Audio Tidbits

Your children first discover and then experiment with what they have discovered. They then repeat the activity, action, behavior, or experience until they have either mastered it or determined it has no value for them. When your children achieve mastery, their knowledge and skills become conscious: they use the knowledge or skill when it is needed for the sake of something else. …

Your children first discover and then experiment with what they have discovered. They then repeat the activity, action, behavior, or experience until they have either mastered it or determined it has no value for them. When your children achieve mastery, their knowledge and skills become conscious: they use the knowledge or skill when it is needed for the sake of something else. …

When Do I Delegate And When Not?

This is fairly simple in principle but not necessarily simple in practice. Answering the question starts with understanding exactly what is being delegated and what it means to delegate. We do not delegate our accountability for outcomes. Whether the outcomes are successful continues to be our obligation even if we do delegate the job to someone else. We continue to be responsible for how the job is done and the results despite having delegated the assignment. We have merely gotten someone to help us do what we are committed to doing. We should delegate then, only when we either cannot do the job by ourselves or do not want to do it alone.

Delegation goes a little further though. Instead of just getting someone to help us, we ask them to do the job for us, on our behalf. They do the job as if we had done it ourselves. We do not do the job, supervise their doing it, or interfere in their work. We delegate the job and then back away and let them do what they have agreed to do. They are not an extension of us, they are a substitute for us.

The conclusion is thus to only delegate jobs when we are prepared to turn the job over to someone else and then wait on the results. The corollary is only delegating jobs to people who we trust enough to be held accountable for whether or not they succeed and in whom we have enough confidents to step back and wait.

Of course, we delegate enough authority to get the job done and assure sufficient resources are available or accessible to do what needs done. This means the job does not require authority only we or people above us have. The person to whom we have delegated the job does not need any further approval or authorization from us or anyone else. They have the authority and resources they need to succeed.

The next conclusion is we only delegate when the job does not require our level of authority to be done or our level of access to resources. The person doing the job does not have to come back to us for approval. If he (or she) does, we have not actually delegated the job.

There are a variety of arrangements among co-workers we use to further the interests of our companies and our customers. Delegation is only one of those arrangements. However, when we do delegate, we are saying, "Get the job done and let me know when it is finished."

As we see, delegation is not a cooperative activity. Rather, it is more a matter of having enough trust and confidence in someone else to let him stand in for us and our willingness to be personally held accountable for the outcome he (or she) does or does not achieve.

The fact of it is that Tuesday just does not have much going for it. Oh well, so much for Tuesday. There is a caution though. If you have a boss, beware. Tuesday is the all-time favorite day for bosses to do their boss thing. By Tuesday, they have pretty much figured out what they want to accomplish for the week and there you are with one of those Tuesdays and nothing much that absolutely has to be done today.

I think you get it. You don’t have to have everything spelled out for you. Even though there isn’t all that much to do next Tuesday, be prepared, especially if your boss will be anywhere close to where you are or if you have a phone or computer that can receive calls, messages, or e-mail.

When we last joined our intrepid explorers on The Great Mouse Hunt, they had tracked the Great Mouse to Zombieland where The Great mouse was blending in with the local zombie population. The huntsmen were able to engage The Great Mouse in an intense battle but just as our aggressive hunting party sprung an explosive trap intended to finally capture or destroy The Great Mouse, the beast transmogrified and was gone from Zombieland.

We now find our eager adventurers deep in outer space where they have stalked The Great Mouse to Adar XIV near the outer boundary of the third galaxy beyond ours. Let’s wish our hunters good luck and hope for their final success. Please join me as I hold my breath and keep my fingers crossed anxiously awaiting the outcome of this, the most recent episode in the continuing saga of The Great Mouse Hunt.

As an exercise, develop a brief sketch showing the key elements of the Helping Triangle you might use to create a human services agency. For this exercise, answer the questions below, limiting your answer to each question to a paragraph. Here, a brief sketch will suffice.

What is the name of Your-New-Agency?

Who are the Potential Clients for Your-New-Agency; why do they need human services?

Who will you recruit to join you as Initiators for Your-New-Agency; who will help you get and keep authorization for the agency and why do you think they will help?

What entity will be Your-New-Agency's primary Authorizer; what entity or organization do you expect to provide primary authorization, auspices, and resources for the creation and operation of the agency and why do you think it will support your initiative?

Who will be the Implementers for Your-New-Agency; which people and organizations will be actively involved in the implementation phase following authorization?

Once Your-New-Agency is opened, who will be the Providers; who will deliver the agency's services and what other personnel resources will be needed to operate the agency?

How will you assure Your-New-Agency successfully connects with Potential Clients; what strategies will you use to make sure the people needing help actually receive the help they need?

What's with that? Do I think you are out of control or something? You are consistent and predictable and are certainly attractive and fun to be around. You give your relationship your best shot as well. Now what am I talking about with this being attentive and self-disciplined stuff?

I assume you are responsible, considerate, reliable, thoughtful, and all of those kinds of things. There is a potential glitch though. In quality, serious relationships, your comfort zone increases, you are very familiar with your significant other, and there is little need to consciously attend to the relationship. It is not something you think about much and there is minimal need to "stay sharp." You assuredly are in a safe place. Nonetheless, you need to beware of what I call "attention drift."

Here is the problem. In a serious relationship, you and your significant other gradually adjust and accommodate to each other. You are each attractive to the other and pay little to no attention to quirks, habits, and behavior that is slightly annoying or irritating. You get used to each other.

All would be fine were it not that you both change over time. Each of you behaves a little differently here and has a slightly shifted attitude there. For a while, you just accommodate with no conscious awareness of doing so. At some point, you become aware but do not make an issue of it. More time passes and annoyance and irritation appear with no specific focus. This grows and begins to take on more importance than your attraction to each other. You have drifted apart.

What happened? One or both of you were not attentive enough to your changing behavior and attitudes. You experienced attention drift. The result is that your relationship is in jeopardy.

What is my suggested strategy for preventing attention drift? Here it is, simple and straight up. Have the self-discipline needed to continuously be attentive to subtle changes and shifts and to deal with them immediately.

It is important for you to actively and thoughtfully Participate on the management team. An important element of your participation is to assure that you Work within the scope of your responsibilities and authority.

The Great Mouse Hunt continues. In this episode it goes to Zombieland. The hunt is tense and still thrilling. Did the hunters capture The Great Mouse or did it once again out-clever the hunters. Listen to the end and draw your conclusion.

Your children's development starts with their physical, doing dimension. It incorporates their physical bodies, their potentials and capacities to do and behave, and most of what is visible in terms of their actions and activities.

Part of your role is to help your children grow to respect and appreciate their physical abilities and skills, to know how to behave in a variety of situations, and to recognize and utilize their physical capacities and potentials. This physical, doing dimension starts at infancy and is central to your children' adjustment throughout their journey to adulthood.

The emotional dimension is equally important. Here are found feelings, fears and frustrations, sadness and joy, disappointment and excitement, love and hate, fun and futility. Your growing children experience all of these emotions and must learn how to interpret them, how to express them, and how to manage them. …