Team Tips – 16 {An abundance of Angels}

When I was a District Manager of Customer Service at Xerox Canada one of my managers told me she had seen an Angel. The spiritual kind, the God's Helper kind.

Lizzie (almost her real name) was a professional, logical, coherent, mature adult who was a very “by the book” manager. I realized as she talked about her Angel experience that she was taking a big “career limiting” risk by sharing this with me, her corporate boss. Happily that meant that she trusted me enough not to judge her as crazy, or rat on her in to Human Resources.

I'm glad to say I listened quietly, kept my skepticism to myself, so she could share this secret. My task was to support her, not make things more difficult. In my mind I could conjure up some extenuating circumstances: her mother had just died, her husband was unusually introspective, she was stressed with a tough job.

Nonetheless, it was just plain weird in our cultural circle to admit to seeing Angels.

And I'm reminded of that situation when Vickie or I encounter some people's reactions to the Core Protocols or BootCamp.

We get:

• these concepts can't work, won't work, aren't feasible, won't be accepted
• the Core Protocols are too ... (insert negative adjective here)
• people won't use these Simple Rules and Tools
• people need to build their own
• there's no means to enforce compliance
• this is dictatorial
• people won't share emotions
• groups need facilitation
• we can't spend the time to come to BootCamp
• and several billion more

What's fascinating to discover, when a conversation is possible with an objector about any of these reactions, that the objector hasn't actually read the Core Protocols document, or has not attended a BootCamp, or seriously tried to investigate this material. Nor does the fact that thousands of people have found it helpful over the 15+ years that teams have been generating these ideas seem to make any difference to them. Or that an investment of five days is worth the value of changing one's life.

So what is preventing the level of understanding that all this might be genuine?

One possibility is fear.

When we talk about the potential for BootCamp to be a life changing experience and to effect your success for the balance of your life, that can be very scary. We know that some people don't really want to challenge their belief systems, or to deal with their true potential.

So when objectors deny the 15+ years of BootCamp success is possible, we just listen quietly, share the facts we have, and leave it at that.

If a world of abundance isn't what you want, if you don't want to realize your potential, or reach for the sky, then BootCamp is not for you.

You probably just aren't ready for a universe of possibility, or Angels either.

On April 21^st. Vickie Gray and I will conduct another Great Teams BootCamp. The details are at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e6w31ovda52cdbb5