Tag Archives: relationships

Posted on

You Are Powerless…Unless

by

power-018

Greg, I don’t have any power. No one listens to me. My work doesn’t matter. My vote doesn’t matter. Nothing I do really matters. I’m powerless.

Do you ever think thoughts like that? I know I do.

You’re right…unless.

I saw a great speaker at church last Sunday night. He was talking to us about parenting and he said any influence you have with your children is dependent on the relationship you have with them.

Good relationship = lots of influence. Bad relationship = very little influence.

Click To Tweet

That struck a chord with me. When my dad and I were getting along well and had a good father/son relationship, I hung on his every word. I wanted to be like him. When our relationship was strained, I turned to my friends for guidance on how to live and what to do.

The speaker told us how he had a very tough time in school. At 13, he was tall and sickly thin – so thin he couldn’t even play sports. He also had horrible acne with pimples as big as nickels.

Kids can be mean and every day at school was misery. But more mornings than not, his mother would stop him at the door, as he was about to leave, look him in the eye and say, “I know it’s hard for you right now. But I want you to know that I believe in you. I love you. God loves you, and he has big things planned for you.”

Because he had a great relationship with his mother, her words had great influence on him. They carried him through the tough days. Later in life those words rang in his ears as he started to write the first of 24 books. They encouraged him as he preached to 8,000 people on the steps of our nation’s capital.

Her relationship with her son gave her great power and influence with him.

I think it’s the same for every part of our lives. Our power is derived from the relationships we have with people, not from our title or perceived power.

We’ve all seen the boss who has very little influence with his employees because he has a horrible relationship with them. He can fire them, but he can’t get them to do their best for him.

How about the politician who becomes known for corruption and lying? Who wants to continue to volunteer to help her win re-election?

But, when your family, friends, coworkers, and followers know you care about them – when you have invested in deep relationships with them – they are willing to run through brick walls for you.

You matter to them. And they matter to you.

True, caring, deep relationships give you great power and influence.

How can you grow your most important relationships to have more power for good than you’ve ever imagined?

The measure of a man is what he does with power. -Plato

Click To Tweet

Let’s GO!

If this post resonated with you, Please subscribe to my blog and get my free eBook — 5 Steps to Finding Your Passionate Purpose. You can also purchase my book, GO!

Posted on

Nice Guys Finish…1st?

by

white hat

Nice guys finish last, right? It’s what we see in the movies and what society tells us. You have to be ruthless and selfish to get what you want in this world.

That can be true in the short term.

You can push in line to be first. You can sell something to someone they don’t really need to get your commission. You can lie about someone to get that promotion.

It can work…for a while.

Time wounds all heels. Mean people tend to lose over time. Be nice!

Click To Tweet

But as my dad says, “time wounds all heels.” Mean people don’t finish first most of the time. They end up burning bridges, getting a horrible reputation and living a miserable existence.

Sounds fun, huh?

Being nice wins out in the long run.

“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
― Mark Twain

Who would you rather do business with, hire, work with, or sell to? Someone you like or someone you dislike?

Wait a second, Greg, is this a trick question?

If we want to do business with, and be around, nice people, doesn’t it make sense for us to be as nice as possible in everything we do?

Nice guys finish first!

My last vacation was to NYC – the land of rude people. (Or so I’d been told.) Guess what my family found? Nice people.

Perhaps it was because we sent out kindness that we received kindness in return. I think it also had to do with the fact that we were looking for nice people.

We had nice people coming up to us explaining how to use the subway, helping us with directions and telling us about the best discounts.

We did meet a few rude employees at some of the businesses we went to and a few disgruntled people on the street, but we simply moved on until we found the next nice one. (Notice how the rude people lost our business and the nice people got it.)

And things just kept working out for us during the entire trip. My favorite was when we got the cheapest tickets available to a Broadway show simply because we were kind to the ticket agent at the box office. (I know it was a great price because of all the research we had done on it.)

Being nice “just because” will make you stand out with everyone you come in contact with. It will make people rave about you to their friends. It will get you more – and better – business. It will make you feel great. It will come back to you ten fold.

It’s the right thing to do.

And it doesn’t cost you a penny to do it.

Nice guys finish first.

Who can you be nice to today?

If this post resonated with you, Please subscribe to my blog and get my free eBook — 5 Steps to Finding Your Passionate Purpose. You can also purchase my book, GO!

Posted on

How Trying to Show How Smart I (think) I Am Hurt Me

by

20150217173059-einstein

We all want to connect with people, right? We want to form good relationships in and out of the workplace. We want to be respected. We want people to know how smart and great we are!

Okay, Greg, you lost me on that last one.

Did I? Maybe it’s just me. Sometimes I notice that I have an unhealthy desire to make sure the people I’m dealing with know I’m smart, accomplished, successful…(Geez, just writing this out makes me feel like a jerk.) What adds insult to injury is that when I do this, it doesn’t help me it hurts me. It also hurts the person I’m trying to show up. So, why do I do it?

How often do we sabotage a relationship with a lack of humility and desire to feel important?

Click To Tweet

I rationalize that I mainly fall into this trap when the person I’m dealing with is putting out signals that he thinks he’s better than me. To which I brilliantly respond by thinking, “He thinks he’s better than me? Who does he think he is? I’ll show him!”

Yes, brilliant. That will get him to like me/buy from me/want to do business with me.

Wrong.

This kind of thing just happened the other day. I told myself a story that the guy I was talking with was acting like he was way better than me. So, I started talking, and talking, and talking to prove how much I knew, how smart I was, why he should listen to me, blah, blah, blah.

Then I realized what I was doing. I physically felt ill at my actions. So, I stopped. I apologized for dominating the conversation and started asking him questions. I learned a lot and actually started a friendship.

How many times do we tear down the relationships and influence we are trying to build with the need to make sure the other guy knows we’re pretty cool stuff?

We can fall into this trap with our bosses, the people we manage, our children, our spouses, our preachers…

What helps me with this is being secure in who I am, yet working at remaining humble. I remember that we are all equal in God’s eyes, that everyone knows something I don’t know, and that I will learn more and make more friends by asking questions and listening than by trying to show off.

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”
-C. S. Lewis

I also remember what my dad used to tell me, “Some people are thought to be fools. Others open their mouths and prove it.”

If this post resonated with you, Please subscribe to my blog and get my free eBook — 5 Steps to Finding Your Passionate Purpose.