subject: Man always rises to meet up to his expectations [print this page] When I took over the management of a chain of retail stores in the auto-service industry, one of the biggest challenges that I faced was the incompetency of the staff. Two points stood out very strongly: a) Whoever I asked, had a bad opinion about the non-performers and b) The so-called non-performers were actually not producing results. "Obviously!" you might think. How can you expect non-performers to produce results? Well, that's what I thought too, at least initially.
Then I happen to come across one of Zig Ziglar's video trainings on Attitude. And from this training I learnt something very valuable, and it perfectly explained why some of my staff were not performing. I decided to apply the knowledge to the market place. What did I do? I just reassigned the roles of the non-performers. I gave them the same role as before, but at a different location. However, the big difference was my change of attitude towards them; read that line very carefully. It's my attitude that I changed, not theirs. What did I change in me? I just removed all previous notions and negative opinions that I had let others plant in me, about these people. I convinced myself that these guys should be good and there should be something valuable in them, but no one has told them that and let them have a chance to prove it. I decided to be that person, who is going to bring out the good in them.
So I met up with them, understood their strengths and weaknesses and assigned them to a location wherein their strengths would be useful; and I teamed them up with people whose individual strengths would cover for this staff's weakness. For e.g.: One of poor-performers weakness was the English Language, whereas his strength was Arabic. But he was currently placed at a location, which demanded communication in English. Seeing this as a mismatch, all I did was to assign him a location wherein the majority of clients speak Arabic, and I teamed him up with a person who is fluent in English, just in case if he needs it. This made him feel comfortable with himself, and capable of handling his clients. The result? His shop was awarded Outlet of the Month for outstanding sales achievement within two months of that happening.
So what's the nugget that you can take home from this story? It's this: "Look at a man the way that he is, he only becomes worse. But look at him as what he could be, then he becomes what he should be". That is a very powerful lesson. Man always rises to meet up to his expectations. If you expect mediocre results from a person, you will surely get it. And if you expect greatness from a person, you will surely get it too. All you have to do is change YOUR mental attitude and see that subject in a positive light.
Apply the teaching to your daily life and see the difference for yourself. Take care and God Bless.
