Leadership, Sales & Customer Service - From the Inside-Out
Posted by Jim Bearden on Fri, Jul 17, 2009 @ 10:01 AM
Earlier in my career as a professional speaker, trainer and facilitator, I “went to the mountaintop” (my office) along with a dear friend, and over a three-day period of relative seclusion we each developed our respective core values and statements of purpose. As a starting entry for my new blog, here’s one of the core values I developed then and continue to rely on when developing my Leadership, Sales and Customer Service materials and presentations:
Self-mastery is the ultimate people skill, and it can only be achieved through mental training, the long and difficult process of acknowledging and improving the mental choices we make.
Leadership, sales, customer service and many other work-related disciplines certainly qualify as “people skills”, and I am convinced that self-mastery is a prerequisite for acquiring and effectively utilizing the skills associated with those disciplines.
And speaking of roles that require people skills, how about parenting? If you’re looking for some real “people skills challenges”, parenting will certainly provide them.
One of the things all of those roles have in common is that practitioners’ success is determined by their ability to influence the choices other people make. The core value I’ve developed and shared with you reflects my belief that before any of us can effectively influence the choices others make; we must be willing to acknowledge and improve the choices we make.
Success in the people business is an inside-out phenomenon. The things we say and do are the tools we use to influence the choices others make. The point I’m making here is that the things we say and do are based on the mental choices we make about the people and situations we encounter.
That’s why improving the mental choices we make is a prerequisite to improving our ability to influence the choices others make. Where Leadership, Sales, Customer Service and Parenting skills are concerned:
Self-Mastery
Precedes Skills Mastery