A collection of Ray Zinn’s thoughts from this week. To get these in real time, connect with Ray on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
A friend recently said that good and honest debate is healthy. His opinion came on the heels of the recent presidential election and the rhetoric that spurred. Good and honest debate can be healthy once we define the rules. The rules for any “good and honest” debate should include all parties being calm and their remarks being devoid of personal attacks or insults. Each side should be free to present their argument or position without rancorous interruption. In addition, the end result should be that each party expresses, freely and openly, their position without the view that there must be a winner from the debate (there often isn’t). If we all approached discussions in this manner, we could avoid much of the negative narrative and divisiveness.
Gratefulness and entitlement don’t seem to go together, although they should. We are all entitled to be happy, but are we? We can be happy once we decide to be. Yet when we have an entitlement mentality, we cease to be gracious, kind and happy. Anger stirs us when we don’t get what we want, when we want it. Anger and happiness don’t go together. To avoid the entitlement unhappiness spiral, think back on all those times when things did go your way. This counting of blessings instead of cursing at the world around you allows you to be happy, grateful and enjoy life.
There is little difference between marketing and lobbying. In a sense lobbying is generally associated with influencing politicians. Yet functionally they are the same. Marketing or lobbying is the effort to influence a party to decide in your favor. Both are forms of pestering and nobody likes to be pestered. To do good marketing or lobbying, you must be aware at what point you begin to pester. This is tricky since a lot of marketing/lobbying is very repetitive, and that’s annoying. In social media, one pesky marketing tactic is the use of “modals” that appear annoyingly over top of your computer screen. Really effective marketing/lobbying is when you get your point across, simply and almost unnoticed. Likely, take care that other actions, ones not intended as marketing or lobbying, do no hurt your brand. All of us whether we are professional marketers or lobbyers are in fact, marketing or lobbying ourselves by our daily actions.
A friend recently commented on one of my posts that was very encouraging. It caused me to reflect that if we would be more encouraging with each other rather than discouraging, just think how much more we could accomplish in life. So just for today, let’s be more encouraging to others rather than discouraging.
Where there is no vision and insight, a company will fail. In my book, Tough Things First [http://amzn.to/2k1rSDH], I discuss the importance of CEO vision and insight. It is insight that leads to the right vision, the goal all employees will chase. Know this; insight without wisdom is an oxymoron. Wisdom and insight go together. Insight is that wise vision that spurs and catapults a company into the future. The inspired CEO knows what to do and when to do it.
Trust in the world leaders, both in government and business, has fallen to an all-time low. The precipitous decline began in 2008 at the start of the financial crisis. Distrust is a result of people being let down by leaders. These “leaders” are those who have not accepted responsibility for their poor decisions and in some cases committed flat-out dishonesty. So what behavior drives mistrust? All too typical, it comes from greed. Greed drives almost every form of dishonesty: lying, cheating, stealing, and every manner of corruption. Until the world leaders demonstrate a willingness to accept true responsibility for their actions, the level of trust will not improve.
Making fun of people, whether you’re teasing or not, is unacceptable. Most teasing or bashing comes from a lack of respect for the other person. Perversely, such teasing is geared to make us feel good at the expense of others. We tease or bash it is primarily when we are angry or upset. This is divisive. It is never good or even acceptable to intentionally hurt another no matter how much we believe they deserve it. If we want to be considered kind and gentle, we must rid ourselves of the terrible tendency to be mean spirited to others.
