Promises, promises

When I was a young man, I remember reading a Reader’s Digest article about promises. It equated our relationships to a bank account. When you keep your promises, you slowly build up ‘credit’ in your account and the trust ledger rises. Unfortunately, when you break your promise, the resulting singular withdrawal if far greater, and it takes a great many more kept promises to cover the loss of trust.

It seems unfair to those of us in the service industry. All that hard work to build a fantastic customer relationship, and one slip can destroy it all? Damn!

A real estate friend of mine who is very successful with open houses gave me another rather crude example. She said, “Mathieu, you can stage a home beautifully, then proudly take your visitors through an immaculate living room, bright and shiny kitchen, well made up bedroom… but it will be the turd floating in the toilette your last visitor forgot to flush that will leave a lasting impression.”

It doesn’t matter if it’s your fault or not. If you’re in charge, you pay the price. Why else do you think the captain goes down with the ship?

Four Guiding Principles to repair the damage and your professional standing.

Stop making promises

Easy to say, especially if you and I share personality types. We get excited by amazing people and projects. We love to help other people, we tend to jump up and say “yes” before counting the cost. I got into trouble with a lovely lady who I really wanted to help, and I made some promises I later realized I couldn’t deliver. Getting her hopes up and failing was far worse than saying “no” ever would have been. The relationship bank account didn’t survive. After that, I stopped making any promises I didn’t absolutely have to make.

 

 

Set a realistic timeline and keep it.

Work often takes twice as much time or twice as much money than planned. I call this the “Scotty principle”. If you are a fellow Star Trek fan, you’ll remember the episode where Scotty confessed to Jordie he always told his captain an engine repair would take twice as long as it really would, so that when crunch time came, and he pulled it off in half the time, he was seen as a miracle worker!

Complications arise and regularly muck up your work schedule. Might as well build in enough time for a contingency plan should you need it.

We don’t really “work better under pressure”

Yes, I know. I, too, was pretty good at riding that edge, right up to the aforementioned moment I lost a customer. Once I started backing up my timelines, I found room to be much more creative and thorough with what I could deliver, and my customers were delighted more often.

Listen without making suggestions.

Next time you’re having coffee with a friend, family member or client, just listen and gather information without suggesting ideas. Instead, just ask more questions. Trust me, you don’t need to be ‘the answer’ to their problems. People are excellent at finding their own solutions, and it’s amazing how often it happens when you give them room to verbalize. The added advantage is you’re much more likely to help them get to the real heart of the issue when you don’t short circuit the process by making suggestions too early. And wouldn’t it be a lot more fun to come away from a coffee meeting not loaded down with tasks you promised to complete?