I heard someone paraphrase the American Naturalist John Burroughs once. They said, “the smallest good deed is of more importance to the world than the grandest of intentions.” This holds true at work and at home. Here’s why I’ve come to believe this.
On Tuesday of this week, I met my neighbor Trudy while walking the rambunctious Giant Schnauzer wonder puppy named Remy. (That’s him posing for the camera below.) We stopped and discussed the rainy Seattle weather and how our tolerance of the nasty weather was being pushed to the limits.
Trudy asked about Alyson and how Remy was progressing with his training. I said great, but that Alyson had come down with flu-like symptoms. She was coughing and felt miserable, and I, in turn, was stepping into the breach with Remy. Trudy was genuinely sympathetic for Alyson as she had the same flu-like symptoms last week, but assured me it would pass quickly as it did for her.
Four hours later, there was a knock on our door. Trudy arrived and extended a container of homemade chicken noodle soup for Alyson. This small good deed was both hot and delicious.
As a coach and consultant, I’ve seen first hand what happens when small good deeds are done for both employees and customers. Specifically, in those unexpected moment when an employee goes out of their way to do something they consider small, but that is considered big by another person.
In writing this post about small good deeds, I started with the question, can leaders coach employees to care about engaging in small good deeds like Trudy? That wasn’t the right question, though. I think a better question is, “what do employees really care about?” If I know what employees care about, I can then link it to what the department or company cares about.
My shift from “do employees care” to “what do employees care about” is important because every employee cares about something. Still, all too frequently, leaders don’t know precisely what their employees care about most. In turn, they don’t align employee cares with organizational cares and miss capturing discretionary performance.
If you want to capture added discretionary performance from your team, check out the challenge below.
Monday Morning Mindset Challenge for January 27, 2020
1. List the five top employee and customer relationships that matter most to you.
2. Next to the name or relationship, write down what they care about most. As best you can, articulate clearly what matters most to them.
3. Next to what the person cares about, write down one thing you did last week that helped them achieve what matters most to them.
4. Perform a gut check and ask if last week you engaged more in grand intentions or doing small good deeds.
5. Show the people on your list your answers to the above four questions. Have a conversation that sounds like this: “Barbara, I believe the thing that matters most to you this quarter or this year is XYZ. What I care about most is helping you be successful or achieving that. Last week I did this in the hopes of helping you be successful. Was what I did helpful, or would you suggest I do something different?
If you want to change the trajectory of your results this week, ask yourself this question Friday at 5:00 PM: Did I do my best this week to help the people that matter most to me achieve what matters most to them?
Knowing you’ll ask yourself this question on Friday reminds you to think about small good deeds throughout the rest of the week.
As always, if you have questions or would like to discuss this further, drop me a line at hugh@clarisconsulting.net.
Live Boldly!
Hugh
The post Small Good Deeds Versus Grand Intentions appeared first on .