Ask, Know, Do

What are worldviews?

There are six basic worldviews according to research done by Edward Spranger in the early 1920s.  This may seem outdated, but the fact that the model is still valid shows how powerful the information derived from this survey can be applied to almost every situation today.

Theoretical

Values knowledge and constant search for truth.  How will you survive and grow in a career that doesn’t allow you to learn and grow?   Solve problems or mysteries.  Identifying, differentiating, generalizing, and systemizing.  Get engaged in intellectual process just for the sake of the game.  Identify truths and untruths – discovery main mode of action. 

Utilitarian

If you thrive in an environment that rewards a return on investment of time, talent, resources.  Utilizing resources to obtain results.  Gaining a measurable return on all investments.  Creative application of resources.  Capitalism.

Traditional

If you live by a closed system of principles – play by the rules – stay within the lines.  Pursuit of the Divine in life. Convert others to their system.  Work for worthy causes. Understand the totality of life.  Live and apply their principles to all situations.

Aesthetic

Form, harmony, beauty, balance (natural systems thinkers).  Appreciation, enjoyment, and striving for form, harmony, beauty and balance.  They have subjective experiences – there is no objectivity which makes it difficult for them to get on with engineers.  Understands the feelings of self and others.

Social

A humanitarian drive.  Opportunities to develop potential in others.  To champion worthy causes. Bettering society and elimination of conflict and pain.  Helping people live better lives.

Individualistic

If you have a passion to lead, direct, and control others.  Achieving, advancing position.  Forming strategic alliances. Planning and carrying out a winning strategy. Leading others.  Working in and respecting authority and the chain of command.

What is the Law of Love?

Divine Law can neither be ignored nor put aside. Perhaps, the most important of these laws is the 'law of love.'

Put simply, "Love is Law, Law is Love."  This amounts to the same thing as "the gift of giving" without the "hope of reward or pay," or serving others. 

For more information, go to: www.LawofLove.com 

For more on this thing called love, go to: www.WhatisLove.info 

To test for love, go to: www.TestforLove.com

What is empathy?

"An empathic way of being with another person has several facets.  It means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it.  It involves being sensitive, moment to moment, to the changing felt meanings which flow in this other person, to the fear or rage or tenderness or confusion or whatever he or she is experiencing.

It means temporarily living in the other's life, moving about in it delicately without making judgments; it means sensing meanings of which he or she is scarcely aware, but not trying to uncover totally unconscious feelings, since this would be too threatening.  It includes communicating your sensings of the person's world as you look with fresh and unfrightened eyes at elements of which he or she is fearful.  It means frequently checking with the person as to the accuracy of your sensings, and being guided by the responses you receive.

You are a confident companion to the person in his or her inner world.  By pointing to the possible meanings in the flow of another person's experiencing, you help the other to focus on this useful type of referent, to experience the meanings more fully, and to move forward in the experiencing.

To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another's world without prejudice.  In some sense, it means that you lay aside yourself; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish."

Carl Rogers (1902-1987). This quote is excerpted from the book "A Way of Being" (Houghton-Mifflin 1980)

To assess your empathy, consider taking an emotional intelligence self-assessment at www.SelfAssessmentCenter.com

What is the best show in town?

Ask a Las Vegas cab driver, 'What's the best show in town?'  He will probably reply with something like this, 'Oh, Jay Leno!  My wife and I just went to see him. He gives a special show for taxi drivers at two in the morning.  Otherwise, we could never afford to go.  Kenny Rogers does the same thing when he's in town.'

You wouldn't think that anyone as big in the entertainment field as Jay Leno and Kenny Rogers needs to give away their performances, but they do.  Both realize that some of the best word of mouth advertising they could have would be taxi drivers raving about their shows.

If you could do just one thing to help your customer and your business, what would that be?

The short answer is to give more of what you have away.  For the long answer, go to:  http://www.LawofReciprocity.com

John G. Agno, certified executive & business coach, http://www.agno.info/ 

 John Agno: Ask the Coach

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Why Casa dei Bambini?

Today's standard of good motherhood is: the mom with the highest-achieving child is the best mom. 

Most moms think that having the first reader on the block is the way to pull ahead of the pack.  Wrong!

Research finds that the earlier children are taught to read, the more likely it is they will develop a learning disability (probably due,  in some measure, to not having been taught properly).  So don't waste precious time teaching your child to read but do spend your energy on teaching him or her good manners, respect for authority and other practical life skills.  Knowing right from left and right from wrong matters.  How to pay attention to an adult leads to basic manners.  Entering a room quietly, knowing how to tie shoes, listening to an adult read a story and patiently wait their turn opens the door to learning.

Helping children develop concentration and task commitment along with a love for work is a cornerstone of the Montessori approach.  Montessori fosters creativity, self-confidence and an entrepreneurial spirit according to its graduates.  Here is what a few successful grads have to say:

When Barbara Walters interviewed Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, they didn't attribute their remarkable success to universities, like Sanford or
Michigan, but give credit to their Montessori schools.  According to Brin, the Montessori approach instilled in them self-direction and self-motivation, an inclination to challenge the status quo and to do things differently.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, was recently mentioned in Business Week magazine: "As a preschooler, Jeffrey P. Bezos displayed an unmatched single-mindedness.  By his mother's account, the young Bezos got so engrossed in the details of activities at his Montessori school that teachers had to pick him up in his chair to move him to new tasks.  It's a trait that goes a long way toward explaining why the company he founded, Amazon.com Inc, has survived to become the most dominant retailer on the Internet."

