Happy Sunday Everyone:
My team and I are in growth mode right now. With growth mode comes growing pains. Growing pains right now for us is a combination of training correctly and what I would call at times “a misallocation of stress” i.e. is everyone feeling the same stress or is it being carried by one or two people? Having consistent stress is never a good thing but a team that is united is a team who understands the stress of others and then jumps in to take on the stress of others until the stress is gone, as a team. Best quote I’ve heard from the Olympics was around Michael Phelps (of course). Announcer said “a champion is at their best when their best is required”….Same goes for a team. As it relates to my own team, I know I have the right team and they care about each other, but have I trained correctly so that the team is functioning in a way where all parties are capable of taking the stress away from where the stress is being felt?
I was talking to Lisa Wells about this whole topic and she commented that her team has a concept called “peek around the corner”. Peek around the corner for her is synonymous with anticipating what the next team member needs, or what the client needs, basically, what is going to make their life better, what is going to put them in a position to have a greater chance of success, and be able to accomplish that success in a faster, more efficient manner. I love this concept. When you think about our teams, processing, underwriting, front end, back end, initial call to close, what are we doing to anticipate what we can do to make someone’s chance of success greater? The opposite is true too, what are we doing to set this person up for failure? bad file, lack of understanding on time lines, lack of attention to detail…we’ve all been there, we all know an example where people are setting us up for failure or for success. Its more than that though, it’s just making someone’s life better. It’s not just in business, its personal too. What can we do to make someone’s LIFE better? Big things, small things….all things.
I decided on writing about this topic last night because of Kim (my wife). I was running late yesterday and we were having friends over for a BBQ. I was running around crazy, getting my “stuff” in order and realized I had forgotten to get the BBQ going. I also remembered Kim had bought a new bag (25 lb. bag) of charcoal for me, which I assumed was in the garage. While I’m running around, a little stressed, and a little agitated, which makes people not love to be around me, I come to find out my new bag of charcoal is sitting next to my green egg (the mother of all BBQ’s) with a perfectly sliced cut in the bag ready for pouring. Anyone that BBQ’s knows getting charcoal bags open is a pain in the butt. Kim took care of it for me, she was “peeking around the corner” and it changed my mindset in a single second.
I gave the assignment to my team on Friday to think of 3 things that each team member can do to make their life easier and we are reviewing tomorrow. I would recommend you do the same. I would also beg you to think about this concept in general. It feels good to peek around the corner and figure out what you can do to make people around you happier.