Who is “we?”  Have you ever heard statements like these at home and work:  “We should really do something about that!” “We need to make a decision‚” “We should get this done by Friday‚” “We need to do a better job of keeping the house clean.”

“We” has you leaving the conversation wondering who’s we, and whose doing what?  It also can be interpreted as a passive tactic, of not asserting what you really feel/think/believe, or a defensive move for avoiding conflict or responsibility.  Either way, it leads to miscommunication.

So here is what you can do if “we” shows up in conversation.   First, trust intentions.  Stay curious, wanting and waiting to listen and understand.  Second, openly, and without opinion or assumption, ask for clarification.  (If you’ve already formed an opinion, judgment or assumption, it’s tough to be truly open.)

If you have been trained in the Process Communication Model (PCM), you know we are also talking about using appropriate parts and channels (what’s in front of you?) in how you ask for clarification.

Rest assured that if you do nothing, “we” will keep hanging around and tasks will never get completed… because “we” doesn’t do anything.  A frog could get more done.  If you want to know more about the PCM, give us a shout. Ribbit.

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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
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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.

Your title is like a window of opportunity to connect, motivate, listen to understand, and model healthy conflict, which carries a responsibility beyond having the final say.

Do Happier People Work Harder?
By Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer
Published: September 3, 2011

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher, are the authors of “The Progress Principle.”

LABOR DAY is meant to be a celebration of work. Yet, on this Labor Day, few have reason to rejoice. Even those who have jobs.  The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling over 1,000 adults every day since January 2008, shows that Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before. People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve.

Employee engagement may seem like a frill in a downturn economy. But it can make a big difference in a company’s survival. In a 2010 study, James K. Harter and colleagues found that lower job satisfaction foreshadowed poorer bottom-line performance. Gallup estimates the cost of America’s disengagement crisis at a staggering $300 billion in lost productivity annually. When people don’t care about their jobs or their employers, they don’t show up consistently, they produce less, or their work quality suffers.

Over the past decade, we researched the micro-level causes behind this macro-level problem. To gain real-time perspective into everyday work lives, we collected  nearly 12,000 electronic diary entries from 238 professionals in seven different companies. Our study charted each person’s psychological state each day, and asked respondents to describe one event that stood out during that day. Our analysis revealed their inner work lives — the usually hidden perceptions, emotions and motivations that people experience as they react to and make sense of events in their workdays.

The results were sobering. In one-third of the 12,000 diary entries, the diarist was unhappy, unmotivated or both. In fact, workers often expressed frustration, disdain or disgust. Our research shows that inner work life has a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality. Employees are far more likely to have new ideas on days when they feel happier. Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; our real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do.

Managers can help ensure that people are happily engaged at work. Doing so isn’t expensive. Workers’ well-being depends, in large part, on managers’ ability and willingness to facilitate workers’ accomplishments — by removing obstacles, providing help and acknowledging strong effort. A clear pattern emerged when we analyzed the 64,000 specific workday events reported in the diaries: of all the events that engage people at work, the single most important — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.

As long as workers experience their labor as meaningful, progress is often followed by joy and excitement about the work. “This time it looks good! I feel more positive about this project and my work than I’ve felt in a long time,” one programmer wrote after she’d completed a small but difficult task. This kind of rich inner work life improves performance, which further supports inner work life — a positive spiral.

Unfortunately, many companies now keep head count and resources to a minimum and this makes progress a struggle for employees. Most managers don’t understand the negative consequences of this struggle. When we asked 669 managers from companies around the world to rank five employee motivators in terms of importance, they ranked “supporting progress” dead last. Fully 95 percent of these managers failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.

This failure reflects a common experience inside organizations. Of the seven companies we studied, just one had managers who consistently supplied the catalysts — worker autonomy, sufficient resources and learning from problems — that enabled progress. Not coincidentally, that company was the only one to achieve a technological breakthrough in the months we studied it.

Working adults spend more of their waking hours at work than anywhere else. Work should ennoble, not kill, the human spirit. Promoting workers’ well-being isn’t just ethical; it makes economic sense. Fostering positive inner lives sometimes requires leaders to better articulate meaning in the work for everyone across the organization. Sometimes, all that’s required is that managers address daily hassles and help with technical problems. If those who lead organizations — from C.E.O.’s to small-team leaders — believe their mission is, in part, to support workers’ everyday progress, we could end the disengagement crisis and, in the process, lift our work force’s well-being and our economy’s productivity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/do-happier-people-work-harder.html?_r=1

Personal growth, team development, dealing with diversity and opening the lines of communication are topics that merely skim the surface of what Kaleidoscope Learning Circle, LLC, Birch Run, Mich. can offer. And did we mention these skills are taught in partnership with horses?

