PERSONAL FULFILLMENT ASSESSMENT

Use our Personal Fulfillment Assessment to assess your Life's Meaning and Belonging.

READ EACH OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS AND THEN CHOSE THE NUMBER THAT MOST ACCURATELY DESCRIBES YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT.

             SELDOM                SOMETIMES                    OFTEN
1. I am satisfied with the way my life has a sense of purpose to it.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
2. I have reasons to be enthusiastic about life and my place in it.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
3. I study to learn better ways of achieving the good things I should be doing.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
4. My life is free of trivial activities and shallow relationships.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
5. I plan my activities with positive attitudes and high expectations.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
6. My life follows my master plan for living wisely and wed.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
7. My work seems a mission I should successfully complete.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
8. I work at meaningful avocations in order to help other people.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
9. I have satisfying relationships with both men and women.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
10. I act on the fact that I have the freedom to mature spiritually.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5

Add your score and enter it here. MEANING ______

CONTINUE WITH THE STATEMENTS BELOW.

             SELDOM                SOMETIMES                    OFTEN
1. I experience a sense of awe about life.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
2. I feel compassion for people in trouble.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
3. The women and men with whom I work contribute to my life.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
4. When my family, company or community has trouble I help out.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
5. After a long trip I enjoy returning to familiar surroundings.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
6. I participate in sports and entertainments appropriate to my age and shape.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
7. I spend time with friends and relatives I love.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
8. I vote and/or work for political candidates I trust.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
9. I expect people to be ethical and honest when I deal with them.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5
10. I try to make the world a better place in which to live.
            1                      2                      3                      4                      5

Add your score and enter it here. BELONGING_______

To plot your score, mark the MEANING score at the corresponding height on the vertical scale and the BELONGING score at the corresponding distance from the left on the horizontal scale. Then, extend both lines into the square to the point where they cross. Mark that spot for it will reveal the level of your satisfaction compared to the men and women who have used this scale in past Fulfillment Seminars. A score of 30 points vertically and horizontally registers average satisfaction. A score of 10 is low satisfaction and 50 is high satisfaction.

SATISFACTION SCALE

M        50 (high)

E

A

N        30 (medium)

I

N

G        10(low)        30(medium)        50(high)

B        E        L        O        N        G        I        N        G

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PATTERNS THAT AFFECT PERFORMANCE - Mini Quiz

As Except From The Book" GRACE UNDER PRESSURE"

New Era, Greater Challenges

Leon Trotsky, the old Soviet ideologue, is not widely respected by large numbers of business men and women, but he made several statements that bring into focus some of the major challenges faced by managers in an era of constant turmoil. During the confusion of the Russian Revolution, the Old Bolshevik said that anyone who wanted only to be left alone in peace to do his work had chosen a terrible time in which to be born. He also concluded that trying to reorganize a society was much like trying to revitalize a cemetery. Trotsky was correct on both counts, for deep within all kinds of organizations is the desire to keep things as they were when the members first learned them. We do indeed want to preserve our vested interests without interference or loss. Many people live with the illusion that humans enjoy change. The fact is, however, that we seldom want important things to change unless the benefits are immediate and personally valuable. Even when there is an obvious advantage to changing, many people have difficulty adjusting to new circumstances and relationships.

For example, the sports and entertainment industries have produced many athletes and performers who were unable to successfully handle sudden fame and wealth. In many business and professional organizations, rapid change can have similar disruptive results when people are forced, frequently against their will, to deal with resources and relationships they resent. Many resist for so long that the organizations are destroyed as the great English historian, Lord McCauley, explained. He wrote that every great civilization, nation, noble family, corporation and community eventually commits suicide by creating so many selfish, vested interest groups that it cannot adapt when great changes occur and the entire group must adapt swiftly or perish. He went on to reveal that while there are always hungry and younger societies waiting in the wings to take over, all but one or two of the twenty two civilizations that left their footprints on earth, collapsed from their own internal contradictions and conflicts.

Managers and professionals like dentists, attorneys, and physicians, who are responsible for leading their employees to achieve together, are frequently the causes of many problems in their own organizations. They yearn, often unconsciously, to continue working through the concepts and skills they learned in the beginning. They do so because changes in relationships, techniques, and responsibilities force us to rethink ideas we already mastered, and to adapt when it seems obvious that we usually want others to do the adapting in our organizations.

