Sometime all it means is that you aren’t doing anything uncomfortable or different.  In this case, you are sitting down on the job of life.  A higher level of authenticity involves standing up, and taking responsibility for your entire life, and your entire personality, all your potential.

Process Communication describes six unique personality types within each person, arranged in order of preference, much like the floors of a condominium.  Your BASE floor is present near birth and determines your preferred communication style throughout your life.  Your PHASE floor predicts how you are motivated, and how you get negative attention when you are in distress.  Then, there’s a whole lot more that often gets overlooked.

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a Process Communication Model seminar led by Jerome Lefeuvre of Kahler Communication, France.  We explored what it means to “stand up in your condo.”  We were taken through an exercise that helped us explore our signature strengths from each floor of our personality condo.  We shared stories of things we were proud of, sought feedback from peers, and became more familiar with the less visited floors in our own condominium.

Stand Up. Stand Tall.
You are more than your base and phase.  You are more than your strongly developed floors.  You are a whole person with six floors, a unique constellation of gifts, perspectives, and abilities.  When you stand up in your condo, develop and use the character strengths from bottom to top, you open up all sorts of new perspectives and possibilities.

Authenticity is more than sticking with what you know.  It’s about growing into your full self and sharing that with the world.

So don’t limit yourself with old-school authenticity.  You aren’t too old, too stuck, too tired, or too successful.  Stand up, look around, and reach for your true, fullest self.

Attend a Next Element Seminar and find out your PCM Structure.

Submitted by:

About every three years we get one of those storms in Kansas that dumps several inches of rain in an hour or two.  Streets are like rivers, ditches are overflowing onto the streets, and yards look like lakes.  If your gutters aren’t flowing freely, rainwater will run over the edges, right down the side of your foundation, and flood your basement in a hurry.  Even the best sump pumps struggle to keep up.

Miraculously, I’m still alive.  Never mind that there were two or three HUNDRED sunny days when I could have safely cleaned my gutters.  Somehow I seem to get motivated only when tragedy is imminent, and I put myself at high risk to fix the situation.

Is this how you tend to your gutters?  Do you let the little leaves and debris in your life pile up until there’s a crisis?  Do you wait to fix things until doing so puts you in danger?  Maybe you procrastinate, avoid, or just dismiss the little things that aren’t fun, take a little extra effort, or sidetrack you from the important things of the day.  Most likely, the clogged gutters in your life cause even the small rains to soak your basement.

Today, make a commitment to clean your gutters.  Maybe it’s a messy desk, an apology that’s long overdue, a software upgrade, quality time with your kids.  Take time out of your sunny day to joyfully and mindfully clean the gutters of your life so that when it rains AND pours, you can stay inside and enjoy the safety and comfort of your home.

Submitted by:

And how sad that we so often believe that the star is “out there,” just beyond our reach.  When you stop focusing on expectations and begin focusing on what you want, you can be among the stars.

Start with these three steps:

Set your sights: What do you really want?  What have you been putting off because it wasn’t practical, or too risky?  What have you been avoiding because it just seems “too out reach?”  Get clear, get focused, and get honest about what you really want.

Set your mind: Begin by becoming aware of all those negative and pessimistic messages in and around you telling you you can’t, you shouldn’t, or “you’d be better off playing it safe.”  Recognize that those messages come from fear, shame, and selfishness rather than owning your star-power and making a difference in the universe.

Set your course: Get moving.  Do something, anything, to begin working towards your star.

And remember, when you set your sights, your mind, and your course in-line with your dream, the stars are already within reach.  Where you end up is anybody’s guess!

What could the Magi’s gifts teach us about reaching our greatest potential?

Gold: Precious and worthy across all cultures and times, a gift fit for royalty.  Give yourself the gift of royalty.  You are worthy of great contribution, to pursue a a life of significance.  Believe in your value and your purpose.

Frankincense: Touted for its medicinal and soothing properties, herbalists say frankincense is calming, restorative, gently clarifying, and meditative.  Give yourself the gift of gentleness and patience.  It’s OK to take your time, restore yourself, gain clarity, and become inspired to realize your dreams.

Myrrh: While it has strong antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties, Myrrh is most well-known as an embalming material for Egyptian mummies.  Myrrh signifies pain and death.  Growth usually requires death; part of you may have to die in order for the rest of you to flourish.  Give yourself the gift of letting go of the dead weight of old habits, behaviors, and beliefs.

To be your best self, take a lesson from the Magi and give yourself an Epiphany!
-NR

• More responsibility, less resentment
• More courage, less disappointment
• More ownership, less compliance
• More acceptance less judgment
• More honesty, less assuming
• 
More persistence, less aggression
• 
More trust, less control
• More creativity, less coercion
• More intention, less luck
• More asking, less wishing
• 
More mistakes, fewer failures
• More joy, less justifying
• 
More goals, fewer rules

- NR

In the coming year, look for the continuing evolution of PCM with Next Element.  Our passion is to help you communicate for a change!