The program provides a home for six horses who partner with people inside a state-of-the-art, $500,000 facility. The founder and owner of Kaleidoscope Learning Circle, Tracy Weber, stays busy caring for these horses and preparing customized leadership curriculum for her business and organizational clients. She contracts with a three equine specialists/mental health facilitators who share her vision of creating something “great” for each client. She also credits her accountant, attorney and the folks who clean horse stalls for their critical role in the business.

Tracy Weber with "Al"

And that’s not all Weber does. She is a single mom, constantly seeking the perfect work-life balance. She holds a PhD and teaches coursework at four universities ranging from customer relationships to equine assisted learning, even serving as a graduate adviser and on a student’s dissertation committee.

Partnering with horses is unique in leadership circles but for Weber they are a part of her life journey. She says a horse is often called a mirror. They are very aware of the power dynamic and have a keen instinct of what is going on around them. They live in herds, much like human beings, who live collectively and follow the leader.

Weber begins her relationship with each client by asking questions to achieve the desired outcome. She then organizes activity with the horses that reflect the client’s goals. The horses, she says, help people become more aware of how they are treating a partner or co-worker. Through interactions with the animals, clients find a safe, trusting place to discover how to improve a relationship by identifying beliefs, assumptions and choices.

Several years ago, Weber discovered the Process Communication Model (PCM®), after attending an educational conference and sitting in on the three-day PCM seminar taught by Next Element’s Jamie Remsberg and Nate Regier. Already an advocate for open communication and helping others learn, Weber says she knew PCM and equine-assisted learning could be merged.
“Both PCM and equine-assisted work allow for development that is not just about content,” Weber says. “It helps people understand how students or employees learn, creating those environments and supporting all personality and communication styles. PCM makes teachers and facilitators more proficient and helps develop credibility.”

She says her first three-day PCM experience showed her the differences and similarities in those around her and made it transferable. No other personality test added the kind of insight to organizational culture as to how people are motivated or how to invite people out of distress, Weber says.

“When I was introduced to PCM I knew I’d found ‘it,’” she says. “In PCM language – I am a “persister”  and have been

on crusades my whole life, and I didn’t realize that’s what they were. PCM allowed me to appreciate and extend an “invitation” rather than a crusade, and that if it didn’t work, these tools taught me to extend my invitation to someone else, or move on, as opposed to not being effective. In my business, PCM gives me the confidence in my ability to facilitate.”

In line with her practice of open communication, Weber has opened her Rolodex of contacts, clients and community stakeholders to Next Element. She does so to connect the people she works with and cares about, and because it is also her personal commitment to present equine programming with Next Element all over the world.

Remsberg now travels to the Great Lakes Bay region several times a year to conduct public PCM seminars, and collaborate on the unique kind of leadership facilitation Weber offers. She says even though horses are primarily non-verbal communicators, it makes sense to incorporate PCM into Kaleidoscope’s training because the animal responds to what is coming at them. Tones, posture, gestures and facial expressions are non-verbal ways horses behave and communicate and, when connected to the PCM world, provide experiential tools that help people learn from each other.

Jamie, Jeff, Nate and Michele thoroughly enjoyed their special team-development opportunity with Kaleidoscope Learning Center!

“Tracy is hardworking and dedicated to what she believes in,” Remsberg says. “Next Element and Kaleidoscope align around PCM because the tools we use – whether it’s horses or coursework – make for effective, productive communication.”
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Written by Rhonda McCurry, contract writer

While pastors are often very good at all of the above, they are also human beings with stress and communication issues just like any other person. One lucky group of clergy is not only receiving post-seminary training on how to communicate life lessons from the Bible but also how to attend to their own personality in times of stress.

For the past 11 months, the United Methodist Kansas West Conference has invested in a residency program called Clergy Leadership and Effectiveness Training with Next Element. This post-seminary training is designed to help deacons, elders and local pastors with change management, conflict resolution, self awareness and message proclamation on their journey toward ordination.

Karen Rice Ratzlaff, one of the pastors at First United Methodist Church (FUMC) in McPherson, chairs the entrance committee of the Kansas West Conference Board of Ordained Ministry and says Next Element incorporated the Process Communication Model® (PCM) into the program to help residents move from readiness to effectiveness in ministry.

“The training Next Element provides fits into this goal and strengthens each person’s leadership capacity,” she says. “Leadership is a huge component in ministry in our current cultural context and the Process Communication Model has applications to all areas of leadership that clergy need.”

