Use Problems to Enhance Your Career
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I've broken the sound barrier
over 1,000 times at the controls of everything from the F-86 Sabre, to the
F-102 Delta Dagger, to the F-101 Voodoo to the F-16 Viper. I have knocked off more than my share of
plaster and broken way more than my share of windows. My extra duty job in the Air Force was to
speak to groups of upset, hostile civilians and convince them that those sonic
booms were "the sound of freedom."
Having built a reputation in the military as
the "sonic boom salesman" I got into sales when I stopped flying. Those
hostile audiences must have been an excellent training ground because the
transition went smoothly. I did so well
at my first job as a salesperson that the company asked me to manage one of
their sales offices after only one year of experience. One year later, the same
executives who had put me in that little office the year before showed up again
and told me I was being promoted to manager of the top office in the 36-office
chain.
That's when I started making
the same kind of mistakes nearly every manager makes. I urged my people not to think of me as their
boss, but as a friend who was always right.
My goal was to turn everyone in that office into a copy of me.
It made perfect sense at the time. Turning the entire office into Danny Cox
clones seemed to be what my bosses wanted
me to do. If I could get my salespeople
to do their jobs exactly the way I had done mine when I was in their shoes,
they wouldn't bring me any problems that I hadn't already solved.
Under my management, the
number one office plummeted to number 36 out of 36. One day, as I was scratching my head trying
to figure out the problem, my boss showed up in my office, unannounced, without
his usual smile and pleasant demeanor. "Cox,"
he said through clenched teeth. "I
can now see that it was a mistake making you the manager of this office and I
feel it's only fair to tell you that I'm already looking for your replacement."
That was the shortest and
most effective motivational seminar I
ever attended. I needed to learn how to
lead––and I needed to learn fast.
I sought out the counsel of many
successful people and soon learned that I needed to work on myself, not the
salespeople. Salespeople get better
right after their manager does.
The techniques I began using
had such an immediate effect that within two weeks my boss stopped looking for
a replacement. We were heading back to
number one.
Here are three ways you can start turning
problems into opportunities:
Think
of a problem in the past that turned out to be, a positive.
Choose
a problem that you can turn into a positive if you apply the right attitude and
plan.
Decide
on one thing that you can do in the next 24 hours to improve your leadership
style.
“High performance is often the result of a sudden
change in direction.”
