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Flexibility: Your Key to Personal By Terry Bragg Recently, I’ve been hitting the gym trying to lose fat, build muscle, and improve my general health. While watching people work out at the gym, I noticed that many people concentrate on increasing their muscle size and ignore their flexibility. What happens is they become bulky or muscle bound and inflexible. They increase their strength while losing their flexibility. In the worst case, they treat strength and flexibility as mutually exclusive. The same thing happens outside the gym in business and in our personal lives. People and businesses concentrate on increasing their strengths or flexing their muscle and end up being bulky and inflexible. They sacrifice flexibility in an attempt to increase strength. They treat them as mutually exclusive. For example, companies merge to combine their strengths or to increase their size, but they lose the ability they had when they were smaller to quickly respond to changes in the marketplace. Individuals do the same thing. A person increases their strength by developing a skill or expertise, but they sometimes lose perspective by getting locked into paradigms or rigid thinking patterns and methodologies associated with their expertise. In the worst case, their expertise and strength keeps them from seeing the bigger picture or other worthy viewpoints. Physical flexibility has many advantages. It improves general health, reduces the risk of injury, and improves performance. Increased flexibility in business has similar benefits both for individuals and organizations. According to the Law of Flexibility, the most flexible part of a system controls the system. This law contradicts the way most people operate within their business or social systems. When confronted with change, people who resist the change often become more rigid. Instead of rigidity, surviving and succeeding in times of change requires flexibility and adaptability. The more flexible you are, the better chance you have of thriving in a rapidly changing environment. When I work with people and groups to resolve interpersonal conflict, a common strategy people use is to dig into a position and hold that position rigidly. They believe that flexibility is a sign of weakness that their opponent will exploit. Instead of rigidity, they need more flexibility. In resolving conflict, flexibility is a strength. Like physical flexibility, the advantages of flexibility in the workplace include: • Reducing the risk of injury. Flexible workers and flexible organizations rebound from setbacks faster and better than rigid individuals and organizations. Change and conflict are less likely to damage them. They respond better to the challenges of increasing competition and demands of the marketplace. • Improving the general health of the individual and the organization. Inflexibility increases stress and stress can damage your physical and psychological health. Studies show that flexible workplaces are more desirable to employees than inflexible workplaces. • Increasing the range of movement. Flexibility gives more options for responding to situations. More options are usually better than fewer options. Flexibility allows workers to look for other alternatives. • Improving the image of the individual. We perceive inflexible people as dogmatic, intolerant, and limited. We perceive flexible people as more open minded, tolerant, and versatile. Which type of individual do you think people prefer working with? • Improving performance. Flexibility allows you to approach goals, challenges, and obstacles with more resources for achieving the goals and overcoming the challenges and obstacles. By identifying alternatives and creating options, you are more likely to find better solutions to problems and more successful strategies for achieving goals. • Increasing your chances for success. Greater flexibility means you have more choices. Having more choices means you have a greater chance for success. If what you are doing isn’t working, you change what you’re doing until what you do works. If you have no alternatives, then you are stuck and will get the same results whether that’s success or failure. How do you increase your flexibility and the flexibility of your organization? The same way you increase your physical flexibility—by stretching. Stretching is the best way to improve flexibility. This means pushing yourself and your organization to reasonable limits without injury. It also means experimenting with different approaches, expanding your thinking, and trying new things to see how they work. Stretching increases your range of motion, your ability to respond to change, and your mental flexibility. Warning: As with physical stretching, stretching too far or too fast or using inappropriate techniques can result in injury. Don’t make the mistake of the gym rats. Don’t sacrifice your flexibility while trying to beef up your business operations. Instead, consciously stretch to find your limits and increase your range of motion. You will be more successful and find greater opportunity for success. Terry Bragg and Peacemakers Training offers a variety of tools for promoting, maintaining, and recognizing excellence in your workplace. We also offer tools for helping you achieve and maintain personal excellence. To learn more about these tools, click here: Tools for Workplace and Personal Excellence To find out more about Terry's book, 31 Days to High Self-Esteem, click here: 31 Days to High Self-Esteem To learn more about onsite seminars and workshops for improving interpersonal relationships, resolving conflict, and promoting and maintaining excellence in your workplace, click here: Seminars & Workshops ©2002 All rights reserved Terry Bragg•Peacemakers Training Terry Bragg runs a company called Peacemakers Training in Salt Lake City, Utah, and is the author of the book 31 Days to High Self-Esteem. He works with organizations to create a workplace where people want to work, and with managers who want their people to work together better. If you want your organization or your people to have more energy, more trust, more respect, and more meaning, please contact him at: Peacemakers Training Subscribe to our Free
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