Transcript

Welcome to Going the Extra Mile, a podcast brought to you by New Leaf Training and Development. Each addition is sure to lift your spirit and encourage you in today's working world. Enjoy. With Valentine's Day top of mind, have you noticed how few people seem to really love what they do for work? We've all experienced surly service and I found this to be most common in retail stores. Why? Well, in a restaurant, servers know they need to fake it even if they're not feeling it has. Their tips depend upon IT and technology now efficiently micro monitors, every word spoken by call agents, and standardized scripts help them avoid providing bad service while speaking with customers on the phone. But in a retail store, we often encounter part time employees working for minimum wage. Sadly, many of these individuals take the terms part time and minimum to heart. I went into a big box store this past weekend in search of a Valentine's Day gift for my wife, and I couldn't find what I was looking for. So before I walked out to let my fingers do The Walking on the web, I decided to ask a service assistant for help. And I was disappointed to receive the universal shoulder shrug. I think I did hear the words I don't know, but I couldn't be sure through the slapping of her bubble gum. I guess she must not have read the button pinned to her which said welcome, how may I help you? I kill ill. Gibran, in his most famous work The Prophet, wrote that our work is love made visible when he said quote. And if you cannot work with love, but only with distaste. It is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate at the temple and take arms of those who work with joy. End Quote. He wrote that in 1921. So it's dramatic as it sounds. I must agree with Kilil. One way that we can show love for another person is to serve them in a way we would want to be served. I'm sure we can all think of people we've worked with who didn't work with love, but rather distaste. To use Khalil's words, I believe life is just too short to work in a job that brings you misery and strife. So that dullness and that bitterness don't completely shut down when you clock off. Instead, you may unknowingly. Bring them home and place both dishes of discontent on the dinner table to be consumed by those who dined with you. Taking those concepts to a higher ground in the workplace of the world, I've often thought that the primary commodity leaders dealing is love. A Soppy as it sounds, if a leader loves an organisations purpose, products or service, there's a strong possibility other employees will feel that passion in the way that they lead. If a leader is a person of noble character, an impeccable competence, they're likely to steward the organization's finances as if they were their own. Furthermore, if a leader truly cares about the people they lead, dare I say, loves them and the image in which they were created. They're more likely to communicate respectfully. They'll conduct performance reviews in a way that amplifies the positive, address shortcomings lovingly, and reminds subordinates of their unwavering belief in them and their potential. This is the heart. It's the hands and feet of servant leadership, seeing your role as a leader as the conduit for using your explicit formal authority to clear the path and bring out the best in others. So there's no need for commanding control when the glue bonding. Everyone together is a shared love for the mission. You know why we exist, The vision, where we're going and when will we get there and the values. How are we going to work together? In closing, imagine what customer service, conflict resolution, teamwork, time management, work life balance, business acumen and leadership could look, sound and feel like if we bought the heart of what we celebrate on February the 14th into the work that we choose to do. See whether we're a full time or part time employee, a business owner or even retired. I really believe that we all still work in one way, shape or form. Let's do that with love. I hope you found that short story useful, and if you did, feel free to rate, review, and share this podcast. We'll be back next week with another episode, and we also invite you to check out our other weekly podcast, Take 5, and inspiring interview with a leader worth listening to. Bye for now.