Thursday, June 23, 2005

Get Over Yourself

You do a great job. You have a great network of highly connected people in your business community. You are praised by your peers for being a peak performer. Now get over yourself!

Often times when someone is very successful in their career they begin to believe their own press. They start to view those they meet as "supporting players" in their life. These individuals are easily annoyed by others who they do not perceive as having their level of knowledge and experience. Their natural instinct is to be rude and dismissive.....and everyone around the knows this is how they operate. Most of the time they do not realize they act in such an unacceptable manner. Other times they might openly acknowledge their behavior,.... not caring how they are viewed by the people around them.

In any conflict, their first reaction is to IMMEDIATELY blame the other person for the disagreement. They would never step back and objectively review the situation. They wont compromise or share the responsibility for the misunderstanding.,,,,and NEVER would they accept the guilt or apologize.

Have you ever encountered a person like this? Have you ever been this person?

Look around at the people with whom you work. Do you constantly ask yourself, "what are these people doing to help me?"....OR do you ponder, "what can I do to help these people, thus helping the whole team to succeed?" If you are waiting for everyone in your life to serve you, then you will be waiting a long time.

Discover ways to assist your co-workers, clients and others. Realize that while you might have achieved high levels of success, that you were not born with all of your knowledge and experience. Most likely someone helped you achieve your accomplishments. If you believe that you made it alone (and if you really believe this, you are probably lying to yourself), you should still find ways to help others. Reach out to those who are "up-and-coming" in their careers, and give them a hand to climb to your level of success.

If you think it is lonely at the top, maybe this is because you have never invited anyone else to join you!!!

Have a great day.

Thom Singer
thom@thomsinger.com

1 comment:

Steve Harper said...

Outstanding commentary today Thom. I think there are many people in life that need to take a step back and really think about what you are saying. By bringing attention to this, you will likely get some people to not only get over themselves but to honestly make some large gigantic steps towards improving the relationships they have with the people that are important to them.