Service to others
I’ve been away from a lot of the ‘normal’ things I do of late, with a bunch of changes to my daily routine.
I’ve recently gone back to the Automotive Industry and actually been having a lot of fun with it and enjoying it.
That said, the reason I thought to write something today was I had someone comment on a previous entry, which made me think to pen some thoughts I’ve been thinking about the last few days.
I’ve been a bit quiet on the podcast front this year as I’ve had to prioritise other things ahead of it whilst I ride the wave of changes to priorities that pop up.
Needless to say one of the things I value about doing the podcast is the opportunity for learning, reflection and essentially a live work through of ideas and experiences.
As such, I suppose it’s not a bad idea for me to muse a little more and do more reflecting here and share these thoughts in case someone out there might find it helpful as I enjoy the opportunity to work through ideas.
So for today’s thought - one of my key core values is ‘transparency’.
Why do I choose ‘transparency’ over ‘honesty’?
Because when we’re kids, a lot of our parents probably told us ‘if you don’t have something nice to say… don’t say it…’
I take issue with this because isn’t that kind of bending the rules a little?
I feel like there’s this certain standard that comes with transparency that:
I value you enough to speak freely
I don’t think it would be kind to not let somebody know if something isn’t working
Think of this situation - you see a friend with a booger hanging out of their nose.
Do you say something or ignore it?
Whether it’s the greens stuck in your teeth or the chocolate on your face, we’ve all been there and whilst it’s embarrassing to have it pointed out, would you prefer someone was ‘kind’ and pointed it out so you could address it, or ‘nice’ to you and didn’t say anything about it?
I would prefer the uncomfortable moment of pointing it out to someone as discretely as possible to save them further embarrassment later in a crowd of people being ‘nice’ not to mention it (unless it’s a good friend of mine where I can point and laugh about it with/at them)
So how does this relate to service to others and why have I been thinking about it?
I suppose it comes from the uncomfortableness that comes from being ‘kind’ enough to call out difficult things.
Let’s use another example to illustrate - if we’re on the same team trying to win a sporting match and I have a teammate who is not doing the training or showing up, or putting the effort in, it might be an uncomfortable conversation to have, but that teammate needs to be held accountable if we want to have a high performance culture and get the right results.
It’s in service to the rest of the team that we are transparent enough that we call it for what it is and move forward.
That said, I think it’s also important to take a moment to reflect and think about how I service the teammate not doing their part and consider that perhaps they don’t understand the ‘why’ of what we do.
This is the crux of what I’ve been thinking about - trying to turn every ‘issue’ into a learning opportunity to the benefit of both the individual and the collective.
It’s so easy to take for granted our own knowledge and experiences… but how much larger of an impact could we make if we took the time to serve others and help them along the journey?
If nothing else, it might make our own pathways a little easier to walk.
Have you ever experienced being on either side of this situation? How do you reflect upon it now?
