David Encounters A Young Man In Need

This is another guest entry from my friend and fraternity brother David Spiegel. He's got a lot of great ideas and every once in a while he hits one out of the park and it compels me to share what he has to say. Today's one of those times. Here's David:

Once again on this "How Am I Doin' Friday" I am writing later in the day. And once again the day has influenced what I am writing about. My day started out with a gift of some extra time. My new smart phone allows me to check my emails and bank balances from bed as I drink my first morning coffee! Cool beans!

I accidentally scheduled my training for 7 instead of 7:30 today so I was not able to work with Kieth when I showed up at 7:30. No big.....I still got in a decent workout.

On my way home,about a block from my house, I saw a young man laying half on the curb and half on the road,his friend standing helplessly over him.. I pulled over to see if I could be of assistance.Cars continued whizzing by,honking at me for obstructing their path . The young man had tripped and it seems he may have sprained his ankle. I asked how I could help him. He said it hurt , not terribly and if I could drive them around he corner to the High School he could figure things out from there.

It sounded like a reasonable plan. He was a big boy and his slightly built friend was unable to help him. I helped him up and got him in the car and the three of us took the two minute drive around the corner to the High School.

Here is where the story gets interesting. The boy, although a bit hefty, was a very soft spoken kid. He was polite,a bit shaken a bit embarrassed but you could just tell he was a nice kid.

He called his Mom to let her know what had happened. Over the next 6-10 minutes,the time it took to go around the corner and for his buddy to go get the nurse and a wheel chair, I listened to the Mom tear into this young man non-stop." How could this happen" "how could you be so stupid" "How irresponsible" "How did you get into a strangers car" "How many times have I told you never to do that" 'You're grounded" "Your car privileges are lost now...if you are too irresponsible to walk with out falling how can I let you drive a car." "You have no respect for my time"...in all it was horrible!

I felt terrible for this kid. I wanted to reach out and just give him a hug and let him know that he was okay and that all would be fine.I gave him my business card and let him know that if he or his mom or the school needed me I could be reached on my cell.

Now before you get all "well the Mom has a point about getting in a car with strangers..." on me remember, he was laying in the road! This man child had been on the ground for who knows how long,cars kept passing him by as if he was a pile of leaves and he could not get himself up. And now he was being berated by the one person in life who should be his primary nurturer.

I have been in similar situations where I wanted to just jump all over my kids for one thing or another. It is precisely in that moment that I take a breath, hold my tongue and when the heat has been cooled from the situation take the opportunity to address the episode and try to come to an understanding as to how this may be handled differently should anything like this happen again.

My take away from all of this? Simple. Be loving. Be compassionate. Be thoughtful. Be mindful. Be thankful......some day you may be laying in the road.

Shabbat Shalom

David

Thanks, Dave! Good advice for us all.

Comments

Leadership and Process Improvement

As a leader, how much attention do you give to improving processes? Do you watch your team install a process and then simply let it flow on and on -- or do you drive a constant focus to improve that process? Too often I've seen leaders spend their efforts trying to fix people , when the center of their problems is usually broken processes and procedures . Any process can be improved until it's no longer necessary. And then you can shut it down. It's work is done. So keep improving those processes. If you're still doing it, you can still improve it. -- Douglas Brent Smith http://frontrangeleadership.com

Perfect Relationships

Is your partner perfect? Are you? I've made enough mistakes in my life and in my relationships to know that the search for perfection is illusive at best and at worst, frustrating. There are no perfect people out there waiting for us, to fall in love with us, to fix us, to bring us what we need, to fulfill our dreams. But that's OK. In fact, that's wonderful. We don't need a perfect person in order to create love. Love creates the perfect person. -- Douglas Brent Smith

Keep Reading

How many books do you read each year? I'm not keeping score And as a full disclosure you should probably know that part of what I do is sell books and learning resources. Even if I didn't, though, I am a big believer in continuing to learn. Read. Experiment. Explore. Talk about it. Try things. Watch videos. Listen to audios. Keep learning. The world is changing so fast, how will you keep up? How do you get the training the need when you're not being offered the training you need? Keep reading. You don't have to read every book cover to cover to find great value in it. I used to think that if I started reading a book that I'd have to finish it. That got me slugging thru some poor material. Now I know that you can glean a lot from a book by scanning it, skimming it, reading what you need and leaving the rest for another time. I do still read books cover to cover (some more than once!) AND I read a lot of books for what is relevant to me right now. Howe...