-NR

Read Seth Godin’s entire blog post…

Tools vs insight

How is your vocabulary? It’s a vital tool, certainly. Do you know these words?
a, after, and, as, die, eternal, first, gets, gun, have, in, is, job, life, me, mouth, my, pushing, saying, step, that, the, to, Tyler, waiter, you.

How about these?
a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you.

The first list contains every word in the opening lines from Fight Club, the second is the entire word list from Green Eggs and Ham.  Of course, neither you nor I wrote either of these, regardless of how well trained we are in what the words (the tools) mean.

Knowing about a tool is one thing. Having the guts to use it in a way that brings art to the world is another. Perhaps we need to spend less time learning new tools and more time using them.

from:  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/tools-and-insight.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

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• Have your meetings become a forum for competing agendas, apathy and wasted energy?
• How much time do you waste arguing, nitpicking policies, chasing rabbit trails, delaying decisions, and talking around the real issues?
• Is scheduling another meeting the only guaranteed outcome of your time together?

While meetings have a place and purpose, too often they are experienced as unneeded, unproductive, and unsafe, thus fostering a cynical and apathetic attitude among participants which negatively affects the organization at large.  Effective meetings build alignment around common goals, support innovation and decision-making, and facilitate direct, accountable action, and include each participant as a valuable part of the process.  In this live audio conference, you will learn tips to notice and combat drama in your meetings, identify logistical details to keep meetings on task, engage and motivate a diverse audience, and facilitate a more safe, creative, and accountable meeting atmosphere.

The result: More enthusiasm, more productivity and innovation, less wasted time and energy.

 As our guest, you are eligible for 20% off the *registration fee!

Essential Techniques for Productive Meetings
February 14, 2012
1:00PM EST – 2:30PM EST (Noon – 1:30PM CST)

Please see this attached marketing publication for more details: LORMAN ED_ProductiveMtg_Feb14_2012

Register online: http://www.lorman.com
Call: 866-352-9539
*Discount code: F2716129
Priority code: 15999

We look forward to having you in attendance and will be prepared to answer your questions and provide you the latest information on this topic.

The Assessing Matrix: Tools for dealing with personality differences in the workplace.

SHRM State Conference, Hyatt Regency, Wichita, KS

September 15: 9:45 – 11:15 AM

Click here for conference details.

Visit our booth to learn about Next Element and get some cool free stuff!!

An Autobiography in Five Chapters

1) I walk down the street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I fall in.

I am lost — I am hopeless.

It isn’t my fault.

It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.

I fall in again.

I can’t believe I’m in the same place.

But it isn’t my fault.

It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk

I see it is there.

I still fall in — it’s a habit.

My eyes are open.

I know where I am.

It is MY fault.

I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.

There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I walk around it.

5) I walk down a DIFFERENT street.

~Written By Portia Nelson

Learning about your own and others’ personalities can be a wonderful thing. New insights, new perspectives, and new tolerance. This is progress, right?

It depends where you take it next.

I often find myself beginning a sentence with, “As a Promoter…”  As people become more aware of their personality and comfortable with PCM terminology and concepts, we often hear people preface a statement with “As a Reactor base…” or “As a Workaholic phase…”  We admire this effort. And, what comes next can lead to enlightenment, or for some, entitlement.

The entitled PCM user seeks special treatment because of their personality, or expects others to tolerate them without accountability.  “Hey, as a Rebel, I need a hands-off management style, so back off and leave me alone.”  This is entitled, selfish behavior, and it’s a misuse of PCM.  “I’m a Persister so I can’t trust you until you prove yourself.”  This is an irresponsible use of PCM because it avoids one’s own role in healthy, trusting relationships.  “I’m a Reactor so my feelings are easily hurt.”  This is a Victim statement, and only perpetuates the Myth that others are in control of my feelings. (enter “Drama Triangle” for a search on our website to discover more on this)

This is not unique to PCM.  We’ve heard countless reports of the very same dynamics happening with DiSC, MBTI, and many other personality/communication models.  Thankfully, we know that PCM offers much richer tools for moving beyond entitlement.

The enlightened PCM user shares insights, welcomes feedback, checks out assumptions with others, and uses his new learning to take ownership over being “self-ful.”  In this way she mobilizes her gifts and reaches out more effectively to others.  PCM is an invitation to more enlightened responsibility for self, and to others.  Enlightened use of PCM, or any other personality model, seeks to understand rather than be understood, to motivate rather than discipline, to invite rather than control.

There’s hope!  Even if you find yourself taking an entitled attitude, rest assured that you’ve come a long way and can do so much more!  Moving towards higher levels of effectiveness means taking all you’ve learned, moving beyond labels and categories, and developing confidence in your skills to respond to the behaviors in front of you.  And, this takes practice and support.  We are eager and ready to help you develop enlightened PCM practices in your life, your organization, and your community.