Here’s a plea. Let’s save auto pilot for planes only.
And maybe a few factories, too.
Otherwise, if you’re a human interacting with a human, turn the auto pilot off.
It doesn’t matter if you give the same spiel multiple times a day or if you have similar minded people walking through your store’s doors; make it at least feel personal.
Just because it might be easier to rip from a script or repeat a service flow, there are very few people who enjoy working with or being served by robots.
The gap between mediocre service and remarkable service isn’t that wide.
You can make a significant leap simply by showing interest in the person you’re working with.
That requires asking more questions (oft unrelated to the thing they contacted you about), expressing your excitement in their endeavor (“wow, that’s special” goes a very long way), and following up after an exchange (even if it’s just a “hope everything is smooth sailing from here”).
This applies to sales, customer service, organizational communication and, you know what, just about any interaction.
And if you’re worried about the interest coming off as fake because you don’t actually care, carry on and fake it anyway. You’ll be surprised to find that fake interest begets real interest.
Stay Positive & Enjoy Improving All Your Relationships
Control is mainly a story we construct up to make us feel okay when things are tough or make us feel better when things are going well.
After all, that award we got? We earned that! And that time someone else was selected to have their work on display and not ours? We had no control over it.
The problem isn’t that we’re wrong with either, it’s that we give each too much weight. We didn’t just earn that award, it was our effort combined with good timing, the right people evaluating the work, and a dozen other variables that one could argue are out of our control.
And that time someone else was picked over us? Sure we didn’t have control on the selection process, but we did have control over the quality of work we submitted.
Going forward, it’s in our best interest to use stories of control in a way that helps us be more generous and create better work. The truth is that we’ll always be in control, to a degree. What matters is what we do with the control we do have. Can we shape it to include others? And about that control we don’t have… can we shape it to better ourselves first?
There’s no shortage of small businesses trying to market like big ones.
No shortage of medium ones still marketing themselves in the same way a small would.
A handful of large businesses market themselves in the same way they did when they were half their size.
The best agencies and CMOs might still document the marketing tactics and strategies they’d like to do if they were larger than they are, but they don’t devote budget and energy to it. Not yet anyway.
People don’t like it when you take time away from them.
They do, however, love it when you give it to them.
It’s something to consider the next time you give someone a task. Do you do it in a way that they feel like time is stripped from their day? That they have more important things to do? That the things they could be doing matter more?
Alas, this isn’t about not delegating or assigning tasks, but rather 1. the way in which we do and 2. whether or not we gut check ourselves.
Breaking that down for a moment…
People feel like they are given time (an opportunity to prove themselves or be part of something bigger than themselves) when we ask someone to do something and we share the meaningful reason behind why the task needs to get done. “Hey can you do X” feels like time is being taken away. “Hey can you do X so we can have a productive meeting tomorrow?” feels like time is given.
Ego can often be the enemy, and even more often when we’re giving feedback, which is a cute way to say we’re asking others to do more work. In an effort to feel like we’ve contributed, we often give feedback for someone to do something that at the end of the day, won’t make a difference. Have you heard (or said yourself O_O) “I like it like X, can you make it that way?” <– That’s taking time, not giving it. The flip being, “I know the target is going to love it if you did X.” <– That feels like time is given.
All this to say: be careful. Relationships are built on trust and trust is built on respect for someones time. Time in the work day. Time with family. Time on this earth.
