Be Aware...
This
will be one of my more “off the wall” anecdotes, but it illustrates to me how we
miss opportunities so easily through not being aware.
I recently ordered some pizza for delivery
(we didn’t feel like cooking that night, and luckily there’s an excellent and
well-priced delivery service nearby).
The pizza came on time. I always tip the delivery driver who has to
come out to our place (and if it’s raining, they get more).
The bill came to $29.50, but I only had a
$50 note. I asked the deliverer to give me $15 change,
leaving him $5.50 for a tip.
At this point, things went wrong. The deliverer couldn’t understand (and I
couldn’t make him understand), that I didn’t want a full $20 change from my
$50, only $15. He couldn’t give me $15
change as he only had $10 bills. I then
asked him to give me $20 change and found a $5 bill for a tip. He still couldn’t understand that I was
giving him an extra $5 tip and kept on repeating that the bill was $29.50.
At this point, I decided that we should
both cut our losses and asked my daughter if she had a $10 bill (luckily she
did). I was then able to give the driver
$30 (leaving him a 50 cent tip, but he seemed satisfied that he had received
the correct money.
It got me thinking: what went wrong here? I wanted to thank the driver for coming out
to our home by giving him a tip, but he wasn’t able to understand this. Worse, I wasn’t able to help him understand,
so that was my problem.
We all need to understand the opportunities
and challenges that we will face.
Sometimes it’s a case of looking at things from another angle. Sometimes it’s a case of trying things a
different way. Sometimes we need to work
out how to get a message across. Others
don’t see, understand or hear things the same way as we do. There’s a great phrase used by children’s
author and illustrator Robert McCloskey that I found some time back:
I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not
sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.
How much can we learn from this, and how
much does it explain the cultural, social, religious and political
disagreements that we have in our lives?
Next time remember (as I will): it may be your fault that the misunderstanding occurred, just as much (if not
more) as the other person’s.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy to offer solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Social, Teamwork
posted by William Martin @ 09:20
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