Food for Thought: Deploying kindness Pt 1. Patience

Hi there,

Before we dive too deep I need to confess something - I have very little patience, myself. Some might say zero patience. Haters shall hate, but anyways….I share this to preface our conversation by saying being eternally patient is a lifelong practice and takes lots of time and self awareness. Self awareness comes with experiencing life so take it easy on yourself through this personal journey. If our “perfect self” is always a day ahead of us then we’ll never stop growing and that’s a beautiful thing.

Congrats on being a business owner. If your juggling that with being a mother, father, husband, or wife Mazel-freakin- tov to you. You are truly a miracle worker and might even have more to offer here than i do. For me, being an entrepreneur and owning your own business is truly a balancing act. You have a vision for your company. You know how you want to execute it. You hire a team of fine folks to help you execute it. And they’re doing a great job, by all means….BUT, they aren’t doing as good of a job as you could do, or as you envisioned it in your head. First of all Charlie, hold your bloody horses. You’re the head honcho. You’re the reason everyone is there. It’s YOUR visions and YOUR ideas. Of course no one is going to execute your ideas with the same level of passion as you would. The business isn’t their baby like it is yours. That leads us to our first tip in practicing patience.

Setting the Proper Expectations…

..or better yet, don’t set any at all. Human beings are not robots. They make mistakes and where there is margin for error, of any degree, ultimately and inevitably error will follow. You have two choices: to live in the reality being experienced and “react” instead of “predict”, or live in the altruistic place in your mind that rarely ever comes to fruition in real life. Either way, the burden of those thoughts will weigh only on your shoulders and responding poorly to employee error will only negatively affect how that employee interacts with customers throughout the day.

Accepting the “blame”

Wether you like it or not, everything that happens in your business is your fault. All of it. The employee that rang out a customer incorrectly. The customer that wrongfully yelled at one of your employees. It’s all your fault. Being comfortable in the present means being able to take ownership over every single thing that happens in your business, navigating tough decisions in real time, and being able to live with those decisions. If you made the right decision, great. If you made the wrong decision, adjust your plan and move forward. Once you’re able to accept blame you’ll be able to make decisions for your company much more efficiently and to the benefit of you and your employees.

The umbrella method

I’m quite honestly not sure if this concept has it’s own terminology attached to it, but what I call, “the umbrella method”, is a different way of conceptualizing your relationship with your employees. Instead of looking at a business job model as a hierarchy with the owner at the top, think of it as an umbrella. The owner is the little focal point at the top of the umbrella that supports the larger awning, which is ultimately the part that protects you from rain. Without your employees taking ownership of the brand and fully buying into the company, your umbrella has nothing holding it together and is ultimately useless. If a business owner can accept his/her role as a servant to the greater identity of the company - living to serve the employees that make the company operate - they’ll be much more gracious and selfless leaders and be able to respond and pivot with change more easily.

Hop you picked up some tidbits here! Thanks for tuning in. More to come soon!

Keep spreading love, good people!

Best,

D.B.

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