Pretty Well Said Wesley Crusher.........

"I have two often-conflicting monkeys on my back: Monkey number one is Creative Monkey. He occasionally digs his claws into my brains, and refuses to let go until something wonderful comes out. I love him.

Monkey number two is Pragmatic Monkey. He regularly wraps his prehensile tail around my neck and only eases his grip when I'm doing the things I need to do to support my family. I don't necessarily love him, but I'm glad he's here.

From time to time, I can satiate both monkeys, like writing. More often than not, though, I can only satisfy one monkey at a time, and when push comes to shove, Pragmatic Monkey always wins; with a family to support, I just don't have the luxury of turning my back on him.

For the last few years, I've been luckily enough to to strike a Balance that makes both Monkeys happy . . . but for most of this year, Pragmatic Monkey has been squeezing the life out of me, and in an effort to make him happy, I've ended up taking on far too many responsibilities, and given away way far too much of myself to other people. I've rarely seen Creative Monkey, let alone felt his wonderful claws in my brains, and that's got to change. I miss him."

Group 45 - Frontline Manager Presentation

For the past 6 months, 27 Frontline leaders from 17 Provincial Government departments got together monthly to learn about leadership.

Looking at it from a dollars and cents perspective, 27 of us managers attending the 14 sessions our personal investment alone is well over $ 75,000. Add in the cost of facilitators, booking of meeting rooms, coffee, and don’t forget the productivity costs of us being away the from the office. In all ways it has been a major investment. We all believe that it was money well spent.

Thank you for believing in us.

Over the past 6 months each of the 13 facilitators that worked with us provided a piece of the leadership and management puzzle.

At first it was not clear what picture the puzzle pieces would make, but as the program proceeded it became clearer. At first I thought the course was like a "new flavour of of the month" - learning a new theory each week and wondering whether they would all fit together somehow. When I returned to the office after each session staff were wondering "what is he going to try out on us now?".

Each week was a new piece of the puzzle. Sometimes it was piece on managing change, other days coaching or stress management. As the course progressed, I realized that it was less important to analyse each single piece of the puzzle too much but to challenge myself to bring all of the pieces together into a larger management philosophy or style.

One of our facilitators advised us that presenters should "show not tell". So we brought with us something to show, that in our opinion, reflects the bigger picture of our program.

The big picture that I believe we learnt was that leadership and management is all about looking at yourself in the mirror. I think that we all learnt that to successful in the work place the first thing that you need to do is know and understand yourself. This program taught me that the outside world reflects our inner world. The way you see yourself will define the way you see the world - and not the other way around.

This wisdom was shared with us by facilitators who said "If your consciousness tells you it, then you believe it", "you own your emotions and the cost of negative emotion is not worth it", "adjust the way you think", and "every action is neutral."

Over the next 10 minutes, the Group wants to continue to show you how we have grown over the past 6 months.

So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, on with the show!