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Leadership Coaching – “Easier Said Than Done”
Recently at a Pharmaceutical meeting in Europe, one of the presenters shared the results of a recent study that demonstrated that Managers who were trained in Eight Step Coaching Skills were out selling DM’s who were not trained in the program....
Leadership: Stoking The Success Train
Everyone wants to succeed yet everyone has a different perception of what success means and what it will bring into their lives. It is a means of gaining financial freedom for some and for others it means a healthy, happy family life. There are...
Student Leadership Program Should Create Future Knowledge Workers and Deliver Positive ROI
Leadership is a popular topic both in the business and education worlds. The main reason for this popularity is that effective leadership is a primary factor for the success of any organization. By implementing leadership at the middle school and...
Teambuilding: The Most Rewarding Act Of Leadership
The experience of great teamwork is one of life’s greatest thrills. Unfortunately, it is also rare and fleeting. If you want to turn your own working group of individuals into a magnificent, all-conquering team, you need to guide them on a journey...
Why Do You Have a Job? Five False Beliefs that Lead People into Jobs they Hate
If you find yourself stuck in a job that you don't enjoy or in a
company that isn't fun to work for, the first step to making a
change is asking yourself, "How did I get here?" Your being here
at this time in your life is not a random event. You...
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Don't Settle
Chuck was the best of the twenty-four candidates. Still, he didn't have exactly what I was looking for and my instincts warned me of his unusual personality. Yet the skills required for the job were specialized and he had most of them, and I'd been interviewing for five months, and my boss wanted the position filled before the budget process started. No, he might not be perfect, but he would be ok.
So I hired Chuck. As a new manager, it was a decision I came to regret. Chuck turned out to be a marginal performer, never grew into the job, and drew frequent complaints from his teammates. It might have taken me five months to hire Chuck, but it took me eighteen to fire him. Still, I'm grateful for the experience. Chuck taught me a lesson I applied in my next twenty years in management: don't settle.
When you settle, you choose mediocrity. Don't settle for the best of the worst. Keep looking. Don't settle for something that's barely okay. Push to make it better. Don't settle for average work from others when exceptional is needed. And don't settle for delivering good when you're capable of better. Expect more from yourself. Then expect more from others.
Whenever I've settled, the work or decision comes back like a boomerang, reminding me to keep my standards high. As W. Somerset Maugham says, "It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." I know that's been my
experience.
There's a story I like about Phidias, a Greek sculptor working on the Acropolis. As he was finishing a statue of Athena, which would stand a hundred feet high next to a marble wall, an onlooker asked, "Why are you chiseling strands of hair on the back of her head where no one will see them or even know they're there? "I'll know," replied Phidias.
I wish I would have found a cabinet maker with that same attitude when we were building our home. When we moved in, we discovered tops of cabinets uncapped and unstained. It's true no one would see them. But, it was not the quality of work we expected, paid for or wanted. The cabinet maker had settled for mediocre. But we didn't. We had him do them over.
People who are winning at working know when good is not good enough. They operate like Phidais, not our cabinet maker. They understand that quality work is not an accident. It's a deliberate focus that starts with high personal standards. People who are winning at working don't settle for mediocre. Not in others. And not in themselves.
(c) 2005 Nan S. Russell. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Sign up to receive Nan's free eColumn, Winning at Working, at http://www.winningatworking.com. Nan Russell has spent over twenty years in management, most recently with QVC as a Vice President. Currently working on her first book, Nan is a writer, columnist, small business owner, and instructor.
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