A Confession. When I feel stressed, I become hyper-focused to the exclusion of much around me. When I first opened the Atlanta office of Fleishman-Hillard, one of my staff came into my office with an ear-to-ear grin. He was so proud of himself. He had scheduled an appointment for me with a new business prospect with a particularly large budget. The potential client was on her way to our office to check us out. When she arrived, I briefly noted that she wasn’t dressed in typical business attire (I am not sure when I last saw fish-net hose in an office.), but my attention was on winning her business rather than her apparel. We settled in the conference room, and after some small talk I asked her about her organization. A portable stereo appeared from nowhere, and before I knew it, she was taking off her blouse. I was so focused on the potential new account, I did not realize that I had been had. My staff had hired a “strip-o-gram” for my birthday.
Archive for the ‘communication’ Category
A Funny Story
August 2nd, 2011
I Do It Too
July 22nd, 2011
Finding compassion. Extraordinary moments pop up at ordinary times when we pay attention. My friend David was standing in line at the supermarket when an impatient woman broke in line and demanded the cashier check her out. “I only have one item,” she barked. The young cashier politely explained she was serving another customer. Exasperated, the woman broke into another line.
David looked at the cashier, rolled his eyes, and said, “She must have been in some hurry.” The cashier opened her mouth to reply, then paused and thought better of it. She took a deep breath and said, “I do it, too.”
I do it, too, thought David. What a wonderful response. Instead of judging the impatient woman, the cashier found empathy.
“All through the day, whenever I got put out with someone, I thought, ‘I do it, too,’” David told me. “Whether I was in line, in traffic, or dealing with a rude coworker, I remembered, ‘I do it, too.’ What a gift that cashier gave me,” David said. “And I would have missed it, if I wasn’t paying attention.”