Abraham Lincoln has been quoted as saying, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” While I’ve also seen him credited for saying things like “You can’t believe all the quotes you read on the internet,” I’ve actually heard that particular quote attributed to him often enough that I think he really did say it… Regardless of whether Honest Abe did or did not say that about being as happy as we make our minds up to be, it holds a lot of weight!

In the article I published on LinkedIn recently, Don’t Wait Until You Get There, I referenced how basically everyone I know could point to at least one crappy situation they’ve had to deal with since Covid took over the world. I won’t hash the whole thing out again here, but I will be building on what I shared there through this and the next several posts. 

Picture this: you’re in your mid 20s, just getting started on your own. You recently...

Before we close the loop on what we can do to exceed expectations for the folks with the final primary behavioral, I’m going to insert a quick plug for the complimentary session Cindy and I are hosting on Friday, Feb 12 at 2:30p on How Top Leaders Set the Tone for Recruitment & Retention. Whether you have a SHRM or HRCI credential that you can use the approved continuing education for or not, the only reason I can imagine this not being a relevant topic would be that you just don’t mind hemorrhaging money due to turnover. And if that’s the case, no worries at all. But if that topic will be of any value, here’s the link to register at no cost…

Now, let’s look at some things we can be sure to do to really exceed expectations when we’re serving the 25% of the population who are Reserved and Task-Oriented; our more CAUTIOUS friends…

While the folks who have this CONTEMPLATIVE style will approach things with a slower pace, it’s...

In a large majority of the initial conversations I have with folks around the DISC Model of Human Behavior, I’m told “I’ve taken an assessment. I’m a D (or an I, or an S, or a C)” and that’s about as far as they take it. Interestingly enough, statements like that are almost always made under the assumption that they actually know how to use what their assessment told them. I won’t even go into the tirade about whether or not the assessment they took was anything even resembling accurate…

Don’t get me wrong, I believe a scientifically validated DISC assessment can provide us with some great information - but the key lies in understanding how we can effectively use that information on a day to day basis! There’s where the real value is with any type of assessment… And it absolutely should not stop at simply understanding we’re this or we’re that, we need to have a framework for recognizing how we can best...

Even after doing all the things we’ve looked at through the last several posts to ensure we’re on the right track to being able to exceed expectations with each person we interact with, there can be a huge gap between what we intend and what they perceive! Nearly all of us have grown up hearing just how important it is to follow The Golden Rule by doing unto others as we’d have them do unto us. But there are times with even the purest of purpose, things can go awry…

Have you ever met someone who seems to view the world through a pair of rose colored glasses? You know, one of those folks who can find the best in any situation… Hope about someone who can brighten just about any room simply by walking out of it? I’m not sure what color their glasses are, but they probably don’t have that same rosy tint!

Cindy and I were in a training session a few years ago where the instructor divided us into small groups and challenged each group to review...

I got my first taste of behavior-based safety in late spring or early summer of 1998. Cindy and I had only been dating a few months at that point so I was still teetering on the edge to say the least… By the time I went through the two day training process required to conduct behavioral observations in January ‘99, we were nearly a year into a pretty solid relationship so some of my extremely rough edges were beginning to get at least a little bit smoother. Looking back, I can see so many places where God’s hand was moving in my life at that time but I’ll save those stories for another time.

For now, I’d like to share a subtle but crucial lesson that I probably should have pulled away from those two days of training. Truth be told, it took a few years for me to really get it!

You may have heard me reference this before but I’ll hash it out here again. One of the core tenets of behavior-based safety is that employees are trained to watch their...

Once we’ve worked to ensure we’re very clear about exactly what it is that we provide for our customers, our clients, the team members we lead, or even our family, we’d each do well to invest some additional time into making sure we understand just what it is they’re really hoping to receive through their interaction with us. 

Gosh Wes, why would I need to do that if I’ve already put so much into clarifying what I can offer in each of those situations? Shouldn’t that be enough?

I remember hearing a story about a couple who were going through marriage counseling. The wife was upset because her husband wasn’t communicating with her. The husband was upset because he just couldn’t figure out how to please his wife. As the counselor asked the wife a series of probing questions to really dig into what her husband wasn’t communicating with her about, she finally said “he hasn’t even told me that he loves me since the...

So before we really dig into the specifics of those questions I outlined in the last post that we all need answered in order to EXCEED EXPECTATIONS on a regular basis, let’s take a look at one critical thing we each need to consider in this process.

Having hit on this idea of EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS from quite a few angles over the last several weeks, there’s been one common theme: nearly everything I’ve shared on the topic has been from a perspective of how this impacts so many levels of the teams we lead and the community we serve. While building this approach into our entire organizational culture, ensuring the company is known for exceeding expectations, can make a tremendous impact at so many levels, there’s one thing we need to really take ownership of to have any real hope of it ever becoming part of our team’s culture.

We need to take personal responsibility for exceeding the expectations of each individual we serve on a daily basis; not...

As we consider each area that we can take responsibility for controlling that we’ve worked through to this point, there’s one thing that ties back to every single one… And without being very intentional about how we control this final thing, the control we’ve assumed for each of the others is likely to have a very limited impact!

In the last post, I referenced reaching out to the manager of the company to provide a heads up about our friend’s experience. I shared that he took responsibility for the issue, even though it wasn’t something that he had any direct contact with. I also mentioned that he asked me to pass along an apology on his behalf, which I did. 

Here’s where that final thing we need to control comes into play....

In his role, and with the issues that industry has dealt with over the last several months, he has an incredibly full schedule and I believe he works extremely hard. As Cindy and I teach on the 3 R’s and...

In working through the importance of controlling our delivery in the last post, I stopped just short of detailing the scenario in question. Without going into specifics and tossing anyone under the proverbial bus, I’ll touch on that briefly now as it tees up the topic we’ll look at this time…

A business associate who was doing some work for a friend we referred to them had been asked to make a few changes in some documentation. In a normal world, those changes may realistically take an hour or two to get knocked out. The request was made on Dec 1. On Dec 14 or so, our friend was told that the changes still weren’t complete but would be no later than Dec 21. That day came and went without the changes being made. On Dec 23, our friend received an email saying that the person responsible for making the changes had decided to close their office until Jan 4 without providing any detail on when the changes would actually get some attention.

Hey, I get it....

When I made the last post, I thought we’d be turning the page from Controlling What We Can Control and looking at an entirely different topic when we picked things up again. As Cindy and I discussed a few recent scenarios where we had referred family members to a few different business associates, it became clear that there were indeed a few more things that each of us can control on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the places we had referred business to had not done that…

Before I go on, please understand that this and the next few posts aren’t to slander anyone specific, but to illustrate the importance of controlling the things we can control when so much of the world we live in seems like it’s spinning out of control. (If you don’t think things are spinning out of control, GOOD FOR YOU! You’ve clearly not bought into the nonsense the media is shoveling…)

The other thing I’ll stress before diving into today’s topic is that...