For example, several years ago, when the decline of large automobile engines became obvious, one young manager was called to a meeting where he was told that his test group would be evaluating the reliability of the Chrysler Corporation's new power plant for domestic sales. When he asked about the engine, he found it to be a massive thing that produced more than 300 horsepower with commensurate fuel consumption. He protested that the competition was adjusting to rising fuel costs by developing fuel-efficient engines and that Chrysler should be doing the same thing. His manager immediately pinned him to the wall and told him to keep his mouth shut and follow orders if he wanted to keep his job. The young manager thought about the potential consequences of resisting change despite fuel costs and soon started a career in another industry. And Chrysler's small automobile came on the market with an engine and transmission built in Germany because the massive V-8 engine was an anachronism that few customers would buy. To this day, General Motors and Ford are having trouble manufacturing automobiles that American customers will purchase and Chrysler has bonded with the Mercedes Group of Germany.

Of course we all understand, at least at a gut level what resistant to change has cost our automobile industry in our current crises. Although we may not realize it is a deeply rooted human trait unless the benefits are immediate and personally valuable.

The resistance to change that so complicates the work of managers and supervisors is much more than a conscious determination to keep things as they were in the past. According to scholars like Konrad Lorenz and Carl Jung, our resistance may well be rooted in the evolution of humankind, in the development of Western Civilization itself, and in the manner in which work groups have long been led in our society.
As our civilization grew in size and complexity, humans developed the technology needed to prosper and the interpersonal relationships necessary for success. In other words, our ancestors created both the hardware (the resources) and the software (the relationships) of achievement. The hardware included tools, weapons, clothes, etc. The software included the psychology and the philosophy needed to work successfully in groups, to distribute rewards equitably, and to avoid unnecessary conflict within each community. We must still balance the use of software and hardware if our organizations are to prosper as our competitors do in Europe and Asia.

In many, if not most, cases, an organization begins as an entrepreneurial enterprise that prospers in that form as long as the founder uses both good hardware and software to serve clients well. In time, the small organization grows beyond the ability of the entrepreneur to control everything, so either the transition to professional management is made or else the company stagnates upon the death of the dynamic founder. However, it has only been in the last few decades that we have come to understand that there is a drawback to professionally managed organizations that do not change as society changes. For example, when an organization becomes so complex that people feel lost in its activities, confused about its objectives, and resentful of its impersonal approach, the organization has peaked. At that point, to become optimally successful, the management team must regain the community spirit that has so frequently been destroyed through the development of impersonal systems, a division of labor, and the rest of the Industrial Engineering/Harvard Business School approach.

In communities where men build ships for their sons and nephews to fish in or fight from, quality is never a problem. When people are hired to build products -- or small parts of products for a faceless consumer market, or for managers they do not know because they are away soaring like falcons in a deserted forest, quality and productivity are certain to be consistent problems. And therein hangs a tale for ambitious managers and supervisors who believe there is a better way to work in their organizations.

Avenues To Success

Business has become too complex to believe that profit alone is the measure of how well an organization is serving its clients and utilizing its employees. Joseph Juran, the quality specialist who, with W. Edwards Deming, gave Japan the tools they needed to prosper with small inventories in their production organizations, has blamed our leadership failure on the finance specialists of our organizations. In their pursuit of short-term profit, they neglected the quality and productivity that would have created long-range growth for their organizations. In all fairness, the finance wizards were only doing what their owners hired them to do, and since they seldom had any production or service experience, our performance calamity caught them unawares. Unfortunately, the belief that the bottom line rather than growth is crucial was accepted by the smaller organizations of our society as well.

A more reliable measure of success that far transcends the quarterly statement is a manager's ability to increase productivity and quality enough to capture more of the market without a proportional increase in expenses. Scholars like David Tansik, Edwin Flippo, and Peter Drucker report that we have come as far as possible without a restoration of creativity, a rebirth of the human element in our organizations. And that is the last thing many executives who would like to treat employees as inventory want to hear.

We must remember that we suffered our massive leadership failure while using the best administrative systems ever devised. Unfortunately, these were never enough and certainly more troublesome than inanimate resources -- while our less sophisticated competitors around the world harnessed the human strengths that can make many organizations strong, vibrant and productive!

Fortunately, the behavioral sciences, especially the research of psychology and sociology, have matured past traditional concepts to identify and teach methods that can restore to any organization the achievement that it deserves. An entire nation did that after the most disastrous defeat in its history. Japanese men and women at all levels of responsibility worked very hard to reach what first seemed to be impossible goals. They were forced to rebuild an industrial civilization in which ninety percent of its significant cities had been burned to the ground.

Obviously, I think that the time has now come when a great many Western managers must learn how to better lead their organizations’ relationships to increase productivity and quality.

To succeed in the post-cold war business climate, each manager must best utilize the organization's hardware and software, the resources and relationships to produce goods or services that will serve the market well. This means that few companies will become optimally successful without a conscious dedication to service through its products and its people. To do that well will require that each manager and supervisor learn as much as possible about human personality, productivity, and motivation and use the new concepts effectively.

SELF-FOCUS
Write a short paragraph telling how you would distinguish between those elements the author calls the hardware of production and the software of achievement in your organization.