Since I consider myself a salesman to a degree, I always find myself telling stories. Having something to sell is no more complicated than conveying an idea to someone that I'd love for them to adopt. As an extraordinary coach I would like for you to adopt the idea that the attitude is all important. Once you decide that things are going to be great, typically things are just great. When things are great one time, you think about that the next time you happen to see that things are not great and all this is why I'm sharing with you this next story I'm going to tell you. This next story I'm going to tell you about is how having a great attitude is its own reward.
For those of you that don't know, before I became an extraordinary coach I worked in the medical field. I was a registered nurse in the emergency room so my days were characterized by spending time with medics and firemen and policemen. This particular firefighter was telling me one day about a story involving him and another fireman some time ago. They were really excited about their jobs so even when they were not working they carried around two-way radios. One guy had a pickup truck and he always had a two-way radio in his pickup truck, and he always had his two-way radio turned on.
There was an accident. There was a fire, and a small child was in dire stress. When they heard the call they weren't far from the location so they decided that they would go there. They knew a shortcut; they knew the roads; they knew the neighborhood so it was easy for them to take some back streets and get there faster than the ambulance that was on the way.
When he turned onto a street that he was familiar with, as it turned out there was an earth mover that had just taken a big chunk of the road out and had the bucket still in the air with the chunk of dirt in it. They had come to the place where they had to go this way. To go any other way they would have been too long and the child could have died. They said to the workman, says, "Mister, would you mind please can you put the dirt back down long enough for me to drive my truck across there? We got a sick little girl that we got to go and save."
The workman was a guy like me. He believed in attitudes. He believed that his attitude determined his altitude, so he decided that he would accommodate these firefighters. He put the dirt back down and they rolled over. When they got there the little girl was just about to turn purple due to lack of oxygen. Because of this workman who had a good enough attitude to let these firefighters through, the little girl was saved in the nick of time. The little girl was not hurt at all. I'm telling you they took her to the hospital and did the work on the little girl. Everybody was excited about that. Now the workman, he didn't have any way of knowing that but that's really what happened.
Several days later the firefighter's driving around a neighborhood and they're still working on this road, so he decided that he wanted to go over and talk to the workman and tell him how wonderful it was that he let him through. He wanted to express his sincere appreciation how important it was that the workman made the decision that he did and that he demonstrated a good attitude by being helpful.
As he drives up in the neighborhood, sure enough, the workman is there and the workman sees him. The workman is just really, really excited and he's walking toward the fireman, and the fireman is excited too because the workman is excited, so they're getting each other jazzed up and getting each other excited. They're walking towards each other. They're hugging on each other. The firefighter told the workman, said, "Hey, you know something, man? Because of you, because of you we were able to save that little girl and we just appreciate you and we're so glad that you had a great attitude that day. Man, we are so excited about what you did. Thank you, my brother. Thank you."
To which the workman, with equal enthusiasm, says, "Oh no. No, no, not at all, sir. Not at all. What you don't realize is that that little girl that you saved was my daughter." Can you believe it? Can you believe it? That workman, had he not been cooperative, he would have sealed his daughter's fate. Now it didn't have to be his daughter at this time. It could have been anybody's daughter, but the mere fact that he was cooperative and demonstrated an attitude was its own reward. In addition to feeling good for helping somebody, he felt good that he saved his own little daughter's life.
What about you? As extraordinary coaches we tend to think that we know a lot more than we really do. Often people will make a suggestion to us about a particular thing and rather than simply evaluate the suggestion on its own merit, we have these preconceived notions that we carry around that make us think that we are right. We then begin to defend our being right in more ways than you can imagine.
How do you respond when you are asked to do something that's not a part of your job per se? How do you behave when someone asks you to do something when you have to go above and beyond, or even still, someone asks you to do something that is not clearly defined as something that you're responsible to do, but it is something that can help somebody? How often do you agree to it without a fight?
I want you to make a commitment after hearing this story that you will always, always be cooperative. You will always do what you can to help somebody. One way to encourage yourself to do that is forget about who's going to get the credit. A wise man told me one time, if you're not worried about who gets the credit, you are able do a lot of things. Give up the right to be right. Give up the right to get the credit and don't look for the pats on the back. Whenever you get the chance to do somebody a favor, whenever you get the chance to forgive somebody for some transgression, I want you to take it. This is the essence of a good attitude.
Now if this blog has helped you, maybe it will help somebody else, so I'm going to ask you to pass this blog on to something that you know. Then I'm going to end the blog like I end all my blogs, with me inviting you to have yourself a good time until the next time and continue being an extraordinary coach.
No comments:
Post a Comment