**After reading the article, please answer the two questions below in your OWN WORDS:

A. What are the five Personal Mojo qualities?

B. What does the group think is the most crucial takeaway from this article? And WHY?

READING 4 Mojo Marshall Goldsmith, with Mark Reiter Summary Prepared By Meghan Brown Meghan Brown obtained her bachelor's degrees in Human Resource Management from the Labovitz School of Business and Economics and Political Science from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2008. She is currently working as a Store Team Leader at Target Corporation in Minneapolis, Minnesota. INTRODUCTION Mojo is the positive spirit aimed toward what we are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside. This is the moment where we feel we've made a difference or done some- thing with purpose, the moment we've done something powerful, or achieved something we're proud of and that rest of the world recognizes. Mojo produces harmony between internal feel- ings and external appearances. There are four vital ingredients that, when combined, allow your Mojo to be at its highest: identity, achievement, reputation, and acceptance. To achieve these, you should first assess how prevalent each is in your current life and then explore ideas of how you can change either yourself or it to start achieving more meaning and happiness in your life. The first step in sustaining or increasing your Mojo is to determine your current Mojo Score. Where do you excel and where do you need to focus? Ten qualities, five related to your Professional Mojo and five related to your Personal Mojo, make up the Mojo Scorecard. This scorecard helps determine what day-to-day tasks are contributing positively (and negatively) to your current Mojo. After identifying your current Mojo, a Mojo Tool Kit can be used. It contains 14 useful tools to help you achieve your peak Mojo by helping you to close the gap between the way you perceive yourself and how others perceive you. Ultimately, the goal is to find (or create) an extended answer to a common workplace question: "What is the one quality that differentiates truly successful people from everyone else?" Marshall Goldsmith, with Mark Reiter, Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It. New York: Hyperion, 2009. 134 Reading Four Mojo 15 Four Mojo Ingredients 1. IdentityWho do you think you are? The element of identity is not to be confused with how others perceive you or to answer with what you think those closest to you would say, but instead to focus on your own self-image. Who are you? This may be difficult to assess, but without it, you may never be able to fully understand why you gain (or lose) your Mojo. 2. Achievement-What have you done lately? This is the act or process of finishing something successfullyan accomplishment that has meaning, impact, or power as defined by you. Achievements are often looked at from two perspectives: (1) What we bring to the task, and (2) what the task gives to us. Understanding what we've accomplished and/or what we've awarded value to recently is the second important part of creating or finding your Mojo. 3. Reputation- Who do other people think you are? In contrast to identity and achievement (where you develop your own definition), your reputation is defined by those around you, whether it is your friends, family, coworkers, or a stranger walking down the street. They are grading your performance and reporting your scores to the world, and although you are not directly in control of your reputation, there are a variety of things you can do to preserve or change it that can have a big impact on your Mojo. 4. Acceptance-What can you change and what is beyond your control? On a surface level, acceptance should be the easiest of the four to achieve. To assess the situation, "take a deep breath and accept it sounds a lot easier than creating a whole new identity or chang- ing how you do things in order to change the reputation you have with others. However, acceptance is often the biggest challenge. Why? This is because failure to accept what is and move on often stands in the way. In doing this, our Mojo often fades. Measuring Your Mojo The next step is to determine where you individually score on the Mojo Scoreboard. You need to measure how much Mojo you currently possess, and in what areas you are strong and weak, in order to know what you have to change. To do this an operational definition is necessary to ensure both parties (i.e., teacher and student) are discussing the same thing. The operational def- inition of Mojo is an expression of the harmony- or lack of harmony-between what you feel inside about whatever you are doing and what you show on the outside. The opposite of Mojo is Nojo. This is the "negative spirit toward what they are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside. In brief, it means 'No Joy!'" As noted, in order to assess your current Mojo, a Mojo Scorecard can be used. This score- card measures both your Professional Mojo (the five skills and attitudes that you bring to any activity) as well as your Personal Mojo (the five benefits that a particular activity gives back to you). The test involves logging your daily activities and rating yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, in regard to each of the 10 qualities. A perfect Mojo score would be 100. . Professional Mojo Qualities Motivation: How well do you want to do this activity? Knowledge: What is your current understanding? Do you understand what to do and/or how to do it? Ability: Do you have the skills required to complete the task well? Confidence: How well do you feel you will perform this activity? Authenticity: How sincere are you about engaging in this activity? 