“How do you spend your days?”
Some people answer this question by describing their job. Some by describing their vocation. Many can answer the question by saying:
“I spend my days helping people to succeed.”
Let’s explore how you may follow this path in your own way.
Helping The People
Close To You To Succeed
“The hardest job I faced was being an encouraging parent for our children,” said one person.
“This was particularly the case when they hit trouble at school. Both my partner and I had been good at passing exams, so we found it hard to understand their difficulties.
“We later discovered our son was dyslexic. He had difficulty with formal lessons, but was brilliant at business.
“So we encouraged him take charge of fundraising for school charity events. He raised masses of money.
“Our daughter loves dancing, acting and sculpture, but the arts were not encouraged at her secondary school. So we helped her to attend other dancing and drama classes.
“She has now grown in confidence. Paradoxically, she seems most at ease on stage.”
Different people choose different ways to encourage their loved ones. Many long-term partnerships, for example, are based on affection, acceptance and adventure.
The partners continue to show affection. They accept each other – rather than harangue each other to change. They also continue to share adventures.
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to do the following things.
Describe the specific things you can do to encourage the people close to you and, if appropriate, help them to succeed.
Describe the benefits of doing these things – both for yourself and for other people.
Helping Your
Colleagues To Succeed
Let’s move on to looking at your colleagues. These may include people with whom you work and those in your network. How can you help these people to succeed?
You may be a full-time employee in an organisation. If so, who are the work colleagues you can encourage? Whether you are relating to your manager or team members, it can be useful:
To show you understand their picture of success.
To make clear working contracts about how you can contribute to helping them to achieve the picture of success.
To perform superb work, encourage people and proactively keep them informed about the progress towards achieving the picture of success.
To, when appropriate, present positive solutions to challenges.
To do whatever you can to help your colleagues and the team to achieve the picture of success.
If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme. This invites you to do the following things.
Describe the specific things you can do to help your colleagues to succeed.
Describe the benefits of doing these things – both for yourself and for other people.
Helping Your
Customers To Succeed
The aim of virtually every service business is to help the customer to succeed. This is obvious in services such as education, but it stretches into many other fields.
Whether you help individuals, teams or organisations, your role often is to enable them to reach their goals. Different people have different approaches to helping customers.
One approach, for example, is to become a trusted advisor. It is to connect with the customer and, when appropriate, share knowledge that helps them to reach their goals.
The Trusted Advisor, by David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford, is one of the most respected books on this topic. The authors describe how it is vital to earn trust, build good relationships and pass on effective advice.
There are many ways to act as a trusted advisor. If you wish, try tackling the exercise on this theme.
This invites you to think of a person who has acted as a trusted advisor for you at some point in your life or work. They may have been a friend, doctor, lawyer or some other person.
Write the name of the person and describe the particular situation. Describe what the person did right and how you can follow these principles in your own way to, when appropriate, act as a trusted advisor to other people.
Several principles appear time and again when people do this exercise. Here are some of them.
My Trusted Advisor
did the following things:
They made me feel the centre of their world. They listened to my story, clarified my goals and played back what they believed were the aims.
They asked if it was okay for them to share their ideas. They began by outlining the things we could do – the specific things we could control – in the situation.
They shared the possible options for going forward, together with the pluses and minuses of each option. They also, if appropriate, shared their recommendations. They underlined, however, that it was ultimately my decision and gave me time to reflect.
They then, once I had made my decision, again explained the implications. They also explained the various roles going forward. They explained their role, my role and the roles of other people. They explained what I could expect to happen at each stage of the process.
They then acted to pursue the chosen way forward. They used the skills, knowledge and wisdom to do what they could to help me to reach my goals.
There are many ways to help customers. You may do this by providing superb service, finding solutions to challenges or, when appropriate, acting as a trusted advisor.
Doing such things is another expression of spending your days helping people to succeed. If you wish, try completing the final exercise on this theme. This invites you to do the following things.
Describe the specific things you can do to help your customers to succeed.
Describe the benefits of doing these things – both for yourself and for other people.
Leave a Reply