Sources of Insight is one year old.  It’s hard to believe.  Sometimes, it feels like I just launched yesterday.  Other times, it feels like it’s always been there.  Time is funny like that.   My first post was Fear of Weaknesses, Fear of Failure, and Fear of Who You Are.  This post is a walk through some of my highlights and lessons learned over the past year, and a look to the future.

Top 3 Lessons
These are my top 3 lessons learned from a blogging perspective:

• Get up to bat a post at a time.  How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  How do you build a great blog?  A post at a time.  Getting up to bat is part of the game.  Sometimes you strike out.  Sometimes you knock it out of the park.  Each post is a chance to master your craft, inspire somebody you didn’t know, or create a new “ah-ha” moment, that makes somebody’s day.
• Working on your blog is working on your life.  The more you blog, the more you learn about yourself.  For example, you learn your motivations and where your energy really comes from.  You learn more about your ideas by thinking on paper.   To be sustainable, it’s a continuous process of finding what drives you.  It’s really a journey thing.
• Blogging is a team sport.  It’s all the people that make blogging worth it, including the people behind the scenes.  The more you give, the more you get.

Perhaps a way to summarize these lessons is, “give your best, where you have your best to give.”

Top 3 Posts
These are my top 3 posts based on pageviews:

• The Top 10 Best Ways to Persuade
• The Zen of Results Free E-Book
• Finding Your Key Strengths

My Top 3 Favorite Posts
With the way I use 3 all the time, you would think my favorite post is The Rule of 3.  It’s up there alright, but these are my top 3 favorite posts:

• You 2.0
• Living Your Process
• Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee

I think You 2.0 is especially important.  I’ve used it to help a lot of people unleash their best.  It’s a way to get a fresh start, get back to the basics, and find your personal success formula.  It cuts right to the heart of things.  Living Your Process is a quick read and it summarizes some personal success patterns.  It was input for You 2.0.  Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee surprised me.  It touched a lot of people’s lives and for many Bruce became a new hero.

Featured Guests
I’ve had the honor of several guest posts by some people with great insights:

• Al Reis, author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding on Left Brainers and Right Brainers.
• Dr. Ken Sylvester, professional negotiator, on Top 5 Characteristics of Leaders.
• Dr. Rick Kirschner (aka Dr.K), author of Dealing with People You Can’t Stand, on Top 10 Lessons Learned in Interpersonal Skills and How To Design a Fulfilling Life.
• Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, on Top 10 Lessons Learned in Happiness.
• Janine de Nysschen on Discover Your Why and
  Discover the How to Your Why.
• Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You for Arguing, on The 10 Best Ways to Persuade.
• Jim Kouzes, author of The Leadership Challenge, on The Top 10 Leadership Lessons and Questions and Answers on the Top 10 Leadership Lessons.
• Michael Michalko, author of THINKERTOYS, on Choice.
• Steven Nelson, the Louis L’Amour of computer books, on The Five Small Business Success Formulas.

My Guest Posts on Other Sites
I haven’t done much guest posting.  I know I’m supposed to, and I will.  Here are my two guest posts from this past year:

• How Do You Measure a Life?
• Finding Your Eye of the Tiger

I wrote them a little bit differently than my style on Sources of Insight.  Every now and then I have to stretch my wings.

Quotes Collections
While I don’t have a lot of quotes collections yet, I regularly use the ones I have for inspiration and insight:

• Bruce Lee Quotes
• Motivation Quotes
• Productivity Quotes
• Time Management Quotes

They were a one-time effort that seems timeless and priceless.

Tag Line
My tag line is …  “Stand on the shoulders of giants!”

Vision, Mission, Values
My vision, mission, and values have a simple theme:

• Vision – World’s best insight for work and life.
• Mission – Improve the quality of life for as many people I can, as long as I can.
• Values – Growth, learn and move on, success is a journey, not a destination.

Really, it’s about lifting others up by sharing patterns and practices for skilled living.  It’s going from ordinary to extraordinary using proven practices, insight, and action.

Guiding Principles
I summarized these in my About page, but I wanted to list my guiding principles here for convenience:

• Life’s not a spectator’s sport.
• Absorb what’s useful; reject the rest.
• It’s not what’s on your plate, it’s how you eat it.
• Don’t take life too seriously, or you’ll never get out alive.
• Success is a journey, not a destination.
• Live more, laugh more, learn more, love more.
• Roll with the punches.
• Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.
• If you fall down, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, carry the lessons forward.
• Don’t seek to be better than others; seek to be better than yourself.

Stats at a Glance
I haven’t hit the tipping point yet, but It seems to be slow but steady growth.  Slow and steady wins the race, right?  Here are my stats at a glance:

• Page Rank 4.
• 1400+ subscribers.
• 162,000 visits.
• 285,000 page views.
• 207 posts.