As a part of their training with Next Element, the resident class of ten was asked to journal how they used new skills on a daily basis, offer a sermon demonstrating how they could connect their message to different personality types in their congregations, and identify scriptural affirmations that could speak to various people with different viewpoints. In addition, each of the residents were offered six coaching sessions with Next Element partners Nate Regier or Jeff King to use in any way they wanted, perhaps to create a church mission statement, learn to deal with church conflict or work to strengthen their marriage or family.  As one resident expressed, “The tools gained in PCM allow you to analyze all fronts of communication so that you can understand people and be understood.”

Ratzlaff is a dedicated student of PCM and seeks to use it in her professional and personal life. She and FUMC-McPherson’s lead pastor Mike Marion are certified PCM instructors.

PCM is obviously helpful as Ratzlaff and Marion work among staff members, apply its principles to couples during pre-marriage counseling and motivate church volunteers to carry out tasks and events. Understanding individual differences in communication helps pastors with a variety of settings and tasks including preparing sermons, interacting with people in the office, caring for people during a funeral and other leadership demands.

On the last day of the program, the group participated in experiential learning activities on the Bethel College Discovery Adventure Course

In years past, educational events offered by the Board of Ordained Ministry for the post-seminary residency program received mixed reviews but Ratzlaff says the Next Element course has been so popular, its class members continually approach her with statements such as, “grateful,” “amazing” and “valuable” and give specific examples of how it has enhanced their own professional and family lives.  One participant stated, “It only took one day of being with Nate and Jeff, and the members of my Residency Class, to realize God had something deep planned for me if I was willing to invest in the experience.”

Ratzlaff says she knows PCM works and therefore trusts what it does to improve personal relationships and help pastors become more effective spiritual leaders.  “I really appreciate the way PCM teaches you to take care of yourself based on your unique individual needs,” Ratzlaff says. “It isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of model. PCM is very unique to who each person is. I’ve found in ministry how important it is to be emotionally healthy as possible. The heart of sustaining ministry for the long haul is finding a healthy balance between life and work.”

Marion has served FUMC-McPherson for 11 years with a total of 33 years in ordained ministry. As lead pastor for the church he supervises staff and administrative committees to help church members develop a vision for what God’s calling is all about. He preaches most Sundays and teaches within the congregation, being personally vested in the music program.

Marion met Regier and King four years ago at a conference and after a brief presentation on PCM, he knew he wanted to learn more. He began to see the value of PCM almost immediately and believed in its potential to help other pastors.

“PCM helped me begin to see other people’s strengths in a new light,” he says. “In church we certainly believe that God gives us the gifts and strengths we have and as the body of Christ we want to utilize those to be effective in our mission. I saw that potential in the church and in my personal life and relationships. Most of my family has taken PCM training and we joke at our family gatherings that we should all wear our PCM nametags.”

After their own positive experience, Ratzlaff and Marion wanted to introduce other clergy to PCM, and to do so early in their ministry so they could begin implementing the tools in their own congregations.

“Through PCM you gain a lot of self awareness and learn how to live authentically with others in community.” Ratzlaff says. “It helps us on a daily basis with our interactions with people of all styles. I love that it helps embrace each person’s diversity and gifts while we make leadership choices to move forward.”

Regier says the philosophies of Next Element and the First United Methodist Church in McPherson compliment each other in many ways. Both organizations focus on self-awareness and communication as fundamental competencies of leadership.

“We also have a progressive outlook that challenges status quo and continually seeks ways to effectively reach people.” Regier says. “Next Element and FUMC-McPherson also share a true belief in the potential and gifts of each person.”

Marion agrees. He says PCM reinforces the belief that people are all fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

“It helps us celebrate that we all have different gifts and to learn to appreciate ourselves in the way God has created us, which is so theologically important,” he says. “From a standpoint of the Board of Ordained Ministry, it and Next Element are both working toward what it means to have effective leadership. So often I’ve heard Nate say, ‘Do you want to be right or be effective?’ The skill sets Next Element teaches help you to be more effective and that’s really one of the major things the board is interested in.”

And while Marion easily recognizes the value of PCM in his personal and professional life, he says it is important for residents in the training program to learn these essential leadership skills that will compliment other pastoral work in messaging, communication, conflict management and pastoral care. One reason clergy “burn out,” Marion says, is because they have not practiced self care. PCM, however, teaches clergy how to ensure both their emotional and physical needs are met.

“Jeff uses the reference point that when we all travel by air, the instructions at the beginning of the flight say in the event of an emergency you must place the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others,” Marion says. “Self care is really about that as well. You can’t help others and give them oxygen unless you’ve given it to yourself. Too often, pastors fall into this myth and PCM teaches key things that help you take care of yourself then work full-force to help others.”  And as summarized by one participant, “Coming in with a closed mind will only hinder you. However, with an open mind, the transformation that will take place as a result is mind-blowing.”
###

Interview and writing by Rhonda McCurry, contract writer.

