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The One Ball: Bounce

February 12, 2009 By 2 Comments

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

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The One Ball vs. Making It All Work and Getting Things Done

February 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement, The One Ball

The One Ball: Choice

February 4, 2009 By 1 Comment

Choose your One Ball and Know Your No.

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.

Filed Under: Employee Engagement, The One Ball

The One Ball: Engaged Performance

January 20, 2009 By 1 Comment

To perform is to engage with something worthy of your attention. Read this One Ball post offering a creative and colorful pathway to full and authentic work/employee engagement.

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).

Filed Under: Employee Engagement, The One Ball Tagged With:
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