Julia Child, the author and cook, said, "Influenced, perhaps, by my early experience at a Montessori school...I am all for encouraging children to work with their hands."

To choose their own tasks and, with guidance, to shape their own learning builds character and their mental models of the world breeds future success.   So, mothers, learn to recite this little ditty:

Let children be carefree when they are small. Teach character, not characters, and help their manners grow tall.  Read to them a lot and discipline them well, and they will do their best when rings the school bell.

Sources: Tomorrow's Child Magazine, Spring 2005 and The Reno Gazette, March 6, 2005

What is life?

A son and his father were walking on the mountains.  Suddenly, the son falls hurts himself and screams: 'AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!'
To his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain: 'AAAhhhhhhhhhhh!!!'

Curious, he yells: 'Who are you?'
He receives the answer: 'Who are you?'
Angered at the response, he screams: 'Coward!'
He receives the answer: 'Coward!'

He looks to his father and asks: 'What's going on?'  The father smiles and says: 'My son, pay attention.'

And then he screams to the mountain: 'I admire you!'
The voice answers: 'I admire you!'

Again the man screams: 'You are a champion!'
The voice answers: 'You are a champion!'

The boy is surprised, but does not understand.
Then the father explains: 'People call this Echo, but really this is Life.

It gives you back everything you say or do.  Our life is simply a reflection of our actions.  If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart.

This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life.  Life will give you back everything you have given to it.

Author Unknown

What most mothers don't know about the ABCs

Today's standard of good motherhood is: the mom with the highest-achieving child is the best mom. 

Most moms think that having the first reader on the block is the way to pull ahead of the pack.  Wrong!

Research finds that the earlier children are taught to read, the more likely it is they will develop a learning disability (probably due,  in some measure, to not having been taught properly).  So don't waste precious time teaching your child to read but do spend your energy on teaching him or her good manners, respect for authority and other practical life skills.  Knowing right from left and right from wrong matters.  How to pay attention to an adult leads to basic manners.  Entering a room quietly, knowing how to tie shoes, listening to an adult read a story and patiently wait their turn opens the door to learning.

Helping children develop concentration and task commitment along with a love for work is a cornerstone of the Montessori approach.  Montessori fosters creativity, self-confidence and an entrepreneurial spirit according to its graduates.  Here is what a few successful grads have to say:

When Barbara Walters interviewed Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, they didn't attribute their remarkable success to universities, like Sanford or Michigan, but give credit to their Montessori schools.  According to Brin, the Montessori approach instilled in them self-direction and self-motivation, an inclination to challenge the status quo and to do things differently.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, was recently mentioned in Business Week magazine: "As a preschooler, Jeffrey P. Bezos displayed an unmatched single-mindedness.  By his mother's account, the young Bezos got so engrossed in the details of activities at his Montessori school that teachers had to pick him up in his chair to move him to new tasks.  It's a trait that goes a long way toward explaining why the company he founded, Amazon.com Inc, has survived to become the most dominant retailer on the Internet."

Julia Child, the author and cook, said, "Influenced, perhaps, by my early experience at a Montessori school...I am all for encouraging children to work with their hands."

To choose their own tasks and, with guidance, to shape their own learning builds character and their mental models of the world breeds future success.  So, mothers, learn to recite this little ditty:

Let children be carefree when they are small. Teach character, not characters, and help their manners grow tall.  Read to them a lot and discipline them well, and they will do their best when rings the school bell.

 

Sources: Tomorrow's Child Magazine, Spring 2005 and The Reno Gazette, March 6, 2005

You get what you tolerate

Face time made perfect sense when people were required to work in "boxes" of factories, offices and schools to do their jobs.  But today, information technology has given rise to the "knowledge worker" who applies his or her intellect to produce results at anytime from almost anywhere.

But common sense is not always common practice; especially when employers expect to receive 24/7 employee access while encouraging these same employees into staying at the office from sunup to sundown.  Face-time addicts who fixate on in-the-office work hours will drive the most productive knowledge workers away.  Knowledge workers don't leave companies, they leave poor managers.

In medicine, we look at how "well tolerated" a drug will be related to its side effects.  At work and at home, many people evaluate new opportunities related to what can be well tolerated. Yet after life, most people don't want their tombstone to read, "He tolerated stuff for other people because they paid him."  Especially, when we realize that we can make more money and have more fun doing work that engages our passions.  Life is too short for doing work you don't enjoy for people you don't respect.

If face-time addiction is part of the culture where you work, recognize that you get what you tolerate.  To learn how to stop tolerating stuff, go to: www.LifeSignature.com

John G. Agno, certified executive & business coach, www.CoachedtoSuccess.com