We’re excited by everyone we meet, but to varying degrees.
Most of the time, we notice our excitement for people who can help us. They maybe have the resources or knowledge or willingness to lend the ear that we’re looking for.
This excitement precedes personal growth and development.
But what marks a growing leader even more?
When we’re excited by people we can help.
Focusing on the first kind of people might help us move forward, but it won’t help us make a meaningful difference.
Better to have a blend of the two. And if you’re going to lean further on one end of the excitement spectrum, you can likely guess which side it’s more worth your time.
In the words of ol’ Zig, “you can have everything you want in life by helping enough people get what they want in life.”
There’s a car rental shop right next to a bar in a bay in Greece. It was just over a year ago that I was sitting outside, enjoying a beverage and was also served some first class entertainment (and life lesson reminder).
A couple at a table beside us had a confrontation about some damage on the vehicle they returned. It got heated. There was yelling – more so from the car rental staff. There was also a ripple effect of anger and frustration – from people at the bar trying to relax to all the other car rental workers who were inside that now had their attention turned onto the confrontation happening.
Without a doubt, the customers being yelled at would never be customers again.
I couldn’t help but think about how much of a waste that time and energy was to deal with those people. Then I thought how the workers could have killed them with kindness – and maybe even made a returning customer or advocate of the two who may or may not have caused some damage to the car – certainly it wasn’t on purpose. Or they could have shrugged them off entirely and moved on.
Either way, they could have invested the time – rather than yelling – in calling upcoming guests and giving better attention to those in the shop. They could have focused on making it a remarkable experience for everyone but two troublemakers. They could have moved on sooner and both business (car rental and bar) would have been better because of it.
Most crappy customers. Most issues that arise. Most challenges we face – it’s the same thing.
We’re better off reducing our sunk cost and pivoting and moving on. Better to shift to kindness and focus on advocacy than getting sucked into a heated debate and frustration.
Doing so impacts a lot more than just what’s in front of us.
The reassurance we feel we need; the assurance we seek from others; the affirmations we try to give ourselves – there will never be enough to last and to fuel us day in and day out as we leap, try new things and take risks on our missing of making the change we seek to make.
Worry is wasted time – and so is reassurance-seeking.
There’s a reason speaking engagements are more profitable for authors than book deals. (It’s because they are more impactful.)
There’s a reason calling a client will always lead to a better collaborative solution than emailing. (It’s because they become connected with you – it becomes personal.)
There’s a reason a voicemail saying “I love you and I always will” hits the heartstrings more than a text saying the same thing. (It’s because they can hear the truth in your voice, but might otherwise try to read between the [non-existent] lines of a text.)
