Month July 2015

Don’t Walk Home

Steve Keating 2 Comments

One day a pride of ostriches were sitting around with their heads in the sand. (yes, I know that ostriches don’t actually bury their head in the sand but it works for this story) One brave ostrich pulled his head out of the sand long enough to see a convocation of eagles flying overhead. He was amazed by the site, large birds flying, soaring, and going where ever they liked.

The ostrich thought to himself wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to fly like those eagles. So he did what we would all do, he looked for a flying school on Google. Soon enough he located a nearby flying school and convinced his fellow ostriches to join him in learning how to fly.

It was a challenging course and it took several days to master the art of flying. But the ostriches loved it, they flew and they flew, up and down, back and forth, it was just as amazing as they had thought it would be.

After several days they received their certificate indicating that they were certified to fly. They had a big celebration and slapped each other on their backs and then they all walked home.         

Yes, they walked home.

The ostriches made the all too common mistake of believing that the goal of education is knowledge. The goal of education goes beyond knowledge; the true goal of education is action. 

Success requires more than simply knowing what to do; success requires that you actually do it. 

You can’t just prepare for success and then wait for it to arrive. All the education and preparation in the world does no good unless you put it into action. Successful people DO!

Successful people do more, they do it more often, they do it in spite of fearing failure. When they fail they do it again, often differently and with a better plan but they do it again. They simply DO! 

The ostriches learned how to succeed and yet they did not succeed. They didn’t succeed because they didn’t DO! In every success there is action, somebody did something to bring about the success. 

If you’ve yet to receive the success that you believe your due perhaps it’s because you’ve yet to actually DO.

Think about it.

 

How Much is Your Credibility Worth?

Steve Keating 4 Comments

What’s your most prized possession? When you ask that question to a group of people you get some very interesting answers. You also get a lot of different answers, some very personal answers. 

You also discover that very few people say credibility. It’s not that they don’t value credibility, it’s just that most of us don’t think of credibility in terms of something we possess. Credibility is just something that exists, it’s just sort of there. We know it’s important, we want to be seen as credible, we want the people around us to be credible, we simply value credibility.

So we say.

But then we go out and do things that destroy our credibility. We say one thing and do another. We criticize someone for doing something as we’re doing the exact same thing. We behave or speak in a manner that we know is wrong, at least we know it’s wrong when somebody else does it. 

We say credibility matters but often act as if it doesn’t. 

There are literally a million ways for us to negatively impact our credibility but I’m going to focus on one because it’s so pervasive, maybe not as much as it used to be but I’d still bet it’s the number one destroyer of credibility today, especially in business circles.

It’s drinking while working. (DWW) Let me define drinking while “working.” If you’re with customers, co-workers, at an “after-hours”  work function, or just somewhere people you work with or for might be, you’re working. If you’re out in public wearing a shirt or jacket with your company’s logo on it, you’re working. If you’re sitting in an airport with your backpack next to you and your backpack has your business card attached to it, you’re working. I could go on but I think you get the idea, “working” goes way beyond sitting behind your desk at 3:00 in the afternoon.

If you believe for a minute that you can go out and get completely wasted with a group of your business associates or customers and not damage your credibility with them you are completely and totally wrong.

Credibility does not just exist, it is built and re-built everyday. The things, all things, that we say and do matter, they all count. Every single thing you say and do either adds to or subtracts from your credibility. I wish that wasn’t true but it is.

We can’t live 100% of the time being “careful” with what we say and do to protect our credibility. We are human beings, prone to doing and saying dumb stuff from time to time. Those dumb things will sometimes harm our credibility and no matter how hard we try to avoid them, they will happen.

Which makes DWW all the worse, it is a choice, at least it is for the vast majority of people. If the waiter came over at asked “what would you like to destroy your credibility tonight?” we might think twice before ordering. Unfortunately, they say, “what would you like to drink?”

Just how much is your credibility worth? One beer? Two or three? Maybe you’re a very credible person and yours is worth 10 or 12…. oh wait, it doesn’t work that way.

The more you drink while working the less credible you will be, if you want to argue that point go ahead and order another, it’s only your credibility.