As she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children an untruth. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. However, that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stallard.


Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he did not play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. In addition, Teddy could be unpleasant. It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a broad red pen, making bold X's and then putting a big "F" at the top of his papers.

At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child's past records and she put Teddy's off until last. However, when she reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise.

Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners... he is a joy to be around.."  
His second grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle."
His third grade teacher wrote, "His mother's death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn't show much interest, and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren't taken."
Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and he sometimes sleeps in class."
By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except for Teddy's. His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he got from a grocery bag.
Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one-quarter full of perfume. But she stifled the children's laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stallard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, "Mrs. Thompson, today you smelled just like my Mom used to."



After the children left, she cried for at least an hour. On that very day, she quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he responded. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and, despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her "teacher's pets."
A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling her that she was the best teacher he ever had in his whole life.
Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then wrote that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in life.
Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things had been tough at times, he'd stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would soon graduate from college with the highest of honors. He assured Mrs. Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he had ever had in his whole life.
Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time he explained that after he got his bachelor's degree, he decided to go a little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had. But now his name was a little longer.... The letter was signed, Theodore F. Stallard, MD.
The story does not end there. You see, there was yet another letter that spring. Teddy said he had met this girl and was going to be married. He explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he was wondering if Mrs. Thompson might agree to sit at the wedding in the place that was usually reserved for the mother of the groom. Of course, Mrs. Thompson did. And guess what? She wore that bracelet, the one with several rhinestones missing. Moreover, she made sure she was wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother wearing on their last Christmas together.
They hugged each other, and Dr. Stallard whispered in Mrs. Thompson's ear, "Thank you Mrs. Thompson for believing in me. Thank you so much for making me feel important and showing me that I could make a difference"
Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back and said, "Teddy, you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn't know how to teach until I met you."
Comments:   The tale of little Teddy Stallard and his inspirational teacher, Mrs. Thompson, is from an original story written by Elizabeth Silance Ballard (now Elizabeth Ungar) and called "Three Letters from Teddy."

What way does your organization treat its people? Is it like the way the teacher Mrs. Thompson treated Teddy to start with or how she eventually ended up treating him. If you were to take a poll of the employees at your organization after reading this story and asked them what way they would like to be treated by their colleagues I think we know what the answer would be. 
According to Jeff Campbell of High Performance Employees if you treat people in a special way you will get special results from them. Loyalty, openness, motivation, trust and collaboration will all increase. Staff turnover, stress, conflict, sickness, and disputes will go down.
High Performance Employees has the tools you need to introduce this culture into your organization in an easy and proven way. You know that your people deserve it so why not contact us today to find out how we can make your organization an even better place to work.


As Jeff Campbell of High Performance Employees states “You listen people into existence so therefore the Corporate Ombudsman feature of our website will help staff in any organization to feel that they actually matter, and their ideas and concerns are being taken seriously. I invite you to try it out for yourselves and make your voice matter. After all, that is the least you deserve.”

"Rome wasn't built in a day. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. One day at a time. These wise sayings and many more like them are exactly what we need to be thinking about when we start to get overwhelmed by our goals and how much it will take to achieve them. Break your goals down into daily and even hourly chunks. Don't allow yourself to be overwhelmed. Always ask yourself 'What one thing can I do right now to progress towards my goal?' It doesn't have to be a big move, just anything that you can actually do. 'A man who does not possess a map of where he wants to go ends up being a Wandering Generality.'" A brief excerpt from one of our most popular programs: 'Goalsetting.' To learn more about this and other programs offered by High Performance Employees, just click here!

According to an article released early last year, "Americans are growing increasingly unhappy with their jobs...The decline in job satisfaction is widespread among workers of all ages and across all income brackets" In a survey of 5,000 U.S. households it was found that: "Job satisfaction has declined across all income brackets in the last nine years. While 55 percent of workers earning more than $50,000 are satisfied with their jobs, only 14 percent claim they are very satisfied. At the other end of the pay scale (workers earning less than $15,000), about 45 percent of workers are satisfied, but only 17 percent express a strong level of satisfaction." Furthermore, via the survey it was determined that: 40% of workers feel disconnected from their employers. Two out of every three workers do not identify with or feel motivated to drive their employer's business goals and objectives. 25% of employees are just "showing up to collect a paycheck." Imagine that, two out of every three workers in your office or place of business do not identify with you and your business goals. Forty percent of the individuals who spend a large portion of their lives working at helping your business succeed feel disconnected from you, their employer! And one in four are simply there to 'collect a paycheck.' There is no loyalty, no concern, no pitching in toward a mutual effort and it's all because of the most primary relationship in your office - their relationship to you: the supervisor, CEO, or owner. In striving to maintain a sense of satisfaction among your employees, how can you get around the traditional models of business relationship? How can you directly address those people who fall into the staggering percentages of unhappiness and disconnection? You can start by listening those people, each and every one, into existence. You can start by introducing new ways of communicating and listening into your working environment, and High Performance Employees specializes in helping you do just that! Listen to a short snippet from one of our live workshopping events in England, with a client company who was looking for ways to make that change, by clicking here. The sound byte frames the great energy that comes out of one of these events; where employer and employee alike participate in an effort toward protecting the bottom line against turnover and the emotional malaise that inspires it. Reach those 25 percent and their paycheck is more than a paycheck, connect with those 40 percent and foster a sense of loyalty to the company, so that feelings of satisfaction, pride, and ownership flourish.

