Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

Today in society and business there is clear erosion in quality of standards, conduct and manners.  Manners and etiquette play a huge role in conducting successful business and differentiating your brand.  And yet, 80% of Americans think rudeness is a real problem in the country and 99% of Americans consider everyone else to be rude. How about you look at yourself in the mirror and think about what common sense tells you.  Common sense tells you that manners, etiquette, and first impressions are very important.  So think about how you conduct yourself and you make a good first impression, it’s common sense. 

Helicopter parents are parents who call the teacher or college professor to tell the professor to change the grade of their child.  How insane is that?  When I was a child and came home with a bad grade, my mother would tell me to study harder and get better grades.  It would have been unthinkable for my mother to call the teacher to try to protect me.  If you are parents, you are the parents of the children rather than their friend.  It is really important to provide good role modeling, safety guidance and helping your child to learn lessons about life rather than protecting them because you want to be their buddy.  You are their parent rather than their buddy. 

A lot of people speak in disjointed thoughts and sentences, they start an idea, stop it in the middle, then start another idea then stop it and start another one. Notice, when you do that, people really get uncomfortable because they are trying to keep up.  What you are doing is trying to manage your anxiety because your brain is ready for the information sooner than your mouth can get to it.  So, simply slow down, deliberately slow down and complete each thought.  When you do that, you are in command and the listener finds it easier to follow you. 

A “You” message is when you tell someone how they are.  When you are talking with someone and you want them to know how rude they are, if you say to them, “look, you are rude, you are thoughtless, you are inconsiderate.” It makes them very defensive, even if you’re right. So, use an “I” message and it will avoid the defensiveness. Instead of telling them how they are, you tell them how your experience is of their behavior.  So instead of saying “you’re rude, you say, “I’m uncomfortable with your behavior, which is clearly less than polite.” If you do it like that, then they are going to be more interested, and less defensive and you might actually get the message across. So use “I” messages rather than “you” messages and you will see results. 

You may find that when you talk about yourself, you speak in the second person a lot. You use the pronoun “you” rather than “I.” When you do that, you are watering down your authenticity or your power.  Here is an example: “In order to be a public speaker, at first you have to do a lot of prep and you feel uncomfortable because everybody’s judging you.  Or “When I speak in front of people, I’ve done a lot of prep and at first, I was uncomfortable and after a lot of practice, it got easier.”  So speak in the first person when you are talking about yourself.  It’s more compelling, its more authentic, and you have more horsepower. 

Do you ever notice how often you discount yourself?  You will say, “I’m just lucky to be here.”   “I’m not really educated on this.”  “This is probably beyond my pay grade.”   “I don’t know much about this.”  “This may be a stupid question.”  When you discount yourself upfront, you are teaching people how to treat you.  If you are discounting yourself, you are encouraging them to discount you too. If you say, “This may be a stupid question…” And then you ask the question, I may say, “You know, you are really smart, that is a stupid question.” The problem is, is that you are leading me to discount you.  So instead of discounts, just ask the question or make the remark and you’ll be taken more seriously. 

Do you ever notice that you will say, “I wanted to ask you…” “What I was going to ask you was…”  “I just wanted to thank you.” When you put your present intentions in the past tense, it waters down your horsepower.  It actually invalidates the message you want to say.  So instead of saying, “I wanted to ask you…” change it to “I want to ask you…” “I want to thank you.”  Put it in the present tense and now you have a lot more horsepower and you are avoiding invalidating your strength.  So, give it a try.  I want you to know that. 

Think about how often you opt for security.  You will stick with the same job you dislike because you’ve got seniority or because you’re vested, you stick with the same mate you dislike because you think, “well, who else will have me?” You stick with a job or some direction where you think you are secure and yet, you are continually reminded of your own dependency. The problem is that when you opt for security and you’re unhappy, then you’re dependent.  If you’re dependent then you are weak and angry.  So instead, consider happiness.  Happiness is when you are in control of your life rather than dependent.  So, jump in the pool, take that risk, off-load that security and you will feel better. 

If you think about your relationship with your mate and one or both of you is full of contempt for the other, that absolutely will kill the relationship. It is the most toxic thing you can do.  If you think about contempt, think about disgust.  If one or both of you, while the other is talking, rolls your eyes, or immediately discounts any initiative at all, and all you are thinking about is contempt, your relationship is doomed. My recommendation is to stop this nonsense right now and end the relationship or go get some professional help.  The likelihood that you are going to fix this without help is remote.  So take this seriously, fix it!

