Influencing People!

I have recently been re-reading one of my favourite books 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Carnegie. This has by chance coincided with a couple of incidents that I personally have experienced of unbelievably bad customer service. The specifics of these events will remain in the vault of my mind labelled "Did they really say that?"! as on the whole I believe that these things should not be dwelled upon for any longer than is necessary but I feel I should reflect on it long enough to illustrate something that Dale Carnegie talks about early in his book. For any of you who have read this book that has well and truly stood the test of time you will be aware of three of the main tenets which are fundamental throughout. They are:

• Never criticize, condemn or complain.
  Criticism makes others defensive and resentful.
  Positive Reinforcement works better.


• Make the other person feel important.
  People yearn to feel important and appreciated.
  Praise others’ strengths and they’ll strive to reinforce your opinion.


• Frame requests in terms of what others find motivating.
  Ask yourself: “Why would someone want to do what I'm asking?”

It is perhaps prophetic that I should have read the book just prior to these 2 incidents as I was very aware of Carnegie's message as the situations unfolded. Life throws odd things at us from time to time and how we deal with these things effects how we grow and in some way how far we go in life. Getting angry is destructive to all involved - it humiliates the shop assistant or whoever we feel it is that has done us wrong and ultimately it takes power away from us. I don't advocate at all that shoddy customer service in any guise should be shrugged off as not important but just think that as Dale Carnegie says: "When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity."

So when next time you don't quite get the deal in customer service that you hoped for remember another DC quote:

"Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain - and most do. But it takes great character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving."

Warmest regards

Craig

craig@craiggoldblatt.com

The difference between an average performer and a top performer

So what’s the difference between an average performer and a top performer? A top performer understands conditioning. The difference between an average performer and a top performer is that a top performer doesn’t wait for somebody else to tell them its okay to feel good. Let me ask you a question: did you brush your teeth this morning? Of course you did. Before you play sport, do you warm up? Course you do. In the business world, I’m wondering how many people condition themselves properly. Let me give you a different analogy: You go to watch your favourite football team, premiership football team. Those boys are on £120,000 a week so say it’s Arsenal. You support Arsenal and Man United show up on the pitch; do you think that Arsenal will need to warm up? Physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically? Of course they would because they want to make the best out of the game.So how do you condition yourself before you step onto your field? How do you get ready for your day? We understand conditioning in the hygiene world; we’ve been washing and brushing our teeth since we were two years old. We understand it in sport world, do we understand in business? You see invariably I speak to so many people and I find that they walk into the seminar or conference room and they’re hunched. Or they walk into the office and I say ‘How you doing?’ and they say ‘Not bad.’ By the way, when you take ‘not bad’ not what have you got bad. That’s how they start their day. And then they go and sit in a seat and somebody’s sold them Viagra through the night, they’ve got 70 emails, they start their day by going ‘delete, delete, delete, delete’. That’s how they kick off their day.Make sure that before you make that phone call, you breathe. You send oxygen to your head, you feel, you listen, you paint, you run, do exercise, get rid of the stress. Feel. Feel it in your heart before you make the call. Make sure every call – every call – counts. Make sure you’re not the one that’s conditioned when the big opportunity arises. Step up. Condition yourself like an athlete and you’ll perform like one.

Enjoy!
Warmest regards
Craig

Let Craig help your organisation get the most out of every day - craig@craiggoldblatt.com

Attitude vs Skills

What attitudes and skills do we need over the next twelve months to be enormously successful? I ask this to many, many audiences and people come up with attitudes like energy, passion, hunger and they need determination. So they need all these different attitudes to succeed and then I say to them ‘What are the skills that they need?’ and they say the need to negotiate better, listening skills, communication etc. So providing you want to push forward, you need to find out what you need first off that’s going to make you more successful. Here’s the thing, interestingly enough. Let me ask you another question: At what stage when you were one-year old did your parents turn around to you and say ‘Give it up kid, you’re never going to be a walker’? They never said that to us. Even though they knew that one day we were going to walk, they kept encouraging us. What’s my point? My point is how energetic is a two-year old? How much passion, how much hunger, how much belief, how much determination does a two-year old have? Masses. And then we get to three, four, five-years old and people start saying ‘You know what, lower your standards. You know what, you’re not hard enough to play football with us, you’re not clever enough to work with us.’ People lower their standards.Here’s the thing; I believe we can learn skills. Here’s where most businesses spends loads of their money, loads of their time. We can’t change somebody’s attitude but we can remember one. So let me ask you this final question today: When has it been in your life when you felt magnificent? Before you start work and every morning of your life, remember the times when you’ve had the most courage, you’ve had the most passion. Remember being a child. Remember the times when you had humility, focus, strength, belief, determination, persistence. When were the times when you felt like a child?Anchor that in your subconscious before you start work, before you set your desk, feel in your heart where you really belong. Just before you start work, flow the emotions into your heart. Feel great before you sit down and make that phone call and don’t make that phone call until you know that your attitude is right.

Have a great day!

Warmest regards

Craig

Craig Goldblatt is one of the UK's top human potential speakers, contact him to find out how he can help your organisation.

craig@craiggoldblatt.com

www.craiggoldblatt.com

Being Comfortable In Business Sucks!

How do we get the best out of learning?

In order to change and develop and therefore grow we need to get uncomfortable enough to facilitate that process.

Whilst being comfortable is important for us to be relaxed enough to contemplate change, if we are totally comfortable with all areas of our lives - why would you to change in the first place?!

So make the decision about which areas you would like to make a difference in/to and accept that the feeling of discomfort you get when you think about it is the positive force you need - the catalyst - to making the shift. This will help you make that decisive move to challenge yourself - challenge enables us to get energy and a belief in our own abilities. Think of the child who sees others riding a bike without stabilisers - they feel uncomfortable and take that decision that they want to develop that skill and they focus on it like mad until one day they wobble off down the road unaided and as they cycle more they get stronger and better until riding a bike is second nature. When they get off their bike having riden it for the first time they invariably run and jump and depending on the child engage in any number of seemingly life threatening activities! The energy their body has been fuelled by comes directly from accomplishing their goal - they did it by the power of focus and a sentiment that going out on the road with stabilisers on their bike made then feel uncomfortable - they made the shift.

Have you noticed that using the child analogy again - once a child can ride a bike they don't settle with that they set their sights on another accomplishment - somthing else that challenges their feeling of comfort. Don't let that go away just because you are no longer at primary school! Keep striving and challenging yourself and your business and enjoy the fulfilment it brings!

Be Successful in whatever you set out to do!

Warmest regards

Craig

Craig Goldblatt is a successful UK speaker - to discuss how he can help your organisation contact him at craig@craiggoldblatt.com

http://www.craiggoldblatt.com/