Here is a look back at the stats  from the six month mark …

• Page Rank 4.
• 650+ subscribers.
• 56,000 visits.
• 110,000 page views.
• 110 posts.

The Future
What does the future hold?   I’ll continue investing in the hot spots for life:

• Mind
• Body
• Emotions
• Career
• Financial
• Relationships
• Fun

I plan to find and share the best patterns and practices in these areas, that actually make a difference.  I’m a fan of skills.  While skills aren’t everything, the right technique, at the right time can be the game changer.  On my immediate horizon, I’m organizing some key techniques for skilled thinking.  Thinking is one of those things that really impacts so much of your day.  I have a large collection of techniques, but I’m trying to turn them into a simple but effective set that you can put to use right way.

My Related Posts

• Sources of Insight is 10 Months Old
• Sources of Insight is 6 Months Old
• Sources of Insight is One Month Old

Photo by Clearly Ambiguous.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Who’s got your back? One of my colleagues used this as a gut check.  It’s amazing how simple, but revealing this simple question can be.  Ask yourself, on your own team, who’s got your back?  Who’s back do you have?  In your org, who’s got your back? … etc.  Worse, who doesn’t have your back?
• Focus on a supportive, learning environment.  Make it safe for the team to spread their wings.  I’m a fan of learning and growing.  It’s tough to grow if you can’t take chances.  I find that pairing on the team and using mentors helps a lot.
• Encourage open and respectful communication.  I think this is critical for the team leader to set the stage for this one.  Asking the right questions and encouraging ideas is the key.
• The leader has to set the example. By setting the example yourself, you help mold the culture. On example is open, trusting communication. Asking for honest feedback from employees, and then acting on it is another. Examples that run counter: Playing employees off of each other, competition in which the loser gets penalized in some way, public humiliation – as a supposed joke, penalty for honest failure, failure to extend trust – not trusting employees to take initiative and do things right on their own.

Vulnerability-Based Trust is the Place to Be
I’ve been on many teams throughout my career and there’s a big difference between a team that trusts each other to take risks and speaks their mind versus a team that trusts each other in terms of predicting behavior.  Having experienced both, I know that vulnerability-based trust is the place to be.  I also know that it comes from shared experience over time and through the right behaviors.

My personal  favorites for building vulnerability-based trust include going out to lunch and taking the team off-site.  I prefer to do the off-site earlier versus later so that the team can learn each others’ styles and learn the rhythms in a low overhead way.  It’s actually a working off-site, where as a team, we kick off the project together in a shared room.  Building the shared experience really helps humanize the relationships and improve understanding across the team.

Vulnerbility-Based Trust
Lencioni writes:

“In the context of building a team, trust is the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be protective or careful around the group.  In essence, teammates must get comfortable being vulnerable with one another.”

Standard Definition of Trust
Lencioni writes:

“This description stands in contrast to a more standard definition of trust, one that centers around the ability to predict a person’s behavior based on past experience.  For instance, one might ‘trust’ that a given teammate will produce high-quality work because he has always done so in the past.”

Trust and Great Teams
Lencioni writes:

“As desirable as this may be, it is not enough to represent the kind of trust that is characteristic of a great team.  It requires team members to make themselves vulnerable to one another, and be confident that thei respective  vulnerabilities will not be used against them.  The vulnerabilities I’m referring to include weaknesses, skill deficiencies, interpersonal shortcomings, mistakes and requests for help.

As ‘soft’ as all of this might sound, it is only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves.  As a result, they can focus their energy and attention completely on the job at hand, rather than on being strategically disingenuous or political with one another.”

Achieving Vulnerability-based Trust
Lencioni writes:

“Achieving vulnerability-based trust is difficult because in the course of career-advancement and education, most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers, and protective of their reputations.  It is a challenge for them to turn those instances off for the good of a team, but that is exactly what is required.”

The Costs of Failing Are Great
Lencioni writes:

“The costs of failing to do this are great.  Teams that lack trust waste inordinate amounts of time and energy managing their behaviors and interactions within the group.  They tend to dread team meetings, and are reluctant to take risks in asking for or offering assistance to others.  As a result, morale on distrusting teams is usually quite low, and unwanted turnover is high.”

How to Build Vulnerability-Based Trust
Lencioni writes:

“Unfortunately, vulnerability-based trust cannot be achieved overnight.  It requires shared experiences over time, multiple instances of follow-through and credibility, and an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members.  However, by taking a focused approach, a team can dramatically accelerate the process and achieve trust in relatively short order.”

