has become a staple of stand-up comedy. Imagine the more powerful performance you can give birth by starting with a pregnant pause and inserting pauses into the entire performance. Someone once said that music resides in the space between the notes. Find your music and space through pausing on purpose.

Pause now. Before you click away or shut down pause for a moment. Let life catch up with you as your pause enters you into the state of mindful performance.

Bonus: Pause to take flight. I just came across this powerful slideshare presentation on amazing pictures of birds. There are 25 pictures…even if you take 2 seconds to look at each picture you will have paused for one minute before taking flight from this site!

Marking time? Some people make their marks while others sign their names. Are you just marking time or is your work a full expression of who you are — signature work!

Impression and expression. Occasionally you see a picture of a production crew putting their signatures on a piece of an aircraft that they manufactured to indicate their investment in their work. Are you putting your signature on all your work including your intangible or knowledge work? And you know I don’t mean buying a permanent marker and scribbling all over your computer screen. Does your work not only impress others, but express who you are?

Signature expression. I believe good work is an expression of who you are. We have much of our identity tied into our work and performance. When asked who we are most of us reply by telling the other person what we work at. When we not only realize this but give work our full expression we begin to sign our work.

Signature moves. If you love a sport you can identify individual athlete’s strides and mannerisms from a mile away. Can the people you work with identify your work this easily? Does everyone know your signature move?

Signature and identity. When we are young many of us work on developing our personal and unique handwritten signature. We swirl the letters, make a large dot for an I, fuse a bunch of letters into a smooth line, or experiment with a multitude of different autographs. Here is an explanation of signature:

A signature (from Latin signare, “sign”) is a handwritten (and sometimes stylized) depiction of someone’s name, nickname or even a simple “X” that a person writes on documents as a proof of identity and intent. The writer of a signature is a signatory. Like a handwritten signature, a signature work describes the work as readily identifying its creator.

Sign into these questions:

• Do you focus on making work a full expression of who you are?
• Do you have your unique work or performance signature?
• Do others recognize it?
• Do you “sign off” on all your work?
• Is your signature work a strong endorsement of your value and values?

Dominate your work. Here is an old experiment. Take a moment, grab a pen and paper and quickly sign your name. Now do it again but sign your name with your non dominant hand. Most of us struggle to get a signature that looks as good as a fifth grader with our non dominant hand. Let your unique strengths, experiences, contributions, and learning dominate your work.

Signature story. I have written about signature story at another site, Joyful Jubilant Learning. I believe we each have a signature story that gets played out in all that we do. Learn to identify your signature story by clicking here to learn more about this perspective.

Can I have your autograph? If you are ever going to “make your mark” at work ensure your mark is an authentic signature of who you are and how you express yourself in the world. Who knows, people just might want you to sign in or sign up for all kinds of projects, performances, and work.

Click here to read other posts on THE ONE BALL.

“PLAY BALL,” the umpire shouts to start the game. The umpire does not say let’s get down to work here, he says, “play ball.” Musicians play their instruments they don’t fret much unless they play the guitar. Young children spend the whole day engaged in various acts of playing.

Fumbling playfulness. Are you playing? Not on a diamond or in a rock band but playing ball at work each and every day? Are you leveraging play as a powerful source of employee engagement?

Playful engagement. Playing is a vital pathway to engaged performance. When we play we seldom realize how engrossed we are in what we are doing. Go ahead, ask some children who are learning so much through play what they are doing and chances are they will look at you like you are slightly daft and don’t realize, “we’re playing.” Yet while engrossed in play they are performing, relating, engaging, communicating, creating, and learning. These functions and benefits of play are effortless and children feel bothered when told it is time to stop playing.

Grow up. When did you stop playing? Do you feel that play is just a trivial activity for children — not something that belongs in the seriousness of work? As you got older did you also grow out of a childlike playfulness that made every day seem alive with vibrant activity and relationships?

WORKshop phobia. Is work playful for you? The mark of sanity is to blur the line between work and play. Yet so many of us have divorced work and play and view work as a drudgery to be engaged in only for instrumental reasons—getting paid. Or we take a FISHY workshop to learn to play. If you are enrolled in a WORK-shop to learn to play I think we have spotted the source of the problem.

Of course. Young children do not need to enroll in a course to learn to play and it sometimes seems when they enroll in school that play begins to dissipate out of their approach to living. Play can be invited, play can be initiated, play can be engaged in, but play is not something to impose upon others or to put too much conscious effort into achieving a playful state.

Strong play. Some of us our gifted with a playful strength. Play comes easy to us like water from a tap and we engage in play because it engages us. For us not to play is to risk disengagement and lowered happiness. My number one signature strength on the VIA Signature Strength Inventory is humor and playfulness. I personally risk disengaging when I don’t play everyday.

Entertain playfulness. Entertain playful notions. Don’t stifle yourself. Don’t learn to play or work at playing, just play.

