The Four Agreements in the Workplace – Class 1 – inspired by the Toltec wisdom of don Miguel Ruiz

May 6th, 2009 Posted in Four Agreements in the Workplace, Gratitude, Toltec, Uncategorized

The Four Agreements are powerful tools to unleash one of the greatest assets in any organization: Your Energy! And by extension, the energy of all the others in the enterprise can also be sent soaring. What is possible is not simply an increase in performance (although you will certainly enjoy those) but rather an entire new point-of-view that connects the creative potential of the individual to the mission and goals of the business. And the creative potential I’m pointing to is the profound flowering of an individual that comes from a process of increasing mindfulness and self-understanding in relation to others. Multiply this individual transformation across many people in an organization, and you have a world-class organization.

Whether you are a systems-oriented thinker along the lines of W. Edwards Deming or a fan of The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, The Four Agreements, by don Miguel Ruiz provides a simple-to-learn, lifetime-to-master set of principles that can create amazing leverage for today’s small business owners, entrepreneurs and professional managers.

When I say “leverage,” I mean greater results with relatively less effort. Another way of saying this is “working smarter not harder.” These days with increasing global competition in all markets, we all need to enjoy greater leverage. Also for individuals, leverage is the way to come back to work-life balance. As we create more results in our work lives more efficiently, we have more time and energy for our non-work pursuits.

The Four Agreements are:

1. Be Impeccable with Your Word
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best

So where to begin? How about almost at the beginning with #2?

The next installment will be about:

Don’t Take Anything Personally

When we first engage The Four Agreements to shift our energy in our workplaces, the first place to look is: where are we using our energy now? One of the places we invest so much energy is in: Taking Things Personally…. To be continued….

For Class 2 of this series- click here – for The Four Agreements in the Workplace – Don’t Take Anything Personally

For Class 2 1/2 of this series click here -for  The Four Agreements – Systems Thinking and Systems Point-of-View

For Class 3 of this series- click here – for The Four Agreements in the Workplace – Dont Make Assumptions