As a business growth specialist, I strive to bring the best and
most effective information to my clients. If you’ve been in this
amazing field of business consultancy for very long, you know
our clients don’t always take our input. Rightly so. It’s their
business and they have every right to choose which path they
want to traverse.
2009 was a tough year. And I believe it created an atmosphere
of delivery that will force all of us to rethink our businesses,
our services and how to best help our clients come out of a very
difficult time.
Was reading some information on the teachings from Anthony De
Mello who was born in India in 1931 and passed away at the young
age of 56. De Mello’s rants were about ‘waking us up’ and his beliefs
were that increasing our awareness would increase our ability
to stop ’sleepwalking’ through life, to truly ‘know thyself’.
I realized that in certain situations, I was ’sleepwalking’ through
engagements with clients. I always delivered more than expected and
clients seemed satisfied. However this article mentioned how
difficult it really is to live in awareness and in fact, people in
‘unawareness’ are not conscious of their actions or their words.
Whew. How many times did I leave a presentation or a workshop and
as I was walking back to my hotel room or to my car have a moment
of thinking ‘what exactly did I say’?
Ed Bassett, senior vice president at DuPont is quoted as saying:
‘The secret of leading in a rapidly changing environment is to be
committed to living the examined life; oneself.’ And the great
Confucius said, ‘The one who would be constant in happiness must
frequently change.’
There is a strong lesson here that I am going to take away and it’s
simply this:
– I will not just ask my clients to recognize change in themselves,
I will strive to increase my own awareness of everything around me.
– I will listen even more intently to my clients but I will also
listen intently to myself in order that I may hear those clients
more completely.
As Stephen Covey writes: “Between stimulus and response, there is a
space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our
response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”
I’m going to learn how to put that gap into my conversations, my
actions in order to improve my life which in turn will improve the
lives of people I strive to help.
