Dan Schneider

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
August 29, 2008

Remember that question from the fairy tales? It was all about how one generation handled the rise of the next. You might recall that the older generation didn’t handle the response any too well, and dealt with disappointment of beauty lost by poisoning the heir(ess) apparent.

How can you keep that from happening in your own set of circumstances? If your relationships among potential successors are healthy, then we need to keep building on the good work you’ve done. If the poisonous seeds have already been planted, then we’ve got to figure out how to mitigate the damages. Until the monitor says “Game Over,” it’s never too late to repair damaged or strained relationships.

Seven Steps to Strong Relationships

Here are seven steps that we use to build strong relationships among generations, partners, and different types of teams. If you already do these things, you won’t be surprised at their impact.

Step 1: Treat each person as a unique individual. That means allow each person to define success in his/her own terms. Forcing people into a mold knocks off their edge.

Step 2: Treat mistakes as stepping stones to future progress. We all make them. The trick is helping people learn how to learn so that the same mistake is rarely repeated.

Step 3: Praise in public and give corrective feedback in private. Notice, I said “corrective feedback” and not “constructive criticism.” No criticism is constructive – it is all destructive. A colleague is fond of saying “The ax forgets but the tree remembers.” Give the next generation something positive to remember.

Step 4: Celebrate at every opportunity. Life is short.

Step 5: Focus your efforts on sustainable excellence rather than perfection. A personal mentor was once asked by one of his corporate critics why his department (usually the top performing group in the organization) sometimes made critical errors. Harry looked at his critic calmly and replied “It’s because I hire human beings.”

Step 6: Manage your priorities, and you will have time to deal with all the interruptions and distractions.

Step 7: Keep yourself in perspective. Sometimes we become overly confident in our own significance. That’s almost always a recipe for disaster.

By following these steps, you will generate relationships based on respect and dignity for those around you. Those attributes, soft as they may seem to you, are what people tend to remember most about the people they admire.

Posted by Dan Schneider on August 29, 2008 | Comments (0)