are late to meetings all the time. This has to change.
6. You need to be more assertive.
7. You are too much of a perfectionist.
We drastically underestimate how difficult it is to change these deeply ingrained patterns.
Marry As Is; If You Get a Change, It's a Bonus
A seminar participant once asked, “Do you mean my husband is never going to change?” In response to the question, “Can you tell me more?” she explained.
“I'm very goal oriented and my husband is very laid back – a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Last Saturday, he left the house at 10:00 AM to run some errands. He had six things he was going to do. He returned home at 2:00 PM and he had done only two! So I said to him, ‘What about the other four?’ ‘Don't worry,’ he replied, ‘I'll get them another time.’ Do you mean to tell me that is never going to change?”
I asked, “Suppose it does not change? Would you still love him? Would you still want to remain married to him?”
“Of course,” she replied, “but what can I do about this?”
“Get off his back! Quit asking him to change. Accept him as he is.”
Everyone you know has people in their lives who are trying to help them improve. But they are doing it by focusing on eliminating flaws and remediating weaknesses. Everyone has plenty of help on that agenda. You have the opportunity to be one of the few people who focus on what is right about a person rather than what is wrong.
Lesson
Marry as is. If you get a change it is a bonus. When you quit asking people to change, you will change your relationships. And when you change your relationships you will change your life.
Of course this applies not only to your personal relationships, but also to your professional ones, and particularly to your relationships with the people you manage.
Experiment: Quit Asking People to Change
1. Identify two people you are asking to change – one in your personal life and one in your professional life.
2. Just quit asking them to change. Accept them as they are.
3. Notice what happens to your relationship.
CHAPTER 5
TOLERATE UNDESIRABLE BEHAVIORS
If you are committed to cultivating positive relationships with people through accepting them as they are, you will inevitably run into conflicts between how people really are and how you wish they would be. What will you do in those instances? Where will you draw the line when accepting people as they are rubs you the wrong way?
The General Manager and the Director of Sales
I was teaching a seminar for a group of hotel general managers and one of them said, “Larry, help me apply what you're talking about to my director of sales. She is notoriously late to all meetings. And we have a standard that if we say a meeting that starts at eight, we do not mean 8:05.”
This was a luxury hotel in which timeliness was a sign of excellence, precision, and attention to detail. Meetings started on time. The general manager was asking, “Given our culture and standards, what am I supposed to do about this? We consider that behavior disrespectful toward the other people in the meeting.”
I said, “Well, tell me about the director of sales. How is she doing against the budgeted goals?”
He replied, “She's blowin' 'em away.”
“Okay,” I said, “how is she doing with her people? Is she a good mentor?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, “she trains people, and we promote them out to other hotels. People are standing in line to get into this department to work for her.”
I responded, “What's your problem?”
“She's late to meetings!”
I said, “Do you want a director of marketing who is on time to meetings, or do you want a director of marketing who blows away her revenue goals and develops great people for your organization?”
He said, “I want it all!”
Lesson
With real human beings in the real world, you do not get it all. Everybody has aces and spaces. In both business and personal life, tolerance of shortcomings is required to cultivate close positive relationships.
In every job there are things that are Nice to Have (such as timeliness in the previous story) and Need to Have (such as the ability to close sales). Be most tolerant in the Nice-to-Have category.
But how much undesirable behavior should you tolerate? The unsatisfying answer is: it depends. The more valuable a person is to an organization, the more inclined an organization will be to give that person special treatment.
The Best Car Salesman
Hank, a general manager of a large, successful Lincoln-Mercury dealership told me this story. For context, it is important to understand that Saturday is an “all-hands-on-deck” day for car dealers. Nobody gets Saturday off.
Tom had been the number one salesman in this dealership for 18 years in a row. One day, he walked into Hank's office and said casually, “My son's playing football this year, so I'm taking Saturdays off to watch him play.” This was not a request.
A seminar participant asked, “What did you do?” Without hesitation, Hank replied, “I gave him Saturdays off. He's my top guy.”
Experiment: Tolerating Undesirable Behaviors
1. The next time one of your best people exhibits an annoying behavior, ask yourself, “Is that Nice to Have or Need to Have?” Be honest.
2. If it is Nice to Have, just let it go. Nobody is perfect. Accept him with all his aces and spaces.
3. Focus on helping that person amplify his talents and strengths – the things that really make a difference in his productive performance.
4. Do this with all of your direct reports for 90 days.
5. Reflect on what you have learned. Do you see a difference in morale and engagement? How do you feel now that you are not asking people to change things that do not really matter all that much?
The downside of this accommodation typically involves dissatisfaction from other employees. “Hey, why does he get Saturdays off?” Of course, this is an easy one. Hank can reply, “As soon as you're number one for 18 consecutive years, I'll be happy to give you Saturdays off!” The downside of not giving the top guy Saturdays off is that he goes to another dealership. We are talking about favoritism here, but favoritism that is earned based on superior performance.
The Chef with Long Hair
I was on the pre-opening training team for The Ritz-Carlton Barcelona. My responsibilities