Learn from Each Test

How many tests do you face today? We face all kinds of tests. Tests of our skills. Tests of our will. Tests of our relationships. If you're like me, you don't pass every test. I've messed some things up in the many years of putting things together, creating, coaching, selling, and serving. Sometimes the learning curve is so steep it does not seem like there is an end. It's not always fun. While we may not pass every test, we can always learn from them. We can learn how to be better prepared. We can learn the secrets to the most effective process steps for what we need to do. We can practice. We can learn to repair relationships with honest, gentle, courageous, and compassionate communication. I don't know what tests I'll face today - but I do plan to learn from every one. How about you? -- Douglas Brent Smith

The Benefits of Supervisory Training

When was the last time you had any leadership training? How often do the supervisors in your organization get training? If you are like most organizations, it's never enough. Some teams go without any supervisory training at all and expect supervisors and managers to learn as they go, on the job. Unfortunately, while it is memorable to learn from your mistakes, it comes at a high cost. People get tired. People leave. Important accounts go away. Customers complain. And teams struggle without the skills and knowledge it takes to build cohesive teams that are capable of solving problems, improving performance and achieving goals. Admittedly, I can be expected to support training since I'm in the business. Still, take a closer look at your own leadership career and decide for yourself. Are leaders better off with more training and development or with less? Supervisory training can generate benefits that pay off long after the training is over. Here are just a few of the things sup...

Dear Home Office

Have you ever worked in the field with the responsibility of reporting to a home office? How did that feel? I've noticed that there are big distinctions between people working in the field, doing the work, selling the product, delivering the goods, facing the customers... and people in the home office who make the rules, collect the cash, drink free company coffee, and call in sick if they need a day off. When you work in the field you don't call in sick because then you don't get paid. At least not what you'd make by doing the work. So when someone from the home office wants to give you feedback, how does that feel? Maybe they have something to offer. Maybe they will give you tips that make a difference. Or maybe you might want to write them a note something like this... "Dear Home Office... Your advice sucks so please keep it to yourself. We know what works and what doesn't. We see our customers' faces. We feel their pain. We need new rules ...

What Do Your Goals Say About You?

What would people think about you if all they knew about you was your goals? Would they consider you ambitious? Noble? Focused? Ask yourself that question and think about your answers. If I only knew what your goals were, would you be someone I'd want to spend time with? Help you with those goals? Tell my family about? I need to ask myself those questions, too. What makes my goals so special? What makes me worth talking to? I'm with you on this one today. What do our goals say about us? -- Doug Smith

Create a Positive Perspective

How much of what we see is true, and how much is filtered by our perspective? While it may all seem true, it is all filtered by our perspective. We do not get a choice. Our perspective filters everything. How can we ever be sure that OUR truth is THE truth? We can't. It isn't. It is simply our truth as presented by our perspective. There's no reason to get all anxious about this. It is simply there, whether or not we worry about it. But, there are things we can do to improve our perspective. We can read great books and articles. We can keep learning. We can stay curious. We can stop judging quite so much and simply experience. Life is a collage, and we are largely in charge of what pieces fit into that collage, but not completely. We cannot evaluate completely our own perspective with the device that created it (our our minds). High performance leaders recognize the influence of filters. They realize that their own perspective is always open to interpretation and...

Be Your Best You

I wrote an aphorism that I wanted to share, but have held back because it sounds a little edgy; it sounds a little presumptuous, maybe even conceited. That's not my intention. So in order to share it, let me first share this: it's up to each of us to be our best. Whatever anyone thinks about us, that does not define us. What defines us is what we see in ourselves and how we put that into action. How much clarity we bring to any issue, is completely up to us. How courageous we are under pressure is not up to anyone else but us. The degree of creativity we bring to the world depends on our daily practice and our willingness and discipline to develop that creativity. Our compassion can not be given to us -- we must make it, feel it, show it ourselves. It's true for you. It's true for me. Your best you is up to you. That keeps changing. That keeps growing. It's our lifetime project and adventure: perpetual improvement. Now here's that aphorism that...

Make Progress On That Big Problem

What have you done to fix your biggest problem today? My biggest problem is relocating. I'm not even close to figuring out what that means or where it will be, other than it is highly likely to be back to my home state of New Jersey. For a variety of reasons, it's time to come home. It's easy to get polarized and immobilized though when it comes to making big decisions and solving big problems. So today I'm going to do what Brian Tracy calls "chunking it down". I'll take that monumental problem and find a small piece of it that I can do. I will also practice what I preach when it comes to problems and convert my problem to a goal. Instead of "don't know what to do about moving" as a problem, I will rephrase it as the goal of "Relocate my business and my life to New Jersey by August 2016." As is the case with most of my goals, I hope and plan to achieve it far ahead of the deadline - but the deadline is real. It's energi...

High Performance Leadership

Search This Blog