A few minutes later, two young men came out, one of them a little younger than the other and both of them were in security uniforms and was telling me not to hit on the glass. I know not to hit on the glass, and the reason that you don't hit on the glass is a mystery to me, because the glass is bulletproof, but it makes sense that you don't want to hit on the glass. It also makes sense that you don't want to be looking for help and not having help there to greet you. The young man told me not to hit on the glass and I told him, of course I'm not going to hit on the glass anymore, because you're already here.
There's no reason to hit on the glass. He says, well yeah, but we were in the back doing something that we were told to do and we don't need you to hit on the glass. I repeated myself after he repeated himself. Got it, I don't need to hit on the glass and I won't be hitting on the glass again, so you don't need to tell me not to hit on the glass, but of course he told me not to hit on the glass. At this point, I regained control of myself, realizing that I really didn't have a beef with the young man, I had a beef with myself about something else, so I was quiet and let him finish his dissertation and let him finish giving me the instructions that he wanted to give me.
I took a deep breath and excused myself and opted to speak to the other young man, who by the way, had touched this first young man on the arm to try to get him to be quiet, to try to get him to be cool. Well, he couldn't be cool and the reason he couldn't be cool is that he doesn't know how to be cool. He was doing the best thing that he knew how to do in this situation, I on the other hand was not doing the best thing that I know how to do under the situation. I even reminded him that I don't come to the bus station all the time and he does and it's his job to take care of customers and that in actual fact, I was in charge since I was a customer.
He paid no heed, he's just continually asserting himself and telling me how the cow chews the cabbage. This situation is played out in our country countless times every day. Each time a person has a confrontation with a policeman or a person in authority for whatever reason, they have to decide whether or not they're going to yield to instruction, whether or not they're going to give up their right to be right or not. What many of us don't even realize is that the figure is a person just like the young man that I ran into. Whenever you get someone trying to usurp your authority, your natural tendency is to take your authority back.
Conversely, when you decide to give up the right to do something, the person that you're giving up your right to typically will give up their right and you'll come to a meeting of the minds. What he brought to that interaction, I have no idea. What I brought to that interaction, oh yes, I have an idea. I was having a conversation with my wife and her and I were having a disagreement about something that had nothing to do with that young man. Just like many other instances where law enforcement are approached by people who bring things to the table that the law enforcement guy doesn't know anything about. Well the law enforcement guy brings stuff to the table as well.
What is the point of this blog? How does this relate to being an extraordinary coach? Glad you asked. You must constantly prepare yourself for that time when you are likely to be off your game. You must constantly tell yourself about the power of forgiveness, about the power of being quiet, about the power of not causing the confrontation to escalate so that if and when that time comes, you will know how to act. The reason I was able to relate to that young man and respond so appropriately was that, I was such a person at one time, where I was in a position of authority and I liked nothing better than exerting that authority and showing somebody who was boss.
Whenever you get a person like that meeting another person like that, the situation is fairly volatile and it takes somebody who has been being an extraordinary coach, I guess, to be able to extricate himself from that situation in a positive way. Your clients are just like that. Your clients bring things to the table things that you have nothing to do with and you know even less about it. You don't know what you don't know. If you were to talk with me, you would not know that I had an altercation with that young man like I just described to you, there's no way that you could.
Whatever problem that you were addressing with me would have nothing to do with you. Whatever problem I was addressing with you have nothing to do with you. It is purely a struggle between me and my sense of better judgement. Byron Katie purports that we love "what is" and by loving what is, that means you come to terms, and you can be okay with whatever the situation is. You can see that people in customer service positions shouldn't make the customer angry. They should give the customer the right of way, but in point of fact is that true?
How could you know that that's true, whether they should or not. What is it that would happen to you by holding onto the thought that people should give way to customer service. Well, they shouldn't and they don't. It's up to you, rather than trying to exert your will to try and change things from how it was or to carry around a complaining attitude about why things are a different way, you must learn to love "what is" and "what is," is that sometimes people are not going to behave like you want them to behave and if they're not going to behave like you want them to behave, that's their choice. That's their prerogative and it has nothing to do with you.
As I complete this blog, I want to tell you extraordinary coaches, be on the lookout for those situations where you can turn into a teaching moment, because at the end of the day, nobody owes you anything and you don't owe anybody anything and the best that you can hope to do is to maintain control of yourself and choose to love "what is." Now if this blog has helped you, I want to encourage you to share it with somebody like your family or your friends and continue following me on this blog. I end this blog like I end all my blogs, you have yourself a good time until the next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment