“Every relationship improves when we are mindful of each other’s dreams.”  Matthew Kelly

What are your dreams?

Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.  (Acts 2:17b; NLT)

I just finished a book that I would like to heartily recommend.  The book is The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly.  I especially want to recommend this book to the coaches among our readership, but as will become clear in this review, I believe it will be of great value to the non-coaches as well. 

The book is a very easy read…will take you three to four hours if you push straight through.  And it wouldn’t be a chore to read at one sitting because the story line and writing style makes it easy to “read just another page or two before I lay it down.”  The book is a business book written in that genre that uses a story to convey the author’s message, much like The Go-Giver by Bob Burg, The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard, Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, and others.

The premise of Kelly’s book is that if you will take care of your employees, they will take care of you.  Sounds a bit like a cliche, but Kelly takes the idea of caring for your employees several steps deeper than just the typical financial, work environment, and other HR approaches used by so many “caring” companies.  Kelly’s message is that the key to employee morale and productivity is simply to understand each employee’s dreams and then help them devise a plan to pursue and fulfill those dreams. 

“If we can help our employees beyond the quiet desperation of mere survival by teaching them to dream again, and help them to fulfill their dreams, we’ll create a loyalty and dedication that’s unmatched.  And then our people will bring the passion and energy they have for their dreams to work.”

The story itself is about a janitorial service company that was struggling with massive employee turnover costs because the only jobs they had to offer were low or no skill, dead-end jobs.  The turnaround came when they hired a “dream manager” whose job was to meet with individual employees and coach each of them to articulate their unique dream(s) and then help them to develop a plan to follow toward the realization of that dream.  It wasn’t long before they had to add several dream managers to the staff.  People came “alive” and the result flowed directly to the bottom line.  They weren’t employees any longer, as they began to see themselves as respected, valued, members of the team.

Woven throughout the story are little tips about the value of dreams, the motivational power of dreams,  how to rekindle dreams in those who have long since stopped dreaming,  as well as how to coach people to the realization of their dreams.  It’s an incredibly compelling case for providing life coaching in a corporate setting, and not just to the top echelon of management.

While the story is woven around business issues, the message extends way beyond corporate walls and would clearly be applicable in any sector, such as churches, non-profits, schools and universities, or anywhere else where people work together in employee/employer relationships.  The book is inspirational to coaches as it helps them maintain the vision for the power and efficacy of what they do, and is similarly compelling to non-coaches helping them to see how and why a coach could be of incredible value to them.

Don’t miss this book!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank you for the creative ability you have designed into each and every one of us to dream dreams of our preferred future.  Unfortunately, many of us have long since allowed that ability to atrophy.  Show us that that vital part of their lives can be rejuvenated and restored to be fully functional once again.

Link of the Day
The Dream Manager

Blessings on you as you begin your list of dreams.