Happy Sunday everyone.
We had our sales kick off and awards for rpm Thursday/Friday. 2016 our corporate theme companywide was “all in, driven, and approachable” So our awards were the same theme, voted by their peers. Proud to say Thursday night I received 2 of the 3. Hold the applause please, fast forward Friday morning, Kim is with me, Sonoma mission inn, warm bed etc….I could go out with all my peers for business planning, of which I already have one, or I could play hooky, do some wine tasting, have a great lunch with Kim, and be much happier, door #2 please, who would miss me?? As I’m waiting for the valet guilt comes over me, as does the prodding of a fellow employee. I say to Kim, I’m going to go for a little bit and then escape. I walk in for two minutes to hear “where is hunter Marckwardt?”. We are launching a new company wide software, the entire demo was based on my business profile, 90 minutes of hearing “hunter this, hunter that”. My owners are front and center, they’re great friends, and they expect my best (they trust they’ll get my best). The entire place would have known I wasn’t there, my owners would be both disappointed, and hurt, and I would have appeared very far from “all in, and driven”, a fraud to some degree as it relates to the awards. After the demo, business planning and “the why”, we do stuff….up comes a picture of my vision board in my office with Jack/Thomas/Kim, and my numbers from 2008-2016, as an example of what is possible. Point here is not to brag about awards/recognition of effort, point is to suggest my owners counted on me, the person doing the demo counted on me, the person doing the business planning counted on me, and I came very close to letting them all down, I got lucky. No one told me I was going to be used as an example, thankfully because they trusted I would be there. There is a quote in the bible that basically says “to much whom is given, much is expected”. Think about your coworkers, your friends, your business partners…who can you count on to show up? Flakey people suck. You know who I’m talking about, the person who is guaranteed to cancel the apt, not show at the last minute, reschedule 10X, not bring in the assignment, not commit to the work. Then you think about the peace and confidence you have when you’re working along someone you can count on, an event where you know the people are going to show (because they said they would), someone who delivers the work w/ effort…a friend you can rely on to be there all the time.
A few points I’d like to make:
1. When other people put their trust in you, it’s an honor and we need to treat it as such.
2. We need to reverse roles all the time and put ourselves in others shoes….Someone put hours into the business planning session on Friday…to some degree I’d have sabotaged their efforts by not showing up.
3. Go to what you sign up for. Cancel as little as humanly possible on people, just don’t say yes in the first place if you’re not committed.
4. You show people that you care and respect them when you show up. When you don’t, you also show you don’t respect them or care….how other way could someone look at it?
5. Don’t think of yourself as more important than you are but consider the disappointment in others when you let them down, and the impact on their world.
Be honest with yourself….what side of the fence are you on? I was straddling both on Friday….I’ll call it a weak moment:)
Have a great week!!