In a recent study from Switzerland-based Pictet & Cie it is determined that job creation is a form of socially responsible investment. The study examines 1,677 companies in the MSCI World Index from 1997 to 2005, and compares employment statistics with financial performance. In a third-party article on the study, the research company is quoted as making the statement: "A sustainability analysis that focuses only on indicators that have a 'material' impact on the financial success of companies is incomplete and ultimately even obsolete, since it does nothing more than a standard financial analysis, namely to identify the most profitable companies...sustainable investment should allow for inclusion of criteria that are desirable from a purely sustainable point of view." At High Performance Employees, we agree, and believe it's not just 'socially responsible investing' to create the jobs themselves, but it is equally important to keep employees happy in those positions. Regardless of the number of jobs created by any given company - the social return of investing in employee satisfaction (and the relative management satisfaction!) is invaluable to both the company's own financial returns and the social return. Employees who are content on the job and happy in their workplace take that energy and enthusiasm with them out into their non-working daily lives. It would be interesting to see a study analyzing the relationship between employee satisfaction and financial performance. Because, no matter how many jobs a company creates - if the employees are unhappy and unmotivated at work, what are those jobs really worth?

Discovered by our very own director, Jeff Campbell: Now, of course this isn't our philosophy on how to handle office conflict...but it's a fun little piece. A little bit about what's behind conflict and what you can really do to address it, from one of our workshops:
"We don't have conflict because we're different. Don't blame 'because we're different' for conflict. That's not why. We have conflict when I don't feel you're trying to understand me, when I don't sense you're willing to meet my needs. Those are two of the real key factors in terms of conflict... If you're looking to add value, grow your business, get your customers locked in to you, feeling good about you - that's it! Getting people smiling when they hear your voice they got a sense from you, 'Hey, you understand me and you're willing to meet my needs!' They're the two key factors, no matter how different we might be. So, in terms of significant relationships in your life, these are magic questions: 'How much do you feel I understand you?' Ask that of the people around you. And of course the second would be, 'How much do you feel I'm willing to meet your needs?' And if those scores are low, ask the next magic question, 'What do I need to be doing so that you felt I understood you even more, or that I was more willing to meet your needs?'" *We're always on the lookout for images of office conflict expressed in a funny or otherwise interesting way, so if you've run across something you'd like to submit, please let us know! (Refresh the page to play the clip again.)

If this is the kind of paperwork your employees are processing - and according to recent statistics upwards of 20 percent of them are actively looking for someplace other than their current workplace to build a career - what can you do about it? How do you keep that 20+ percent from turning over and looking for workplace satisfaction elsewhere? High Performance Employees has created various programs to help you address just this issue. By following the tenets laid out and taught in our workshops you and your employees can learn to have not just 'good' working relationships, but GREAT ones - and in doing so, you will be ensuring the future positions of those very employees you've already spent time, energy, and money on to train. From one of our recent workshops: "Seventy percent of the people leave jobs because of 'relationship issues.' And most of those are relationships with their immediate supervisor. That's a real critical relationship. Twenty-five percent of a manager's time is lost on unnecessary conflict. In my experience, when I run the Winning Relationships program at organizations that's a conservative figure. In my experience, working with people like yourselves, it's much much higher. All I'm trying to suggest is - you want differences, you don't want conflict. Conflict doesn't make good business sense. You're losing time. You're generating stress. The stuff that was being talked about this morning in terms of improving efficiency and all of that - look at the time that's lost. And it was really interesting this afternoon - about communication issues coming up. And that's all about relationships. You know, to grow your business, grow relationships...It's not just a soft issue, or, rather it is a soft issue - but the soft issues are often harder than the hard issues..." Listen to live samples from our workshop events here and when you're ready to take a first step toward reversing that 20+ percent loss, toward maintaining a happy atmosphere in the workplace, toward listening your employees into harmony and satisfaction in your place of business (and affecting your financial bottom line in a positive way in the process!) you can sign up for the free Corporate Ombudsman service, learn more about High Performance Employees' A Great Place to Work system, or check out our extensive list of workshops and workshopping options. High Performance Employees is poised to help you grow your people, so why not take advantage of what we have to offer - and ensure that those you value most in the office aren't actually on their way out the door. Image courtesy: PostSecret.

Now you can stay connected to the High Performance Employees website via your email inbox! Just use the 'Get Connected!' signup form on any of the main website pages to enter your email and receive a copy of our monthly newsletter. The newsletter will be targeted to business owners with working relationships as the main focus; including tips and highlights from the High Performance Employees workshops, event information, new site feature announcements, targeted news articles, and personal messages from the Director of HPE, Jeff Campbell. Also included will be helpful business tips ranging from maintaining high morale in the workplace to how to decrease turnover rates at your company. Get connected! Sign up now! Our first issue is expected to make it's debut in early August. Archived newsletters will also be available on the website, in our News Room.