Hello Friends!!!!

August focus: "Winning Your People's Minds", our 10th people skill from our Super Supervisor video series.....

"Winning people's minds" is something we do every day. Whether it's the Sales person closing the deal, the bachelor proposing to his future wife, teachers in the classroom, presidents reporting to the board or front line supervisors assigning tasks to their workers.

Toyota, one of the most successful manufacturing company's in the world, credits their success on engaging the minds of all their workers. .....Quoting from their web site "every Toyota team member is empowered with the ability to improve their work environment. This includes everything from quality and safety to the environment and productivity. Improvements and suggestions by team members are the cornerstone of Toyota's success"...

WOW!!!! The ideas, thoughts and suggestions of the workers on the floor is the cornerstone of Toyota's success!

Since "Winning minds" is so vital to frontline supervisors, we will dedicate two newsletters to this topic. This month we will explore the awesome "Power of the Mind", 3 false myths about intelligence that can limit us, and "A Challenge for front line supervisors".

Next month in her article titled, "The Door to the Mind is through the Heart.", Mildred will draw from her 42 years on the shop floor to teach us some tips and techniques for tapping into this power and winning the minds of your workers..........techniques that will work on the shop floor.....and best of all they will work at home, too!

From Super Supervisor 1 video People Skills 101
1. Getting response instead of reaction from subordinates. (Aug03)
2. Meeting the emotional needs of today's workers (Sept03)..
3. Building Good Will .........good will=good work (Oct03)
4. Motivating with Respect and Recognition (Nov03)
5. Being a Super Role Model (Jan04)
6. Operating in the Positive Zone (Feb.. 04)
From Super Supervisor 2 video People Skills 102
7 . Looking like a Leader and Acting like a winner (Mar04)
8 . Managing the Superior/Subordinate Factor (April04)
9 . Creating a team spirit with the will to win (May04)
10. Winning your People's Minds (this month Aug04)
11. The Magic in using the light touch
12. Building Unity in the Workplace

 

LESSON: "The Amazing Mind"

Although for the most part, the human mind remains a mystery, a few amazing facts hint at it's awsome power.........let's review some of these.

5 Amazing Facts about the Brain:

1. The human brain has a whopping 100 Billion neurons...........about the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. These neurons connected end to end would make a highway 600 miles long.

2. Each Neuron is connected to up to 8 neighboring neurons via an elaborate web extending throughout the human body. With over 400 billion nodes it is hundreds of times bigger than the internet world wide web (6.5 billion connections if everyone on earth was on-line).

3. Each neuron has some independent intelligence (for example when you burn a finger on the stove, neurons in the spine trigger the muscles in your arm to recoil before the brain even knows you are burned).

4. Communications among neurons in this vast network is a complex electrochemical process at each node involving many neurotransmitters having unique roles affecting everything from mood to attention.

5. Collectively these neurons work together to do amazing feats including conscious processes like sense perception and cognition (thinking) and unconscious processes like the autonomic nervous system which controls everything from breathing and beating your heart, to immune response to infections and viral attacks.

Three Common myths about intelligence:
Belief in these myths will limit a supervisor's ability to win the minds of their subordinates.

1. Intelligence depends on education................... Bill Gates never graduated from college.

2. Intelligence depends on wealth................... William Blake, the genius English poet/philosopher (Tiger Tiger Burning Bright) was poor all his life.

3. Intelligence depends on rank................ Mahtma Ghandi one of the most influential spiritual leaders never held a political position or job title.

So even if they are poor, uneducated, and at the bottom of the totem pole, they still have an intellectual contribution they can make to the company!

A Challenge for Front Line Supervisors:

When you look out over the production floor at all of those workers, think about the great potential in those minds.......enormous constellations of neurons flashing through a huge network more complicated than the world wide web.....Awesome........

And (this is worth repeating) even if they are poor, uneducated, and at the bottom of the totem pole, they still have an intellectual contribution they can make to the company! The challenge for the front line supervisor, then, is to tap into this power for the benefit of your organization.

Next month Mildred will use her 42 years on the shop floor to teach us some techniques to tap into all that mind power on the floor with her article "The Doorway to the Mind is through the Heart." .....and the good news is, they will work at home, too!