We’re here to play. I was a counselor for almost 25 years. Many couples entered my office declaring they were there to work on their marriage. I saluted their determination and resolve and willingness to engage in rekindling their relationship but I often wondered what it would have been like to have a couple come in and say, “we’re here to play on our marriage.” Of course I always thought if that was the perspective they had, they probably never would end up seeing a marriage counselor.

Mindful play. It is not my intention to provide an instruction manual or a lengthy to-do list or send you off to Seattle to throw a mackerel around. It is my intention to remind you of play. You often played as a child and it did so much. I simply ask that you become more mindful of playfulness and allow it to seep into your work…perhaps if you can do this, even just for a few minutes everyday, work won’t feel so much like…what else can I say….work!

Here’s my pitch. I invite you to get a ball. If you can find an old classic rubber ball that I use to illustrate these posts, even better. Put it on your desk or near where you work. Every so often just pick it up and feel it, roll it, toss it, play catch with a peer, and remember the primal power of play as you play with the The One Ball.

Be the ball. Go ahead, have a ball at work and as you engage in your work let your work engage you so that you experience full engagement, not feeling separate from your work or your organization, as you become: The One Ball.

]]> http://www.davidzinger.com/the-one-ball-play-1848/feed/ 2 http://www.davidzinger.com/the-one-ball-bounce-2048/ http://www.davidzinger.com/the-one-ball-bounce-2048/#comments Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:51:12 +0000 David Zinger http://www.davidzinger.com/?p=2048 Do you bounce? Do you bounce back?

Goldfish don’t bounce ~ Nancy Cartwright

Time for bouncing. We can always bounce yet in uncertain times and economic upheaval I believe we need to have even more bounce. If we can’t bounce we will get stuck and unable to create movement with our work.  Bounce is what puts energy into our work and transforms effort into engagement.

Defining bounce. Some of the definitions of bounce include to spring back, to move up and down, to come back, able to rebound, leap, a light self-propelled movement upwards or forwards, and rebounding from an impact. When we are engaged we bounce. We move upwards and forwards, we move up and down, we spring back, and we rebound from an impact. I like the idea of thinking of engagement as a light self-propelled movement upwards and forwards!

The give and get of bounce. As a child I played with a baseball glove and rubber ball. That rubber ball was the inspiration for the image used for this series of The One Ball posts.  I loved to throw the rubber ball against our cement front steps. If the angle was right and the toss was true it was like pitching in baseball and the ball would instantly bounce back right into my glove. It was both captivating and engrossing to be able to throw something and have it come right back. The One Ball is not limited to a real rubber ball.

• Do you give and get bounce?
• Is your toss true?
• What do you throw away (give) that also comes back to you (get).
• Do you pay enough attention to this dynamic in your work?

Resilience. How resilient are you? How well do you cope with adversity and difficult situations. Can you bounce back after a setback or do you get all bent out of shape and stuck in adversity.  It was interesting, that the rubber ball I would play with as a boy would start to fall apart ever so slowly through prolonged use but it was amazingly hardy and able to keep returning after being tossed even with all kinds of nicks and rips. Here is a snippet Val Nelson, a painter, wrote on her blog Optimistic Pursuits:

“optimism” is actually misrepresented. A word coined by 17th century philosopher Leibniz, its original meaning was actually “optimal”, to signify the perfection of the universe as it is now – in other words, being in the moment, and deciding to accept things as they really are.

Val is a painter who describes her approach as “I aim to convey the pleasures of looking, and, without irony, I propose that optimism is a viable impetus for painting. If optimism can be a viable impetus for the art of painting, and Val does it very well, I believe optimism is an essential impetus for work.

The core strength of acceptance. Although bounce implies movement there is something solid at the core that helps create bounce. Can you live your optimism by being in the moment and accepting things as they are. To me, acceptance, is the core strength from which bounce originates.

Conversational Bounce. Good conversations also have lots of bounce. When we feel safe and work towards mutual purpose and mutual respect we are able to bounce ideas off of each other and develop results we never may have imagined on our own.

• Who do you play conversational bounce with?
• Who can you throw your thoughts at and have them return stronger and more advanced?

Bouncing Baby. When my 3 children were small they loved to be bounced. They were the proverbial bouncing babies. As they grew older they loved to bounce on their beds and on the sofa. I believe we are made for bounce. Have you kept your childlike enthusiasm for bouncing or have your become brittle both physically and psychologically? Go ahead and get bouncing.

Trampoline effect. As we learn to bounce it is amazing how much altitude we can generate. Ensure that you can bounce psychologically and in relationships and take a good look around when you reach new altitudes. Many children can bounce for hours on a trampoline fully engaged in the movement and enjoy the process. Discover or create the work that will keep you fully engaged and bouncing well into retirement.

Success is how high you bounce

when you hit the bottom.

~  General George S. Patton

I think David Allen offers useful perspectives and advice but it got me thinking that The One Ball is not about his titles.

I don’t want to make it all work. I just want, in the moment, to make one thing work. And a lot of that is working on myself to focus on The One Ball.

It isn’t about getting things done. It is about getting this thing right before me done.

Have a ball.

