Week 7

 

Week #7

Lessons Learned

7 Habits of highly effective people has been on my list to read for a while now. It was nice to get a small taste of the lessons from that book in less than 10 pages. Although everything from this was good, the biggest thing I will take on my entrepreneurial journey is the idea of keeping a healthy surplus in my “emotional bank”. Every interaction we make has an effect on our balance. I think this concept pairs up well with another business concept of “moments of truth”, which is the idea that every interaction with a customer tells something about your business and yourself. If you smile at every customer and say thank you, they will likely think you are an honest person who wants their business, but if you share a bad personal attitude at one of those customer interactions, the moment of truth for that customer changes to something negative about you and your business.

If we seek to build up our emotional bank we will have positive moments of truth and build up opportunities in the future to grow our success. 


Lessons Not Yet Learned

Public  Victory:

This is something I sort of understand but will need to spend more time on. Here is what I know so far about the public victory:

  • Effective interdependence can only be built on a foundation of true independence. Private victory precedes a public victory. You can’t be successful with other people if you haven’t paid the price of success with yourself first. Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make.

  • Interdependence is like an Emotional Bank Account. We make deposits into this account by courtesy, kindness, honesty, openness, and keeping commitments.



Personal Thoughts & Impressions

Seek first to understand then seek to be understood is probably one of the most important principles to use in life. These days people take almost anything personally and feel like the slightest disagreement is an affront to their personal character. Usually, if we take the time to understand someone's opinion there are opportunities for Win/Win scenarios, but when you don’t try understanding someone else you’ll only find Win/Lose or more likely, Lose/Lose scenarios since no one gets what they want when no one listens.

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