Tools
Lencioni identifies some tools you can use:

• Personal histories exercise.  Humanize the relationships by sharing your life stories and backgrounds.
• Team effectiveness exercise.  Identify the single most important contribution that each of their peers makes to the team, as well as one area that they must improve upon or eliminate for the good of the team.  Focus on one person at a time, starting with the team leader.
• Personality and behavior preference profiles.  Some of the most effective and lasting tools for building trust on a team are profiles of team member’s behavioral preferences and personality styles.  These help break down barriers by allowing people to better understand and empathize with one another.  Lencioni recommends the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for profiling.
• 360-degree feedback.  These are riskier than the other tools because they call for peers to make specific judgements and provide one another with constructive criticism.  The key is divorcing it entirely from compensation and formal performance evaluation.  It should allow employees to identify strengths and weaknesses without any repercussions, otherwise it can take on dangerous political undertones.
• Experiential team exercises.  This includes ropes courses and other experiential team activities.  While they don’t always translate directly to the working world, they can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Frame your arguments. One approach is to just ask for what you want and see what happens. If the stakes are high, you’ll want to frame a compelling argument.
• Know whether you need logic, emotion or a combination. In general, I find a combination is most effective. That said, some people are more emotionally-driven while others are more data-driven. For those that are more emotionally driven, I find that metaphors or emotional picture words work well. If you know somebody is more data-driven, be sure to do your homework. See Know It Alls.
• Know an individual’s convincer strategy. You need to know the recipe to how an individual gets convinced. See Seven Meta-Programs for Understanding People.
• Don’t misrepresent your argument. There’s a difference between improving your argument and manipulation. Present your argument in a compelling, relevant way, but don’t mislead. Integrity matters.
• Know the meta-programs. If you know how people filter the world and what they value, you can make your argument more relevant. See Seven Meta-Programs for Understanding People.
• Know the Five Thinking Styles. If you know how people think, you can better frame your argument. See Five Thinking Styles.
• Create a compelling business case. You can use a business case to show how big is the pie and what’s your slice. You can use a business case to either support your argument or to argue against an alternative action. See Eight Rules of businessThink.
• Calculate the impact. This includes the impact over time. Many people are driven by impact. They like to know they make a difference. If you help show them how they will make a difference, this will help you frame a more compelling argument. See Calculating Impact.

Appealing to Core Values
Watkins summarizes appealing to core values:

Reason, Values, or a Combination
Watkins writes:

“Persuasive appeals can be based on logic and data, or on values and the emotions that values elicit, or on some combination thereof. Reason-based arguments have to directly address the pragmatic interests of the people you want to convince. Value-based arguments aim to trigger emotional reflexes — for example, by evoking patriotism to win support for sacrifices during wartime.”

My Related Posts

• Five Thinking Styles
• Eight Rules of businessThink
• Seven Meta-Programs for Understanding People
• The Lens of Human Understanding
• Cooperative Controversy Over Competitive Controversy
• Six Thinking Hats
• How To Use the But-Rebuttal Method
• No Person
• Know-It-Alls
• PRIEST for Well-Formed Outcomes
• Expectation Management
• How To Paint a Future Picture
• Mutual Purpose
• Refuse the Sucker’s Choice
• Putting Good Ideas in Place

A Nonconceptual Experience
Alexander and Annellen write:

“Chinese Zen masters Ma-tsu and Lin-chi often resorted to shouting or hitting in response to students’ questions. This created tension in the students since they never knew when they might receive a smack from the master. The purpose, however, was not to terrorize the students but to give them a direct, wordless, nonconceptual experience.”

The Unborn Mind
Alexander and Annellen write:

“If you think about a time you were surprised by something – for example, a ball thrown at you unexpectedly – you probably extended your arms and caught it without thinking. Bankei referred to this as the Unborn Mind. This is the nonrational awareness that Zen helps us awaken. Frequently, students who were
struck by Lin-chi’s stick discovered sudden enlightenment.”

Thomas Edison’s Personal Invention Quotas
Michalko writes:

“Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He was a great believer in exercising his mind and the minds of his workers and felt that without a quota he probably wouldn’t have achieved very much. His personal invention quote was a minor invention every ten days and a major invention every six months. To Edison, an idea quota was the difference between eating beefstake or a plateful of Black Beauty stew.”

Key Take Aways
Quotas are a powerful tool for improvement. For example, if you want to change a particular behavior, count the number of times you perform that behavior each day.

Once you set a benchmark, you can tune it. If you first get in your quantity, you can then get in your quality. For example, I wanted to comment more in blogs. First, I decided I would comment in five blogs a day, while I ramp up. Next, once I found my rhythm, I decided to focus on efficiency. From there, I can either improve the quality of my comments, or increase my quota.

I haven’t applied quotas to creating ideas. I already have a large backlog. Instead, I’m considering quotas to implement my ideas.