136 Part Six. Motivation Personal Mojo Qualities Happiness: How happy does doing the particular activity make you? Reward: Does this activity provide you with an emotional or material outcome that is important to you? Meaning: When completed, does the end result of this activity mean something to you? Learning: What do you "get" from this activity that has helped you learn something new or grow in some way? . Gratitude: Do you believe this activity to be a good use of your time? Were you apprecia- tive for being able to participate? Although this self-assessment seems like an easy and simple test, remember that you determine your own score. Ensuring you are honest and accurate in your assessment of yourself is pivotal to your Mojo success. Mojo Tool Kit The last step is determining how to create significant positive change in the areas that you've identified as having low Mojo. To do this, a Mojo Tool Kit should be used. First, however, you must ultimately understand and agree that to create this change, you need to either change yourself or change it. Changing yourself" means changing your thoughts, your words, your feelings, or any- thing else that you control. Changing it means just the opposite. It includes everything that you are not in control of-other influences within your life that are not you, such as, relationships, another person, or a place. This "you-or-it" way of thinking puts matters into the individual's hands. To positively impact your Mojo, you can either change you or change it, but inherently no one else can make this decision for you. It's your life, making it your decision. Fortunately there is a tool kit to help with these decisions. The Mojo Tool Kit is made up of 14 specific actions, broken down into the four building blocks of Mojo: Identity, Achievement, Reputation, and Acceptance. This allows you to pinpoint which tool or tools will help you improve your Mojo based on where your Mojo (Personal or Professional) is most deficient. Identity Tools Tool #1 lish Criteria That Matter to You. What brings meaning and happiness to your life? The odd thing about this tool is that for most other people in our lives we apply criteria to judge them, but we don't always set similar criteria for ourselves. Establish your criteria and then hold yourself accountable to them; this will often help you make many of the major choices in your life, and help bring you meaning and happiness. Tool #2 Find Out Where You're "Living" (Emotionally). Whether we realize it or not, we often run everything through two filters: short-term satisfaction (or happiness) and long- term benefit (or meaning). These two filters, when combined on two dimensions, together form five modes: Surviving, Stimulating, Sacrificing, Sustaining, and Succeeding (the best combination of short-term and long-term satisfaction). These modes help identify how individuals experience meaning and happiness at work and at home. Tool #3 Be the Optimist in the Room. Optimism (as a practiced behavior) is contagious. When setting goals, be aware of the negative forces that could negatively impact you reach- ing your goal. Knowing these factors and realizing when one or more of them may be Reading Four Mojo 137 getting in the way of achieving your goal will help you maintain your optimism. Optimism tends to be self-fulfilling, and often increases your influence in a room. Tool #4 Take Away One Thing. Don't wait until it's too late to subtract something. Most often we don't change until we are forced to, such as continuing to work at doing some- thing we hate until we are laid off. It's at this point that we decide to find our dream job." Although this is not the most obvious strategy, taking away something (instead of adding or changing) could reshape your life for the better. Achievement Tools Tool #5 Rebuild One Brick at a Time, Aim at serial achievements. Remember that a brick wall cannot be built overnight but instead brick by brick, layer by layer. This is the same mentality you must use when the thought of something seems like a daunting task. Repu- tations are rebuilt through continuity--a sequence of successes. Tool #6 Live Your Mission in the Small Moments, Too. Give yourself a mission, but remember that you can't just talk about it; you need to actually live it. Multiple small moments can create a big impact on who we are oftentimes more impactful than that one big moment! Tool #7 Swim in the Blue Water. Don't be afraid to differentiate yourself. Going about something in a completely different way can be a game changer and/or a game winner. Embrace the impulse to do things differently. . Reputation Tools Tool #8 Decide When to Stay, and When to Go. If it's time, jump! Don't wait to be pushed. Use the Mojo Scorecard to distinguish what needs to change-you or it? Tool #9 Say Hello, or Say Good-bye. How do you start a new job or leave an old one? Always keep your reputation in mind. Consider how you enter into a new job and give the same amount of attention to your exit strategy when/if necessary. Tool #10 Adapt a Metrics System. Create your own personal stats. Using a personal metrics system is a way for us to obtain specific feedback so that we do not have to rely on impres- sions or hunches. Measuring what we're not doing well is just as important as measuring positive progress if we want an accurate assessment of our reputation. Tool #11 Reduce This Number. Reduce the amount of time spent singing your own praises or passing judgment on others. Reduce the number of unproductive minutes that are lost every day in meaningless and oftentimes damaging conversations. . Acceptance Tools Tool #12 Influence Up as well as Down. Treat those who make the most important deci- sions as you would your best customers. Every transaction has a buyer and seller, and this includes your relationship with your boss. Leaders who are successful at influencing upward are much more likely to get the support or resources needed to meet their goals. Tool #13 Name It, Frame It, Claim It. To better understand something, someone, or a situation, give it a name. In doing this, we can better recognize and deal with the situation. The names we use are oftentimes referred to as jargon." Naming can help in two ways: It can provide a private understanding as well as help define a common understanding for a group of people. 138 Part Six Motivation Tool #14 Give Your Friends a Lifetime Pass. Take a list of the people who have had a significant impact in your life. This should help you realize that you have not achieved everything on your own, but that you've had friends, family, coworkers, and bosses who have helped you achieve your goals. You are better off because you know them. Give them a "lifetime pass from criticism! Chances are they've been more forgiving, sometime during your relationship, than they should have been. Conclusion Whether you are finding your Mojo for the first time, trying to keep your Mojo during a difficult time in your life, or looking to get it back after losing it, your success can be posi- tively influenced by enlisting someone to help you. Your odds of successfully finding and keeping your Mojo are greatly increased by finding a friend who is genuinely interested in helping you succeed. Strive to increase and exhibit your Mojo (the positive spirit toward what you are doing now that starts from the inside, and radiates to the outside). Study its four key factors: Identity, Achievement, Reputation, and Ac- ceptance. Pinpoint where to focus, and decide which of the 14 tools to use to improve your overall Mojo