Студопедия

Главная страница Случайная страница

КАТЕГОРИИ:

АвтомобилиАстрономияБиологияГеографияДом и садДругие языкиДругоеИнформатикаИсторияКультураЛитератураЛогикаМатематикаМедицинаМеталлургияМеханикаОбразованиеОхрана трудаПедагогикаПолитикаПравоПсихологияРелигияРиторикаСоциологияСпортСтроительствоТехнологияТуризмФизикаФилософияФинансыХимияЧерчениеЭкологияЭкономикаЭлектроника






Lessons in pain






 

Just as there are emotions we desire to experience because they're pleasurable, and that's why we're always moving toward them, we also have a list of emotions that we'll do almost anything to move away from. Very early in my career, when I was just beginning to build my first company, I experienced tremendous frustration in being on the road and trying to run my business simultaneously. At one point, it appeared that a person representing me had not been completely honest. When you deal, as I have, with hundreds of thousands of people, and literally thousands of business arrangements, the law of averages says that a few will attempt to take advantage of you. Unfortunately, these are the ones that tend to stick out in our minds rather than the hundreds or even thousands of business relationships that have far surpassed our expectations. As a result of one such painful situation, I sought out a new CEO, a man who I thought could really run my company. Armed with my new tool of being able to elicit someone's values, I asked each of the potential candidates, " What's most important to you in your life? " Some of them said things like " success" or " accomplishment" or " being the best." But one man used the magic word. He said, " Honesty." I didn't just take him at his word; I checked him out with several people he'd worked with. They confirmed that he was " honest as the day was long" and that, in fact, at times he had set aside his own needs if there was any question of integrity. I thought, " This is the kind of man I want representing me." And he did a fine job. Soon, though, it became clear that we needed an additional associate in order to really run my rapidly expanding business: someone who had additional skills. My CEO recommended someone he thought could become his partner, and they could jointly run my organization. This sounded great to me. I met this man, whom I'll call Mr. Smith (names have been changed to protect the not so innocent), and he did a fabulous presentation, demonstrating for me how he could use all the skills he'd developed throughout the years to take my company to the next level. He could free up my time, and allow me to do even larger seminars and impact even more people without having to live on the road. At the time, I was spending almost 150 days a year away from home, conducting my seminars. In addition, he didn't want to be paid until he'd produced the result! It sounded almost too good to be true. I agreed to the arrangement. Mr. Smith and my honest CEO would run my company.

A year and a half later, I woke up and discovered that it was too good to be true. Yes, my seminars had gotten bigger, but now I was on the road almost 270 days a year. My skill and impact had grown, I'd helped more people than ever before, but suddenly I was informed that I was $758, 000 in debt after I'd given more than I ever had in my entire lifetime. How could this possibly be? Well, management is everything, both within companies and within ourselves. And I clearly did not have the right managers.

But worse, Mr. Smith had over this eighteen-month period of time misappropriated[123] more than a quarter of a million dollars from our coffers. He had a new house, a new car—I had assumed he'd gotten them from his other businesses. Boy, was I in for a surprise! To say that I was angry or devastated[124] by this experience would certainly be using Transformational Vocabulary to lower the intensity of my feelings. The metaphors I used at the time were things like " I feel stabbed in the back" and " He tried to murder my firstborn." How's that for emotional intensity?

However, the thing that perplexed me the most was how my honest CEO could stand by and not warn me that all this was happening. He was aware of what was going on! This was when I began to realize that people don't just pursue pleasure, but they clearly also move away from pain. My honest CEO had tried to tell me that he was concerned about his partner. He came to me after I'd been on the road for three straight months. On my first day home, he approached me to tell me that he had questions about Mr. Smith's integrity. I immediately became concerned and asked him why. He said, " When we moved to our new offices, he took the biggest office." This was so petty[125] that I got extremely angry and said, " Listen. You brought him into this business; you deal with him yourself personally." And I stormed off.

I should have realized that day that I'd given this man pain when he was trying to give me information. In my exhausted and stressed state I failed to evaluate the deeper meaning of what was going on. As if this weren't bad enough, my honest CEO approached me again to give me similar feedback. I told him that he was not being totally honest by talking to me instead of Mr. Smith. I marched into his associate's office and said, " He's telling me all these things about you. You guys work this out! " Can you imagine the pain he got from Mr. Smith? As I look back on the experience now, I can see clearly why he didn't tell me the truth. Telling me the truth—that he'd brought someone intomy business who'd misappropriate more than a quarter of a million dollars—seemed to him, in the short term, to be much more painful than just putting it off and trying to find some other way to deal with it eventually.

In fact, as I look back on all the upsets I ever had with this CEO, invariably they all came down to times when he didn't do things he needed to do simply because he wanted to avoid the feeling of confrontation. This was the ultimate pain for him, So while honesty was important to him, avoiding confrontation was more important. Thus he simply did not communicate to me, and rationalized that he was being honest because, after all, I had never asked him if Mr. Smith was taking money. If I had,

he would have told me. As angry as this situation made me, and as painful as it was financially and emotionally, it provided me with one of the most valuable lessons of my life because it gave me one of the final pieces in the puzzle of understanding human behavior. Understanding these twin forces of pain and pleasure has helped me not only to positively influence myself and my family, but people around the world with greater precision.

 

 


Поделиться с друзьями:

mylektsii.su - Мои Лекции - 2015-2024 год. (0.006 сек.)Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав Пожаловаться на материал