Efficacy vs. Esteem

In a remote area in the Calabasas hills, there is a stone building, an outdoor amphitheater, a tree house and a garden. Children come here each day, ages preschool through 5th grade, to follow their passion. The lessons are based on what they want to learn that day. A simple question to a teacher like, “How does a robot work?” can turn into months of instruction and international Skyping to engineer and build a working robot, just to see how it is done.

Students at this learning center are also engaged in a professional, unique communications strategy called the Process Communication Model (PCM). This personal development training allows children to identify their own personality and how it relates to their peers – all while learning traditional subjects of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Founders Suzy Amis Cameron and Rebecca Amis

Inspiration following Frustration
The Amis sisters, Susan and Rebecca, founded MUSE School CA in 2006. Before this, their first-hand experience – namely frustration – with the public education system made them wish for a better way of learning for their children. As a result, Suzy Amis Cameron chose to home school her oldest son in the eighth grade. Then she hired a teacher who wrote a school curriculum just for him. This, Cameron says, is when he burst wide open.
“If we had known his learning style when he was two or four years old, it would have saved us a lot of heartache and tears,” she says. “Next we found a Los Angeles high school that catered to his passions. In one month, just watching him go from having his spirit completely squashed to witnessing his essence come back was amazing.”

Cameron says the same spirit-crushing school environment made her oldest daughter “live under her hoodie” for two years. Placing her daughter in the same L.A. high school as her son, Cameron watched the hood hiding the girl’s face disappear and see her essence rise again. Then Cameron met, married and started a family with film director James Cameron. When it was time to place their five-year-old child into a school system, Cameron once again considered home schooling. She had researched the Reggio philosophy of child-led learning and decided to open a private school that would accustom ten children in its humble beginnings. Fellow parents soon heard of the school’s focus on giving children an opportunity to pursue knowledge within their own heart. Today, MUSE School CA has grown to 90 students and 15 teachers for preschool through 5th grade levels.

“When we searched for a name my husband, Jim, referenced the Nine Muses of Greek Mythology and the inspiration they create,” Cameron says. “The MUSE school is really about inspiring children and adults. We want to be a muse and give everyone the courage to be who they authentically are.”

Child-led Learning
Cameron says MUSE school teachers are trained to identify a child’s interests and build curriculum into projects that suit each individual. This allows each student to grow and learn at their own pace. This can often mean children engage in subject lessons offered at one or two levels above their grade in school.

MUSE School boasts a tag line of inspiring children to live more conscious lives in relation to themselves, others and the planet. This includes learning to take care of Mother Earth. MUSE School has a no waste policy. They eat snacks and lunches grown in their own gardens and drink water from Kleen Kanteens. Students clean the school using dye-free, toxin-free and pesticide-free products. MUSE School students also participate in community outreach programs, for example, raising money for a local animal shelter and cleaning up beaches.

“These sustainable practices are about taking care of, respecting and honoring one’s self and one another,” Cameron says. “We have three sets of relationships, teacher to teacher, student to teacher and student to student. This is a place where each child’s idea is as good as an adult’s idea.”
Sustainable education isn’t cheap but the MUSE School maintains its original 501(c)3 status. Cameron also says half of the students receive financial aid to cover tuition. The end goal, she says, is to teach sustainability at a young age so that as the child grows into adulthood they believe it is commonplace to recycle and avoid toxins.

“If people don’t make big changes very quickly, there won’t be much of a planet left to grow up in,” she says. “We teach them that it is how you live and that they should do it for the greater good.”

Learning How to Communicate
As if it weren’t enough to open a school that literally teaches children how to live and learn, Cameron’s sister, Rebecca Amis, began raving about the PCM. Amis told Cameron repeatedly how amazing the Next Element-led course is and finally, Cameron gave in and attended her first PCM session.

“It was so much fun learning personality styles and realizing why people do things the way we do,” she says. “I was hooked from there. We incorporated PCM into the MUSE School three years ago by having a one-day parent training. Parents said they learned a lot about their own children, and specifically, how to talk to them in a different way, which was really mind-blowing.”

Next Element teaches PCM as a framework for appreciating, respecting and developing the uniqueness and dignity of others. MUSE School CA uses this adaptive approach as an environment for better learning. It helps teachers and student’s negotiate conflict in productive ways and empowers children with skills to be more effective throughout their lives.

