Putting others first is a characteristic of our world’s real heroes. By Gary Shotton #000171

Click Here to download in audio (.mp3 format); right click on link and select “save as”

Click Here to download in video (.mp4 format); right click on link and select “save as”

Humility

By Gary Shotton

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton and I’m so happy to be with you here is a part of inspiring better business, and today we’re going to talk about a word that you many times don’t think consistent with business talk but its humility. In this session I’m going to talk about a clear definition about the way I use the word humility in this discussion and then we’re going to talk about how it applies in business not just life in personal parts of life but then we’re going to talk about the good examples that I’ve seen and submit. bad examples that I have seen and then we’re going to wrap up with clear understanding that humility is not in any way true humility is not a weakness, it’s not something that a weak person would be judged to be a humble well first of all is the definition a lot of people when you think humble they’re the person that got up for the lady that got on the bus. I was so humble that I got up and let this older lady take my chair or I was so humble that I didn’t want to take credit for something I’ve done.

I want to maintain a back position not being on stage and you know that may be true to some degree. But that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about somebody that’s humble that strong has good strong opinions and that is willing to speak out their opinions at the right time. And yet be humble about it and what I mean by that? it’s someone that has the willingness and ability to submit boy those things don’t really go well with a lot of people’s vocabulary, I’m humble and I’m going to submit, and you know submission is not something that’s blind submission. That says they instructed me to jump off this cliff with no net below and that’s that wouldn’t be what we’re talking about, or our submission is not obeying an order that’s going to hurt you or hurt someone else. We have a standing agreement in our code that no one ever is expected to do something that’s unsafe at any point we have lessons on this that at any point anybody feels that what they’re doing is unsafe me as the owner.

I have told them they must never proceed on to do that and will honor that so we’re not talking about something to do blindly submit to something and we have a culture here at our company that is continually drawing in advice and input and suggestion, so hopefully you’ll see that those two cultures go well together. We’re not the army we’re not the general we’re not the sergeant we’re not spitting out orders and people taking those orders well we’re working as a team but at the end of the day there’s going to be few people that have various or different opinions on how to do something. And at that point someone must be able and willing up to step up and take the leadership and take the direction and show the direction in that project without everyone pulling back and so someone’s got to take the leadership and that probably means someone may need to submit their opinion and prefer that another person that’s what we need as a team. Now let’s quickly describe what I’m talking about in just in the world well in the sports world you know.

I’m glad we happen to be in a basketball season when I’m doing this recording right now and we have some people that are great shooters and I’ve seen teams where there’s a great shooter and they will not pass the ball they will not submit to the betterment of the team. Because they want their name to be the highest scoring individual the person that’s going for the record, we have some great examples now of individuals that are team players and they’re submitting and I’d love it that we’re now not only judging score. But we judge the number of assists in other words the times that we passed off so the other person can score let’s talk about the police department you know the police have a tough job in any nation and in our nation. We have a rash of situations where people are being asked maybe the police officer is harsh or maybe you don’t know his background, but he asked someone to raise their hands or drop to their knees you know at that point.

If he’s got a gun and he’s asking me to do that and he’s a policeman you know, I better submit right then I know some people that we hear that they’re asking for police suicides and so they purposely don’t obey and walk towards a policeman to the point that policeman must do something. And it’s not necessarily good well that’s the opposite of submitting would be say you’re in authority right now. I want you to know that and I’m going to do exactly what you say when you get to the bottom of it, you’ll know that I’m innocent that’s what we’re talking about now. We’re not the police department here now at business here’s what we run into we have a company that’s continually suggesting new ideas new things better ways of doing that and so at some point someone’s got to give up the old way that will be a form of a submission. Now hopefully we have an environment whereas something new comes on we can kind of sell that show that or at least give the opportunity to show that that is a good way of doing or maybe a better way.

We’ve got a swallow pride just a bit let’s give some real examples well the way we maintain our cutting devices you see we could have cutting devices that are piled on everybody’s desk and everybody’s work center, is there’s no organization there’s no ability to know what we have in inventory, so we just keep buying more cutting devices. And we have no organization well somebody’s got to submit and trust that with a new way we’re doing that is going to be better and they submit their opinion that they need to hold them right at their desk right at their work center and not and relinquish that control and know that they can go get that cutting device. When they need it, we have a situation where we have the need for keeping programs backed up and stored and people want to store them in different places kind of X you know for the good of the company but that’s not a submission to our system. You see we’re creating systems where we use computers, and we have a bad software program for what we’re doing with our parts then we’re going to have a potential risk that we’re making bad parts, so we have to have people submit their opinions and follow the group we try to create a smaller team.

It’s not a perfect world but when we have a new proposal, we try to ask ourselves is this good for the team is it good for the people that are working on this project, and somebody’s got to submit most often and at the end of the day there’s some give-and-take but again we’re not talking about week. We’re not talking about the good ideas always set back because we have one person that’s the bully that they’re going to always have their way and everybody else must submit to that person that person really needs to work at a different place than our company. We will work through that in our own way and that may happen as process of time goes on see ideas are going to come forward people are going to have different ideas how to do something people are going to have preferred ideas and at the end of that little encounter most likely.

If you have two opinions one of the two are going to have to submit and at that point we’re going to see what the real character of that individual is we want a company full of our workers creating new systems new, ways new efficiencies new ideas, and that means if you got a new idea inherently you got to get rid of the old idea and that means a little bit of change well. I hope this is helpful to you not a word not a topic that you would normally hear maybe in in in business but there’s a little slogan, that says let’s commit to submit that goes well with a company that is engulfing and asking people’s ideas in an input for new things. at the same time thank you for being a part of this we hope to be Inspiring Better Business.