Destroying the Destroyer

Destroying the Destroyer

MOTIVATION by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

To grow a business, the naysayers must be negated, a national business consultant says. Start with being positive.

Motivational speaker and business consultant Jim Paluch says nearly all his mantras - setting goals, not quitting and having a positive attitude, to name a few - are common sense, easy-to-understand concepts.

Easy and successful. In addition to a keep-it-simple philosophy, the ideas revolve around what the upbeat Paluch calls generating "organizational excitement."

Paluch, founder of suburban Cleveland-based consulting firm J.P. Horizons, spoke to two groups of Sarasota business and community leaders recently; the Pickard Circle of Light Fund at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, sponsored his presentations. One chat focused on how executives and managers can identify the builders and destroyers of their respective organizations.

Builders, Paluch says, do just that and are behind all the little, and big, things that make a company go. Destroyers spend most of their time focusing on the negative and trying to take apart what the builders built.

A company-wide goal should be eliminating destroyers and destroyer-type attitudes. First though, executives need to figure out whose doing the destroying, as that can change. Says Paluch: "A business owner has to realize that on any given day, anyone can be a destroyer."

Paluch says destroyers exhibit close-minded, short sighted and self-indulgent behavior, as they stomp in and out of co-workers lives, directing their misery toward whoever is around them. For some people, behavior like that is habitual, while for others it's periodic.

Either way, Paluch says managers and executives should get inspired, rather than irritated. The goal is not to out-negative a destroyer, but to turn him into a builder, or at least lead him away from destroying. "Even if we can't change the way someone acts," Paluch says in a newsletter on tearing down destroyers, "we can always control the way we respond to him or her and maybe influence his or her behavior."(See related story on destroying destroyers).

Paluch's tips and ideas can come across as so obvious and simple that their goofy. But the ideas and gimmicks work, Paluch says, mostly because they generate a positive, can-do attitude that can have a lasting impact.

Another Paluch philosophy to help grow a business, for example, is to dump mission statements. They tend to be wordy, full of jargon and boring, he says. Instead, go with a battle cry, a few words that scream what the company is about.

Paluch's company's cry is to "energize a zillion people." And a pool company in Los Angles Paluch worked with changed its mission statement to "express the wow."

In 2005, Ariens Gravely, a Brillion, Wis.-based snow blower and lawnmower manufacturer that was unprofitable for seven years, hired Paluch.

Paluch went around the company with his ideas. He asked the assembly line crews to churn out happiness, as well as machinery, so now employees ring a bell when a product goes through a turn. When someone asks how another person is doing, the answer is always a resounding "Great." And the mission statement was turned into a battle cry of "passionate people astounding customers."

Ariens Gravely has become profitable, and grown three times as large, since bringing in Paluch. Other corporate clients Paluch has consulted with include the Cleveland Clinic, FedEx and Ernst & Young. His Web site is www.jphorizons.com.

TIPS

Defeating defeatism

Motivational speaker and business consultant Jim Paluch says the best approach to handling destroyers - the employees of an organization who try to bring others down with negative and defeatist attitudes - is to beat them back with a positive approach. Here are his four Ds of defeating the destroyer:

• Diffuse: Change the direction of the conversation, even using humor if possible. Say something outrageous to shift the momentum.

• Direct: Ask questions to try to expose the problem.

• Discuss: Listen carefully to the destroyer; look for creative solutions.

• Don't be defensive: Be willing to admit when you've made mistake.

Five Important Things

Paluch has written two motivational novels, one titled "5 Important Things." Paluch's top five are:

• Continue to learn: It's hard to learn while talking, so Paluch suggests improving listening skills and asking relative questions when speaking with others.

• Appreciate people: Find the good in everyone, from old friends to strangers, by asking yourself "What do I like about this person?" Writes Paluch: "The habit of finding the good will replace the vice of looking for the bad."

• Attitude: "Cherish the privilege of laughing," writes Paluch, and do it everyday, early and often. It fosters creativity and a positive state of mind.

• Set goals: Writing goals in an "as if it has already happened manner" can motivate you to follow through.

• Don't quit: Study the lives of people that have overcome big odds.