Thank God it's Monday

Monday, Monday, so good to me. Monday morning, it was all I hoped it would be.  —

The Mamas & The Papas

Monday. Officially, it’s the first day of a work or school week.  The way you behave on a Monday most likely depends on what kind of weekend you had. Mondays and rainy days, as the song goes, always get you down. But Mondays and sunshiny days always give you a boost. You will have a sorrowful Monday or a joyful one depending on your own behavior and relationships.

The meaning of “Monday blues” can be as varied as the number of people who wake up on Monday mornings.  You can be low-spirited with a down-in-the-dumps feeling, cold, exasperated, depressed, unenthusiastic, moving around with a jinxed frame of mind, experiencing the humdrum of daily life or going through hurdles as you drag your feet back to work.  All these descriptors are counterproductive and must be reversed, albeit with great difficulty, into a more hopeful mindset that is energized and geared towards working with high spirits, helping others and planning a fruitful day and week ahead, and making things really work.  

The challenge to make things work is the same challenge Roxanne Emerich, author of the tome Thank God it’s Monday, identified as she explained how she would like you to get out of the “Thank God it’s Friday” mode, and to look forward instead to an exciting Monday. The book posits that as an organizational man or woman, you should be able to express yourself on the job, and be able to help build a workplace that thrives on everything positive. This is quite a tall order, and it starts with you. In order to achieve workplace nirvana, whatever or however you define nirvana to be, you and all the other people in the company have to want it, demand it and strive to get it. And if you get it, it should naturally rub off on your customers or other people you deal with on a very consequential plane. Emerich provides ideas on leadership, change, choice, honesty and communication. These suggestions should always kick off your workweek so you make “Thank God it’s Monday” a regular mantra.

1. Make big things happen regardless of who you are and what you do. Leadership isn’t a position; it’s a way of being. It’s affording you the chance to help bring people from the dark into the light.  You can be aggressive and take the initiative of leading the way, and that’s unquestionably laudable. However, as you do this, avoid turning into a control freak or being an overbearing boss or subordinate.  Simply see the opportunity to make a difference, seize the chance to do it, and do it well.  

2. Lead others to see your vision. Let them be aware of it, understand it, buy it, and participate to make it happen. Vision is possible. Without a lucid picture of what you wish to have, it will be difficult to make it happen. A vision statement is simply a clear word image of how you live your values in order to serve your customers in extraordinary ways.

3. Bust the “Baditudes.” A “baditude” is an energy vampire who sucks other people’s energy through negative behaviors, an obvious display of uncooperativeness or, or an inability to team play. Your workplace should not tolerate bad attitudes. It is understandable that you have bad hair days, but they shouldn’t bog you down. Instead they should make you move on and push you to make the best of every circumstance.  You must be a person who is willing to indulge in “get over it” so you can “get on with it” in conversation and action.

4. Avoid the “taste of whine.” It will not get you anywhere. There isn’t much room for a whiner in a workplace where team members want to “rock” or in an office where everyone is willing to carry their own weight. Whining can negatively impact others and render them ineffective.

5. Declare that gossip is off-limits in your workplace. Gossip is a wound that never heals.  There’s nothing more violent and violating in an organization than gossip. It can cause you to lose friends, gain enemies, or worse, lose a job. Even if you aren’t involved, listening to gossip should be banned, too. As a rule, always search for facts before drawing conclusions about people and situations.  Remember the visual statement that warned you, “Who gossips to you will gossip about you.”

6. Embrace truth and allow it to influence your engagements. One of the absolute keys to a workplace worth working in is authentic honesty. It is making sure that you get to do your work without having to throw your weight around.

7. Be aware of your point of view. Being right can be wrong. Of course, you like to be right, and it’s part of your ego. But there’s such a thing as being “so right you’re wrong.” No one is perfect. There is always a slight chance that at some point, you’ll be wrong, and it’s absolutely okay. Sometimes it’s better to listen than talk.

8. Accept that every idea, impression, and experience you encounter is filtered. The great thing about a filter is that once you have one, you can tweak, modify or totally change it for a powerful shift in results.

9. Demonstrate enthusiasm in all your commitments. Let it radiate in everything you do until it turns into a virus that will infect everyone around you. Commit to your commitments.  Listen to them and manage them. To do this, you need to engage in honest conversations and have the kind of openness that will allow you to communicate with anyone else who is slipping off course.

10. Reel back, adjust, and reassess your priorities. No matter how you rate yourself in the balance scale of life, sometimes you have to truly process what has happened, and from what you find out, determine your next forward actions.

11. As much as you can, avoid violating your values in life. If you look back, you will surely realize that almost every bad decision you made comes from an infringement of a professional or personal standard — a moving away from fear instead of moving towards something you love.

12. Be true to yourself when making decisions. Make it your true north in the workplace. Don’t make a decision that runs contrary to what you felt was wrong in the beginning.  You have to ask yourself whether you’re moving away or towards something.  Fear is a “moving-away from emotion,” while love is “moving-toward.” In life, you may find yourself running away from rather than facing the issue at hand. The better way for you to go is to analyze the problems encountered, find solutions, and after each experience make sure that a pattern doesn’t persist.

13. Pitch in to help others at work. It is going beyond your job description, but it’s okay. Help others accomplish a greater good without expecting that it will be part of your own performance evaluation.

14. Be at the giving end. Experience the great feeling and the joy of lighting up someone’s life, albeit momentarily. The returns on your gracious act will naturally come back to you in no time at all.

15. Be honest and clear in your communication. Discover how it can resolve apparent difficulties or impediments.  You must be able to communicate with coworkers on a regular basis to keep the work flowing in an orderly fashion, and likewise deal with work issues as they arise.

16. Give praise to others. Gratitude and appreciation lead to productivity.

17. Clean up messes and mistakes. Doing a cleanup has two parts: acknowledging the result wasn’t okay and committing to take corrective action. When you make a mistake, acknowledge it and care enough to fix it, and you are forgiven. On the other hand, when you don’t acknowledge it and don’t care enough to fix it, you will not be forgiven and it will be even harder to gain trust back the next time. The reality is, you make mistakes and you always will.

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E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments questions and suggestions. Thanks for communicating. Thank God It’s Monday is available at National Book Store.