Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Where's your Courage?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but we Americans love to boil things down.

"What's the bottom line?" we ask...

"What's the shortest distance between here and there?" we demand from our GPS...

"Right, right, too many details, can you get to the point of the story?" I too often think (and sometimes say) when my wife is trying to tell me about something that happened during her day...

We like bullet points, linear thinking, and summations. We like it all neatly wrapped up, nothing extraneous, nothing out of the ordinary. We've been trained for mediocrity. We've learned to expect the expected.

Courage, on the other hand, is getting the whole story. Courage is listening and finding out the unexpected.

Courage is not making a decision based solely on the numbers in the spreadsheet. Rather it is hearing from people what they think, how they feel, what they expect, how they've been let down, what they're afraid of, or what makes them incredibly happy.

Courage does not believe in one-size-fits-all. It takes courage to "Wow!" because let's be honest, it's kinda out there. It doesn't seem normal to think about clients more than you think about yourself.

It doesn't seem normal to serve without being served first. Unless you think courageously, that is.

Find the courage to "Wow!"

I'll boil it down for you: Shut up and listen. Dare to be different.

No comments:

Post a Comment