ATTENTION DECODED

Passive aggression is sugar-coated anger. It is a cover up. A sneak attack. A covert way of getting someone back. Some people turn it into a behavioral art form they become so good at it.   But passive aggression is a no-win power struggle. A no-win means no productivity, and there is usually some form of pain involved. Passive aggressive people satisfy their own anger by pushing another person to publicly displaying anger.   It is nothing more than a coping mechanism.   Displaced anger stemmed from a long time of being directly ignored.   Before you label a colleague, client or partner as passive aggressive and throw your hands up feeding the negativity with more negativity… Try assertive communication. Call a spade a spade. Talk about the elephant in the room, and resist any urge to do this with sarcasm—passive aggression’s evil twin. The reality is that a person who is passive aggressive is not being heard and acknowledge...

Gratitude and gravity have a few things common. Both hold you to things other than yourself. Both will keep you grounded. Being grounded helps you remain humble. To be humble is an admission. That your success is due in part to more than you alone. Including the people you serve and work with. The people who see you as a partner and trust you. Having expectations for outcomes is fine. It is hard to reach your full potential without a positive attitude and goals. But don’t confuse expectations with rights…or feelings of being owed something just because you expected it. Problems arise when your expectations require sacrificing your virtues. Tarnishing the brand that is you. Bending in your virtues runs the risk of losing clarity of who you need be in business. The customer. Winning should never get in the way of what your client needs. That goes for winning an argument. Winning should not be a goal. Creating a win-win situation for a deal to ...

"Does this client not know how hard I worked for them? I spent countless hours keeping this deal together and they “changed their mind”?   They had the nerve, after all my hard work to go and work with someone else after I did most of the work for the person who replaced me. How could they not understand all the time I sacrificed on their behalf? Do they just not care?!" Basically… We expect our effort, our sweat, and our time to count for something. The reality is your time and your effort will never mean as much to other people as it means to you. When it comes to legwork, and the physical labor of your work, no one (other than yourself) is going to understand the sacrifice. Remember the saying that lasted a really long time: “Don’t work hard! Work Smart!” You could pick in the past. You could make a decent living working really hard or working really smart. In the past. People have endless choices for who they can work with today. That is ...

If your primary job is to provide people with a personal service, you have likely experienced a disappearing client. Sometimes no communication is worse than unpleasant communication. At least with unpleasant communication you know where everyone stands which gives you a sense of direction. Assumptions most often occur when no one is talking, leaving you as your only point of reference. Assumptions create distance. Distance does not help productivity. Productivity is a fundamental necessity for success, especially in service industries. With trust, it is likely that a person is untrusting of you not because of you but something else making them uneasy. Discover what makes them uneasy. Did something happen to them in the past that the current situation reminds them of? Tell them you sense distance. Remind them you are their partner and tell them again what being a partner means to you. If you have an agreement with a client and they disappear it is natu...