Thank Goodness It's Monday #386

PERSONALIZE YOUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES 

The young-ish Zig
with his chrome pump prop
presumably delivering his signature
"Priming The Pump" lesson
which you can read
HERE.
 

Is there a TGIM reader who doesn’t know that the motivational, sales-training legend Zig Ziglar recently departed this mortal coil?

I doubt it. For days after his death fully half of my social media business friends posted their favorite Ziglar-isms. 

And I filled in the “Comments” box with mine:

“Expect the best.

Prepare for the worst.

Capitalize on what comes.” 

Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar

(November 6, 1926 – November 28, 2012)

But before we go too far down that path: As good as many of them are, specific Zig-conceived sales, management, or self-improvement principles are NOT going to be our main focus today.

Here’s why: Such principles are easy to understand, especially when carefully conceived and presented in Zig’s most charming, homespun, appealing way.

What’s hard is living up to them. 

There’s little doubt that Zig was true to the principles he espoused. 

But how often can you point to folks who parrot such truisms but don’t practice what they parrot? (Not my social media friends/ posters, of course. But all those others … you know who they are.)

Too damn often, I’d say. So …

Maybe we can identify part of the cause and find some useful corrective action.

The problem as I see it is -- 

The principles aren’t specific enough. 

Or they aren’t personal enough. Proverbial advice and general admonitions suffer from a lack of depth. People pay lip service to them, but they don’t necessarily know how to apply them.

And that’s also true of proven-in-action, quantifiably established strategies like management principles as well as “softer” proverbial wisdom.

Case in point: One rising corporate type I worked with devoted himself to the ongoing study of management science, hoping to develop a more effective “executive” style. 

He sought out and read the latest available material in the discipline. He took self-improvement courses on-line as well as in a classroom setting. He could easily recall and report the self-improvement lessons he had been exposed to. Yet in practice, nothing he learned seemed to work the way it should.

He was frustrated because he knew the principles cold, but somehow was unable to apply them to his satisfaction.

“I even leave notes to myself on my desk,” he said. “But they haven’t helped.” He still acted in the same old way.

After chatting with him at length in a catalyst/coaching capacity it became clear that, while he truly wanted to apply these management principles, he resisted them for some deeper, personal, emotional reasons. 

This was pointed out to him, with examples such as: Simply repeating “I shouldn’t blow up at subordinates” would not accomplish anything unless he understood why he got angry. 

This line of inquiry interested him, so we explored it further and made some eye-opening discoveries.

One in particular:  He often blew up at others because he was mad at himself for giving poor instructions or not explaining something sufficiently. So flying off the handle at the subordinate was much easier than accepting the blame himself.

Ah ha! Breakthrough: With his newly gained insight his “Don’t blow up” principle was revised just for him and morphed into: Don’t project your own shortcomings onto others.

Harsh-but-effective insight. He “got” it and was able to apply it. Gradually he formed a new habit. When someone did something wrong, he often still got mad. But he didn’t blame it entirely on the person. Instead he assigned some of the blame to himself, making statements such as, “I may not have explained it clearly enough.” 

TGIM Takeaway: Proverbial wisdom and time-tested principles are a good thing, and we owe a debt to those who conceive of and develop them. But they are, by their very nature, general and so have the potential to be ignored in practice.

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Tailor such received wisdom to best suit you, your situation and – if you’re sharing it – your people. “Classic” principles and textbook guidance may be sound in theory, but to be effective in practice it must be personalized to suit individual personalities – your coworkers and your own. If you want to follow them – or want someone else to – dig deep into the personal aspects of your understanding to come up with a specific, workable approach.

“See you at the top.” Just in case you didn’t know, Zig said that encouragingly. And he used it as the title for his first book which, his publisher, Pelican Books, said was its most successful book, despite having been rejected by 30-odd publishers previously. 

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P.S. “You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.” Oh, yeah. Zig said that, too.