If you think about your relationship with your mate, you might notice that you and/or your mate is really good at criticizing. And, if you are good at criticizing the prognosis for your relationship really stinks.  You are going to kill the relationship because criticism is continually toxic; it actually robs the relationship of its foundation. If you want to pretend that you are helping instead of actually criticizing you might want to adjust your perspective on things.  A relationship with continual criticism in it will actually die.  So replace the criticism with all that reinforcement that you did during courtship.  When you do that, you are building a foundation and you can repair things. 

You’ll notice that when you are stonewalling your need to avoid talking about it is more important than your need to resolve anything.  Often one or both of you have these off limit subjects in your relationship that now are so incendiary it is impossible to talk about them.  So therefore you avoid talking about it.  You say, “I don’t want to deal with it.” You’ll say, “There is no problem.” You simply stonewall. So, does it really make any sense to keep avoiding dealing with it, whatever it is simply because it is so difficult to do so?  Therefore, stop stonewalling.  Start talking about it.  Start resolving it.  And you’ll get some results. 

Do you get defensive?  Do you defend yourself all the time? If you do, then you’ll notice that very often you have to be right or make sure you avoid being wrong. When you defend yourself, your need to be in the contest is more important than your need to resolve an issue with your mate.  Therefore, if you or your partner continues to be defensive, that creates a death-nail for your relationship. So ask yourself, do you need to be right or would you like to resolve the issue? If you think about resolving it then the need to defend yourself goes down and now you actually resolve issues and make progress, so consider that.   

If you think about your life, there are a handful of items that are really important:  your health, your wealth, your sleep, your family, your relationships and your finances.  Those are important.  So, what is urgent?  Well, it’s putting out the latest fire, it’s the latest thing you get seduced by, it’s the “We have to clean up the house before the cleaning people arrive.” How insane is that?  If you get seduced too often by the urgent, you’ll notice that the important takes short shrift.  So write down a list of what is really important and set aside time to do those first.  When you do, you are in charge of your life.

“The Benefit of the doubt,” when I hear people say that, I think it’s insane.  In what way is there any benefit in doubt? When you think about it, the moment you hear the word “doubt” you start getting nervous and you start thinking there is a real problem. Rather, the intent of "benefit of the doubt" is actually one that is supposed to repair things as opposed to making them worse.  So, change the wording from “the benefit of the doubt” to “the benefit of the trust” or “the benefit of the confidence.”  When you say that it seems like it is repairing things rather than making them more divisive. So, change it from “doubt” to “trust” and see what happens. 

When you feel sorry for yourself, in addition to wasting time, you are sucking life out of your relationship.  When you say “Life isn’t fair,” the reality is that is correct, life is unfair.  When you say, “Nobody knows the pain that I’ve suffered,” then you are seducing people into feeling sorry for you.  Decide that it is now time for you to become a grown up.  Quit feeling sorry for yourself and start validating what is good rather than whining about what is bad.  “Poor me” will suck energy out of a relationship so turn it around and breathe life into it. 

Love what you can love and let the rest go.  Do you ever notice that you have a relative… a parent, a brother, a mother-in-law, someone who you care about and yet they drive you out of your mind?  Their behavior is insane.  It makes you want to dip into the Prozac, or open a vein or go buy them a set of cement shoes.  “Come on darling, let’s go get some shoes.” Well, what do you do about that?  The reality is that it is hard to reconcile the gap between the fact that you really love that person and that you really have trouble with their behavior.  You might thrash around trying to figure out what to do.  Look at it this way… love what you can love and let the rest go.  Love what you can love and let the rest go, that’s common sense.  You can simply love what’s lovable and quit fussing about the rest.  It makes sense. 

The final step to resolving conflict, once you have defined the problem, come up with multiple options, evaluated the options, chosen what you want to do and implemented the solutions is to follow up.  It is absolutely essential that you follow up.  You must meet again with the people with whom you have conflict.  If you fail to follow up the whole thing will evaporate. And, when you do follow up, fine-tune and keep going and the resolution is solid. Remember to follow up. 

In resolving conflict, once you have defined the problem, come up with multiple options, evaluated the options and chosen what you want to do, implementing is critical.  Now, you want to assign who is to do what and when.  Perhaps you are to take care of Option A and Larry is to take care of Option B.  When you make those assignments of who is to do what and when, you’ve got the traction you are looking for and the conflict can now be resolved.  So the key is to make some accountability and assignments and you are on your way to resolving conflicts.

In resolving conflict, after you have defined the problems, generated options, and started thinking about what the best options are, now you want to choose the options.  It is a good idea that you, along with those with whom you have conflict, after looking at all the options, start deciding which options are the best.  Take two or three options and put them together.  When you put them together then you can decide how to implement the options, however, you will want get clear on that before you do it.  If you get sign-up to the process of choosing among multiple options you will have much more forward movement.  That’s how you resolve conflict.