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Teamwork

This week’s topic is “ Teamwork ”. Wow! Imagine that, another topic I’m totally passionate about 😊 . This one starts early for me as I got into team sports starting in 3 rd grade. Not unusual these days, but back then to get into something like football was a big commitment from your parents. There was equipment to purchase and getting to/from practice. As a kid, I road my bike everywhere around town, but not at 8 years old. That freedom didn’t come until 11-12 timeframe. That meant my dad would take me to practice and home again. The team I was involved with started practicing together a year before we were old enough to join the league. The coaches were all about teaching form and technique to us. We did drills for what seemed like hours each practice. They did a great job teaching us the basics of the game and how to win at each position. We learned plays and had playbooks we took home to study. It was a phenomenal way to get early learning on preparation, teamwork and winning. In...
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Listening

This week’s topic is “ Listening ”. Now I’m not talking about how people learn (as depicted in the chart below). I’m talking about communication and listening to people. A topic that almost everyone thinks they are good at (96% according to surveys). However, many issues in life are related to communication – either not communicating thoughts well enough so someone can understand or not active listening to show that you do or do not understand. I’ve found there are some pretty common reasons why we don’t listen as good as we should. Among these are:   We’re moving too fast . We’re hearing or reading what’s being communicated, but we’re taking it at face value or not thinking about the full implications as we’re simply going too fast. We’re busy on so many things and it’s hard to get to everything. This leads to skimming and making assumptions or jumping to quick conclusions before hearing the whole story.   We’re multitasking / dist...
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Service

This week’s topic is “ Service ”. This is a passionate topic for me and Chris (my wife). We’ve always felt that great customer service is crucial to bringing customers back. Not surprising since Chris did run a Disney Store the last year+ of her retail career. You can imagine the training she went through (on-site at Disneyland in CA for multiple weeks) and the training and reinforcement she continually provided to her team.  Although they have “guests” and not “customers”. Words matter in setting a tone. It’s why I like to say we have clients.   To me, great customer service is providing the “ WOW factor ”. Whether this is an internal coworker, a partner, job candidate, or client. It doesn’t matter. Providing and continuing to improve upon world-class service should be part of our DNA. What does this mean to you? It’s a question I like to ask audiences all the time as it varies from person to person. However, you can usually see patterns that develop:   They c...
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Attitude

This week’s topic is “ Attitude ”. Again, one of my favorite topics. I know, shocking, right?!?! This has got to be one of my biggest life tenets and I’ve preached to my kids since the moment they were born. You cannot control much in life, but I firmly believe you can control your reaction to whatever happens. There are so many things that we can’t change or control. For example: when you go on a vacation and have all these great plans, do you sulk and complain when the weather doesn’t cooperate or do you still go out and have a great time or adjust your plans so you can still get that thing done at a better time? Your attitude sets the stage for whether you have a great time or not.   My dad was/is a person who lives a closed-off/guarded life * . No, you don’t here me talk about my dad. I was 11-12 when my parents split. It made me grow up fast.   * “And all around your island There's a barricade It keeps out the danger It holds in the pain”     ...
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Hard Work

A couple of weeks ago I was sharing a list of the favorite quotes I’ve assembled over the years with Kimberly and she encouraged me to send something out each week until I’m done in January. I don’t usually think I have that much to say or great insights into things, but I thought… “what the hell, I’ll give it a go”. I’ll try to group topics together each week with quotes, stories and lessons learned/advice. Think of it as assembled ramblings from my 30+ years in services and almost 50 years of employment.   This week’s topic is “ Hard Work ”. It’s one of my favorite topics. I started working at age twelve to help support my mom, brother and myself. I did Mike Rowe-type dirty jobs… nasty, smelly and hard. The types of things others didn’t want to do – clean public bathrooms, empty and clean restaurant grease fryers and traps, clean walk-in freezers, retrieve lost golf balls in water hazards at the public golf course (BTW, they paid 5 cents/ball), etc. This gave me a foundation of...
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