Next One Ball Post: Bounce.

Take your pick. Do you know what your One Ball is? How do you choose which ball to pick up? When there are so many possibilities it can be stressful just to make one choice. We may even choose to just keep juggling rather than determining the ball that is the best fit for us and getting the most out of our engagement with the one ball.

Choice paradox. Performance means anything worthy of your attention. The challenge is to determine which ball is most worthy of your attention. Barry Schwartz wrote an insightful book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less on the paradox of choice alerting us to the stress of trying to make the right choice. There may not be a perfect “ball” to pick up but there are some guidelines to follow to help you engage with the one ball:

Ball paralysis. Rather than suffer from ball paralysis just pick up the ball that seems best at the time. Engage with the ball and monitor your focus, energy, and performance. You could follow Marcus Buckingham’s suggestions to find your strengths: determine what activities you look most forward to, watch for activities that you feel fully engaged in while you are working with them, and watch for activities that you have positive reflections about.

Mastery trumps competency. Strive towards mastery rather than merely being competent. Many organizations encourage “ball juggling” by having managers and leaders responsible for so many competencies that they cannot even remember them without referring to the 150 pages manager’s competency guidebook outlining the 287 managerial competencies at 5 different levels. This reminds me of the old statement: he got on his horse and rode off in all directions at once.

Know no. Learn the power of a positive no. Know that you must say no to say yes to something else. William Ury wrote about the Power of the Positive No. Here is the lead paragraph from his site:

No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. Every day we find ourselves in situations where we need to say No – to people at work, at home, and in our communities – because No is the word we must use to protect ourselves and to stand up for everything and everyone that matters to us.

3 tips. Ury created a tip sheet that is available at his website that outlines the 3 steps for a positive no:

1. uncover your deeper yes,
2. deliver a respectful no,
3. negotiate to a healthy yes.

Click here for the pithy one page PDF from Ury’s website.

The choice is yours. Go ahead make a choice. You are not glued to your choice for life and you can make additional choices too. Just don’t choose to engage with more than one ball at a time.

And that’s the way the ball bounces.

Effortless virtuosity. The world’s greatest rhythmic gymnasts perform incredible ball routines. They dance, move, balance, and demonstrate mastery, originality, and virtuosity. They achieve this with what appears to be effortless performance because they are so graceful.

How routine is your best performance? How well do you focus and flex with The One Ball?

Defining performance. The best definition of performance I know is quite simple: Performance is anything worthy of your attention. You don’t have to be in public to perform, other people don’t need to know you are engaged in performance, but you have determined that something is worthy of your attention — writing a report, meeting with a co-worker, creating a presentation, delivering a presentation, meditating, spending time with someone you love, or walking the dog. These are all performances! What kind of performer are you? What is most worthy of your attention at work?

Text tossing? How present are you to your performance? Imagine a rhythmic gymnast pulling out a cell phone in the middle of a routine or taking time to text as she tosses the ball in the air. The notion is ludicrous yet how often do we end up diminishing our performance by multitasking. We believe we can juggle more and more and that if we just keep the balls spinning we are really getting some place.

Single tasking. Dr. Edward Hallowell stated in his insightful book Crazybusy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap – Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD:

While there is a place for what is commonly called multitasking, the notion that is as effective as single tasking is wrong. When what you are doing is important, multitasking is a practice to be avoided. Just think of it as playing tennis with two balls.

Pathways to engaged performance:

Just noticing. Become more mindful this week of how often you engage in single tasking. How long can you sustain your single-mindedness? What were the benefits and challenges of single tasking for you?

Lengthen your time on-task. When you begin to notice how long you can be on task with a single performance see if you can stretch it out ever so slightly. Work at moving from initial engagement to sustaining engagement over increasingly longer periods of time.

Open just one window. Work with just one window open on your computer. How often do you have so many windows open that you begin to feel a draft and get blown right off the course you had originally set for being on the the computer.

Stop light stress. When you stop at a red light do you stop, pause, and refresh or do you impatiently wait to get going again? Can you stop in traffic even for 40 seconds without becoming impatient or quickly trying to make a phone call?

Be kind to yourself. I believe so many of us have been multitasking for so long that it will be a challenge to work towards more single-tasking. (For example, while writing this post I just noticed that I had 4 windows open on my computer and it was so tempting to try and watch another You Tube video while also writing this. When you catch yourself losing focus on The One Ball – simply accept this has occurred and gently bring yourself back to your One Ball performance.

Required reading. I encourage you to read Edward M. Hallowell’s CrazyBusy. This is a must read if people ask you how you are and you reply by saying, “busy” or “crazy busy.” Dr. Hallowell will help you raise your F-state (frenzied, flailing, fearful, forgetful and furious) to a C-state (cool, calm, clear, consistent, curious, and courteous.)

Be inspired. Watch Inna Zhukova perform a silent ball routine. As you watch her perform think about how you can work more effectively, efficiently and gracefully with your One Ball.

Next. The next One Ball column will help you determine your most important performance(s).