MUSE Schools incorporates PCM and facilitates self-efficacy with teachers to help them connect with students on social-emotional learning, academic achievement and behavior. MUSE selected Next Element as its communication partner because of the company’s expertise in helping businesses align metrics and training with organizational communication and staff development.

The PCM Experience
The next PCM-MUSE encounter was a three-day training with school staff. Again, Cameron says the group had amazing results. Cameron has now completed the advanced training – twice – and is working to earn her training certificate in PCM.

At MUSE, gifted teachers offer the PCM experience on a daily basis. Through inquiry, listening and observing, they evoke the authentic interests that animate our students and bring personal relevance to project-based learning. This not only engages children toward learning but models how to fully engage them in everything they do, for a lifetime.

Cameron also says PCM offers great solutions for conflict resolution, which is key for reducing children’s  frustration. When MUSE teachers speak to students in their channel, the child responds to the challenge and distresses.

“At a very young age, MUSE children participate in council, a traditional way of communicating by passing a talking piece around,” she says. “They learn to speak and listen from the heart at a young age, in contrast to so many adults who can not articulate how they’re feeling. PCM has also been strong in teaching children how to navigate relationships and even if they don’t get along with everyone, it raises an awareness and encourages respecting each other as individuals.”

Jeff King is a partner with Next Element and has been helping incorporate PCM with MUSE Schools CA for the past year. After training both Amis and Cameron in the communications program, he also travels to California once a month to observe teachers using PCM in the classroom. At the end of his day-long visit, King provides feedback, telling teachers what they did well and how to improve their connection strategy with students based on personality types.

“Multiple teachers have felt their connection with students and realize PCM is a more efficient way of learning and communicating,” he says. “MUSE teachers love it.”

Personal PCM
On a daily basis, Cameron uses PCM to better communicate with her husband and five children, each of whom, she says are all different personalities. PCM training has helped get her family to the same end point by using various channels. One daughter is a Dreamer, constantly reading a book in a discreet corner of the room. Cameron says PCM tells her to specifically command her to complete tasks, which actually motivates this child and removes her from stress.

“She will go read for ten minutes then come back to the group,” Cameron says. “She knows how to recharge and feels empowered about taking time for herself.”

One of Cameron’s sons is a Rebel, a jokester yet difficult to stay mad at. PCM gives Cameron insight on the right channel to talk and motivate him to accomplish tasks as well. Her youngest daughter is a reactor, who loves hugs and wants to be with other people. Cameron’s director husband is a Promoter, and her sister, Rebecca is a Reactor.

Cameron herself is a persister-workaholic. She maintains a tight schedule and does not like to be late. She says she is constantly looking for and gathering more information and though she often wants to manage everything on her plate, Cameron has realized how to de-stress through PCM.

She also enjoys discovering other people’s communications channels, a PCM skill that she will hone as she works toward her PCM training certificate. During one of the advanced PCM sessions, Cameron made the comment to King that she wanted a quick reference of each of her family, friends and teachers PCM profiles, preferably on a keychain.

King presented her with this exact gift, made from business card-size tags, all looped together on a keychain. Cameron keeps this at her side at all times.

Accomplishing Her Goal
Six years after building a place to help her own children grow and learn in a positive educational style, Cameron has built a multi-grade, international school system that celebrates individual children for who they are. MUSE School CA students learn at their own pace and are not expected to sit in a box all day. Watching MUSE students flourish and hearing comments from happy parents is what truly motivates Cameron.

“Because PCM allows you to be exactly who you are, it gives you ways to differentiate yourself,” she says. “Schools are mainly started and created by Workaholics. Then a Reactor goes in and starts making mistakes and a Promoter without the right attention stirs things up. Rebels are left to do their thing and are kicked out because the teacher doesn’t know how to communicate. Before we brought PCM into the school there were times when I would get frustrated but I’ve seen extraordinary things happen since our teachers went through their first PCM training.”

Cameron is an avid reader and when she was a single parent, she accumulated volumes of parenting and leadership books. Though they contained interesting information on motivation and sibling rivalry, she says PCM has taught her how to manage communication techniques much more effectively.

“Early on I was a single mom for many years and went to a child psychologist to become a better parent,” she says. “If I didn’t have PCM skills now, I would have many more frustrated days of not knowing how to reach my children. Now I have five children who are successful, gorgeous and darling and will become functioning adults. Even as a mommy and a wife, there are things that come up with Jim where I’m able to see where he is coming from and have the ability to get him out of distress and let him go.”

Cameron says her hope is for each child of the world to appreciate who they are as authentic individuals.

Now isn’t that a dream coming true?

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.

Read this article in the Wichita Eagle, published April 14, 2011